SUBJECTS OF REPORTS

Literature of Great Britain

I. The Middle Ages in England

"Beowulf" as a monument to the medieval heroic epic. The plot of Beowulf. Pagan and Christian motifs in the poem. Time in Beowulf. Main themes. Alliterative verse in Beowulf. Kennings.

Late Middle Ages in England. J. Chaucer and his “Canterbury Tales”. Compositional construction. "The Canterbury Tales" as an encyclopedia of the morals of English medieval society. Pilgrimage motive. Genre originality of The Canterbury Tales. The Chaucerian Tradition in English Literature.

The novel “Le Morte d'Arthur” by T. Malory. Historical prototype and historical chronicles. Depiction of chivalry in the novel. Subject Round table. Holy Grail Cup. The conflict between Lancelot and Gawain is like a struggle between two worldviews. Mythological motives in the novel "Le Morte d'Arthur".

II. Revival in England

Features of the Renaissance in England. The difference between Renaissance humanism and bourgeois humanism of the 18th century. J. Colet and the Oxford Humanist Circle.

K. Marlowe and his tragedy “The History of Doctor Faustus” (or the tragedy “Tamerlane the Great”). Aesthetics of Marlowe. The theme of the limitlessness of human knowledge in Faust. Marlowe's innovations in the interpretation of: a) Faust and b) hell (compared to the folk novel). Dramatic exposition in Faust. Compositional structure of "Faust" and medieval morality.

W. Shakespeare. Biography. Theatrical and intellectual life of London. Periodization of creativity.

Historical chronicles. "Richard III". Richard as a "Titan of the Renaissance" Duality in Richard's depiction: the other side of titanism. "Richard III" as a monodrama. Shakespeare and Pushkin (“The Stone Guest” and “Boris Godunov”).

Tragedy "Hamlet". Hamlet and Macbeth: antagonists. Hamlet and Elsinore: attitude to power. Hamlet is on the verge of two worlds. Hamlet: participation in the unreal (Shadow of Hamlet's father). Ophelia's problem.

The tragedy "Macbeth". Macbeth and Richard III. The other world in Macbeth: three prophetic witches. Macbeth and Hamlet. Shakespearean hierarchy: participation in the otherworldly. The tragedy of Macbeth: a hero overcome by evil. Leitmotif images.

Comedy. General characteristics. Mainstream comedy plot. Comedy hero. Comedy love affair. The difference between Shakespeare's comedies and the Spanish "cloak and sword" comedies (Lope de Vega) and from the comedies of French classicism (Molière). "A Midsummer Night's Dream": parallelism of love stories. Love metamorphoses. Pastoral context. The motive of friendship. The image of Falstaff in the works of Shakespeare. Falstaffian background. "The Merry Wives of Windsor": Falstaff in love.

III. English literature XVII century

English poetry of the 17th century: the work of metaphysicians and gentlemen. J. Donn and B. Johnson.

J. Milton and his poem “Paradise Lost”. Milton's verse and Shakespeare's verse. "Paradise Lost" as a Christian epic. Milton's polemics with Calvinism. Main theme. Images of God and Satan.

Literature of the Restoration era. "The Pilgrim's Progress" by J. Bunyan. "Hudibras" by S. Butler.

Classicism in England in the second half of the 17th century. “An Essay on Dramatic Poetry” by J. Dryden. "Heroic Plays" by J. Dryden.

Comedy writers of the Restoration period: J. Etheridge, W. Wycherley and W. Congreve. General characteristics of comedies. Problems of comedy: life in aristocratic London. Typology of heroes. The difference between the heroes of Etheridge and Wycherley from the heroes of Cogreave. “Double game” and “This is how they act in the world” by W. Congreve: characteristics of a secular society.

IV. English literature XVIII century

Age of Enlightenment. Formation of educational trends in English literature. The main features of the early period of the Enlightenment in England. Characteristic features of English philosophical thought of the Enlightenment.

General characteristics of English classicism of the 18th century. “The Stealing of a Lock” by A. Pop. Satirical trends in journalism by D. Addison and R. Steele.

English educational novel. Formation of the genre. “Novel-chatter” with the reader. Typology of the English educational novel. Three stages in the development of the English educational novel.

The first stage in the development of the English educational novel: Defoe and Swift. J. Swift. Periodization of creativity. Early Swift: pamphlets “The Battle of the Books” and “The Tale of the Barrel.” The artistic merits of Swift's journalism. Swift's importance as a satirical poet. The novel "Gulliver's Travels" as a satirical summary of Swift's contemporary England. Genre originality of Gulliver's Travels. The evolution of the image of Gulliver. The realistic basis of Swift's fiction. Features of Swift's aesthetics. Swift's predecessors. Swiftian tradition in world literature.

D. Defoe. Defoe's path: from journalism to novel. General characteristics of Defoe's novels. Genre of the novel "Robinson Crusoe". The originality of Defoe's artistic method. The importance of the adventurous element in the composition of Defoe’s novels (“Moll Flanders” and “Roxana”). Features of Defoe's style. The cult of labor in Robinson Crusoe. Robinsonade. Defoe and the Russian reader. Defoe and Tolstoy.

The second stage of the English educational novel:C. Richardson, G. Fielding and T. Smollett. The development of the realistic trend in the English educational novel (G. Fielding and T. Smollett). Various trends in the English educational novel (S. Richardson, G. Fielding, T. Smollett).

S. Richardson is the creator of the epistolary family and everyday novel. The evolution of novel structure: from “Pamela” to “Clarissa Garlow”. Richardson's innovation. Psychological development of characters. The role of the emotional principle in Richardson's novels.

G. Fielding. Periodization of creativity. Continuation of Swift's satirical tradition in the early Fielding (“The History of Jonathan Wilde”). Fielding's satirical dramaturgy.

Fielding's Controversy with Richardson (The History of Joseph Andrews). "The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling": a comic epic and a novel of education. Tom Jones image. Revealing the character of the main character in contradictions and development. Jones and Blifil. The principle of plot construction. Aesthetic views Fielding. The meaning of humor in Fielding's aesthetics

T. Smollett. The novels The Adventures of Humphrey Clinker, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Adventures of Roderick Random. Development and deepening of the means of satire. The significance of the journalistic element in his novels. Features of sentimentalism in the late works of Smollett (“The Adventures of Humphrey Clinker”). The significance of Smollett’s work in the development of the English realistic novel. Smollett and Fielding: differences in aesthetic views.

The third stage in the development of the English educational novel. The work of L. Stern and the aesthetics of sentimentalism. The influence of D. Hume's philosophy on the formation of Stern's creative method. Novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman." Features of L. Stern's creative method. Author in the novel Tristram Shandy. Time in the novel Tristram Shandy. Features of the composition and style of Stern's novels. A depiction of a person's inner life. Stern's innovation.

The significance of Stern's work for the 20th century novel.

English sentimentalism. The poetics of sentimentalism (“An Essay on the Original Writings” of E. Jung): a dispute with the rationalistic and classicist tendencies of the early English Enlightenment.

Lyric poetry of sentimentalism: T. Gray, D. Thomson, E. Jung, J. Crabb. Features of sentimentalist poetry. Contrasting the early “pre-feudal” Middle Ages with modernity. Elements of psychologism in the lyrics of sentimentalists. Nature theme.

“The Songs of Ossian” by D. Macpherson: stylization as a feature of Macpherson’s artistic style.

O. Goldsmith. Poetry of Goldsmith. Novel "The Vicar of Wakefield". Goldsmith's patriarchal ideals.

Sheridan's satirical comedy "The School for Scandal". The problem of the comic. Byron on Sheridan.

Pre-romanticism. G. Walpole and S. Lewis. Poetics of the Gothic novel. The novel “The Italian” by A. Radcliffe.

Features of pre-romanticism in the poetry of W. Blake and R. Burns. The folklore basis of Burns's lyrics. Scottish motives of Burns's poetry. The genre diversity of his poetry. Burns's poetic language.

The poetry of W. Blake and its place in the history of English poetry.

V. English literature of the 19th century: Romanticism

Social novel by W. Godwin (“Caleb Williams”). Gothic elements in the novel. The influence of W. Godwin's ideas on the work of English writers of the 19th century.

The first stage of English romanticism. Poets of the “Lake School” (W. Wordsworth, R. Southey). Preface to “Lyrical Ballads” by W. Wordsworth and the aesthetic manifesto of the “Lake School”. General and different in the aesthetic views of W. Wordsworth and. Innovative features of the poetry of the “Leukists”.

Coleridge and German philosophy. The irrational principle in poetry (“The Tale of the Ancient Mariner”). Ballads of R. Southey. Southie in translation. The evolution of the creativity of the “Leukist” poets. Pushkin about the work of the poets of the “Lake School”. Byron on the “Leucists” (“Don Juan”).

The second stage of English romanticism. The evolution of the creative method of the romantics. J. G. Byron Periodization of creativity. Aesthetic views of early Byron, his attitude to classicism. Byron's criticism of modern English literature ("English Bards and Scottish Reviewers"). Lyric-epic poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”: genre originality, romantic hero, relationship between the hero, the author and the lyrical character, artistic and political significance.

"Eastern Poems" by Byron 1813–1816. (“Corsair”, “The Giaour”, “Lara”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “The Siege of Corinth”, “Parisina”). The image of a rebel hero: the problem of romantic individualism. The contrast between the contemplation of Childe Harold and the rebellious spirit of the heroes of the “eastern poems”. The hero's relationship with the environment. Compositional and stylistic features.

The Byronic hero and Byronism: gloomy pessimism, individualism, a certain type of behavior and attitude towards life, longing for an unclear ideal.

Byron's Political Poetry 1812–1816 "Jewish Melodies".

Dramatic philosophical poem "Manfred". The crisis of Byron's individualistic worldview in 1816–1817. Strengthening revolutionary trends in creativity. Features of Byron's late work. The evolution of aesthetic views. Ideological, political and artistic significance of the mystery "Cain". The image of Cain the rebel.

The poem “Don Juan”: a new hero, the influence of the environment on the formation of the hero’s character, a wide coverage of countries and events. The difference between Byron's Don Juan and the traditional seducer. A satire on English reality. Features of composition and verse. “Don Juan” by J. G. Byron and “Eugene Onegin”: differences in genres, characters, dynamics of events.

The place of J. G. Byron in the history of English literature.

The influence of W. Godwin on the formation of Shelley’s worldview. Shelley’s aesthetics (treatise “Defense of Poetry”, prefaces to “Prometheus Unbound” and “The Rise of Islam”; the artist’s task is to create the ideal of beauty; poetry as a source of inspiration and beauty for the reader). Poem "Queen Mab". Romantic poems "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Rise of Islam". The nature of Shelley's imagery (a fusion of the real and the fantastic). Shelley the lyricist. Shelley's Political Lyrics 1819–1820 Features of Shelley's philosophical lyrics. Shelley's pantheism. Pictures of nature and symbolic cosmic images. Strengthening realistic tendencies in Shelley’s work (the tragedy “Cenci”).

Poetry of D. Keats. The artistic originality of Keats's poetic manner.

W. Scott Small literary form (ballads). Narrative poems “Maiden of the Lake”, “Song of the Last Minstrel”. The place of Scott's ballads and narrative poems in the development of English romantic poetry. Scott and Coleridge. Scott and Byron.

The genesis of W. Scott's historical novel. Scott's historicism (the relationship between two traditions and cultures, the moral meaning of history). Aesthetic views of Scott the novelist. Poetics of the historical novel by W. Scott (narration, description, portrait, dialogue). Scott's "Scottish" novels (Waverley, Rob Roy). Novels of the medieval cycle: “Ivanhoe”, “Quentin Durward”. Novels about the English bourgeois revolution: “The Puritans”, “Woodstock”. The problem of V. Scott's artistic method. The significance of W. Scott’s work for the development of the European novel tradition.

The crisis of English romanticism in the second half of the 1820s.

VI. English Literature of the 19th Century: Victorian Era

Typology of genres. Victorian novel. Periodization. The evolution of the Victorian novel: the difference between the poetics of the early Victorians and the later Victorians.

The significance of W. Scott’s creative method for the development of the English Victorian novel. The influence of W. Godwin's social novel on the work of Charles Dickens.

Roman J. Osten. The artistic originality of J. Austen's method: narrow social range, depth of psychological characteristics. The influence of J. Austen's work on the Victorian novel.

Charles Dickens is the largest representative of English critical realism. Periodization of the work of Charles Dickens.

Characteristics of the first period (1833–1841). "Sketches of Bose". “Notes of the Pickwick Club”: compositional structure, function of humor. The artistic originality of the author's style of early Dickens. Deepening social issues in the novel "Oliver Twist". Controversy with the Newgate novel.

The second period of creativity (1842–1848). Dickens's Travels to the USA: American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit. “Christmas Stories”: the predominance of romantic elements in the description of the characters. Dickens' polemic with bourgeois philosophers (Malthus and Bentham). The novel Dombey and Son is a masterpiece of the second period, its significance in the creative development of Dickens the satirist. Specifics of the tragic perception of the world.

The third period in Dickens's work (1848–1859). The novel "David Copperfield": a subtle reproduction of the psychology of a child. Three educational systems (Murdstone, Creakle, Betsy Trotwood). Image of Uriah Hippus. Dickens's social novels of the early 1850s: Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times. “Bleak House”: two storylines (litigation in the Chancery Court; the mystery of Lady Dedlock).

The fourth stage in Dickens's work (1860s). The novel “Great Expectations”: the collapse of illusions. The nature of Dickens's realism in his later novels. “Our Mutual Friend”, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”: complex intrigue, painful manifestations of the human psyche. The significance of Dickens's work for world literature.

Creation. The works of early Thackeray: the satirical stories “Notes of Yellowplush”, “Hoggart’s Diamond” and parody novels “Katerina”, “Barry Lyndon”. Thackeray's polemic with the authors of The Silver Fork and the Newgate novel. The Book of Snobs is a satire on English society. Criticism of English bourgeois culture. The novel “Vanity Fair” is a masterpiece. Problems of the novel. Composition of the novel. Peculiarities of typification in the novel. Emilia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp: a novel without a hero. Thackeray is a master of realistic satire. and E. Trollope. The evolution of Thackeray's work in the 1850s. Novel "Newcomes". The originality of Thackeray's late satire. Historical novels "Henry Esmond" and "The Virginians".

E. Gaskell and her social novel"Mary Barton." Evolution of E. Gaskell towards the psychological novel in the 1850s. (“Wives and Daughters”). The novel “Cranford”: humor E. Gaskell.

S. Bronte and her novel “Jane Eyre”. Problems of the novel. Image of Saint John. Romantic imagery in the novel. S. Bronte's novels “Villette” and “Shirley”.

E. Bronte. Poetry of E. Bronte: transparency and musicality of verse, semantic capacity, philosophy. Theme of the poems. “Wuthering Heights” by E. Bronte is a masterpiece of English literature. Problems of the novel. Two narrators in the novel. Mystical intonations in the novel. Romantic imagery in the novel.

A. Bronte and her novel “Agnes Gray”. New heroine A. Bronte. A. Bronte's place in English literature.

English poetry 1830–1850s Poetry of A. Tennyson. "In memoriam" and "Idylls". The poetic evolution of R. Browning. The philosophical depth of R. Browning's lyrics. Poetry E. Browning.

The development of the Victorian novel in the 1850s–1860s: the influence of the ideas of positivism, naturalism, and discoveries in natural science. The Work of J. Eliot: Scenes of English Provincial Life. J. Eliot's innovations in the novel genre. The first period in the work of J. Eliot (“The Mill on the Floss”, “Siles Marner”). Second period (“Middlemarch”, “Daniel Deronda”).

The works of E. Trollope. "Barchester Chronicles". The novel “Barchester Towers”: genre originality, composition, characteristics of the main characters. Description of the clerical environment. E. Trollope is a master of satire.

VII. From the Victorian era to the 20th century. Naturalism. Decadence. Neo-romanticism

Formation of naturalism in the late 1850s. Aesthetic features. Positivism is the philosophical basis of English naturalism (J. S. Mill, G. Spencer, O. Comte). Two schools of English naturalism: artistic originality, distinctive features, common philosophical basis.

Aesthetics of T. Hardy. Problems of T. Hardy's novels. Novels about Wessex: “novels of character and environment” (“Tess of the d’Urbervilles”, “Jude the Obscure”, “The Mayor of Casterbridge”). Ideological and artistic problems of T. Hardy’s novel “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”: conflict, heroes. Poetry of T. Hardy: main themes, features of poetic language.

English aestheticism. “Essays on the History of the Renaissance” by W. Pater. Ruskin's aesthetics. Pre-Raphaelite poetry. . K. Rosetti. W. Morris and E. Swinburne at an early stage of creativity.

General characteristics of decadence. Almanac “Yellow Book” and “Savoy” magazine. Decadence and modernism.

The works of O. Wilde. O. Wilde about art and the artist. Ideological and artistic problems of O. Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. O. Wilde's plays “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Salome”. “Aphorisms” by O. Wilde.

Neo-romanticism(, R. Kipling, J. Conrad, A. Conan-Doyle). Specialization of novel genres. New hero.

