Francophone literature in search of happiness

Abstract

The article deals with modern French-language literature on the loss of a person’s sense of happiness and harmony. The study authors explore the work of Western European novelists, who not only record the next decline of Europe but also try to return a sense of dignity to their fellow citizens. For centuries, literature has offered various forms of describing the uniqueness of human interaction with the world. If realism gives rise to a literature of explication that thinks aloud, and modernism tries to free the art of realists from layers of pretense, then the oppositional postmodern aesthetics proposes the so-called pluralism of reading practices, which frees both the reader and the literary critic from the need to search for forerunners and origins. Having experienced postmodern delight at the turn of the 21st century, the modern Western European writer en masse returns into the fold of realistic literature, in which a person is determined both socially and historically. At the same time, preference is given to documentary literature, which includes both memoirs, diaries, and essays, and the auto-fictional novel, known today as the “non-fiction” novel which has been in the focus of scholars’ attention for many years. Whatever forms modern literature may use to disguise itself, even if these forms are the most flowery, its main task is to describe a contemporary who lives with an inescapable feeling of the end of the world, trying to regain the meaning of life, to find footholds that are described in such detail by centuries of aesthetic practice. Therefore, the subject of the study is the classical categories: life, family, love, and peace of mind. The purpose of the study is to describe the current state of literature in Western European countries, identify the trends of its development and genre preferences of the experts of culture. The novelty of the study consists in the fact that the concept of “happiness” is investigated for the first time using the example of French-language literature, and the works of writers little studied in Russian criticism, such as A. Makine and Catherine Lovey, are introduced into academic circulation.

Keywords

• postmodernism
• nonfiction
• concept of “happiness”
• multiculturalism