The most famous books of English writers. 20th century British literature

Everyone knows the plot of Daniel Defoe's novel. However, the book contains many other interesting details about the organization of Robinson’s life on the island, his biography, and inner experiences. If you ask a person who has not read the book to describe Robinson’s character, he is unlikely to cope with this task.

In the popular consciousness, Crusoe is a smart character without character, feelings or history. The novel reveals the image of the main character, which allows you to look at the plot from a different angle.

Why you need to read

To get acquainted with one of the most famous adventure novels and find out who Robinson Crusoe really was.

Swift does not openly challenge society. Like a true Englishman, he does it correctly and witty. His satire is so subtle that Gulliver's Travels can be read as an ordinary fairy tale.

Why you need to read

For children, Swift's novel is a fun and unusual adventure story. Adults need to read it to get acquainted with one of the most famous artistic satires.

This novel, although artistically not the most outstanding, is definitely iconic in the history of literature. After all, in many ways he predetermined the development of the scientific genre.

But this is not just entertaining reading. It raises problems of the relationship between creator and creation, God and man. Who is responsible for creating a being who is destined to suffer?

Why you need to read

To get acquainted with one of the main works of science fiction, as well as to experience complex issues that are often lost in film adaptations.

It is difficult to single out Shakespeare's best play. There are at least five of them: “Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Othello”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”. The unique style and deep understanding of life's contradictions made Shakespeare's works an immortal classic, relevant at all times.

Why you need to read

To begin to understand poetry, literature and life. And also to find the answer to the question, what is better: to be or not to be?

The main theme of English literature in the early 19th century was social criticism. Thackeray in his novel denounces his contemporary society with the ideals of success and material enrichment. To be in society means to be sinful - this is approximately Thackeray’s conclusion regarding his social environment.

After all, the successes and joys of yesterday lose their meaning when a well-known (albeit unknown) tomorrow looms ahead, which we all will sooner or later have to think about.

Why you need to read

To learn to relate more simply to life and the opinions of others. After all, everyone in society is infected with “fair ambitions” that have no real value.

The language of the novel is beautiful, and the dialogue is an example of English wit. Oscar Wilde is a subtle psychologist, which is why his characters turned out to be so complex and multifaceted.

This book is about human vice, cynicism, the difference between the beauty of the soul and body. If you think about it, to some extent each of us is Dorian Gray. Only we do not have a mirror on which sins would be imprinted.

Why you need to read

To enjoy the stunning language of Britain's wittiest writer, to see how much one's moral character can deviate from one's appearance, and to become a little better person. Wilde's work is a spiritual portrait not only of his era, but of all humanity.

The ancient Greek myth about a sculptor who fell in love with his creation takes on a new, socially significant meaning in Bernard Shaw's play. How should a work feel towards its author if this work is a person? How can it relate to the creator - the one who made it in accordance with his ideals?

Why you need to read

This is Bernard Shaw's most famous play. It is often staged in theaters. According to many critics, Pygmalion is a landmark work of English drama.

A universally recognized masterpiece of English literature, familiar to many from cartoons. Who, at the mention of Mowgli, does not hear Kaa’s drawn-out hiss in his head: “Man-cub...”?

Why you need to read

As an adult, it is unlikely that anyone will take up The Jungle Book. A person has only one childhood to enjoy Kipling's creation and appreciate it. So be sure to introduce your children to the classics! They will be grateful to you.

And again the Soviet cartoon comes to mind. It's really good, and the dialogue in it is almost entirely taken from the book. However, the images of the characters and the general mood of the story in the original source are different.

Stevenson's novel is realistic and quite harsh in places. But this is a good adventure work that every child and adult will read with pleasure. Boarding boards, sea wolves, wooden legs - the nautical theme beckons and attracts.

Why you need to read

Because it's fun and exciting. In addition, the novel is divided into quotes, which everyone should know.

Interest in the deductive abilities of the great detective is still great today thanks to the huge number of film adaptations. Many people are familiar with the classic detective story only from films. But there are many film adaptations, but there is only one collection of stories, but what a one!

Why you need to read

H.G. Wells was in many ways a pioneer in the genre of science fiction. Before him, people were not at odds with, he was the first to write about time travel. Without the Time Machine, we would not have seen either the film Back to the Future or the cult TV series Doctor Who.

