МІЖ RES GESTAE (ІСТОРІОГРАФІЄЮ) ТА RES FICTAE (ІСТОРИЧНОЮ ПРОЗОЮ): ДЕЛІМІТАЦІЯ І ДЕМАРКАЦІЯ КОРДОНІВ

The article notes that historiography (Greek ίστορία – narrative, story) is a branch that studies the history of historical science, scientific historical discourse, and is engaged in studies of the past, historical narratives on a particular problem or topic.

Historical fiction as part of national literature is an integral part of the cultural life of modern nations, one of the tasks of which is to form the cultural memory of large groups that create national spaces, structure the past and preserve its completeness and uniqueness. It is noted that historical fiction is born on the borderline of two narrative strategies: historiography, whose task is to recreate the «true past», and fiction as a special means of exploring the world.

The article points out that in Ukrainian literature, historical prose in all periods of its existence has most often tried to artistically construct the past as a nation-building mark (the apotheosis of these trends was actually the historical prose of the twentieth-century Ukrainian emigration).

The author emphasised that there is a correlation between art and science, between fiction (primarily historical prose) and history: the former explores the world through artistic images, through its artistic development, while the latter seeks a logical explanation of the laws of the Universe.

It is noted that the author of a historical novel, unlike a historian, cannot claim to have a comprehensive view of the actions of individuals, nations, and the influence of natural factors on the course of historical events. It is shown that the writer is looking for his own perspective: he seeks to create his own artistic model of a certain era in the artistic form, through the depiction of past events, reconstructed human actions and thoughts invented by him (including within the scientific paradigm contemporary to him).

The article concludes that the artist claims the right to interpret past events in his or her own way, to fill them with an anthropological perspective, and this approach allows the writer not only to achieve his or her own interpretation of socio-political aspirations, but also to make his or her own historiosophical generalisations and create his or her own vision of historical development.