Creation. Features of the aesthetic system.

Problems of the science fiction story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

The works of A. Conan Doyle. A. Conan Doyle's development of the traditions of the detective genre. Sherlock Holmes and Dupin.

Neo-romantic features of R. Kipling's work. Aesthetics of R. Kipling. Kipling's hero: a neo-romantic model of behavior. Kipling's soldier theme ("Tommy Atkins", "Denny Deaver", "Mandalay"). Idea of ​​Empire: "The White Man's Burden." The theme "East - West" in Kipling's works. Features of Kipling's poetic language. Modernists about the “Kipling phenomenon”.

VIII. Literature of Great Britain. XX century

“Theater of Ideas” by B. Shaw. B. Shaw and G. Ibsen: “The Quintessence of Ibsenism.” B. Shaw and B. Brecht: the alienation effect. B. Shaw and L. Pirandello. The genre of the drama is “extravagance” (“Bitter, but true”). "Pygmalion": problematics. Fabianism B. Shaw.

The rise of decadent trends in English literature before and after the First World War. The stories of V. Wolfe “Mrs. Dalloway” and “The Lighthouse” and the School of “stream of consciousness”. Freudism and decadent schools. Surrealism. J. Joyce, the significance of his work for the development of modernism. "Ulysses" by J. Joyce: the problem of method, "stream of consciousness", elements of satire in the novel. Late Joyce: the destruction of art on the path of formalism (“Finnegans Wake”). Creation.

Eliot's essays (“Tradition and Individual Talent,” “The Metaphysical Poets”). Eliot on Romanticism. Eliot on tradition: the past as a continuing fact of the present. Early Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (themes of the poem, imagery, parody and irony; Prufrock - hero and antihero; tragic ending). “The Waste Land” (problems and structure of the poem; imagery; mythological, Old Testament and literary allusions; myth as a way of organizing material). Eliot's influence on English and American poetic traditions.

Poetry of the “Oxfordians” (W. Auden), its inconsistency.

Writers of “Angry Youth”: The Plays of J. Osborne. The nature of the realism of the “angry”.

The works of G. Green, the novels “The Quiet American”, “Travels with Auntie”, “Comedians”.

Existentialist novel by A. Murdoch. Parable novel by W. Golding. Reflection of the crisis of modern English bourgeois culture in the works of J. Fowles, M. Spark, M. Drabble and others.

Literature of the USA

I. Early American Romanticism

Specifics of early American romanticism. The work of V. Irving. Romantic poeticization of patriarchal America in his works (“Rip Van Winkle”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, “The Mysterious Ship”). "The History of New York": Irving's Literary Hoax. V. Irving is a mediator between the cultures of the Old and New Worlds. The originality of W. Irving's romantic poetics.

The works of F. Cooper. Criticism of bourgeois America in the novels of F. Cooper (“Spy”, “Pioneers”). The theme of the frontier in the works of F. Cooper. The originality of F. Cooper's creative style: elements of romantic aesthetics in his novels.

Pentalogy about Leather Stocking. Rejection of bourgeois America, opposition to the world of profit of the natural man (the image of Natty Bumppo). Epic start in the novels of F. Cooper.

II. Second stage of American romanticism

By. Periodization of creativity. Poe and Byron. Style originality poetry by E. A. Poe. Synesthesia of poetic images. The main themes of the lyrics. E. A. Poe on poetry. Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition."

Collection of stories “Grotesques and Arabesques”: typology of short stories by E. A. Poe. The artistic world of Poe's stories. Space and time in Poe's stories. The originality of the creative method. E. A. Poe and Russian Symbolists.

Transcendentalists. Attitude towards America. Transcendentalist concept of the world. Moral and philosophical utopia of transcendentalism.

Transcendentalists and.

Emerson and his moral and philosophical essays "The Young American", "The Oversoul" and "Self-Trust". Emerson's doctrine of "self-confidence." Emerson's nonconformism and American society. W. Thoreau, his novel “Walden, or Life in the Woods.” The originality of W. Thoreau's creative method.

The works of N. Hawthorne. N. Hawthorne's polemic with the transcendentalists (novel “Blythedale”). Novels by N. Hawthorne (collections “Twice Told Stories”, “Mosses of the Old Manor”). N. Hawthorne's stories for children (“Book of Wonders”, “Tanglewood Tales”). Romantic criticism of bourgeois America. Hawthorne the Moralist and Master of Allegory. A study of Puritan consciousness in the novel “The Scarlet Letter”. Sin as a source of spiritual rebirth of the individual. The novel “The House of the Seven Gables”: a study of ancestral guilt. The problem of aristocracy. The originality of N. Hawthorne's creative method. G. James about Hawthorne's characters.

The works of G. Melville. The novel "Moby Dick": genre originality, problems, language of the novel (Bible and Shakespeare). Captain Ahab and Ishmael: two types of romantic consciousness. Characteristics of the main character: heroic and villainous in Captain Ahab. Moby Dick as the embodiment of world evil. Philosophical symbolism in the novel. The originality of G. Melville's creative method.

Creativity of G. Longfellow. The epic “The Song of Hiawatha”: images of the main characters, poetic language, poetic meter. Folklore basis of the Song of Hiawatha. The theme of nature in Longfellow's poetry. The originality of G. Longfellow's creative method.

The works of W. Whitman. Features of W. Whitman's poetic system. Main themes and poetic images. Vers libre. Poetic dictionary. “Leaves of Grass” by W. Whitman: problematics, poetic language. Innovation by W. Whitman. The tradition of W. Whitman in the poetry of the 20th century.

III. Literature of the USA. XX century

The works of E. Pound. Imagist poets (, M. Moore,).

(“Spoon River Anthology”), K. Sandberg (“Poems about Chicago”): the tradition of W. Whitman in the 20th century.

Poetry of R. Frost. Theme of the poems. Synthesis of the Anglo-American poetic tradition (J. Donne, W. Wordsworth) in the works of R. Frost. R. Frost and US poetry.

Short stories by S. Andersen, the inconsistency of the method, the character of the hero. Andersen's influence on the development of the short story genre.

and the "age of jazz". Novels "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night". Novels.

E. Hemingway's novels, the art of subtext. E. Hemingway as a writer of the “lost generation” (“A Farewell to Arms!”). Spanish theme. The genre of the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, a way of revealing the theme of war. "To have and not to have." Ideological and stylistic originality of the late E. Hemingway (“The Old Man and the Sea”, “Across the River, in the Shade of the Trees”).

O'Neill's dramaturgy. “Plastic Theater” by T. Williams, L. Hellman.

Prose by J. Salinger. Problems of the novel “The Catcher in the Rye”; ethical maximalism of the protagonist. Features of Salinger's author's style. Salinger and the “counterculture” of the 1960s.

The novel “Gerzag” by S. Bellow: the drama of an intellectual hero and spiritual shepherd in modern America. Irony in the novel: Moses Gerzag as a hero and antihero.

“The American Dream” by N. Mailer: a novel about a modern hero. Interpretation of the concept " dream" The hero's dreams as a way of getting rid of the shackles of morality. The hero's self-irony as overcoming the craving for intellectual philosophizing. A modern hero on the path of spiritual rebirth.

The works of T. Capote. The story “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: issues, characteristics of the main character. The novel "In Perfect Cold Blood": a parable about modern America. Features of the “non-fiction novel” genre.

Confessional lyrics of the 1960s: R. Lowell, S. Plath. The life of a poet as material for understanding modernity. R. Lowell: meditative lyricism, a combination of confessionality and autobiography with historical and philosophical reflections. R. Lowell about the poet as a prophet and teacher of the nation.

The literary movement of the “beatniks”: existentialist and naturalistic tendencies in their work (J. Kerouac and others). The development of realism in the 1960–1970s: novels by Cheever, Styron and others. Warren’s novel “All the King’s Men.” T. Morrison's novel “Beloved.”

LIST OF LITERARY SOURCES

History of English literature through the first thirdXIXcentury

1. Beowulf

2. J. Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales (General Prologue. The Knight's Tale. The Miller's (or Majordomo's) Tale. The Tale of Sir Topas. The Monastery Chaplain's Tale. The Student's Tale)

3. T. Mallory. Death of Arthur

4. F. Sidney. Astrophil and Stella

5. E. Spencer. Sonnets ( Amoretti)

6. K. Marlowe. Faust (or Tamerlane the Great)

7. W. Shakespeare. Sonnets. Chronicles (Richard III). Tragedies (Hamlet. Macbeth). Comedy (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

8. J. Donn. Sacred Sonnets. Lyrics ( Annunciation. Air and Angels)

9. J. Herbert. Sonnets The Temple

10. E. Marvell. Poems

11. J. Milton. Lost heaven. Paradise Regained

12. D. Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. Moll Flanders. Roxana

13. J. Swift. Tale of a barrel. Gulliver's Travels

14. G. Fielding. The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling

15. T. Smollett. The Journey of Humphrey Clinker. The Adventures of Rodrick Random. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

16. O. Goldsmith. Poems. Wakefield priest

17. L. Stern. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. A sentimental journey through France and Italy

18. W. Godwin. Caleb Williams

19. W. Blake. Lyrics

20. W. Wordsworth. Lyrics (Yellow Daffodils. Tintern Abbey. Yew Tree. Sonnet Written on Westminster Bridge)

21. . The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

22. R. Southey. Ballads

23. J. G. Byron. Lyrics. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Gyaur. Corsair. Cain. Manfred. Bronze Age. Don Juan. English bards and Scottish columnists

24. . Lyrics. The Rise of Islam. Prometheus Freed. Defense of poetry. Cenci

25. D. Keats. Lyrics (Ode to a Greek Vase. Autumn. Grasshopper and Cricket. Sonnet about a sonnet)

26. T. Moore. Irish melodies. Lyrics (At sea. Young singer. Evening bells)

27. W. Scott. Ivanhoe. Rob Roy. Quentin Dorward. Waverley. Puritans

Literature of Great BritainXIX– beginningXXcentury

1. J. Osten. Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park. Emma

2. C. Dickens. Notes of the Pickwick Club. Oliver Twist. Dombey and son. Christmas stories. Cold house. David Copperfield. Great Expectations

3. . Vanity Fair. Book of snobs. The Story of Henry Esmond

4. E. Trollope. Barchester Towers

5. J. Eliot. Middlemarch. Mill on the Floss

6. S. Bronte. Jane Eyre. Willet. Shirley

7. E. Bronte. Lyrics. Wuthering Heights

8. E. Gaskell. Mary Barton. Cranford

9. J. Meredith. Egoist

10. T. Hardy. Lyrics. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Mayor of Casterbridge

eleven. . Lyrics. Treasure Island. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

12. O. Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Grey. Plays. Fairy tales

13. R. Kipling. Poems (Danny Deaver. Tommy Atkins. Mandalay. The Ballad of East and West). Stories

Literature of the USAXIX– beginningXXcentury

1. W. Irving. History of New York. Rip Van Winkle. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Ghost Groom

2. F. Cooper. Spy. St. John's wort. The Last of the Mohicans. Pioneers. Prairie

3. E. A. Poe. Lyrics (Raven. Annabel Lee. Ulalum. Bells). Novels (The Stolen Letter. The Descent into the Maelstrom. The Gold Bug. The Fall of the House of Usher. Murder on the Rue Morgue. The Mystery of Marie Roger)

4. N. Hawthorne. Scarlet Letter. The House of the Seven Gables (one novel to choose from). Novellas (Tales Twice Told, Mosses of the Old Manor)

5. . Walden, or Life in the Woods

6. G. Longfellow. Song of Hiawatha

7. G. Melville. Moby Dick

8. W. Whitman. grass leaves

9. E. Dickinson. Lyrics

10. M. Twain. Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yankees at King Arthur's Court

11. F. Bret Harte. Stories (The Happiness of the Roaring Camp)

12. O. Henry. Stories

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ENGLISH LITERATURE. The history of English literature actually includes several “stories” of different kinds. This is literature belonging to specific socio-political eras in the history of England; literature reflecting certain systems of moral ideals and philosophical views; literature that has its inherent internal (formal, linguistic) unity and specificity. At different times, one or another “story” came to the fore. The heterogeneity of definitions is fixed in the names that are usually given to different periods of English literature. Some periods are designated by the names of prominent political or literary figures (“Victorian Era”, “Age of Johnson”), others by the dominant literary ideas and themes (“Renaissance”, “Romantic Movement”), others (“Old English Literature” and “Middle English Literature”) - according to the language in which the works were created. This review also examines medieval English drama; the history of dramaturgy is presented in a separate article.

Old English Literature.

The history of English literature before the Renaissance is divided into two periods, each marked by both historical milestones and changes in language. The first, Old English period begins in 450-500 with the invasion of Britain by Germanic tribes, usually called Anglo-Saxon, and ends with the conquest of the island by William of Normandy in 1066. The second, Middle English period begins around 1150, when the indigenous language, forced out of use for some time, again became widespread as a written language. Before the Norman Conquest, the language of England was German, a variety of the dialects of the low-lying coasts of Germany and Holland, but during the Middle English period this language underwent many internal changes, and after the 13th century. considerably enriched by borrowings from French.

The art of book writing became known in England only after the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity. The earliest and most productive school of Old English literature arose in Northumbria under the influence of Celtic and Latin cultures, but it was put an end to the raids of Scandinavian pagan Vikings that began around 800. In the south, in Wessex, King Alfred (reigned 871–899) and his successors successfully resisted the Vikings, which contributed to the revival of science and literature.

All this had two important consequences. Firstly, all surviving works in poetry and prose, including those dedicated to pagan times, belong to Christian authors, mainly from the clergy. There is no direct evidence of oral creativity of the pre-Christian period. Secondly, almost all manuscripts that have survived to this day were created later and mostly in the West Saxon dialect, regardless of what language they might have been originally written in. Thus, Old English is actually a foreign language for England, since Middle English and modern English primarily go back to the dialect of J. Chaucer and his contemporaries that existed in the region centered on London.

Unlike scholarly works and translations, fiction was created in verse. The bulk of the monuments of Old English poetry are preserved in four manuscript codices; they all date back to the late 10th – early 11th centuries. In the Old English period the accepted unit of versification was the long alliterated line, divided by a distinct caesura into two parts containing two strongly stressed syllables; at least one of them was alliterated in each part. The earliest English poet known by name is the Northumbrian monk Caedmon, who lived in the 7th century. The historian Beda the Venerable recorded his short poem on the creation of the world, the rest of Caedmon's writings are lost. From the poet Kynewulf (8th or 9th century) four poems have come down that undoubtedly belong to him: in the last lines of each he put his name, written in letters of pre-Christian German runic writing. Like Cunewulf, the unnamed authors of other poems combined elements of epic storytelling with Christian themes and certain techniques of the classical style. Among these poems stands out Vision of the Cross And Phoenix, in which the interpretation of the Christian theme is marked by the restrained, often harsh spirit of the pagan faith of the Germans, especially noticeable in the elegies Wanderer And Seafarer, exploring with great force the themes of exile, loneliness and homesickness.

The German spirit and German stories were embodied in heroic poems (songs) about great warriors and folk heroes. Among these poems, an important place is occupied by Vidseed: here is a court storyteller (skop), who composed and performed such poems. He recalls the distant lands he visited and the great warriors, including real historical figures, whom he says he met. Fragments of two heroic works of the type that Vidsid could well have performed have been preserved: Battle of Finnsburg And Valdere. The greatest surviving poetic work of that era, in which the elements of German heroic poetry and the ideas of Christian piety appear in absolute fusion and completeness, is the heroic epic Beowulf, probably created in the 8th century.

The formation of Wessex and the accession of King Alfred marked the beginning of a revival of science and literature that lasted until the Norman conquest of England. Alfred personally supported and directed this process. With the assistance of clergy scholars, he translated or commissioned translations of Latin texts important to the English understanding of European history, philosophy, and theology. They were Dialogues And Pastoral care (Cura Pastoralis) Pope Gregory the Great (6th century), compendium of world history Orosius (5th century), Ecclesiastical history of the Angles Bady of the Honorable and Consolation of philosophy Boethius (6th century). Translation Pastoral care Alfred provided a preface in which he complained about the decline of learning and even literacy among the contemporary clergy and proposed expanding education in Latin and English through church schools. Alfred came up with the idea of ​​creating Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, following fresh traces of recording historical events. After his death Chronicle continued to lead in a number of monasteries; in the Peterborough vault the events were brought up to 1154. Poems were also recorded in it, for example Battle of Brunanburg is a fine example of Old English heroic poetry dedicated to specific events.

The authors of prose works that succeeded Alfred made valuable contributions not so much to artistic creativity as to the history of culture. Ælfric (died c. 1020) wrote several collections of sermons, lives of saints, and a number of works on grammar. Wulfstan (died 1023), Bishop of London, Worcester and York, also became famous as an author of sermons.

Middle English Literature.

