History as “stopped” time in works of Ch. Sealsfield / C. Postl and A. Stifter

History has an important place in works of Austrian writers of the first half of the XIXth century Ch. Sealsfield / C. Postl (1793-1864) and A. Stifter (1805-1868). Sealsfield was strongly influenced by W. Scott’s experience of creating historical novels. Stifter created his own historical novel combining genre lines typical of the novel and the epic poem in his work “Witiko”. In Sealsfield’s novels progressively developing time is represented. The time is based on historicity and real events of America’s recent past. In 1823 the writer had to emigrate to America for fear of persecution. However, discourse of his texts correlates with issues of the state system, political and public life of Austria in the 1830s. The Age of Metternich, hereditary privileges of the aristocracy and the oppression by the Catholic Church made up an implicitly expressed level of Sealsfield’s texts. Stifter tries to find an ideal model of social order in the model of a medieval state under rule of a sensible governor capable of protecting his people (“Witiko”, 1867). From this Austrian novelist’s point of view, life of each person should be integrated into the context of history. Stifter’s work does not belong to the historical novel genre in traditional understanding typical of the ХIХth century (W. Scott’s interpretation in particular). Meaning to tell readers about creation of a state based on justice and brotherhood Stifter creates a stylized epic utopia. Stifter’s artistic time continuum has a tendency to atemporality and “making a stop” in some ideal space of the home and state. The time is also “stopped” in Sealsfield’s novel “South and North” (1843). Here the “stopped” time means disappointment with the course of history and the idea of an ideal state. Genre structure of novels by Ch. Sealsfield and A. Stifter is based on a spatial idea of the way. It involves discovering the world and concomitant spiritual formation or transformation of a man. This issue is considered in works of well-known researchers M. Bakhtin, Y. Lotman, V. Toporov.