THE “LITTLE MAN” OF THE PRODUCTION NOVEL AND THE CHRONOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES OF THE GENRE
In the studies of the production novel, one of the research lacunae in modern literary criticism is the definition of the upper chronological boundary of the genre. We believe, it is the image of the protagonist that makes it possible to clarify the dating of the genre completion. The artistic dominant of the genre is the image of the protagonist as a social leader, dating back to the universal mythopoetic archetype of the Reformer / Rebel. The departure from the evolution of this genre indicates its artistic transformation. It is significant that the production novel of the 20<sup>th</sup> century was preceded by the image of the “little man”, characteristic of the “natural school” of the 19<sup>th</sup> century. The return of the image of the “little man” to the literary process in the 1970s testifies to the completion of the production novel genre evolution. Most of the works, written in the 1970s, are distinguished by the journalism optics, since they “debunk myths” telling about the “professional workings” of fashionable, prestigious and familiar professions. The protagonists of “professional novels” are mercantile philistines, as well as master-hand executives deprived of freedom of action. This approach becomes an inversion to the production novel canonical text of the 1920s-30s, whose protagonist is an altruist and a social leader, free in his actions. The object of the research is the genre of the production novel. The subject of the study is the image of the protagonist. The aim of the study is to clarify the chronological boundaries of the genre, based on the correlation with the typology of the protagonist’s image. The research methods are: mythopoetic, historicogenetic, comparative-historical, typological and a contextual analysis.