The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought about profound changes in all areas of English life. Borrowed from France and implemented according to the French model, the feudal system transformed all social institutions, including cultural, legal, economic and political. Perhaps most importantly, Norman French became the language of the nobility and the royal court, while Latin continued to dominate learning. People did not stop writing in English, they continued to teach it, but for more than a century it retreated into the shadows, although it was spoken by the majority of the population. At the end of the 12th century. The English language became widespread again, its grammatical structure was significantly simplified, but the vocabulary of the conquerors only slightly affected its vocabulary. Intensive borrowing from French began only at the end of the 13th century. for a number of reasons, incl. influenced by Chaucer's poetry. Changes in language caused corresponding changes in the structure of verse. The rhythmic organization of a line increasingly relied on the total number of syllables rather than on stress alone, as in Old English; end rhyme replaced internal alliteration as the basis of poetic harmony.

The earliest Middle English texts, large and small, are religious or didactic in nature. Many of them are written in the southwestern and west-central dialects of the late 12th century. and by virtue of this directly continue the tradition of literature in West Saxon, which was widespread before the conquest. The essay clearly stands out from didactic texts Rules for hermits (Ancrene Riwle). Instructing three believing women leading the life of recluses, the author talks about various matters - moral, psychological and economic, turns to a sermon, a short story, an allegory, a parable, and writes in a lively conversational style. Another significant work of the era is an argumentative poem Owl and Nightingale, marked by genuine humor and poetic skill.

The royal courts and nobles who settled in medieval castles craved literary entertainment no less than the courts of the kings who reigned during the Anglo-Saxon period, and they also preferred the heroic poem to other literary genres. The feudal environment, however, radically transformed the content, character and style of the poem, and in aristocratic circles of the 13th century. It was not relatively simple heroic poems that became famous, but chivalric romances. The hero of such a novel is, as a rule, a person at least semi-historical, but his actions consist not so much in ordinary battles and wanderings, but in exploits associated with supernatural bearers of good and evil, in the fight against supermagicians, servants of the devil, and in battles with using magical weapons like Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur. The hero's miraculous deeds can easily be interpreted in a Christian spirit as an allegorical depiction of the soul's struggle with evil temptations in the pursuit of perfection, although by their nature medieval chivalric romances were not allegorical.

In addition to the heroic beginning, the chivalric romance in Western literature of this period was enriched with a completely new set of feelings and motives, called courtly love. It was based on the premise that the main source of chivalry and great deeds was the love of a noble lady, who was traditionally portrayed as virtuous, refined, strict and almost unattainable. The cult of courtly love developed from the cult of the Virgin Mary, which played an extremely important role in medieval Catholicism. The cult of courtly love came to England along with French feudalism. In novels King Horn And Havelock-Dane(both 13th century) heroes, English by blood or adoption, expelled from their native kingdoms by usurpers, behave according to all the canons of courtly love: they return the kingdom with the sword and at the same time win the love of a beautiful lady.

The emerging self-awareness of the English was agitated by two other novel cycles, one related to the theme of the siege of Troy and the Roman descendants of the Trojans, the other to the figure of King Arthur. According to a beautiful legend, which was first published by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the descendants of those who fled from Troy settled in England in ancient times. As for King Arthur, he was known to have read the compilation attributed to Nennius British history (Historia Britonum, 9–11 centuries), where he is presented as the defender of Britain of the Romans and Celts from the invasion of Anglo-Saxon tribes in the 5–6 centuries. The greatest of the medieval English chivalric novels of the Arthurian cycle (Arthurian legends) is undoubtedly created in the 14th century. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The author of this novel may also own the poem Pearl– an elegy on the death of a little girl; didactic poems can also be attributed to him Purity And Patience.

Moralizing literature generally experienced a period of change in the 14th century. a heyday, probably partly under the influence of the ideas of the religious reformer D. Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384). It took various forms: a detailed outline of world history, how Wanderer of the world (Cursor Mundi), interpretation of church doctrine, as List of sins (Handling Synne) R. Manning; reviews of the misdeeds of people of all kinds and conditions, like an essay written in French by Chaucer's friend D. Gower Human mirror (Le Miroir d"l"Homme). The most significant didactic poem of the century is Vision of Peter the Plowman, belonging to the author, who calls himself W. Langland in the text of the poem (preserved in three separate versions). This lengthy moralizing allegory contains satirical attacks on the abuses of church and state. It is written in ancient Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (modified), which represents one of the most striking poetic achievements of all Middle English literature.

J. Chaucer (c. 1340–1400) is the highest embodiment of the English creative genius of the Middle Ages and one of the largest figures in English literature. He performed in almost all genres of literature of that time. Closely associated with the refined court, which absorbed the canons of chivalry and courtly love, Chaucer reflected its morals and way of life in many of his writings. Chaucer's style and prosody belong more to the French than to the domestic tradition; their influence on English poetry cannot be overestimated. Chaucer's language is clearly closer to modern English than to Langland's; The London dialect began to turn into a standard literary language mainly thanks to the poetry of Chaucer.

A highly independent poet, Chaucer used many traditional writing techniques to achieve the desired result. His writings, including lyrics and short poems, often reveal a combination of the original and the generally accepted. The Canterbury Tales, with their composition, within which talkative, bickering and all-about storytellers appear and various forms of medieval literature are embodied, this is the quintessence of the creative imagination of the era. Chaucer uses the fabliau in a particularly original way - a short poetic novella designed to amuse, satirical, mischievous, or combining both of these qualities. The plots of the few surviving English fabliaux are sometimes as fantastic as in the romances of chivalry, but circumstances allowed for realism in them, and Chaucer fully realized this opportunity. The stories of the Miller, the Majordomo and the Skipper are given in fablio form.

About a hundred years separating Chaucer's death from the accession of the Tudors did not bring significant innovations to the content and form of literary works. Throughout the 15th century. there was only one noticeable change - the moralizing satire became more and more evil as the medieval system of the universe deteriorated. The stern tone and terrible, sometimes apocalyptic images in the writings of religious reformers and poets were evidence of a growing sense of crisis.

Among Chaucer's followers, D. Lydgate (c. 1370 - c. 1449) was especially versatile and prolific. He imitated Chaucer House of Glory in his Glass castle, translated secular and moralizing allegories and chivalric novels from French. Lydgate was a monk, but had connections at court and in big cities and often wrote poetry on commission. His contemporary T. Oakleve (d. 1454) did the same, but wrote less. The Scottish imitators of Chaucer differed from the English in being more independent. Among them were King James I, who wrote primarily in a courtly style; R. Henryson (d. before 1508), author of an extraordinary continuation of Chaucer's poem Troilus and Chryseis; W. Dunbar (d. c. 1530), who worked in various poetic genres - secular and moral allegory, satirical vision, realistic dialogue, argumentative poem, burlesque and elegy.

In this age of continuations and imitations Death of Arthur T. Malory, although built on borrowed plots, became an outstanding literary phenomenon. Its sources were a cycle of French chivalric novels in prose and two English ones in verse, together covering the period of the reign of King Arthur and the adventures of his main knights. The author's nostalgia for the past he idealized gives the entire work an intonational unity and, in a certain sense, characterizes the spirit of the century.

Malory's editor and publisher was the English pioneer W. Caxton (1422–1491), who served the English readers, whose circle had expanded significantly by the end of the 15th century, a great service, providing them with a whole library of domestic authors and translations from French and Latin. Caxton was the first to publish the works of a number of English writers, incl. Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate. The realization that what they wrote appeared in the form of a printed book that was read by the public (hence the original meaning of the word “publish”) quite naturally led authors to think seriously about style. Style has ceased to be the result of personal understanding between the reader and a narrow audience and has turned into a kind of generalized, normalized and indispensable prerequisite for mutual understanding between the writer and the reader. Another important consequence of the introduction of printing was the increase in the number of not just readers, but buyers of printed publications, who to a certain extent dictated what they would like to read.

The emergence of the middle class was a process that lasted not just the 15th century, but several centuries. However, its beginnings occurred in the time of Caxton and, in particular, announced itself with the development of the ballad and folk religious drama. In them one can find the first shoots of creative self-expression of that new social class, which belonged neither to the learned clergy nor to the noble nobility, but strived for learning and nobility in its own way.

Ballads are story songs of anonymous authors, which existed in oral transmission and were structurally based on chorus and repetitions. The English ballad flourished in the 15th century, although some ballads date back to the early Middle Ages and others arose after the 15th century. Their plots are simple, the action is fast and intense, and the leading role is given to dialogue. The range of topics is wide - from legendary heroes like Robin Hood to supernatural powers. They owe much of their charm to the dramatic plot and clear, dynamic intrigue.

The roots of English drama go back to a time before the earliest ballads. In England, as elsewhere, performances on religious themes were initially mimetic in nature and consisted of dialogues in Latin, which were pronounced during the liturgy and supplemented it. Qualitative changes came when lay associations, such as guilds, began to stage religious plays outside the church in an expanded version and in the vernacular. The earliest example of English drama of this type is Action about Adam (Le Jeu d'Adam, 13th century), written in French and telling not only about the first fall, but also about Cain and Abel. Heydaying from the 14th to the early 16th centuries, drama was represented in two main forms: mysteries, in which biblical episodes (“sacraments”) were played out, and morality plays, moral allegories. Drama was both a religious art and a folk spectacle, in the organization of which the entire community usually took part. This dual nature explains the frequent (and striking) combination of splendor with realism, and sometimes with mischievous obscenity, which gives the plays their characteristic expressiveness.

Some moralists, such as Wycliffe and Manning, reviled the mysteries, mainly because they were performed under the auspices of the laity. However, staging the mystery required the cooperation of the church clergy in one form or another. Morality plays, like allegorical plays, contained less of the common people, or “secular.” The best and most famous morality play is Everyone(probably an adaptation of a Dutch source), recreation spiritual path a person from the first reminder of death to the consolation of the last rites of the church and death.

Like the romances of chivalry and the later allegorical narratives, English religious drama was medieval in its essence. However, all these genres survived after the reign of the Tudors and influenced literature for a long time. Gradually, their canons changed more and more in comparison with European ones, acquiring a purely English specificity. The medieval heritage thus transformed was passed on to the writers of the Renaissance.

At the beginning of the 16th century. two poets, A. Barclay and D. Skelton, writing in the medieval tradition, brought something new to the content and interpretation of poetic themes. Barclay in Eclogues(1515, 1521), translations and adaptations from Mantuan and Enea Silvio, discovered the pastoral theme in English poetry. Skelton in lively original satire Fool Colin, written in short lines with irregular rhythm and end rhymes, satirized the clergy, Cardinal Wolsey and the court. However, the true beginning of new poetry is associated with the songwriters at the court of Henry VIII, who set a personal example for those close to him, excelling in poetry, academic pursuits, music, hunting, archery and other noble pastimes. At his court, almost everyone wrote poetry, but the renewal of poetry is primarily associated with T. Wyeth and G. Howard, Earl of Surrey. Like all courtiers of that time, they considered poetry only as a pastime for noble people and did not publish their poems, so most of what they wrote was published posthumously in a collection Songs and sonnets(1557), better known as Tottel's Almanac. Wyeth introduced the Italian octave, terza and love sonnet in the style of Petrarch into English poetry and himself wrote courtly songs full of genuine lyricism. The Earl of Surrey cultivated the sonnet genre, but his main merit lies in the fact that with his translation of two songs Aeneids he made blank verse a property of English poetry.

A great achievement of the reign of Henry VIII was the development of the humanities by the students and followers of those Englishmen who at the end of the 15th century. made a pilgrimage to Italy, to the source of New Knowledge. The firm conviction in the power of ancient culture, with which they returned to their homeland, determined the activities of the Oxford reformers; these included Grosin, Linacre, Colet, More and Erasmus of Rotterdam, who visited England several times. They took up reforms in the fields of education, religion and church, government and social structure. Written in Latin Utopias(1516, translated into English 1551), in which Renaissance approaches and values ​​are presented on almost every page, Thomas More outlined his ideas about the ideal state. T. Eliot's treatise on political prudence and the training of a nobleman Ruler(1531) and his later works indicate that on English language, with minor borrowings from other languages ​​and the addition of new formations, one can successfully formulate the philosophical ideas that the author sought to convey to his compatriots. In 1545 R. Askem dedicated it to Henry VIII Toxophilus- a treatise on archery and the benefits of noble open-air amusements for education young man. The structure of his prose is more orderly and intelligible than Eliot's; he was the first to use various techniques for constructing phrases to express thoughts more accurately and clearly.

The poetry created between the end of the reign of Henry VIII and the beginning of the work of F. Sidney and E. Spencer hardly foreshadowed the unprecedented poetic “harvest” of the last twenty years of the century. The exception is the poems of T. Sackville Introduction And Lamentations of Henry, Duke of Buckingham, published by him in one of the editions of a collection of tragic medieval stories Mirror of Rulers(1559–1610). Written in seven-line stanzas using iambic pentameters, they belong to the medieval tradition in theme and stylistic canon, but their composition fully corresponds to their mood, highly original, polished images and mastery of versification. These poems can be seen as an important link between medieval and modern poetry. Apart from these, only the poems of the skilled master J. Gascoigne and T. Tasser, as well as J. Tarberville, T. Churchyard and B. Goodge, stand out against the background of the mediocre poetry of the mid-century.

During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), called the Elizabethan period, the literature of the English Renaissance reached its peak of flowering and diversity; such an amazing concentration of creative genius is a rare phenomenon in the history of world literature. The reasons for such powerful “outbursts” of creative energy are always difficult to determine. In the Age of Elizabeth, its source was the simultaneous impact of existing cultural phenomena and factors on the English nation as a whole. The Reformation gave rise to an abundance of religious writings - from Books of Martyrs(1563) D. Fox to sublimely eloquent Laws of the church code(1593–1612) R. Hooker; they included sermons, polemical pamphlets, breviaries, and religious poetry.

The most influential force that shaped the age was perhaps Elizabeth herself and all that she represented. If religious disputes, geographical discoveries and classical education led the Elizabethans to a new understanding of their place in history, the world and the universe, then Elizabeth, with her royal grandeur and splendor of her reign, clearly embodied all this novelty and optimism. The century rightly bears her name: she forced her subjects to be imbued with a new self-awareness that took possession of their minds, global and at the same time purely national. That she was at the center of everything is confirmed by numerous writings that nourished a strong sense of national pride and the high destiny destined for the nation, - Fairy Queen(1590–1596) Spencer, Henry V(1599) Shakespeare, Music lover(1599) and Defense of the rhyme(1602) S. Daniela, Polyolbion(1613, 1622) M. Drayton and others.

Drama and lyric poetry, these greatest achievements of the Elizabethans, were soon recognized as the most perfect forms for representing action and revealing personal feeling. Of the prominent people who wrote poetry, only a few published them, but many allowed what they wrote to diverge in manuscripts. Their poems often appeared in such collections as Flower garden of graceful words (1576), Phoenix Nest(1593) and Poetic Rhapsody(1602). Many poems were set to music by songwriters - W. Bird, T. Morley, D. Dowland and T. Campion, who himself wrote the lyrics of his songs.

Despite the fact that lyric poetry was still considered “the master’s pastime,” the poems, responding to the spirit of the times, had a pronounced experimental character. Suddenly it was discovered that poetic speech was capable of conveying much more than it could in previous eras, and this gave depth and significance to even courtly love lyrics. The relationship between individual consciousness and the external world is often referred to as the interdependence of the microcosm (“small world,” man) and the macrocosm (“big world,” the universe). This central concept of the Age of Elizabeth and, more broadly, of the entire Renaissance found its most complete expression in the two leading genres of poetry - the pastoral and the sonnet cycle. Beginning with Shepherd calendar(1579) Spenser's pastoral becomes, after the model Eclogue Virgil, a very effective form of allegory, satire and reflection on moral themes. For the “shepherdess” of the Elizabethan pastoral, the macrocosm, the world of the stream, the valley and natural harmony, is internally correlated with the microcosm of his love experiences, thoughts about faith and society. Pastoral novels in prose, such as Arcadia(1580, ed. 1590) Sidney, Menathon(1589) R. Green and Rosalind(1590) by T. Loggia, indicate how much importance was attached to the pastoral genre during the Renaissance. The number of pastoral comedies in Shakespeare is another sign of the dominant position of the genre.

The sonnet cycle arose from an even deeper impulse: to affirm the value of personal experience, usually love, as containing the whole world or universe. Being extremely common at that time, this form produced remarkable examples, including Diana(1592) G. Constable, Phyllis(1593) T. Loggia, Parthenophil and Parthenof(1593) B. Barnes, Mirror of Thought(1594) Drayton, Love sonnets(1595) Spencer and Sonnets(1609) Shakespeare. Perhaps the most brilliant cycle of sonnets is Astrophil and Stella(created 1581–1583) Sidney.

The poem is also richly presented. The peaks of a historical poem, imbued with powerful patriotism in the spirit of popular plays chronicling the era, are England Albion(1586) W. Warner, Civil wars(1595, 1609) Daniel and Barons' Wars(1596, 1603) Drayton. Among the meditative and philosophical poems, the following stand out: Orchestra(1596) and Know yourself (Nosce Teipsum, 1599) D. Davis. The third dominant type of poem is a love narrative, with sensual images and language. Its main examples include Hero and Leander(1593) Cr.Marlowe, Venus and Adonis(1593) and Lucretia(1594) Shakespeare. However, the greatest creation in this genre is Fairy Queen(1590–1596) by Spenser, in which elements of a chivalric romance and a courtly narrative of love are fused into an artistic whole, which represents one of the most significant phenomena in English poetry.

