HOME AND MEMORY: THE ARTISTIC MODEL OF THE FAMILY CHRONICLE IN LOUISA MAY ALCOTT'S LITTLE WOMEN AND LITTLE MEN

The article analyzes the artistic model of the family chronicle in Louisa May Alcott's dilogy Little Women (1868–1869) and Little
Men (1871). The relevance of the study lies in the need to expand the genre boundaries of the family chronicle in nineteenthcentury American literature by including a "domestic" model centered on the inner life of the family rather than large-scale
historical events. The methodology combines comparative-historical, genre-theoretical, and narratological approaches together
with elements of the biographical method. The article examines the autobiographical origins of Alcott's concept of family, the
chronotope of the home as a structure-forming category of the dilogy, the principle of multi-generationality, and the artistic devices
- domestic detail, compositional repetition, and character revealed through action - through which the effect of continuity of family
history is created. It is established that Alcott creates a distinctive type of family chronicle in which generational continuity is
ensured not only by blood kinship but also by moral, domestic closeness, and in which the boundaries of family are defined by a spiritual rather than a biological principle. The scholarly novelty of the study lies in interpreting the dilogy as a coherent chronicle
model comparable in significance to the chronicles of J. F. Cooper and G. W. Cable, yet fundamentally different from them in its
organization of family time and space. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using its findings in
developing university courses on nineteenth-century American literature and the theory of literary genres.