The realization of the concept of the features of the historical novel by Walter Scott on the example of Barry Unsworth's novel "Moralite"

Sadovnikova Yuliya Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0003-4788-0490 Postgraduate student of the Literature Department of Kaluga State University named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky 248000, Russia, Kaluga region, Kaluga, lane Voskresenskiy, 4 OrangeLioness@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

A historical novel is a novel that recreates a specific historical epoch in an artistic form. History in a historical novel is connected with private life, therefore, the choice of a hero and the peculiarity of the organization of time are important criteria for identifying genre features of a historical novel and further ways of developing the genre. The historical novel appears at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries. It is generally believed that the genre of the historical novel was created by Walter Scott, thus, a "classical model, a paradigm of the genre" has developed in British literature.

The task of a historical novel is to provide artistic evidence that certain historical (circumstances and people really existed and were exactly as the writer paints them. As G. Lukach noted, "the historical novel before Walter Scott lacks precisely historical thinking, in other words, an understanding that the characteristics of people's character stem from the historical originality of their time" ^[3].

Proskurnin argues that "a historical novel of the Walterscott type means a work in which a verbal and figurative understanding of historical trends (patterns) dominates, connecting the past and present into a single stream of time, determining the fate and inner world of the hero, that is, the person of the epoch reconstructed by the writer and inevitably including him in the process of creating history." [4: 23]

In a historical novel, the time of the depicted epoch and the time of the author are determined by the historical distance between them. The image of the epoch is recreated by the author by including folklore elements, epigraphs, symbols, images of space, descriptions of everyday life, landscapes and interior into the narrative structure. The author's time, which is always connected with his concept of history, is often expressed in author's digressions, where historical references or arguments about the role of a historical event and historical figures in history are given. Both the artistic time and the hero in the historical novel, on the one hand, are determined by the historical concept of the author, on the other hand, the images of the hero and time reveal the image of the depicted epoch.

Walter Scott reached the historical novel, having thought in detail about its aesthetics, he started from the well-known and popular Gothic and antique novels at that time. The Gothic novel fostered the reader's interest in the place of action, and therefore taught the artist to relate events to a specific national basis. In the Gothic novel, the increased drama of the plot, the character received the right to independent behavior and reflection, because he also contained part of the drama of historical time. The antique novel taught Walter Scott to be attentive to the local flavor, to reconstruct the past professionally and without mistakes, reproducing not only the truthfulness of the material world of the era, but mainly the originality of the spiritual appearance.

Features of the historical novel In Scott:

1. A combination of a true depiction of a past life and an interesting dynamic intrigue, the driving forces of which were great human passions: envy, jealousy, vindictiveness, greed and love for one's land, family, and family.

2. Description, story, dialogue - 3 components of the novel, which are combined into a single whole in a peculiar ratio.

Walter Scott's descriptions served not only as an exposition, but also as a historical commentary on the events of the characters. The narrative line in the novels created a historical perspective on the development of events, the writer called his reader to a new role - not only a participant in the events, but also an outsider who looked at everything from the outside. The dialogues were distinguished by historicism and the peculiarities of poetics. The author's removal from the story gave the character the opportunity to move, think and speak independently.

3. Walter Scott's novels combine romantic adventures, high feelings and meanness of individual characters, who were often guided by opposite motives in their actions.

4. All the characters are divided into several groups:

-real historical characters - did not stand in the center of the narrative;

-people from the people - actively participated in the unfolding of the plot, created a generalizing image - the people, which included various social groups;

- the young man - the plot is connected with him - did not have too expressive individual features, but was noted for decency, honesty, courage and common sense.

5. Raising a hero through hard experiences, suffering, testing for courage in adventures and travels full of trials and threats.

6. In the novel, there is a close connection between historical life and personal, historical events with the fate of the hero. But the central place in the work is occupied by the depiction of history, its movement and development, and the writer's understanding of the historical process.

7. The writer is far from illusions.

The modern historical novel solves in a new way the problems of recreating the events of the past, the search for historical truth, the connection between the past and the present, as well as the existential problems of a person gaining his individuality and his place in the world. This genre fully embodies the poetics of postmodernism, which is characterized by a synthesis of literature and history, double coding, and the use of a complex of various kinds of narratives. It also allows you to make the reader an employee of the author in the process of historical reconstruction of epochs and events.

The end of the 1970s–early 1980s is the period when the key philosophical and aesthetic phenomenon of the turn of the XX–XXI centuries begins to invade British literature (and culture as a whole) - postmodernism, which, however, failed to "crush" the strong one coming from J. Chaucer, a realistic, or rather, realistic-psychological tradition in English literature. But there is one point that particularly distinguishes postmodern literary practices in the literature of Great Britain at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries; this refers to what critics unanimously called the "postmodern boom" of historical narratives, when the historical novel, by the standards of British researchers, a subgenre of the social novel, "overgrown" with a significant variety of subgenres.

