Shulhun M. Metagenre of travel literature in the context of the transitional artistic consciousness (the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century)

The doctoral thesis is devoted to the analysis of the genre of contemporary travel literature as a universal form for the embodiment of cultural crisis, the modeling of the new world’s picture, the expression of the transitional artistic consciousness, the revision of ideological and aesthetic orientations, the reconsideration of the images of “us” and “them”, “otherness”, and the ways of realization of the cultural dialogue. The research is based upon the oeuvre of Ukrainian, Polish, French, German, American, and Russian writers. The author argues that the metagenre of contemporary travel literature has been constructed with the help of different ways of the world’s pictures modeling, dominant discourses, the images of contemporary individuals, structural and semantic unity of fictional works, their border nature, and intentions to genre synthesis. The peculiarity and dynamics of national travel literature have been emphasized as well as the formation of new dominant types. The author has studied paramount changes in the system of metagenre, the transformation of some types, actualization of the “archaic” patterns and their modification (new pilgrimages), the revision of traditions, formation of the new forms on the basis of genre synthesis, the emergence of the new type of travel writings (“antitravelogue”) as the embodiment of the ironic self-reflection of fiction that aims to renew metagenre and literature in general. It is concluded that within the metagenre of travel literature emerges a code and artistic models for the interpretation of the cultural crisis.