The depiction of history in contemporary Russian prose: stylization and visualization

The article analyzes the artistic principles of depicting history in the newest domestic prose. Russian literature of the 21st century is characterized by increased attention to the historical narrative and aesthetic understanding of both ancient and relatively recent past due to the influence that history and its assessments have on the domestic socio-cultural situation. On the material of novels of the early 2020s the article shows that the relevance of historical issues is fixed for the widest genre and stylistic spectrum of texts: from historical novels to anti-utopia and women’s prose. All these multilevel narratives are united by a common attitude to the use of methods of artistic documentary, which are consistently stylized by L. Ulitskaya, L. Yuzefowicz, and E. Vodolazkin, as well as appeals to the principles of cinema-poetics, which are explained by the persistent tendency of contemporary mass culture to visualize literary texts. The article concludes that the stylization of documentary narrative forms is functionally designed to create the illusion of emotional and documentary authenticity, necessary for the depiction of historical events and correlated with the numerous examples of “non-fiction” literature, perceived as eyewitness testimony. The introduction of such elements related to film-poetics as montage, unexpected alternation of several plot lines, and suspense serve to strengthen the reader’s interest in the literary text in the conditions of forced competition for the audience with the visual arts.