D. Lily in the book Euphues, or Anatomy of Wit(1578) and its sequel Euphues and his England(1580) was one of the first in England to attempt to purposefully use prose as a form of artistic writing. His style is characterized by an abundance of “witticisms”, i.e. far-reaching and often highly learned comparisons, continuous alliteration and extremely strict proportionality between sentences and individual words. Lily and the authors of pastoral novels sought to inculcate courtly values ​​and explore noble, sublime feelings. Another direction of Elizabethan fiction, represented by R. Greene's pamphlets about swindlers and ABC of rogues(1609) by T. Dekker, depicts the life of the London “bottom” with savory realism, which, naturally, dictates a style that is not at all courtly, but much more rough, uneven and disheveled. Perhaps the most significant among the English picaresque novels is The Ill-Fated Wanderer(1594) T. Nash. The speech of the rogue and "wanderer" Jack Wilton is a brilliant combination of jargon, wit, scholarship and unbridled volubility.

The need for translated literature also contributed greatly to the formation of the style of mature English prose. Some of the translations carried out in the Elizabethan era are among the most creative and accomplished in the history of English literature.

Throughout the 16th century. all these elements contributed to the development of English prose. The time of expansion of its borders occurred in the next century, and it began with the emergence of the canonical collective, the so-called. authorized translation of the Bible (1611).

By the middle of the 16th century. also refers to the birth of English literary criticism. It began with unassuming essays on rhetoric, such as Arts of Eloquence(1553) by T. Wilson, and in versification, as the first critical essay - Some Notes on How to Write Poetry(1575) Gascoigne. Sydney in glitter Defense of poetry(c. 1581–1584, publ. 1595) brought together everything that had been said before him about the ancient “roots”, the comprehensive nature, essence, purpose and perfection of poetry. Those who wrote about it most often proposed to improve English poetry by introducing classical, i.e. metric, versification system. Only after the prominent lyric poet Campion formulated the rules of versification in this system, and Daniel convincingly and sensibly refuted the provisions of his treatise with his essay In defense of rhyme(1602), serious attempts to introduce the so-called. The “new versification” was put to an end.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, bequeathing the throne to James Stuart. Her death seemed to serve as the impetus for the general sense of change and decline that marked the great works of the Jacobite era - the reigns of James I and Charles I. The upheavals that defined this era included scientific discoveries (including the triumph of the Copernican concept of the solar system) , the rationalism of Descartes and the growing religious strife between Catholics, adherents of the Anglican Church and Puritans - radical Protestants. The War of the Faiths reached its peak in 1649, when Charles I was executed and O. Cromwell established the Protectorate. This event marked a turning point in both the literary and political history of England. With the end of the Protectorate and the installation of Charles II on the throne, the period of Restoration began. It is so different from the previous one that it deserves separate consideration.

The general mood of the first half of the 17th century is perhaps most accurately described as the "exodus of the Renaissance", a time when the optimism and confidence of the Elizabethan Age gave way to reflection and uncertainty. The search for solid foundations in life gave rise to prose, the pages of which are among the best written in English, and the school of the so-called. "metaphysical" poetry, the best examples of which are not inferior to the great works of any other age.

Many of the most important prose works of the era owe their appearance to religious polemics. The most striking example of this kind is probably Areopagitica(1644) - D. Milton's speech in defense of freedom of the press, but polemics added poignancy to everything that was written in this century. The great cohort of preachers in English history - D. Donne, L. Andrews, T. Adams, J. Hall and J. Taylor - wrote artistically perfect sermons. The highest literary level is inherent in introspective, sophisticated psychological Prayers(1624) Donna, full of clarity Healing faith ( Religio Medici, 1642) T. Brown, exquisitely expressive Holy death(1651) Taylor. Fr. Bacon, covering all areas of knowledge, gave the world Augmentation of sciences(1605) and the unfinished compendium of the scientific method The Great Restoration ( Magna Instauratio). Anatomy of Melancholy(1621) by R. Burton - a deep and witty study of the psychological deviations inherent in the imperfect nature of man. Leviathan(1651) T. Hobbes remains a monument to political philosophy. Another important prose writer of that period is Thomas Browne; he shared the doubts of his age, but forged from them a style close to poetic, which contributed to the affirmation of the nobility of the spirit despite all the fallibility of man.

Historical and biographical prose acquired a more current sound in such works as History of Henry VII(1622) by Bacon with its insightful artistic revelation of character; History of the uprising(1704) Earl of Clarendon; Ecclesiastical history of Britain(1655) and English celebrities(1622) the eccentric vernacular T. Fuller; biographies of Donne, Hooker, Herbert, Wotton and Sanderson, compiled by A. Walton, author of a deceptively simple idyll The art of fishing (1653).

It was also the first great century of the English essay, interest in which was revived in connection with the publication in 1597 Experiences Bacon; the latter soon had numerous followers and imitators, the most famous of them are N. Briton, J. Hall, O. Feltham and A. Cowley. Such short forms of essays as reflections and especially “characters”, which describe human types and properties, were also popular. The best examples of them belong to T. Overbury and his followers, as well as J. Hall, the author Virtuous and vicious natures(1608). In style and logic of presentation, the characters had a certain similarity with the main poetic movement of the century - metaphysical, or “scientific” poetry.

At the beginning of the 17th century. three main poetic traditions prevailed, reflecting three ideas about the essence and purpose of poetry: myth-creating, platonic, romantic directions coming from E. Spencer; B. Johnson's classic reserved manner; the intellectual origin of metaphysical poetry is emphasized. It would be wrong, however, to think that these traditions were opposed to each other; on the contrary, they interacted and mutually enriched to such an extent that, for example, the poetry of J. Herbert or E. Marvell cannot be attributed to either the metaphysical or the “Johnsonian” school.

The tradition of Spenser, who became the voice of the great moralizing and heroic poetry of the Age of Elizabeth, turned out to be the least fruitful in the new, disordered reality of the 17th century. The greatest Spencerian of the century was M. Drayton. His Shepherdess wreath (1593), Endymion and Phoebe(1595) and Elysium Muses(1630) - beautifully executed, although derivative experiments in the spirit of Spenser. The works of the second row in the same style include Shepherd hunting(1615) and Beautiful Virtue(1622) J. Wither, British pastorals(1613–1616) W. Brown, Acrids (1627), British idea(1627) and Purple Island(1633) J. Fletcher.

Ben Jonson, the great playwright of the post-Shakespearean age, was also one of its most important poets. In many respects, he is the first true classicist of English literature, for he followed the task of writing poetry in strict accordance with the canon of Horace and Virgil - restrained in intonation, precise, simple and expressive. In the troubled and gloomy Jacobite period, Johnson's poetry, balanced and, most importantly, filled with noble dignity, had great moral and artistic strength. Johnson's most inspired follower was probably the Devonshire country priest R. Herrick, author Hesperides And Sublime stanzas, which appeared in 1648, the year before the execution of Charles I, and some of the most elegant and deceptively artless examples of erotic poetry of the century. Among the prominent adherents of Johnson's style were the "Cavaliers" - i.e. courtiers who took the side of Charles I in the Civil War. These include the author of the book Poetry(1640) T. Carew, R. Lovelace and D. Suckling.

D. Donne, the third great poet of the century, was very different from Jonson. Beginning his life as an adventurer and courtier in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, he ended it as the venerable dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and an illustrious preacher. Donne borrowed poetic rhythms from spoken language and used complex phrases to dramatize feelings. The label "metaphysical poets", invented by S. Johnson and deprived exact value, still accompanies Donne and his followers, although it is misleading, since it does not imply the philosophical content of their poetry, but the practice of using “fancy”, i.e. images that are striking in their combination of seemingly incompatible thoughts and feelings.

Metaphysical poets included J. Herbert, R. Crashaw, G. Vaughan and T. Trahern. Herbert, Anglican priest and author Temple(1633), was a recognized master among them. His poetry combines the drama and rationality of Donne with the restrained intonations and pervasive serenity that is the undoubted legacy of Jonson. Catholic and mystic Crashaw's poetry is characterized by frantic, sometimes disordered imagery that often teeters on the edge of bad taste, but remains always gripping and passionate. Vaughan, a doctor by profession, published a volume Sparkling Flint (Silex Scintillans, 1651); his poems, recreating images of nature and imbued with a deep sense of its secrets, according to some, are the prototype of the romantic poetry of W. Wordsworth. Traherne's work is consonant with Vaughan's poetry. Marvell was the last metaphysical poet; a wide range of his work includes harsh religious lyrics, political satire and graceful sensual pastoral. In general, his poetry was complex, ironic, and intellectual.

Contemporaries of these poets were three others, in whose work there were signs of the poetic taste that reigned in the 18th century. A. Cauli, who was very popular during his lifetime, introduced the disorderly “Pindaric” ode into literary use. E. Waller, who wrote occasional poetry for a long time, succeeded in creating good examples of secular poetry in a light style that delighted readers. D. Denham revived interest in “local,” or topographical, poetry describing real landscapes.

During the Restoration, the main books of two leading poets of the era, D. Milton and D. Dryden, were created. The differences between them are indicative of the wide variety of religious, political and literary attitudes during the turbulent period that followed the restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the throne (1660).

Already in his first collection of poetry in 1646, Milton (1608–1674) declared himself as the largest lyric poet of the late Renaissance. His pastoral elegy Lysiadas and allegorical poem “mask” Comus- the pinnacle achievements in the genre. An extreme Protestant and supporter of Cromwell, Milton, after the fall of the Protectorate, gave up the hope of seeing the political kingdom of God on earth and believed that such could be established in the human heart. This is evidenced by the three masterpieces that he created, turning from journalism revolutionary years to poetry. Lost heaven(1667–1674) is an epic poem not only about the first fall, but also about man’s desire to accept the personal doom of death, as well as the affirmation of the triumph and power of the human spirit, capable of doing good and evil in the image of God. From paradise without to paradise within the soul - such is the evolution of Milton's faith, as shown by his second great poem, Paradise Regained(1671), where the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert becomes a key symbol of Milton's moral concept, and the drama Samson the fighter(1671): here the captive Samson, having accepted guilt and purified by suffering, turns defeat into victory. Milton's greatness cannot be overestimated. Combining a powerful moral message with a brilliant generosity of poetic expression that sometimes breaks the boundaries of didactics, he changed the face of all subsequent English poetry.

Milton opposed the spirit of the Restoration, with its demands for secularization, mischievous freethinking and palace political intrigue. Dryden (1631–1700), on the contrary, was the flesh of his age. As a poet and literary critic, he reflected and largely defined the ideals of balance of power, sanity and social responsibility that were so significant to the Restoration period and the coming century.

In the literature of this time, the reaction to the strict restrictions of the Puritan regime was most clearly manifested in the brilliant drama of the Restoration period and in the lyrics of the second generation of cavalier poets. Talented amateurs, such as Charles Sedley, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Rochester and the Duke of Buckingham, wrote funny and often frivolous songs, and S. Butler subjected Puritanism to evil ridicule in a large satirical poem Hudibras.

In general, literature (with the exception of drama) from the Restoration of the monarchy to the accession to the throne of Queen Anne in 1702 was in striking contrast with the ease of morals of court society, the wit and spirit of fun in the works of its representatives. It was during this time that great works were created that embodied Puritan values. During the reign of Charles II, D. Bunyan, limited in his preaching activities by the strict limits of the law, wrote Pilgrim's Path and other significant books. However, the essence of the Restoration period was expressed in other literature. Marked by a spirit of skepticism, she equally opposed both the creative imagination of the Renaissance and the Puritan detachment from everything earthly. This literature found the canon that best suits its principles in the neoclassical “rules” that triumphed in the so-called. The classical age, which replaced the 17th century. These “rules” were not mere borrowings; they had already been tested to one degree or another in English literature, and Ben Jonson also emphasized the value of discipline of form and orderliness of style in classical examples.

The main feature of the poetry of this period is the use of the heroic couplet in all genres except song. Paired rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter were not an innovation, but in the century after the Restoration they were approached differently than in the time of Chaucer and his successors. The Restoration poets made the most of the expressive possibilities of the couplet, in which the content, rhythm and rhyme logically ended on the last syllable of the second line. This form required brevity and proportionality between lines and half-lines, and poets liked to achieve this. Dryden stated that the art of the heroic couplet for him was embodied by the poetry of Waller and Denham: the first by harmony, the second by the power of verse. Dryden himself was a magnificent master of the heroic couplet.

The only innovation in the field of poetic form was the pseudo-Pindaric, or random, ode, which was introduced by Cowley, who sought to write in the spirit of Pindar, without, however, copying the division of the ode into stanza, antistrophe and epod. The result was a new type of ode, in which each stanza had its own meter and allowed a wide variation in line length and rhyme pattern. Dryden used this form in Message to Mrs. Anna Killigrew And Alexander's Feast, and since then it has existed in English poetry.

In content, the poetry of the Restoration differed from the poetry of previous periods. For love songs, such as the gentlemen wrote or inserted into their plays by Dryden and Aphra Behn, the skillful concealment of true feelings and deliberate artificiality are indicative. Light verse most often took the form of a subtle compliment or a poignant epigram, although it was left to Pryor and his Classical Age contemporaries to perfect these refined genres. Events in public life served as a source of poetic inspiration. Dryden wrote poems in the spirit of Virgil about the war with Holland and the fire of London. As poet laureate, he welcomed in verse the return of the duke from Scotland and the birth of a crowned heir. Waller described St. James's Park after reconstruction, and Cowley praised the newly established Royal Society.

However, events and persons contemporary to the authors did not always evoke praise. Even more characteristic of the century was the brilliant satire it generated. In defiance of Cowley's praises, Butler ridiculed the Royal Society in Elephant on the Moon. The uniqueness of the satire of the Restoration is that it is not directed against vices as such, but against specific people or political parties. Even when it concerns religious controversy, criticism usually has political overtones, as in Gudibras Butler or Satire on the Jesuits D. Oldham. Among the satirists of the era, Dryden occupies first place. IN Absalom and Ahithophel he, without stooping to abuse, poured contempt on the leaders of the Whig party; V Award ridiculed A. Shaftesbury, and in Macke Flecknow- Whig poet T. Shadwell.

Much attention was paid to poetic translation, which was carried out by both leading and third-rate poets. The palm in this area belongs to Dryden, who translated Ovid, Theocritus, Lucretius, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Homer, Virgil, as well as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Despite all the differences in style and method of translation, there was a general tendency towards a free interpretation of the original, as in Dryden's transcription Twenty-ninth Ode from the Third Book of Horace, where there are references to personalities and events in England in the 17th century.

The development of prose went in the same direction as the development of poetry. Starting from individualism and stylistic beauty, she developed her own canon: clarity, intelligibility, spontaneity, smooth movement of a moderately long phrase. Having ceased to serve as an emotional release for authors, prose became the perfect means of presenting scientific facts and rational views. The main initiators of the renewal of prose are usually called Dryden, Cowley, D. Tillotson, T. Spratt, W. Temple and the Marquis of Halifax, but we should not forget that the brilliant self-taught Bunyan also participated in this, for the fusion of colloquial speech and biblical style in his works became the property of, although not such a refined, but much wider circle of readers.

The English novel has not yet been born; fiction, except Pilgrim's Paths, was represented only by translations of French gallant novels and imitations of Aphra Behn in this genre. The essay has not yet taken on its usual forms, although Halifax, Temple and, above all, Cowley in the essay About Me and a number of others were moving towards this. One of the works of the Restoration period, which is still read with great interest today, was not intended for publication and was published a century and a half after its completion. This Diary S. Pepys, where he, without hiding anything, recorded the events of his personal and public life from 1660 to 1669. As for memoirs, they had not yet been written in England more than in the 17th century. The most significant were History of the uprising Earl of Clarendon and History of my time G. Bernet. Few political essays like Opportunistic natures, written by Halifax, despite the fact that works of this genre are usually short-lived.

The rationalism of Descartes and the materialism of Hobbes still dominated minds, but the century produced its own philosopher, who was to influence English thought much more significantly. Experience about the human mind J. Locke laid the foundation for modern psychology, and the philosopher’s conclusions that there are no innate ideas and all human knowledge stems only from experience had a strong impact on all areas of theoretical thought. His essay The Reasonability of Christianity contributed to the development of deism as a form of religion, and Two treatises on government for a century provided liberal political movements theoretical basis. I. Newton's discoveries in optics, mathematics, physics and astronomy followed the constancy of scientific laws and gave rise to the concept of the “universal mechanism”.

