The world of Victorian writers in Zadie Smith’s historical novel “The Fraud”: a non-canonical “insider” view
AbstractThe article examines the ideological and artistic features of the interpretation of Victorianism and the world of writers of that era in the first historical novel by the famous British writer Zadie Smith. The relevance of the study is due to the dynamics of the historical novel in the literary process of Great Britain at the present stage, the need to identify the originality of Smith’s approach to the genre and her contribution to the national tradition. In addition, the relevance is determined by the need for a more comprehensive and unbiased view of the Victorian era as an important stage in the formation of the English national mentality and culture, in which literature played a significant role. The purpose of the present study is to identify and analyze the author’s original approach to the possibilities of the historical novel of culture and to the personalities and destinies of a number of leading writers of the century before last, as well as Zadie Smith’s conceptual and artistic polemics with stereotypes and clichés in the perception of some leading figures of the English literary and artistic process in the 1830s and 1870s, including Dickens, Thackeray, Ainsworth, Cruikshank, and Forster. In the course of analyzing the novel’s artistic system, the author of the article concludes that the novel’s system of images, the type of narration, and the author’s creative work with the genre paradigm of the new type of historical novel that emerged in the English novel tradition in the late 1980s allow Smith to create a work that presents the Victorian era and the world of writers in an original way, adding new accents and authorial individuality to the portrayal of Victorianism. Further research could focus on the novel’s dialogue with Ainsworth’s works as the main literary figures in the novel, the functioning of irony in the novel’s narrative paradigm, the author’s voice, the theme of black Britons in the artistic system, and other aspects.
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