From the History of English Dystopia of the End of the 20th Century: Conceptual and Substantial Dominants of the Novel The Children of Men by P.D. James

Abstract

The paper suggests the analysis of the way dystopian genre invariant was realized in the novel The Children of Men by the English writer P.D. James. Particularly, the author of the article studies the novel’s conceptual and thematic elements regarding dystopian canon. Firstly, the article characterizes literary dystopia. Secondly, it defines the level of novel’s research in Russian and English literary studies. Thirdly, using the methods of genre typology and artistic analysis, the article investigates conceptual and thematic content of the novel, that is defined, according to the canon, by the concept of power, theme of an authoritarian state, problems of freedom restriction, progress of material values and regress of spiritual ones and by the complex of motifs (destruction of the past, standardization, prevention, etc.). The results show that the dystopia The Children of Men was written in the conceptual and substantial aspect within the bounds of the genre tradition. At the same time the motif of family ties’ destruction and decay of family is presented originally: the central image of the child gains sacred meaning. The author intensifies the motifs of prevention and profanation of sacred biblical thematic.