Literary criticism flourished in the works of Dryden; however, few performed in this field. Temple published an essay About poetry And On ancient and modern scholarship, which caused a rebuke from R. Bentley, which is where the so-called "Battle of the Books" T. Rymer condemned the dramaturgy of the Elizabethans, J. Collier attacked the theater of the Restoration. Compared to their writings, Dryden's essays stand out as excellent criticism and excellent prose. His criticisms mostly took the form of casual prefaces to his own books. He does not try to construct patterns and does not allow “rules” to fetter common sense. His sober judgments are expressed in a style that is at once simple and sublime, restrained and impressive. Dryden's essays best help to understand the character of this man, who became the personification of the literature of the Restoration period.

During the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), a cohort of brilliant writers came to literature. Published in 1704 Tale of a barrel And Battle of the books, J. Swift gained fame as an excellent stylist and satirist. Came out in 1709 Pastorals A.Popa, followed by Experience about criticism(1711) and Stealing a lock(1714). Dr. D. Arbuthnot, a close friend of Swift and Pope, published a satire in 1712 The Story of John Bull. In 1713 D. Gay published Rural pleasures, and a year later - Shepherd's week, an incomparable parody of pastoral poetry in the spirit Shepherd calendar Spencer. From March 1, 1711 to December 6, 1712, the influential magazine “Spectator” was published, which published essays, the joint brainchild of J. Addison and his friend R. Steele.

The period when these congenial writers reigned in English literature is usually called the Classical Age. The years of the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus are considered the era of the highest prosperity of Ancient Rome, a time of solid order and universal peace. A similar picture was observed in England. After the execution of Charles I and the extremes of the Restoration, everyone passionately dreamed of order and a normal life. Writers of this era liked to think that their arrival marked the beginning of the English version of the Age of Augustus. They considered it their calling to give English literature something similar to the exquisitely precise word and serenity of the spirit of Virgil, the natural grace and polished style of Horace. Over this, as well as over later periods of English literature, the shadow of Milton falls: from the best materials"The Spectator" is a series of critical essays by Addison about Paradise Lost, and Pop's irocomic poem Stealing a lock owes many images and episodes to Milton's epic poem. However, the authors of the Classical Age, the “Augustinians,” preferred the small world of the living room and library to the big world of the universe and wondered whether it was possible to restore order to the microcosm of human society. Obsessed with the dream of a rationally organized life, they at the same time were the greatest satirists in the history of English literature, for a developed civilization presupposes the presence of satire as a tool for eradicating extremes, rudeness and stupidity in society.

Pop's work presents a method of versification typical of this century - a rhymed couplet, careful lexical and grammatical proportionality between parts of the verse and a heightened sense of each individual couplet as the main semantic poetic unit. The principles on which this method was based are called classicism. There are two such principles. First: art first of all imitates nature, therefore it is more perfect the more truthfully and accurately it does so. By “nature” we mean not so much landscapes and landscapes, but human nature, especially the relationships between people in society. The second fundamental principle of classicism follows from the first. Since art is an imitation of nature, firm, reasonably substantiated and immutable rules must apply not only to nature itself, but also to imitations of it. The poet must master these rules and strictly follow them in order to avoid extremes and absurdities in his work. This is why the English classicists placed common sense above all else. Committed to order and sanity, they experienced mortal horror of madness and senile insanity, which in their eyes were a threat to everything that man had built. In Swift's main satirical pamphlets, for example, the narrators are initially insane and therefore cause not laughter, but fear.

The spirit of poetry of the Classical Age is embodied by A. Pop (1688–1744). The plot of his most perfect creation, The abduction of a curl, built on the ordinary, albeit daring trick of a socialite. However, the author, depicting a closed, frivolous little world, poses serious problems of truth and lies, hypocrisy and morality, appearance and truth. Conscious self-restraint in the choice of topics, a strict moral position and the highest skill place Pope among the great English poets.

Pop's close friend D. Gay (1685–1732) gives in a polished heroic couplet Trifles(1716) funny sketches of London street life. The setting of his irresistibly funny drama in verse Beggar's Opera(1728) - Newgate prison, and its “hero” is the king of criminals Macheath. J. Thomson (1700–1748) was an innovator in the sense that he chose nature rather than human nature to “imitate.” In a great poem Seasons(1726–1730), written in blank verse, he reproduced its changes over the course of twelve months with the precision of a landscape painter. His ardent love of nature contributed to the flowering of the landscape or "native landscape" poetry of Century Johnson, and ultimately to the great poetry of Romanticism.

Early 18th century especially notable for his works in prose. Addison and Steele perfected the essay genre. In “The Chatterbox” (1709–1711) and its more famous successor, “The Spectator” (1711–1712, 1714), they depict with gentle humor and good-natured satire the manifestations of human eccentricities in everyday life. Their essays are invariably maintained in the intonations of a calm, polite, benevolent conversation. Swift, on the other hand, is not afraid to be rude if it achieves the desired effect. His prose is the product of a lively mind and a keen moral sense. If Addison, the kindly "Mr. Spectator", gently ridicules eccentricities, then Swift exposes the basic depravity of human nature; his worldview is tragic at its very core.

The classical age witnessed the emergence of a new literary form - the English novel, the leading genre of our time. This was preceded by the long development of English prose from Lyly and Nash to Swift and the improvement of its style so that it could become a means of personality analysis. Inherited from the 17th century. Defoe, Richardson and Fielding transformed the genre of the gallant and adventurous novel into an English novel - analytical, “realistic”, with personality as the main object of the image.

London merchant and prolific journalist D. Defoe (1660–1731) wrote Robinson Crusoe(1719) is the first outstanding parable-novel in English about a man and his world. Defoe's claim that Robinson Crusoe not a work of fiction, but an allegedly “found” diary or memoir, is consistent both with his experience as a journalist and his reverence for “facts”, and with the sentiments of sensible middle-class readers, hungry for information about a world whose boundaries were ever expanding. Great success Robinson Crusoe inspired Defoe to write a novel about a pirate Captain Singleton(1720) and a sensational, although quite reliable biography of a London criminal Moll Flanders(1722). Defoe's main characters, people forced to torture fate in unfavorable circumstances to find their place in a hostile world, suggested the type of hero to novelists of subsequent centuries.

S. Richardson's first novel (1698–1761) Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded(1740) was created, unlike Defoe’s books, not to entertain the reader and broaden his horizons, but for the sake of moral enlightenment. This epistolary novel tells how Pamela Andrews, a poor but virtuous maid in the house of the wealthy Lord B., resists the persistent advances of her master, and he eventually becomes spiritually reborn and takes her as his wife. The moral of the story is unappealing - calculation and profit, but the self-revelation of the characters, the psychological drama of Pamela and Richardson's sophisticated style combine to produce a masterpiece of an early novel. Richardson continued his experiments with the epistolary form in novels Clarissa(1747) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753).

G. Fielding (1707–1754) was in many respects the exact opposite of Richardson. The incompatibility of their characters prompted Fielding to write Joseph Andrews(1742), a burlesque parody of Pamela. Novel Tom Jones(1749) - a comic masterpiece about the misadventures of a foundling who, trying to make his way in a hostile world and acting with the best intentions, always ends up in trouble. Both books testify to Fielding's tolerance and humanism, inclined to forgive the imperfections of human nature. His insightful satire on age-old social evils was gentler than that of Pope and Swift. Having completed their creative journey by the middle of the century, Defoe, Richardson and Fielding passed on the form of the novel they had developed to the authors who replaced them.

Literary eras are rarely named after literary critics. Criticism, by definition, is secondary to artistic creativity. S. Johnson (1709–1784) is an exception in this regard. Johnson's personality and intellectual power illuminate the second half of the 18th century. from a historical perspective, just as during his lifetime he himself reigned in literary circles. He professed middle-class views, was a conservative and a moralist, and placed a high value on common sense and basic decency; loved Richardson and deplored the witty, aristocratic Fielding. Johnson was called differently, most often - the “literary dictator” of London. He mostly used his enormous, indisputable authority to, shortly before the revolutionary upheaval in social thought and poetry, called the Romantic Movement, once again, finally and irrevocably, establish the dogmas of classicism in literature.

New trends, however, were already making themselves felt, especially in poetry. Although versification was still dominated by the complete couplet, and many of the conventions of the Classical Age, such as artificial epithets and personification, were still in use, poets began to experiment with other, freer and more expressive forms of poetry. J. Thomson in Castle of Idleness(1748) and J. Beatty in Minstrel(1771–1774) turned to the Spencerian stanza. W. Collins, W. Cooper and R. Burns gave the poetic foot a flexibility unusual for the Classical Age. In that transitional era, perhaps only the poetry of Johnson himself, especially The vanity of human desires(1749), was a superb example of the established canonical couplet of the Classical Age.

In the poetry of Century Johnson, the realization began to mature that the poet’s immediate momentary experiences were already a ready-made poetic theme. Partly under the influence of Milton, partly thanks to literary theories of the “sublime,” poetry moved towards a “pre-romantic” stage. According to the concept of “sublime” poetry, especially as set out by D. Bailey in Experience of the sublime(1747) and E. Burke in the essay About the sublime and beautiful(1757), the power of poetry increases as its theme approaches the limits beyond which the unknowable and unimaginable begins. High sadness, often inspired by thoughts that come to the graveyard, determines the intonation Night thoughts(1742–1745) E. Young, Graves(1743) R. Blair and Elegies in a rural cemetery(1751) Gray, perhaps the most famous poetic work this period. Landscape poetry still flourished, however, as shows Ode to the evening Collins, the new poets preferred natural, “unkempt” rural landscapes to the classical, planned gardens of Pope.

The temptation to experiment and the acuteness of perception characteristic of time paradoxically awakened in many authors an interest in the past. At the beginning of the century they began to collect and compose ballads. In 1765 Bishop T. Percy released Monuments of ancient English poetry, the first thorough and scientifically prepared collection of ballads. Gray and above all his poem Bard contributed to the growth of interest in Scandinavian legends and “sublime” ancient poetry. There were two poetic hoaxes: their authors skillfully imitated ancient poetic texts. In 1777, T. Chatterton published “Raulian” poems, and in 1760–1763, J. Macpherson published his “translation” of the poems of the ancient bard Ossian. Filled with deep melancholy, the poems had a strong influence on many, in particular Blake and Coleridge.

Finally, in poetry of the late 18th century. The humanistic principle intensifies, compassion for the common man sounds: Abandoned village O. Goldsmith, works by Cooper, Crabb and Burns. This humanism was another manifestation of the cult of the “natural” and the result of the growth of democratic sympathy for that part of the population that had previously appeared in literature only as comic characters.

Johnson, of course, was himself the first prose writer of the era that bears his name. Being its best writer, he also became its best subject for description. Johnson's friend until his death, J. Boswell, created Johnson's life(1791), the most complete and authoritative of all English biographies, raising the biographical genre to the level of the highest art.

Not to mention Johnson's Life, the most significant prose of the period is represented mainly by the novel. Building on the traditions laid down by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, writers have worked thoroughly on the form of the narrative, so that it often looks much more “modern” than in many 19th century novels. T. Smollett (1721–1771) developed the genre of the picaresque novel. His Roderick Random(1748) and Peregrine Pickle(1751), with their broken episodic composition and underlying spirit of raw, assertive vitality, are exemplary comic novels that humorously describe adventures on the high seas.

L. Stern (1713–1768) abandoned the “realism” of his predecessors for the sake of a reality of a different order - recreating the work of the remembering and reflective mind. In his masterpiece Tristram Shandy(1759–1767) the form of a comic narrative conceals a deep psychological problem. Trying to tell the story of his life, Shandy discovers that some memories evoke other pictures and events by association, so that the “shape” of the novel is given not by life, but by the mind, which seeks to bring some order to life. Stern's style can be compared with the "stream of consciousness" method in modern fiction.

The sentimentality and self-disclosure of Richardson's characters owes its appearance to the “sensitive” novel of the type Human feelings(1771) G. Mackenzie. Fielding's socio-psychological realism was continued in the novels of Fanny Burney and Wakefield vicar(1766) Goldsmith. A new genre also emerged - the so-called. a “Gothic” novel, testifying to the desire of its authors to depict the hyperreal and even supernatural in life. The poetics of the “Gothic” novel, with its melodrama, gloomy atmosphere, ghosts and monsters, was developed by H. Walpole in Castle of Otranto(1765). The works of his followers became the same “pre-romantic” phenomenon in prose as the work of Gray, Collins and Burns was in poetry. Written in the Gothic vein Vathek(1786) W. Beckford, Udolf secrets(1794) by Anne Radcliffe and Ambrosio, or the Monk(1795) by M. G. Lewis, perhaps the most pathologically creepy example of the genre, the belated and completely “romantic” surge of which was Frankenstein(1818) by Mary Shelley and which significantly influenced the Romantic writers.

The time of English romanticism is rightly designated as a “movement” rather than a “century”: the most important works of its representatives saw the light in the 26-year period from 1798 (published Lyrical ballads Wordsworth and Coleridge) to 1824 (the year of Lord Byron's death). But these 26 years were among the most fruitful in English literature, and they can only be compared with 26 years from publication Tamerlane(1590) Marlowe before the death of Shakespeare (1616).

The democracy of Burns and Goldsmith, the “sublime” sensitivity of Gray and Collins and the psychologism of Sterne contributed to the emergence of a new idea of ​​the poet as an ordinary person, but endowed with inspiration. The Romantics were revolutionaries not only in poetry, but also in politics. Blake perceived the revolutions in France and North America as the dawn of a new freedom over all of Europe; Wordsworth and Coleridge also welcomed the Great French Revolution - all the more bitter was their disappointment when it degenerated into the new kind political repression; Shelley and Byron, the last poets of the Romantic movement, considered themselves revolutionaries as much as poets.

The first great poet of the Romantic movement was W. Blake (1757–1827). A remarkably original personality, a convinced visionary, Blake was apparently unknown to the leading poets of Romanticism, although what he created was surprisingly close to the work of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. IN Songs of ignorance(1789) and Songs of knowledge(1794), using a deceptively simple, “childish” writing style, he attacked the institution of the church and the political and economic system of exploitation with caustic irony. Thus, the basis Songs righteous anger was laid against the formal limitations put forward by the 18th century. concepts of "reasonableness" and "order". In the so-called "prophetic books", especially in the three great prophecies - Four Zoons(incomplete), Milton(1808) and Jerusalem(1820) - Blake attempted with astonishing force and originality to imagine the personality of a man freed from the oppression of the political, intellectual and sexual restrictions that he imposes on himself.

W. Wordsworth (1770–1850) and S. T. Coleridge (1772–1834) ushered in the Romantic Revolution in poetry with their 1798 Lyrical ballads. The principle that animated their work was later called by one critic, following Carlyle, “the supernaturalism of the natural.” Coleridge sought to present the supernatural, the otherworldly in a real poetic and life context, while for Wordsworth the mysterious and supernatural are an integral part of ordinary existence. IN Tales of the Ancient Mariner, first published in Ballads, Coleridge turns to the form of an ancient ballad to reveal the experiences of a person who realized that everything in nature is sacred. Among Wordsworth's poems is one of the masterpieces, Lines written a few miles from Tintern Abbey, a poetic reflection on the passage of time and the loss of youthful sensitivity of those years when the poet felt closer to nature and its permeating spirit.

Lyrical ballads were an instant and overwhelming success, but after this collection Coleridge and Wordsworth went their separate ways. Coleridge, who was struggling with his opium habit and his unsuccessful marriage, felt a decline in his creative powers. He wrote some great poems and many first-class ones, but the themes of loss of creative imagination and fear of an all-subduing poetic genius gradually prevailed in them. By the 1820s, Coleridge had abandoned poetry almost entirely and turned to literary criticism and theology. IN Biography Literaria he left priceless memories of the early glory days of the Romantic Movement; here he also gave his definition of the poetic imagination as “unifying” or “forming unity out of many” - perhaps the most important literary concept put forward by romanticism. For Wordsworth Lyrical ballads ushered in a decade of unprecedented creative growth, culminating in the release Poems in two volumes(1807). During these years he wrote such masterpieces as Determination and independence, Michael, Alone like a cloud I wandered and ode Hints of immortality from early childhood memories. Then he began work on a magnificent autobiography in verse Prelude, published posthumously in 1850.

Created by P.B. Shelley (1792–1822) during his tragically short life belongs to best pages romantic poetry. His political views were extremely revolutionary; he remained a convinced atheist until the end of his days. He was close to Blake in that he considered the natural world to be at best a cover, at worst an illusion, and saw the only deity of the universe in the consciousness of man, who constantly strives to find order in the world around him. Wondering in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty When asked where the hope for immortality comes from, Shelley answers that it does not come from the outside, from gods or demons, it is born from “intellectual” beauty, which human consciousness brings into the material world with the power of logic and imagination. All of Shelley's poetry is inspired by the search for ideal beauty and order, but the ideal remains elusive. In an epic drama Prometheus Unbound(1819) Shelley, in the spirit of Blake, traces the liberation of man from the shackles of illusions, without at the same time clarifying whether such liberation is final or just another link in the chain of revolutionary transformations. IN Ode to the West Wind he senses an approaching uprising against tyranny and welcomes it, but the poet is afraid of the destruction that inevitably accompanies this. In the last three great poems - Epipsychidion (1821), Adonais(1821) and Celebration of life(1822, unfinished) - his poetic thought, struggling in the grip of paradoxes and contradictions, perhaps reaches its highest level for the 19th century. incandescence A believer without God and an optimist without hope, Shelley is one of the most difficult, but also "modern" poets of the Romantic movement.

