Poltoratska A. Discourse of bestiary in a fiction of the late XX – early XXI century (based on the works of J. Bowen «A street cat named Bob», B. Werber «Tomorrow the cats», J. Coetzee «Disgrace», О. Tokarchuk «Drive your plow over the bones of the dead»).

The dissertation deals with relationship issues between humans and animals in the era of postmodernism. The objects of research are contemporary works of art by J. Bowen («A street cat named Bob», «A gift from Bob. How a street cat helped one man learn the meaning of Christmas», «The world according to Bob. The further adventures of one man and has streetwise cat»), B. Werber («Tomorrow the cats», «Her Majesty the Cat»), J. Coetzee («Disgrace»), О. Tokarchuk («Drive your plow over the bones of the dead»). Selected texts express not only modern understanding of this topic, but also make it possible to highlight general ideas of understanding contents in different national literatures. Thus, a new understanding of bestiarity provokes readers’ attention to the problems of the surrounding world, in which the essence and place of a person are directly related to the life of an animal, receive rights and arise as a certain marker of inhuman actions of a person. In this case, he/she (a person) should be responsible for his/her own behavior in relation to other forms of life, since the exploitation of the planet has become enormous, so he/she should change his view of the world. A literary embodiment feature of an animal image is a partial rejection of the allegorical depiction of a person in any way, it ceases to be interpreted as a negative connotation. At the same time, a zoological image can be presented as a change determinant in a person’s identity and serves as a background of the ecological consciousness image of the main character. At the same time, in a fiction, a non-human appears as the key to understanding a person and the society.