The Genre Ecleticism of Anthony Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”: Breaking Genre Boundaries?

Abstract

The article analyzes the novel "The Way We Live Now", according to many literary critics, one of the masterpieces of the writer. The novel is considered from the point of view of its place in Trollope's system of creative work on the whole, the increase of the satirical and invective principle in the writer's novel practice in particular, but mainly – in the aspect of the multiplot structure of this panoramic and  satirical novel and, accordingly, the coexistence in the artistic whole of the work of several genre modes: social, everyday life depiction (comedy of manners), psychological, love, satirical. The article proves the correspondence of Trollope's multi-genre thinking to his realistic principle of reproducing life in its integrity, fluidity and characterology.