Adonais Shelley is also an elegy to the memory of D. Keats (1795–1821). The son of a London groom who studied to become a doctor, Keats established his poetic genius in spite of the most difficult everyday circumstances. His novel in verse Endymion(1818) was reviled by the leading critics of the day; he twice embarked on an epic poem about the struggle between gods and titans - Hyperion, then Fall of Hyperion, – but left it unfinished. In addition to the brilliant fragments of these great works, Keats wrote two magnificent short poems, Lamia And Eve of St. Agnes, and probably the greatest odes in all English literature - Ode to Psyche, Ode to Idleness, Ode to the Nightingale, Ode to a Greek Vase, Ode to Melancholy And By Autumn. Keats's romantic impulse found expression in the aesthetic fascination of consciousness before the creation of beauty, in a stable balance of feelings, to which he gave the famous definition of “negative ability.” This ability not to resist, not to think, but simply to perceive the difficult beauty and despair of human life is embodied in his sonnets, perhaps the most significant after Shakespeare's.

The last outstanding romantic poet was J. Byron (1788–1824). He emphasized more than once and at different times that the Romantic movement seemed to him absurd and excessively inflated; for him, the standard of perfection was the proportionality and orderliness of the poetry of Pop and the Classical Age. In many ways, Byron was the most complex, controversial, and certainly the most famous of the Romantic poets. A melancholy poem about wanderings published in 1812 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage instantly made Byron famous. The cycle of adventure poems written over the next four years, incl. Gyaur, Corsair And Lara. In 1816, the court decided to separate Byron and his wife, and the poet left for Europe. From this time on, a new, darker and more bitter intonation increasingly appeared in his poetry. This bitterness is directed both against England and against the enthusiastically optimistic ideology of romanticism. In exile, Byron wrote his last two songs Childe Harold, which are much stronger and more hopeless than the first two, and began his main book, a novel in verse Don Juan(1819–1824) is a chaotic satire of the romantic imagination. The hero of the novel constantly finds himself in situations that hurt his passionate romantic hopes and force him to look at things soberly. The newest critics find in Don Juan elements that anticipate some modern phenomena, in particular the philosophy and literature of existentialism. The importance that Byron, a poet and an extraordinary, enigmatic personality, had on the writers of subsequent eras is difficult to overestimate.

The Romantic movement was named after its poets, but its prose also had its achievements. Leigh Hunt and C. Lamb, friends of Wordsworth and Coleridge, developed a form of subjective essay, abandoning the mentoring tone and thoughtful reasoning of Dr. Johnson in favor of a more personal, often emphatically subjective style of writing. Their goal was not so much to express their point of view as to soften and ennoble the reader’s perception and feelings. W. Hazlitt (1778–1830) set himself more complex tasks and, as a thinker and stylist, was a more significant figure - the most influential critic in the Romantic movement after Coleridge. Hazlitt's concept of "response imagination" - the ability of the mind, through the comprehension of a literary work, to be imbued with the feelings of the artist-creator - expressed the spirit of the times and had a significant impact on literary theorists in the Victorian era.

Hazlitt's theoretical publications are largely complemented by Diaries(1896, 1904) Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's sisters. Their wisdom and grace of style indicate another important quality of the prose of the Romantics. As the romantic poetry that was published became more closely related to the nature of personal experience, a very serious interest began to be shown in the latter, which had not previously been observed. This is one of the reasons why the letters of the great romantic poets are in such close connection with their work as literature has never known. The letters of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Byron have value not only in biographical terms, but also as works of art, and the letters of Keats, marked by deep creativity and humanity, are among the greatest monuments of the genre in English literature.

During the years of the Romantic movement, the novel continued to develop according to its own laws in the works of its three largest and most influential masters. The name of Jane Austen (1775–1817) is associated with the emergence of the “novel of manners” in English literature. Made fun of in his first book Northanger Abbey Gothic novel and the cult of the sublime, she turned to a subtle study of the heartlessness and cruelty generated in the noble environment by differences in the social and economic status of people: novels Sense and sensitivity (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma(1816) and Reasons, published posthumously with Northanger Abbey in 1818.

W. Scott (1771–1832), whose narrative poetry was influential at the time, is now given more importance as a novelist. In his novels, especially the “Waverley cycle,” he gave the genre a new historical dimension, developing plots and revealing the characters of the characters against a broad historical and political background. Shelley's friend T. L. Peacock (1785–1866) wrote dialogue novels - Abbey of Nightmares (1818), Crotchet Castle(1831) and others; his characters, openly based on the great people of the era, such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, have long conversations full of wit and gentle satire.

Thus, the novel maintained its vitality as a genre throughout the Romantic movement and, more importantly, enriched its arsenal of visual arts new techniques and approaches - on the eve of the Victorian era, the great century of English fiction.

Victoria I ascended the throne in 1837 and ruled until her death in 1901. In terms of duration, only the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) can be compared with her reign in the entire history of England. Like the latter, Victoria gave her name not only to the political, but also to the literary era. The Victorian era was also a century of vigorous expansion, imperial ambition and deep faith in the future of England and all humanity. The tone for the era was set by the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, a brilliant exhibition designed to demonstrate England's superiority in the scientific, social and technical fields. The Victorians anticipated a number of problems considered purely modern; moreover, they thoroughly comprehended them. They were the first Englishmen to think about the industrial revolution and its possible consequences for culture and society. The Romantics were outraged by the blatantly unfair distribution of income not based on work and made prophecies of a creative and political revolution. The Victorians perceived this distribution as an obvious, albeit unpleasant fact, which had to be eliminated not by poetic visionary, but by painstaking everyday charitable activities in the specific conditions of contemporary England.

The so-called "new humanism" dates back to 1842, when Lord Ashley presented a report on the terrible plight of miners, which refuted the optimism of T. B. Macaulay and other Whigs and destroyed the atmosphere of public complacency. Writers were among the first to demand reforms. T. Good wrote Song about a shirt, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning touched hearts with a poem Children crying. Novelists, including Dickens, called even more urgently for change in society. B. Disraeli emphasized the monstrous social contrasts of Victorian England, giving his novel Sibyl(1845) subtitled "Two Nations", referring to rich and poor. Elizabeth Gaskell described in Mary Barton(1848) the dire economic consequences of political clashes in her native Manchester. Charles Kingsley in Yeast(1848) showed the hardships of the rural toiler and called for moral regeneration in England. Their social aspirations were shared by other prominent novelists, such as Charles Reed, Charlotte Bronte and W. Collins.

This was the great age of the English novel, when it became the moral and artistic voice of the whole nation, as has probably never happened before or since. Usually published in installments in monthlies and only then published in book form, novels of this era were the fruit of mutual understanding between author and reader, which immeasurably expanded the boundaries of the genre and its popularity. The narrator and his audience trusted each other and were ready to agree that, despite all the hardships of life, man is by nature good and deserves happiness.

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was undoubtedly the most beloved, famous and in many ways the great Victorian novelist. His first novel Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club(1836–1837), an irresistibly funny gentle satire, was a runaway success. In subsequent novels such as Oliver Twist (1837–1839), Dombey and son(1846–1848) and David Copperfield(1849–1850), Dickens created a panorama of English society, especially its lower and middle classes, and showed this society with a completeness perhaps unprecedented in the entire history of the English novel. Dickens was well aware of the abominations of the age and the abject poverty to which many of his countrymen were doomed, and yet his books are animated by a faith in charity that nourishes the hope of the eventual elimination of social evils through the innate goodness of man. However, after David Copperfield, a novel that is emphatically autobiographical, the nature of Dickens’s work changes dramatically. Bleak House(1852–1853) - a detailed analysis of the painfully drawn-out process for its participants in the Chancery Court in the case of inheritance. In addition, it is also a sober look at the hypocrisy and omnipotence of bureaucracy that is corroding society. The symbolism of the descriptions raises the novel to the level of great poetry, and the picture of the big city as a modern hell given on the first page remains unsurpassed. A similar view of society, only slightly softened by the appearance of sympathetic characters and the depiction of merciful deeds, is inherent in Little Dorrit (1855–1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations(1860–1861) and the last completed novel Our mutual friend (1864–1865).

W. M. Thackeray (1811–1863) wrote novels in a different vein. Under his pen, society, despite the external realism of the image, looked much funnier, and this was his programmatic setting. Thackeray's masterpiece Vanity Fair(1847–1848) named after the city from Pilgrim's Paths Bunyan - all kinds of human sins are tolerated and encouraged there. However, Thackeray interprets various forms of society's abuse of man not as sinful, but as caused by ultimately suicidal stupidity. Of all the Victorian novelists, perhaps only E. Trollope (1815–1882) was at peace with his age and shared its fundamental views. His most significant achievement is a series of novels about the fictional county of Barsetshire and its inhabitants. The most important books in the series - Guardian (1855), Barchester Towers(1857) and The latest chronicle Barceta (1866–1867).

Having known illness, desperation and hopelessness since childhood, living in the north of England in a house among the bleak marshy moors, the three Brontë sisters - Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) - fled from reality into the world jointly created fictions, which was hardly conducive to the creation of great novels. Nevertheless, during 1847 three of their outstanding books were published. Novel by Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre came out first and immediately won readers. The story of governess Jane and her employer, a mysterious, Byronic figure, introduced an element of the supernatural into realistic Victorian prose in the spirit of the Gothic novel and romantic traditions. IN Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte, the main character Heathcliff, is tormented by the torment of his obviously doomed love for Cathy. This is one of the greatest, most mysterious and ruthless love stories in the English language. Anne Brontë was inferior to her sisters in the art of storytelling, but in her novel Agnes Gray Through the condensed romantic atmosphere, tenderness and peace appear, unknown to Charlotte and Emily.

The work of Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, represents a synthesis of the best in the Victorian novel. Dickens's preoccupation with social issues, Trollope's realism in recreating provincial life, and the romantic impulse of the Brontë sisters combine in her books to form perhaps the most comprehensive artistic panorama of society in all of English literature. She started Scenes from the life of the clergy(1857), unpretentious, although expressive pictures of provincial morals, but in Mill on the Floss (1860), Felix Holt(1866) and especially in Middlemarch(1871–1872) revealed contemporary life in all its depth and with unsurpassed power of creative imagination.

J. Meredith (1828–1909) was the last of the great novelists of the Victorian era. IN The Trial of Richard Feverel(1859) and Selfish(1879) he turns to a complex, refined intellectual style to expose the vices of hypocrisy and pretense. Both Meredith and George Eliot paid great attention to the development of the novel as an artistic form and thereby contributed to the growth of the creative self-awareness of novelists, which deeply influenced G. James, J. Conrad, and all modern masters of fiction.

The poets of the Victorian era, no less than its novelists, were both heirs and opponents of the Romantic revolution. The work of the three great Victorian poets, Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, can be likened to an attempt to turn the gaze from the mirror of the romantic imagination to the real picture of the 19th century. and to make poetry again a worthy voice of the public, the conscience of the times.

The creative development of A. Tennyson (1809–1892) coincides so much with the evolution of the Victorian worldview that he acts as a prophet of the century and at the same time its mirror. His early poems such as Lady of Shalott, Lotus Eaters And Mariana, the essence of attempts to penetrate into the field of relations between consciousness and the external world and self-sufficient artistic imagination with its dangers. The mature Tennyson, however, turns to the theme of human history. He had a persistent interest in the heroic and its manifestations in times aggravated by doubts and a sense of personal insignificance. This is one of the themes of a large cycle of poems Royal idylls(1859), Malory's epic adaptation of King Arthur, but here the medieval knights show a strikingly modern, i.e. Victorian, complex of feelings. Perhaps Tennyson's greatest poem is In Memoriam, a long elegy to the memory of a friend of his youth. In the poem, which was written over more than 17 years, the poet enters into an argument with himself regarding the place of man in the universe and the meaning of life. Overcoming doubts, he gradually comes to a solid, multifaceted faith based on stoicism and self-discipline. After the publication of the poem in 1850, Tennyson's work became the recognized and undisputed poetic voice of the era.

R. Browning (1812–1889) became an idol of the reading public only in the 1860s. His poetry is quite difficult to understand, but its complexity goes back to the enormous erudition and rich vocabulary that he uses when exploring the psychological motives of human behavior. Browning's poetic method is in many ways similar to that of the novelist: like George Eliot and Meredith, he seeks the key to human nature by considering the properties of individual characters. Browning is famous primarily as a master of the “dramatic monologue,” when a character, narrating about himself, involuntarily reveals more to the reader than he thinks. In contrast to the smooth flow of Tennyson's rational verse, Browning's lines are abrupt, the rhythm constantly jumps, reflecting the specific modulations of living individual speech. A brilliant example of such an expressive dramatic monologue - The bishop orders himself a tomb in the church of St. Praxeds. After his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett (1846), Browning lived in Italy until her death in 1861. Italy is the setting of many of his outstanding works, including his great poem Ring and book(1868–1869), a novel in verse based on the famous murder case. In Browning's interpretation, each of the main participants in the tragedy puts forward his own version of “how it all happened,” refuting the testimony of the others.

The third great poet and leading literary critic of the Victorian era was M. Arnold (1822–1888). His poetry can be seen as an attempt at self-determination as an intellectual and humanist in the face of industrial expansion and a crisis of faith. Arnold was born into a deeply devout family, but in his mature years he no longer considered traditional religion a reliable moral support in life. The core of his views was the conviction that in an age of skepticism, poetry is the only moral compass. Not in the sense that it should become an elementary moral sermon, but in the sense that, reflecting the diversity of life, it should penetrate deeper into the essence of things than is available to scientific methods of research. His motto as a critic was “disinterest”; by it he meant the refusal of the critic (and, of course, the poet) “to share superficial political and practical judgments about ideas, which the majority will certainly express...” Arnold most clearly outlined his views on the importance of criticism as the guardian of culture in a collection of essays Culture and anarchy(1869) and in the lectures he gave while professor of poetry at Oxford. Although his poetic work did not achieve the ideal he set, it remains a moving evidence of the poet’s struggle with the feeling of alienation from the age that he called the iron age.

In the second half of the century a group of poets emerged with a completely different approach to Arnold's problem of anarchy and culture. D. G. Rossetti (1828–1882), W. Morris (1834–1896) and A. C. Swinburne (1837–1909) considered the values ​​of art and the values ​​of society to be polar opposites, and this excluded for them the very idea of ​​the solvability of contradictions, what Tennyson, Browning and Arnold aspired to. Their poetry marks a transition to the position of pure aesthetics, which proclaimed that only art gives meaning to life. Formalistic in tone, romantic and sensual in themes and images, their poetry influenced the formation of the so-called. aestheticism of the 1890s. The complete break of O. Wilde, L. Johnson, O. Beardsley and other writers and artists with their contemporary culture largely anticipated the poetic attitudes of the 20th century.

The Victorian era left brilliant prose of a wide thematic variety: political, religious, art, and philosophical works. It would be a stretch to speak of a certain Victorian style to these works, but the century nevertheless cultivated such virtues as clarity, thoroughness and “high seriousness” (M. Arnold's definition). They, apparently, give Victorian prose its recognizable character. Another typical trait is a “scholarly” or “teaching” character. The century's leading essayists were not just researchers or expositors, but teachers who explicitly taught the reading public how to think correctly.

T. De Quincey (1785–1859), unlike his contemporaries, for example Carlyle, refrained from overt didactics. His most famous work Confession of an English Opium Addict(1822) - an autobiographical narrative about the fight against the opium habit; in descriptions of narcotic visions, its expressiveness approaches romantic poetry. De Quincey's literary criticism is impressionistic (essay About knocking on the gate in Macbeth).

T. B. Macaulay (1800–1859) was perhaps the first great "exemplary" Victorian. Its fundamental History of England(1848–1855), lively, biased and somewhat pompous, contains all the components of the Victorian worldview - optimism, liberalism, moderate utilitarianism and the historiosophical approach. T. Carlyle (1795–1881) embodied the transition from the Romantic movement to the Victorian era. One of the greatest historians in English literature, he placed at the center of his historical concept the figure of a hero, a great man who, despite defeat and hopelessness, affirms faith in life and transforms reality for the better: French revolution (1837), Heroes and hero worship (1841), Past and present (1843).

J. G. Newman (1801–1890), the “sage” and outstanding Anglican theologian of the first half of the century, shocked the British scientific world in 1845 by converting to Catholicism. However, his writings, both before and after his conversion, are distinguished by equanimity and common sense - despite the boiling passions that his activities caused. IN Apologies for my life (Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1864) and Grammar of agreement(1870) he brilliantly justifies his choice of an authoritarian hierarchical church in an era of skepticism. J. S. Mill (1806–1873), like Newman, opposed the utilitarian, obsessively practical philosophy of his time. He called not for the imposition of universal truth, but for a joyful, if difficult, acceptance of the uncertainty of all positive knowledge and for support for the liberal demand for freedom of opinion for everyone. His Autobiography(published posthumously in 1873), About Freedom(1859) and The oppressed position of women(1869) are considered masterpieces of his skeptical, yet humane philosophy.

