Precedent texts as the indicators of the opposition genuine - fake in J. Barnes’s and P. Ackroyd’s novels
The article deals with the representation by J. Barnes and P. Ackroyd of the antithesis <i>genuine - fake</i>, which holds a prominent place in the aesthetics of postmodernism. It is shown that when illustrating this antithesis, the writers often refer to precedent texts. In Barnes’s novel «England, England» with the help of precedent texts, the cultural layer with which the characters deal is referred: the names of historical figures, place names, artifacts. And venerable English history is recreated on the island as the entertainment. In J. Barnes’s «A history of the world in 10½ chapters», the motive of the inseparability of binary oppositions is crucial when the artist is tormented by the inability to transform reality into an object of art without infelicities, and the survivor of Titanic seeks how to return to the past with the help of the setting for a film. The plot of P. Ackroyd’s «Chatterton» is based on revealing the authenticity of some artifacts. Precedent texts enrich the narrative, turning historical figures into characters of the novel. The novel «Lambs of London» by P. Ackroyd is a study of the actions of the falsifier of Shakespeare, who tried to erase the line between the genuine and the fake, revealing to the world the «lost» works of the J. Bard.