This time in the history of British literature is called the time of "obsession with history" by most British writers, who, we emphasize, did not necessarily fervently profess a postmodern philosophical and aesthetic ideology, but resorted to using the discoveries of postmodern poetics, especially the innovations of W. Eco, as well as the suddenly actualized magical realism in the spirit of G. G. Marquez and G. Grass. At the same time, many did not do this at all in order to show the relativity of history in a postmodern way, the confusion and indistinguishability of times, including with the help of a self-reflecting, deliberately exposing its literary historiographical meta-prose,

the shocking destruction of the "realistic illusion" and the total ridicule of mimesis. Reading and reflecting on the novels mentioned above, as well as the historical narratives of J. Barnes, M. Bradbury, G. Swift, A. Thorpe, A. Carter, D. Mitchell, R. Tremaine, H. Mantel (we list here and above writers who are very different in their approach to the reconstruction of the past), especially in the aspect of stage shifts in the historical prose of Britain over the last decade and a half of the twentieth century, one comes to the conclusion that time actually "the postmodern concept of history, problematizing the concept of memory, narrative, and accessibility of knowledge about the past," the time of the dominance of "conventions of historiographical metafiction" passed very quickly in British literature [2:325-326].

The main part

In the presented work, the realization of the concept of the features of the historical novel by Walter Scott will be considered on the example of Barry Unsworth's novel "Moralite".

The novel takes place in the fourteenth century in medieval England. A group of traveling comedians goes to the city of Durham. In the country of the "Feast of Death", the plague returned twelve years later. The funeral of a member of the troupe and the death of a twelve-year-old boy, Thomas Wells, forces the comedians to make a stop in a small town along the way. The daughter of a weaver is in prison on suspicion of murder and is awaiting the death penalty: "Justice is being done quickly in this city," said Solominka. "It's only been two days since he was found on the road, and the woman has already been tried and sentenced." [1: 18]

The intrigue of the novel lies in the fact that a year ago the king began to hear rumors about missing children: "homeless children in the city, orphaned children who came to beg at the castle gates. It's always just boys." [1:96] The beggar claims that the missing children have become angels: "His (approx. Thomas Wells) They found the angels before," he said. "They brought him home early in the morning. And the son of Robert Moore and the youngest Simon, a blacksmith, and the boy who tended the sheep, John Goody, were the first to be found by their angels.

— What are you talking about? Martin said. — Were there others? Who found him? Who found Thomas Wells?

"Jack Flint found him," the fool's eyes were shining brightly. His mouth was a pool of saliva. —Sins are like stones,— he said. — But children are light, they can fly. I saw them with my own eyes. He raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread, and held it in front of a smiling face, as if shielding his eyes from the blinding rays and at the same time trying to see through the gaps a wonderful sight. "I saw it above the houses,— he said. — They were singing when they took them away. The light made my eyes hurt. I told Jane Goody: your child is with the angels in heaven, but she was not comforted. And I was looking for him everywhere." [1: 37]

Thus, the death of a twelve-year-old boy is not the only one. The difference from the other deaths is that Thomas Wells' body was discovered. And this is not an accident, but, as it turns out during the investigation, a planned action by Monk Simon Damian, the confessor of the son of Lord de Guise.

The driving forces of the novel are greed, vindictiveness, abuse of power and, oddly enough, love for one's neighbor. Justice in the city is administered by Lord de Guise instantly. By his order, a monk was hanged. A judge who has come to the city administers Royal justice.

GREED: Lord de Guise "holds more people under arms than necessary, and they are rebellious, violent and threaten peace in the kingdom, taxes — the prerogative of the king — go to pay them. He teams up with others like them to defend the right of the lords as peers of the kingdom to pass sentences on their equals, thus refuting the king's right to judge them. He takes the law into his own hands. Only royal judges are allowed to try serious crimes in the counties, and all fines and confiscations must go to the royal treasury, but this lord assigns the right to try such cases to his sheriff's court, and all the money goes into his coffers." [1: 95]

The judge confidently declares that now the lord will become more obedient: "There are mortal sins and mortal sins. Some of them can add luster to his pride. But not Sodomy sin. No, I will talk to him, and he will listen, and he will continue to listen for the rest of his days." [1:96]

VINDICTIVENESS: A monk, the confessor of the lord's son, deliberately slandered the weaver's feeble deaf-mute daughter. Her father was the target, because he denounces the monks and their orders, "and especially the Benedictines, the laziest and most dissolute of all. This Simon Damian is a messenger from Hell, he serves the lord and helps him live in luxury with our labors, our goodness. We starve, and they feast, we moan, and they dance." [1:60] The monk deliberately came with the lord's servant to find a purse with money and found it, but miscalculated with the suspect.

