«After postmodernism»: on historical novel's development. Some notes in the margines of the book by Jerome de Groot

In the review on the book “The Historical Novel” by the contemporary literary critic Jerom de Groot the dynamics of the genre is critically regarded from its genesis in the early XIX century up to post-postmodernism. The emphasis is put on the issues of the genre definitions of the historical novel and determination of structural and poetic genre limits. Their obvious tendency to shift is shown especially in terms of genre innovations brought by post-modern historical narrations, metahistory and metaprose ideas. Along with this it is argued that the genre core of the historical novel is stable, i.e. artistic reconstruction of interrelations of a human being and history as a socio-cultural and material-cultural process.