Text of a military city: The London Blitz in contemporary British prose

The subject of the research is the process of forming the myth of the Blitz in British prose from the 1940s to the early decades of the 21st century. The events of the London Blitz – the bombings of the capital from September 7, 1940, to May 10, 1941 – were already reflected in the novels and stories of writers in the forties. Together with texts of official propaganda, they became the foundation of the ideological construct formed during the Blitz, known as the "Myth of the Blitz." The aim of this study is to identify the main components of this myth at all stages of its functioning up to the present day. The object of the research includes the novels of P. Ackroyd, M. Moorcock, S. Waters, and works of mass literature from the 21st century. Since this work analyzes works from several historical stages of the Blitz theme and involves the studies of historians that provoke the transformation of the myth about it, historical-typological and comparative methods of research were used. The main conclusion of the conducted research is the assertion that to this day, the combination of semantic centers of the Myth of the Blitz remains the foundation for the interpretation of British national identity. The center of the construct is the idea of the greatest unity of the nation in history. The "nodes" of the myth were examined in the interpretation of Peter Ackroyd, who proposed their list in the chapter "Blitz" in his book "London: The Biography" (2000). It has been shown that over the following decades, the myth was questioned, especially regarding class equality. The theme of "refusers" (those who fundamentally did not take up arms), raised by S. Waters in the novel "The Night Watch," deserves special attention. Despite the documented evidence of historians and sociologists regarding the absence of national unity, the myth of the Blitz remains a cornerstone in the ideological content of contemporary mass literature. References to the Blitz are still frequent, typically in the genres of formulaic literature: spy, detective, romance, as well as family sagas. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time in domestic literary studies, the entire context of British prose about the Blitz is considered from this perspective, including works created in the 2020s.

London Blitz, The Myth of the Blitz, british novel, Sarah Waters, Peter Ackroyd, the everyday life of war, britishness, spy novel, romance novel, aesthetics of fire