"Justice has not been done yet, good people. Why was the Monk hanged? When we find out why, we'll find out who. It all comes back to finding the boy murdered. Thomas Wells was the fifth. Those who were found. If the Monk took Thomas Wells with him, wasn't he the one who took everyone else? But he was punished only for the one who was found. Is it because he arranged to be found?" [1:77]

Simon Damian paid for his vindictiveness with his own life

passion: The son of the lord could not subdue his lust, the apogee was that in the process of a violent act of sodomy, he strangled the boy and broke his neck with one movement.

LOVE FOR ONE'S NEIGHBOR: The comedians planned to bury their friend in consecrated ground, so they decided to continue the journey with the deceased in their carriage during the plague.

Investigating the murder of a twelve-year-old boy, the head of the troupe fell in love with a girl who wanted to be executed and "wanted us to help him save the girl. And the power of his desire affected us, as did the perversity of the desire he felt for her, which possessed him like a disease." [1:67]

In the novel "Moralite" the narration is conducted in the first person. Niklas Barber, a fugitive priest, leads a retrospective story and is a direct participant in the events.

The games about Thomas Wells that the comedians show are improvisations based on the stories of the residents of the city. Comedians invite the audience to become participants in the performance. While acting out the plays, they change words and movements on the go, based on questions and comments from the audience, which each time leads the comedians to an unplanned ending.

In total, the troupe manages to show three games about Thomas Welss, but all these performances differ from each other not only in content, but also in the degree of intertwining with life. Each subsequent performance borders more closely on life, at some point becoming one with it, and eventually completely blurring the line between the life of the city and the performance of comedians.

On the eve of the last performance of the troupe, a jousting tournament takes place in the courtyard of the castle in the lists. Niklas's reflections on tournaments make it clear that tournaments are the same games, but they do not make any sense: "They dress up to kill in the game" [1:38]. In addition, jousting has long been a spectacle, because even knight's spears should be blunted: "It was allowed to fight only with blunted spears or with protective crowns on the points. If a knight was hit in the head or chest in a duel, he was considered the loser" [1:80]. Moreover, like traveling comedians who invite the audience to their performances in every possible way, knights going to a tournament do the same thing: "two horsemen, and with them a huge black beast, whose head rose above them, and his eyes were red, and something crimson moved with him over the head It was dark purple in the whiteness of the snow, and I realized that it was the flame of the Beast's breath" [1:31]. That is why, in the confusing and terrifying appearance of a knight heading to a six-day tournament at the castle, the comedians recognize themselves: "Their whole life is about flaunting their outfits and armor. (...) They're just like us, traveling comedians. (...) They carry everything they need with them, just like us" [1:32].

The tournament takes place under the gaze of comedians watching the knights from above from their captivity: "Now we, in turn, were spectators, and they were comedians playing Pride and Valor" [1:80]. However, the spectacle ends with a tragedy that once again violates the conventional boundaries between theater and life: "Roger Yarm (...) in a desire for fame or profit, in the afternoon he again went to the lists and was set against a knight older than him, (...) The spear of the older knight was reflected, but not completely, the tip slid up the shield the opponent's face was pulled up to his head. (...) he received a glancing blow from his forehead to the back of his head and fell heavily sideways from his horse to the ground, where he remained motionless" [1:82]. For all its authenticity, this tragedy is theatrical, because it also happened on stage, and also became part of the Game about Thomas Welss.

         In the novel by Barry Unsworth, as well as in the novels of Walter Scott, romantic adventures, high feelings and meanness of individual characters are combined, who were often guided by opposite motives in their actions.

The novel begins and ends with the death, or rather the rebirth, of the fugitive priest Niklas Barber, who decided to become a comedian.

Unsworth shows how a troupe of comedians decided to move from a religious drama to a secular one. Barry Unsworth reinterpreted in his own way the transition from the religious plots of mystical and moral plays to a real–life event - the murder of a little boy.

Conclusion

Like Walter Scott, Barry Unsworth is far from illusions. The author is not interested in making us try to guess the truth, but in showing what happens to those who tell the truth to the authorities. Comedians risk their own lives in search of the truth, and in the finale it is not clear whether they have been saved. Barry Unsworth is not trying to imitate the medieval mindset. What he's looking for are ways to say something about our own time–or any other time–using the company's capabilities. "Truth" is one of the archetypes that appears in later productions of the play, and "power" is one of the aspects of the world that he tells the audience he seeks to question.

Niklas Barber concludes that rewriting manuscripts has never been something sacred to him, but simply the role that he thought was assigned to him. He tells the royal judge that he will stick to the only life that will allow him to move from part to part at will. This is Unsworth's final last joke. Throughout the novel, and especially at the end of the chapters, Nicholas predicts future horrors and nightmares. But they are not coming. The comedians told the truth to the authorities and got away with it.