Genre specification of the novel «Mad love» by A.Breton

The present article is concentrated on the analysis of the main book "Mad Love" (1937) of the trilogy by a master of French surrealism Andre Breton. Classifying the novel as a "novel-essay" the author of the article focuses on the problem of peculiarity of genre transformations in modernism. The novel "Mad Love" is put in the context of the writer's works and French literature of the beginning of the XX century. The problems of novel as a genre crisis, urgent for the turning periods in the culture history, for the borderline conditions of the literature historical process are dealt with.