The last outstanding master of Victorian prose was D. Ruskin (1819–1900). An art critic, like Arnold, he, unlike the latter, did not idealize culture as the only viable form of faith in his age, but saw in art and culture historically established phenomena that were devalued in a modern way life with its cult of industry and utilitarianism. His essays on architecture, painting and the creative imagination, which formed the books Venice stones (1853), Contemporary artists(1856–1860) and Sesame and Lilies(1865), radically influenced the “aesthetes” - poets and critics of the late 19th century. The largest of them were W. Pater (1839–1894) and O. Wilde (1854–1900). IN Essays on the history of the Renaissance(1873) Pater collected lyrical essays thematically around such great masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Wilde's aestheticism, formed under the influence of Pater, was embodied in The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891), this manifesto of hedonism with an unexpectedly high moral denouement.

M. Arnold died in 1888, and in the next decade many probably decided that with his passing a holistic view of the place of literature in society had collapsed. For Arnold, the pinnacle of literature is moralizing works that can serve as a guide to action. It is the fruit of man's most successful attempts to apply ideas to life. Arnold believed that the greatest works of poetry and drama will certainly show that their merits are not in the perfection of style or composition, but in the depth of themes of lasting importance to the life of every person.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Arnold's concept was criticized, and in the 1890s it was dealt a serious blow. A new interest arose in individual consciousness and the subjectively colored picture of reality as it is perceived. Art as aesthetic pleasure, creativity as a self-sufficient act and irrespective of the moral impact of what is created, content as a secondary category in relation to artistic form and style - these approaches, formulated by W. Pater gracefully and subtly, and O. Wilde with brilliance and insight, turned minds . G. James's experiments with narrative perspective, when events are presented exclusively from the point of view of one of the characters, as well as his essays on literature and art, also had a significant influence on the writers whose work determined the shape of the literature of the next decades. Many of the original authors popular at the beginning of the new century, such as Shaw, Kipling, Wells or Galsworthy, were heirs of Arnold, attaching great importance to the social and moral content of their writings, but such writers as Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Lawrence, Ford and T. S. Eliot, although they had their own ethical positions, nevertheless relied on aestheticism, which took shape at the end of the 19th century, to expand the boundaries of the novel and poetry.

Of the authors whose work can be called transitional, the most significant was T. Hardy (1840–1928). His literary biography changed course with the beginning of the new century: ending with the publication in 1896 Jude the Unnoticed fruitful activity as a novelist, he transferred into poetry the passion and depth of generalizations that gave his novels the character of tragedies. Hardy owns many lyric poems - small, ironic, original in form and devoid of traditional "poetry" - and an epic drama in verse Dynasts(1903–1908), which shows Europe during the Napoleonic era.

At least three more outstanding writers creative flourishing coincided with the turn of eras. In the mid-1880s, G. James (1843–1916) created two novels with broad social implications, Bostonians And Princess Casamassima. Narrowing of the theme in novels of the second half of the 1890s What Maisie knew And Inconvenient age partly speaks to the literary fashion of the decade for exquisite descriptions of the minutiae of social life, but both novels were at the same time a focused experiment in a new writing technique. James's focus on the literary craft led to a powerful burst of creative energy in the early 20th century. Novels Wings of a dove (1902), Ambassadors(1903) and Golden bowl(1904) all together is a major milestone in the history of fiction.

R. Kipling (1865–1936) remained true to himself all his life: the “black imp” (as G. James called him) went to school, finding his theme and style, in British India and in the 1890s attacked London, branding aesthetes as a “long-haired trash” and asserting himself in poetry and prose as a prophet of the imperial idea, without relying on any broad public opinion. His work had the greatest resonance at an early stage, when he life experience and beliefs opened up a completely new sphere of perception and worldview to the affected compatriots. Kipling's later works, often marked by a deeper development of the theme and a perfect style, are dictated by a strong commitment to the political and social views of the past.

W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) began as a nostalgic romantic, and much of his early poetry was influenced by W. Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. Having developed a spectacular style of symbolic writing in his mature years, Yeats exchanged the metaphorical Ivory Tower for the very material Ballylee Tower in the west of Ireland. He rebuilt this stronghold of Norman times, made it his home - and glorified it in poems imbued with a sense of historical continuity, national identity and the realities of everyday life. Yeats never ceased to comprehend the meaning of what was happening around him - the Irish literary revival, for which he had been creating plays for a long time; the struggle of fellow tribesmen for independence, which resulted in the Easter Rising of 1916; Europe's drift from war to war. Over time, his poetry was molded into rigid forms under the influence of discoveries in writing techniques made by his younger colleagues, primarily E. Pound. Despite his strong commitment to esoteric philosophy, Yeats Tower(1928) and Spiral staircase(1933) proved himself to be the undisputed poetic genius of the new century.

Among the writers of the first rank who started back in the 19th century is J. Conrad (1857–1924). First novels Ohlmeyer's whim(1895) and Negro from "Narcissus"(1897) gained him fame as a singer of the exotic and the high seas. However, his works were closely connected with his time, as evidenced by the novel Nostromo(1904), a story of revolution and counter-revolution, dictatorship, persecution and torture in a society whose members were mired in competition for the possession of material wealth.

E. M. Forster (1879–1970) was initially distinguished by conservatism, both in his writing style and in his desire to preserve and establish the best in liberal English thought. In the novel Howards End(1910), combining a fascinating plot and a parable beginning, it shows that the confrontation between the uneducated bureaucratic and merchant classes, on the one hand, and the cultural intellectual classes, on the other, will lead to disaster if they do not find a common language. The same theme in a broader context is explored in the novel Trip to India(1924): The almost irreconcilable contradictions dividing the races and classes of British India are depicted as analogous to the condition of all humanity.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) made her debut in the 1915 novel Journey outward, followed by equally realistic Day and night(1919); however, Woolf's talent was essentially poetic and impressionistic. Mrs Dalloway(1925) - a subtle recreation of one spring London day through the prism of perception of the tangible and visible side of existence and elusive instantaneous states of consciousness. Woolf's masterpiece, novel To the lighthouse(1927), imparts to the refined photograph of sensations the perspective and completeness of a great painting.

The mighty genius of John Joyce (1882–1941) was much more controversial. After Dubliners(1914), a collection of short stories about Dublin life influenced by French naturalism, he wrote an outstanding autobiographical novel Portrait of the artist as a youth(1916) and finally created Ulysses(1922), a completely unusual and unique creative phenomenon of the 20th century. IN Finnegans Wake(1939), Joyce's experiment with the root structures of language goes so far that only narrow specialists can understand the text of the work.

A passionate critic of society, in the spirit of Ruskin and Carlyle, D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) amazed and shocked many with his focus on sexual experience: the writer considered sexual relationships vital for modern man. Lawrence first introduced this theme in the novel Sons and lovers(1913), his first significant book, which impressively depicts the life of the working class from which the writer himself came. In the duology Rainbow(1915) and Women in love(1920) Lawrence explores the sexual side of existence with disconcerting thoroughness. The last novel Lady Chatterley's Lover(1928) presents the author's views with the utmost frankness, so that the book was banned for a long time in the UK and the USA.

Two writers made significant contributions to the essay genre. M. Beerbohm (1872–1956), author of numerous theater reviews, essays and parodies, became famous for his elegance of style and wit. G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), creator The Man Who Was Thursday(1908) and stories about Father Brown (1911–1935), in books Eternal man(1925) and Superstitions of a Skeptic(1925) used his keen wit and paradoxical manner to defend Christianity - contrary to the agnosticism of many of his contemporaries, including H. G. Wells (1866-1946). The latter put into the form of novels the varied thoughts and assumptions that arose in his tenacious scientific mind while observing the rapidly changing picture of modern England - and the whole world. In his best works, Wells proceeded from his own experience and, albeit typical of his time, perception, which gives his writings more artistic force and vitality than can be found in the work of A. Bennett (1867–1931), who turned to the techniques of French realism , painting the English province, or D. Galsworthy (1867–1933), who developed The Forsyte Saga(1922) and Modern comedy(1929) a reliable panorama of the life of several generations of an upper-class family. The same type of works, which can equally serve as documents of literature and social history, were produced in the next generation by J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) and C.P. Snow (1905–1980). The novelist, short story writer and playwright W. S. Maugham (1874–1965) unvarnished the life of Englishmen abroad. J. Carey (1888–1957), drawing on his rich life experience, created a series of novels about Europeans and indigenous people in Africa, as well as a trilogy I was surprised myself (1941), Be a pilgrim(1942) and First-hand(1944), which provides entertaining and often funny portraits of English nonconformists and rebels.

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), magnificent master story, experimented with storytelling techniques, in particular changing the “point of view”. F. M. Ford (1873–1939) was also an experimenter - in a novel impeccable in style good soldier(1915) and tetralogy End of the parade(1924–1928), who brilliantly embodied the “stream of consciousness” method, i.e. reproducing involuntary associations in the character’s mind. A similar method was developed by Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957) in a series of interconnected novels Journey(1915–1938). The novels of Jean Rhys (1894–1979) are remarkable for their insightful exploration of the characters of women - unrequited victims in a world dominated by men. Between the world wars, outstanding works were produced by W. Lewis, Rebecca West and J. C. Powis, but the leading artist was Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884–1969). She ruthlessly exposed the passions hidden beneath the seemingly genteel existence of upper-class families at the turn of the century. The same causticity, but further enhanced by a wide interest in various theories (Huxley), hatred of totalitarianism (Orwell) and a keen sense of the comic (Waugh), is marked by the books of these writers. O. Huxley (1894–1963) explored the dangers of a purely speculative, calculated approach to life in novels Yellow Chrome (1921), Counterpoint (1928), Brave New World(1932) and Time must stop (1945). Barnyard(1945) and 1984 (1949) George Orwell (1903–1950) and a terrifying dystopia Brave New World(in Russian translation O brave new world) - three of the most famous warning novels of the 20th century. The openly Catholic writer I. Vo (1903–1966) had an attitude towards social criticism expressed it differently. His satirical novels about English society after the First World War Decline and destruction (1928), Vile flesh (1930), A Fistful of Ashes (1934), Sensation(1938) – masterpieces of the bitter comedy of manners. G. Green (1904–1991), the author of parable novels about grace and redemption, was also a Catholic writer. Power and glory (1940), The crux of the matter (1948), The end of one love affair (1951), At the cost of loss(1961) and Human factor (1978).

M. Lowry (1909–1957) published only one significant novel during his lifetime, At the foot of the volcano(1947), but this romantic prose poem about the death of a drunken consul in Mexico stands among the few truly classic works of modern English literature. In novels such as Death of the Heart(1938) and In the heat of the day(1949), Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) explores the complexity of interpersonal relationships. Henry Green's (1905–1973) novels about the working class and high society include: Existence (1929), Pleasure trip (1939), Love(1945) and Nothing(1950). L. Durrell (1912–1990) brought recognition Alexandria Quartet(1957–1960), with its counterpoint structure, refined style and realistic recreation of the scene.

After World War II, a group of writers emerged called the Angry Young Men. It included K. Amis, D. Brain, A. Sillitoe and D. Wayne. In their socialist-inspired novels, they attacked the English class system and its declining culture. Amis's most brilliant and funniest novel (1922–1995) Lucky Jim(1953) - a vicious criticism of the elite of British university circles. Sillitoe (b. 1928), as his novel shows Saturday evening and Sunday morning(1958) and the title story of the collection Lonely runner(1961), has no equal in revealing the way of thinking and characters of representatives of the working class.

W. Golding (1911–1993) in books Lord of the Flies (1954), Heirs (1955), Visible darkness(1979) and Long-distance rituals(1980) created a fictional universe that, in its strangeness, resembles the world of medieval allegories. The source of his pessimism is his conviction in the bestial nature of man and his distrust of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. Muriel Spark (b. 1918) in seemingly traditional comedies of manners Memento mori (1959), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie(1961) and others never cease to amaze with the surrealism of episodes and situations and the irony of metamorphoses, highlighting the consciousness and souls of the characters in an effort to establish moral standards. Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) shows in her novels how the ability to objectively perceive others fuels love and morality, while blind egocentrism leads to pathology. E. Powell (b. 1905) chronicled English life in the first half of the century in a series of novels Dance to the music of time(1951–1976), which is compared to the epic of M. Proust In search of lost time. The sorcerer of words E. Burgess (b. 1917), following Huxley and Orwell, examined the collapse of liberalism, describing in A Clockwork Orange(1963) a degenerate future society mired in violence. In the novels and stories of E. Wilson (1913–1991) mental condition characters shows the decay of modern England; his most significant novels Average age Mrs Eliot (1958), Later calling(1964) and Set this world on fire(1980). Charming comedies of manners brought posthumous recognition to Barbara Pym (1913–1980), who, like Jane Austen, painted the routine of everyday existence with subtle strokes on small canvases. D. Storey (b. 1933) used his experience as a professional rugby player in his novels Such is the sports life(1960) and Temporary life (1973).

The most significant modern novelists are Margaret Drabble (b. 1939), Doris Lessing (b. 1919) and D. Fowles (b. 1926). Drabble is sometimes accused of being petty because she writes about women establishing themselves in a world dominated by men, but her novels Golden kingdoms (1975), Ice Age(1977) and On the rocks(1980) raise pressing socio-political issues. At the center of Doris Lessing's books is the political evil that poisons people's lives. Over time, she turned from describing a racist society in Africa (early stories, novel The grass is singing, 1950) to explore the purpose of women in his masterpiece Golden Diary(1962) and allegories on the theme of the Fall and collective redemption in a series of science fiction novels Canopus in Argos: Archives(1979–1983). Fowles's exceptional gift for narrative is evident in his existential allegories about free will and the need to transform man into a being of "natural" morality, or "Aristo" - novels Collector (1963), Magus (1966), French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Daniel Martin (1977), Worm (1985).

In the poetry of the turn of the century, conservative traditions are represented by the work of poets laureate R. Bridges (1844–1930) and D. Masefield (1878–1967). The first, in a sophisticated classical manner, sang the serenity of the spirit and the delights of solitude; the second performed in different genres, but became famous for his vividly written poems and first-class sea ballads. On the eve of the First World War, poets emerged who wrote without much pretension and in traditional forms; they were called Georgians. The most famous of them, R. Brooke (1887–1915), died in military service. W. Owen (1893–1918), a more original and promising poet, was killed a week before the end of the war. R. Graves (1895–1985) survived the trenches and became a prolific poet and novelist with his own inimitable style. The contemporaries of the Georgians were Imagists, mostly tertiary poets, although at one time Imagism was famous because D.H. Lawrence and E. Pound adhered to it. Imagists strove for poetry that was clear and precise, complex in rhythm, simple in language. They played an important role in preparing the ground for the poetic revolution that the US-born T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) brought about with his collection Prufrock and other observations(1917) and poem barren land(1922). In the work of Eliot and most later poets, most notably Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), clear poetic speech gives way to combinations of images or symbols that act primarily on the subconscious. In skillful hands, this method allows one to achieve amazing richness and capacity of verse. IN barren land a terrifying panorama of a dying civilization is given; the entire history of the West is presented here in its entirety - and Eliot only needed about 400 lines to do it. Eliot's other significant work, the suite Four Quartets(1943), amazes with the unity of symbolic composition and intense thought.

Two major poets, Eliot's older contemporaries, were not affected by new trends. The phantasmagoric poetry of W. de la Mare (1873–1956) is mainly based on traditional genres ballads and songs. A.E. Houseman (1859–1936) wrote highly polished poems in a common pastoral or bucolic style. But most of the young poets of the 1930s became followers of Eliot, who strengthened his authority with numerous and significant critical works. Leading among these poets were W. H. Auden, St. Spender, S. Day Lewis and L. McNeice. Their creative achievements are varied and varied. Auden (1907–1973) in collections such as Speakers(1932) and Look, a stranger!(1936), contributed to the renewal of poetic language and successfully used poetry as a commentary on contemporary reality.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a generation of “revelation” poets emerged, the best of them being D. Thomas (1914–1953). Treating poetry as a mystery, they recreated reality in a highly subjective, sometimes surreal manner, based on the multiplicity and self-development of metaphors.

The most interesting phenomenon of poetry in the 1950s was the work of the poetry group “Movement,” which included K. Amis, D. Davey, T. Gunn, Elizabeth Jennings and others. They all abandoned romantic pathos in favor of the simplicity of poetic speech and restrained ironic intonation. The leading poet of the Movement was F. Larkin (1922–1985); in his collections Indebted to others(1955) and Trinity Weddings(1964) behind the deceptively unassuming form of the verse lies a complex interweaving of skepticism and a not unconditional, but still acceptance of life.

