THE VICTORIAN NOVEL AS A GENRE. AN ISSUE STATEMENT

The article deals with the issue of the Victorian novel in the historical, cultural and genre aspects. There is no single point of view on that phenomenon in the academic literature: some scholars use the term in a chronological sense (Victorian literature referring to the era of the reign of Queen Victoria [1837–1901]); others synonymously use the concepts of “Victorian” and “realistic”; some try to identify the specifics of the phenomenon through non-literary factors (attitude to social issues, philosophical context, etc.). Such approaches, for all their validity, do not clarify the nature of the Victorian novel as a whole. The author of the article hypothesizes that the Victorian novel is a sub-genre of the classic 19th centurynovel, and the following can be distinguished as its distinctive features: attention is focused on the action (plot), and not on the character; social issues are subordinate to the action; the presence of a marriage plot and a happy ending. The above characteristics being not comprehensive, allow outlining further prospects for the study of the Victorian novel as a genre. It is also important to identify and formulate the genre originality of the Victorian novel in the aspect of studying its Russian reception, because otherwise such a comparative study will not have specifics.