Some Aspects of the Development of the Novel in the Twentieth Century and the Crisis of the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

As Aristotle noted, reflection occurs through action . . . and tragedy (generally written) is a reflection not of people, but of action. In this way, Aristotle puts the story and action in the first place in the literary work. However, in the long development of European fiction, story and action were not always a priority, and great writers often preferred judgment and description. James Joyce started his literary career with a story and an action, which on the one hand appealed to the impressionists and on the other hand made the reader feel familiar. Then there was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where he continued the chosen path and raised expectations in the heart of the intellectual reader. This was followed by Ulysses, where judgment and description far outweigh the action. With this in mind, the meter of high modernism looked down at the readers and invited them to come up. And then there was Finnegans Wake. Meanwhile, William Faulkner started Sartoris with story and action, but since he was also the key figure of high Modernism, he made it difficult for the reader to get to him in The Sound and Fury. This trend continued in his works, but the story and the action were never forgotten or pushed back. The purpose of the paper is to answer the question - where would the European novel be if it went the way of Finnegan? On the one hand, the number of writers would be reduced to extremes, and on the other hand, readers would disappear. The paper suggests that the twenty-first century has preferred democratic writing. Although there are significant attempts in historical and scientific writing, great writing is no longer viable, meanwhile, the mainstream rules.