The poetry of T. Hughes (1930–1999) glorifies the violent power of self-awareness, accessible to a genius or an animal, but usually suppressed by a person. Its culmination is a cycle of grotesque and bitterly ironic poems Crow(1970), the “hero” of which thwarts God’s attempts to create a harmonious universe. J. Hill's compact, exquisitely crafted poems (b. 1932) combine soulful lyricism with depictions of the abominations of political and racial intolerance. The Irishman S. Heaney (b. 1939) owns vivid examples of meditative lyrics: he returns to memories of childhood on a small farm and mourns the victims of religious strife in Ulster.

A number of modern poets show a marked interest in the diversity of aspects of culture. T. Harrison (b. 1937) relies on history and his own memory, turning to the unclaimed experience of generations of working people who were not given the opportunity to express themselves in mainstream literature. J. Fenton (b. 1949), a former journalist and correspondent from Vietnam, describes the nagging feeling of human defenselessness. K. Rein (b. 1944) is known as a master of bright, witty metaphors that highlight everyday existence in a new way. D. Davis (b. 1945) develops forms of clear “classical” rhymed verse, praising love and spiritual values. It should also be noted such poets as Fleur Adcock, E. Motion, K. G. Sisson, J. Wainwright, C. Tomlinson and H. Williams.

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Old English poetry. M., 1982
Alekseev M.P. Russian-English literary connections. L., 1982
English poetry in Russian translations. XX century. M., 1984
Modern English story. M., 1984
English classical epigram. M., 1987
England in a pamphlet: English journalistic prose of the early 18th century. M., 1987
English literature 1945–1980. M., 1987
English and Scottish folk ballad: The English and Scottish Popular Ballad. M., 1988
The beautiful captivates forever: From English poetry of the 18th–19th centuries. M., 1988
English lyric poetry of the first half of the 17th century. M., 1989
The Englishman's House: An English Classic Novel. M., 1989
English sonnet XVI–XIX centuries: English Sonnets 16 to 19 Centuries. M., 1990
Vanity of vanities: Five hundred years of English aphorism. M., 1996

Nick Hornby is known not only as the author of such popular novels as Hi-Fi and My Boy, but also as a screenwriter. The writer’s cinematic style makes him very popular in adapting books by various authors into film adaptations: “Brooklyn”, “An Education of Sentiments”, “Wild”.

Formerly an ardent football fan, he even took his obsession to autobiographical novel"Football fever."

Culture is often a key theme in Hornby's books; in particular, the writer does not like it when pop culture is underestimated, considering it to be limited. Also, the key themes of the works are often the hero’s relationship with himself and others, overcoming and searching for himself.

Nick Hornby now lives in the Highbury area of ​​North London, close to his favorite football team's stadium, Arsenal.

Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013)

After the second divorce in 1949, she moved with her son to London, where at first she rented an apartment with a woman of easy virtue.

The topics that worried Lessing, as often happens, changed during her life, and if in 1949-1956 she was primarily occupied with social issues and communist themes, then from 1956 to 1969 her works began to be psychological in nature. In later works, the author was close to the postulates of the esoteric movement in Islam - Sufism. In particular, this was expressed in many of her science fiction works from the Canopus series.

In 2007, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The novel "Bridget Jones's Diary", which was born from the column that Helen wrote in the Independent newspaper, brought the writer worldwide success and the love of millions of women.

The plot of "The Diary" repeats in detail the plot of Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice", right down to the name of the main male character - Mark Darcy.

They say that the writer was inspired to write the book by the 1995 TV series and especially by Colin Firth, since he migrated without any changes to the film adaptation of “The Diary.”

In the UK, Stephen is known as an esthete and a great original, driving around in his own cab. Stephen Fry incomparably combines two abilities: to be the standard of British style and to regularly shock the public. His bold statements about God confuse many, which, however, does not in any way affect his popularity. He is openly gay - last year, 57-year-old Fry married a 27-year-old comedian.

Fry does not hide the fact that he used drugs and suffers from bipolar disorder, about which he even made a documentary.

It’s not easy to define all of Fry’s areas of activity; he jokingly calls himself “a British actor, writer, king of dance, prince of swimsuits and blogger.” All of his books invariably become bestsellers, and interviews are analyzed for quotes.

Stephen is considered a rare owner of a unique classic English accent; an entire book has been written about the art of “speaking like Stephen Fry”.

Julian Barnes has been called the "chameleon" of British literature. He is excellent at creating works that are different from each other without losing his individuality: eleven novels, four of which are detective stories, written under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, a collection of short stories, a collection of essays, a collection of articles and reviews.

The writer was repeatedly accused of francophony, especially after the publication of the book “Flaubert's Parrot,” a kind of mixture of a biography of the writer and a scientific treatise on the role of the author in general. The writer's attraction to everything French is partly explained by the fact that he grew up in the family of a French teacher.

His novel “The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” became a real event in literature. Written in the dystopian genre, the novel seeks answers to a number of philosophical questions about the essence of man, his past, present and future.

A favorite of children and adults around the world, the restless Paddington Bear was “born” in 1958, when Michael Bond realized at the last moment before Christmas that he had forgotten to buy a gift for his wife. Out of hopelessness, the author, who had already written many plays and stories by that time, bought his wife a toy bear in a blue raincoat.

In 2014, a film was made based on his books, where London became one of the characters in the story. It appears before us as if through the eyes of a little guest from dense Peru: at first rainy and inhospitable, and then sunny and beautiful. In the picture you can recognize Notting Hill, Portobello Road, streets near Maida Vale station, Paddington station and the Natural History Museum.

Interestingly, the writer now lives in London just near Paddington station.

Rowling went from welfare dole to author of the best-selling book series in history in just five years, which became the basis for films that in turn are recognized as the second highest-grossing franchise.

As Rowling herself said, the idea for the book came to her during a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. .

Neil Gaiman is called one of the main modern storytellers. Hollywood producers are lining up for the film rights to his books.

He also wrote scripts himself more than once. His famous novel Neverwhere was born from just such a script for a mini-series filmed at the BBC in 1996. Although, of course, the opposite is more often the case.

Neil's scary tales are also loved because they blur the lines between intellectual and entertaining literature.

The writer is a winner of prestigious awards; many of Ian’s works have been filmed.

The writer's first works were distinguished by cruelty and great attention to the theme of violence, for which the author was awarded the nickname Ian Macabre. He was also called the black wizard of modern British prose and a world-class expert on all types of violence.

In subsequent work, all these themes remained, but seemed to fade into the background, running like a red thread through the fate of the heroes, without lingering in the frame.

The writer spent his childhood on the run: he was born in Czechoslovakia in an intelligentsia Jewish family. Due to her nationality, his mother moved to Singapore and then to India. Almost all of the writer’s relatives died during the Second World War, and his mother, having married a British military man for the second time, raised her children as real Englishmen.

Stoppard became famous for the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” a reimagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet,” which, under Tom’s pen, turned into a comedy.

The playwright has a lot in common with Russia. He visited here in 1977, working on a report about dissidents who were kept in psychiatric hospitals. "It was cold. Moscow seemed gloomy to me,” the author shares his memories.

The writer also visited Moscow during the staging of a play based on his play at the RAMT Theater in 2007. The theme of the 8-hour performance is the development of Russian political thought of the 19th century with its main characters: Herzen, Chaadaev, Turgenev, Belinsky, Bakunin.

English literature inextricably linked in the minds of many of us with such names as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. However, I would like to introduce the reader to other less famous, but no less talented English writers, and also say a few words about the era in which they lived and worked.

This article provides detailed periodization of English literature from the Middle Ages to the present day and indicates the most famous works of English writers, as well as lesser-known works, but which are nevertheless worth reading.

First, let's figure out what belongs to English literature. English literature is the literature not only of writers from England, but also from all parts of Great Britain, including: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is known that the English language has more words than any other language in the world. As a result, there are many words with subtle differences in meaning. English writers masterfully used this variety of words, and some of them even took responsibility for creating new words, one of such writers was the brilliant W. Shakespeare.

English literature– this is a centuries-old history, brilliant authors, unforgettable works that reflect the peculiarities of the national character. We grow up with the books of these great writers, learn and develop with their help. It is impossible to convey the importance of English writers and the contribution they made to world literature. It is difficult to imagine a world without the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde and many others. English literature is divided into periods, each of which had its own writers and poets, whose works reflected certain events and facts from the history of the country.

It is customary to distinguish the following periods in English literature:

1st period: early Middle Ages or Anglo-Saxon period 450-1066

Historical fact: in 1066 England was conquered by the Normans led by William the Conqueror. This conquest ends this period.

Predominant genre: poem.

The most famous works: Beowulf

Works from this period are passed on by word of mouth. They are characterized by the following features: fatality, comparison of the church and paganism, praise of heroes and successful battles.

Most important work this period is considered a poem Beowulf, which has a national epic status in England. Beowulf is the longest epic poem written in Old English. The poem contains more than 3000 lines and is divided into 3 parts. Beowulf is a classic tale of the triumph of good over evil. It describes the exploits of a hero named Beowulf, his battles with a monster, the mother of this monster and a dragon.

2nd period: Middle Ages: 1066 - 1500

Predominant genre: folk tales, chivalric romance, ballad

In the 11th-12th centuries, church-didactic works predominated in literature (“Ormulum”, “Ode to Morality”), starting from the middle of the 13th century, there was a transition to more everyday genres(folk "Cuckoo Song", "Bev of Amton", "Horn" and "Havelock").

In the XIII-XIV centuries - the creation of chivalric novels about King Arthur and his knights. In 1469, Thomas Malory collected a whole set of novels about the exploits of knights, and his work “Le Morte d’Arthur” became a monument of English literature of the late Middle Ages.

The beginning of the development of the genre of folk poetry - ballads. Ballads about the brave robber Robin Hood are very popular.

And finally, the second half of this period is considered a new page in the history of English literature and is associated with the name of Geoffrey Chaucer. If previously it was customary to write works in Latin, then Chaucer became the first to write in English. His most famous work was “”.

3rd period: Renaissance or Renaissance: 1550 – 1660

Predominant genre: sonnets, lyric works, plays for the theater

• 1500-1558 — literature under the Tudors

The Renaissance begins with the development of the lyric genre, the leading role was assigned to poetry. Poets Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. One of the most notable writers during the reign of Henry VIII was the great writer and humanist Thomas More, whose book “Utopia”, published in 1516, brought him fame.

• 1558-1603 — literature under Elizabeth

This period is associated with the reign of Elizabeth I; medieval traditions and Renaissance optimism were mixed here. Poetry, prose and drama were the main styles that flourished during this period. However, the drama had a special flourishing. Famous writers of this period were Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe and a little later the greatest playwright William Shakespeare.

• 1603-1625 — literature under James I

A difficult and dark period associated with the reign of James I. During this period, works of prose and also drama were actively published. The period was also marked by the translation of the Bible, carried out on behalf of the king. At this time, Shakespeare and Johnson lived and worked, as well as John Donne, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Middleton.

• 1625-1649 — literature under Charles I

The works of writers of this period were distinguished by sophistication and elegance. During this period, a circle of so-called “Cavalier poets” arose, among whom were Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew and others. Their poetry described the life of the upper class, and the main themes were: beauty, love, fidelity. They were distinguished by their wit and directness.

• 1649-1660 — protectorate period(or Puritan interregnum)

The period is associated with the name of Oliver Cromwell. The political writings of Milton, Thomas Hobbs, and the writings of Andrew Marvel predominated during this time. In September 1642 the Puritans closed theaters out of moral and religious convictions. Over the next 18 years, theaters remained closed due to the lack of dramatic works written during this time.

4th period: neoclassicism: 1660 - 1785

Predominant genre: prose, poetry, novel

John Milton "Paradise Lost", Jonathan Swift "Gulliver's Travels", Daniel Defoe "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", Henry Fielding "Tom Jones", a foundling" (1749))

The literature of the neoclassical period was greatly influenced by French literature. The literature of this time was philosophical in nature and also possessed features of skepticism, wit, sophistication and criticism. Divided into several periods:

• 1660-1700 – period of restoration

This was the time of the restoration of the monarchy, the time of the triumph of reason and tolerance over religion and political passions. All this was marked by an abundance of prose and poetry and the emergence of a special comedy of manners known as the “Restoration Comedies.” It was during this period that John Milton wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Other writers of this time were John Locke, John Dryden and John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.

• 1700-1745 – Augustinian period

The predominant characteristics of the literature of the time were sophistication, clarity and elegance. Famous writers: Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Daniel Defoe. A significant contribution of this period was the publication of Defoe's first English novels, and the "novel of character" Pamela, written by Samuel Richardson in 1740.

• 1745-1785 – sentimentalism

Literature reflected the Enlightenment worldview, and writers began to emphasize instincts and feelings rather than reason and restraint. Interest in medieval ballads and folk literature aroused increasing sympathy at this time. The dominant authors of this period were Samuel Johnson, Edward Young, James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and during the period of sentimentalism of late Sentimentalism the appearance of the most talented folk singer Robert Burns.

5th period: romanticism: 1785 - 1830

Predominant genre: poetry, secular novel, birth of the Gothic novel

The most famous authors and works: Jane Austen “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”, Lord Byron “The Travels of Charles Harold”, poets of the “Lake School” (Coleridge), John Keats, Robert Burns, Walter Scott “Ivanhoe”, Mary Shelley "Frankenstein"

The works are written with feeling, using a large number of symbols. Writers believed that literature should be rich in poetic images, it should be relaxed and accessible. Famous writers of that time were Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Walter Scott, poets William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lake School poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth. At this time, the Gothic style was born. Two of the most famous Gothic novelists are Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.

6th period: Victorian era: 1830 – 1901

Predominant genre: novel

The most famous authors and works:(a lot of works, “David Copperfield”, "Big hopes", William Thackeray “Vanity Fair” (Vanity Fair), “Treasure Island” (), “The Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (), Rudyard Kipling fairy tales “Just So Stories”, (a lot of works, “Notes on Sherlock Holmes” ), (Charlotte Brontë "Jane Eyre", Emily Brontë "Wuthering Heights", Anne Brontë "Agnes Grey", "The Picture of Dorian Grey" Thomas Hardy (stories, )

• 1830-1848 — early period

The works of the early Victorian period are emotionally expressive, mostly depicting the lives of middle-class people. Among the literary genres, the novel dominates. Long novels are divided into many episodes, which are then published in newspapers, which made it possible to reduce their cost and thus make them accessible to the lower class. Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell, as well as famous writers of that time Robert Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Bronte sisters, resorted to this method of attracting readers.

• 1848-1870 — intermediate period

In 1848, a group of English artists, among whom was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, organized the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their main goal was to return to the paintings the truthfulness, simplicity and adherence to religion that existed under Raphael. In turn, Rossetti and his literary circle transferred these ideals into their works.

• 1870-1901 — late period

For literature, this is a period of aestheticism and decadence. Oscar Wilde and other authors of this style insisted on experimentation and believed that art was categorically against “natural” moral norms.

7th period: modernism: 1901 – 1960

Predominant genre: novel

• 1901 – 1914 — literature under Edward VII

The period is named after King Edward VII and spans the time from the death of Queen Victoria (1901) to the outbreak of the First World War (1914). At this time, the British Empire was at its height, and the rich were drowning in luxury. However, four-fifths of the English population lived in poverty. And the works of this period reflect these social conditions. Among the writers denouncing class injustice and selfishness of the upper class were writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Other writers of the time: Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, E. M. Forster.

• 1910 – 1936 — literature under George V

Many Edwardian writers continue to write during this period. In addition to them, the so-called Georgians write, including such poets as Rupert Brooke and David Herbert Lawrence. In their poems they describe the beauty of rural landscapes, the peace and tranquility of nature. Writers of this period experimented with themes, forms and styles. Among them: James Joyce, D. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Playwrights: Noel Coward and Samuel Beckett.

• 1939 – 1960 - literature during the Second World War and the post-war period

The Second World War had a huge impact on the work of writers of that time. And subsequent generations grew up hearing stories about this terrible war. Wartime poets Sidney Keyes and David Gascoyne also wrote about the war, Philip Larkin and Pet Barker.

8th period: postmodernism 1960 – today

Predominant genre: novel

The most famous authors and works: XX century has become very fruitful in the field of popular literature, the following names are probably well known to you:
- (1890-1976): " " and other detectives
— Ian Fleming (1908-1964): James Bond novels
— J. Tolkien (1892-1973): The Lord of the Rings
— S. Lewis (1898-1963): Chronicles of Narnia
— J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter"

Postmodernism mixes literary genres and styles in an attempt to break free from modernist forms. Unlike the modernists, who took themselves and their work very seriously, the postmodernists treated everything with irony. The concept of “black humor” appears in literature. However, postmodernism borrows some features from its predecessor and even strengthens them, this concerns pessimism and the desire for the avant-garde. The features of postmodernism are especially clearly reflected in the drama. Thus, Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot" is a striking example of the theater of the absurd and combines pessimistic philosophy and comedy.

Studying English Literature should be inextricably linked with the study of the era, historical events and culture of its time. When starting to read a book, do not be lazy and read the biography of the writer, get acquainted with the time of creation of the work. Reading literature is not just an exciting activity, but also a great responsibility, because after reading something, we share our opinion with friends and family. Classic literature, coming from the pens of great creators of words and plot, cannot be bad. Sometimes we just don't understand it...