TRANSFORMATIONS OF MOTIVES OF RELIGIOUS DRAMA IN THE LITERATURE OF THE 20TH-21ST CENTURIES: THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT

Abstract

The article studies the transformation of motives of religious drama in the literature of the 20th-21st centuries from the point of view of religious philosophy, namely the neo-Thomism paradigm. The concept of transformation is interpreted as a transition to the use of meaning-generating models close to drama as a kind of literature in the context of the visual turn in the culture of the 20th-21st centuries. The actualization of action as a form-creating means along with the explicit or implicit accentuation of the integrity of the world picture is interpreted as a search for metaphysical grounds for the aesthetic systems of modernism and postmodernism and the poetics of individual authors and their works. The article substantiates the philosophical aspect of the interpretation of religious drama accepted in scientific literature as a metagenre for the literature of the 20th-21st centuries. The study outlines the universal character of generic methods and means of expressiveness of religious drama for literature in the conditions of the visual turn.
 The aesthetics of literature between phenomenological and metaphysical approaches to human action may be inclined to the fluctuation (metaxis) between them, which conditions the stylistic and genre openness of religious drama. In this context, its elements are used both in traditional genres and to rethink the genre and stylistic boundaries of the representation of human action in art in general and in literature in particular. Motives of religious drama (journey, overcoming obstacles, battle, feat as a leap of faith, love, despair, hatred, boredom as existential aspects of the human condition, service, sacrifice) in the works of P. Claudel, H. Chubai and D. Barthelmy are presented with significant differences, but with the preservation of paradigmatic features – symbolism and metaphysics as an indication of the ultimate integrity, unattainable neither rationally nor sensually. The universalism of the motives of religious drama is interpreted as the present ambivalence, which brings together high and low, profane and sacred, parody and grotesque with pathos, etc.