They say that all life is a dream, and a bad, pitiful, short dream at that, although you won’t have another dream anyway.

Why you need to read

To look at the origins of many science fiction ideas that have become popular in modern culture.

Modernism in Great Britain. Satirical novel.

British literature after 1945.

§ 1. Modernism is a general term applied in retrospect to a wide area of ​​experimental and avant-garde movements in literature and other arts at the beginning of the twentieth century. This includes such movements as symbolism, futurism, expressionism, imagism, vorticism, dadaism and surrealism, as well as other innovations of the masters of their craft. Modernist literature is characterized, first of all, by the rejection of the traditions of the nineteenth century, their consensus between the author and the reader. In fiction, the conventional flow of chronological events was turned on its head by Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf introduced new ways of tracking the flow of their characters' thoughts using the stream-of-consciousness style. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot supplanted the logical presentation of thought with her collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions.

In 1924, in her lecture “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” W. Woolf declared: “Sometime in December 1910, human nature changed.” Already in 1919, she saw new literature, which she called modernist, using the word “modern” for the first time in a qualitative sense. The ground was prepared for the development of modernism. After the war, works appeared that explained the essence and nature of a new phenomenon in the spiritual life of the 20th century: “Women in Love” by D.G. Lawrence (1920), “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot (1922), “Ulysses” by D. Joyce (1922), “Mrs. Dalloway” by W. Woolf (1925). Rejecting traditional types of storytelling at the first experimental stage, proclaiming the technique of stream of consciousness as the only true way to understand individuality, modernists discovered the dependence of the artistic image as the main tool of aesthetic communication on myth, which became a structure-forming factor (“Ulysses” by Joyce, the poetry of T. S. Eliot).

Representatives of modernism:

David Herbert Lawrence(1885-1930) - poems, novels, critical essays, literary essays, special works devoted to psychoanalysis and the problem of the unconscious. "Women in Love", "Rainbow", "Sons and Lovers".

Virginia Woolf(1882-1941) – novels “Mrs. Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse”, “Waves”, “Orlando”, “The Years”.

James Joyce(1882-1941) - began his creative career as an urban poet, then created a collection of stories “Dubliners”, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - a paraphrase of the novel of education; "Ulysses."

Satirical novel

The idea of ​​renewal of society and individual consciousness determined the differences in the criticism of the legacy of the Victorian age. This criticism was satirical in nature, which corresponded to the spirit and direction of English literature, but at the same time it was not monotonous, which was clearly reflected in the work of writers of the older generation: D. Galsworthy, B. Shaw, G. Wells, who presented various types of satirical denunciation. They were largely concerned with social and political issues and were significantly influenced by Russian literature and historical events that took place in our country. The degree of their dependence on the literature of the past and connection with the tradition of the classic English novel varied.

H.G. Wells(1866-1946) turned to the genre science fiction to tell about new dangers and threats that have arisen for humanity. Among the primary threats he saw was the power of science. “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Invisible Man” (1897), “War of the Worlds” (1898); “The First Men on the Moon” (1901) can be considered as the first warning works. Main theme: “The earth has ceased to be a safe refuge for man.” Problems of technical progress, ways of development of modern civilization, depersonalization of the individual. A sharp critique of the possessive, individualistic instincts of modern man made Wells a significant figure among those writers who, nevertheless, believed in the inexhaustible possibilities of man, supported by the greatest scientific discoveries. The moral and ethical principle in this satire indicated a close connection with classical, educational tradition, with an attempt to bridge the gap between the individual and society, while taking advantage of the opportunities novel of ideas, review, novel-treatise.

Bernard Show(1856-1950) used the stage to promote his social and moral views, filling his plays with intense debate. He also attempted to answer these global questions in his plays, as a writer full of historical optimism. He became the founder "new drama" in England: the plays “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (1893-1894), “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1898), “Pygmalion” (1912); "Heartbreak House" (1913).

The Second World War, unlike the first, had very important consequences for Britain - the active disintegration of the British Empire began. Of course, this dealt a blow to national self-awareness, although the feeling of loss was compensated by pride in the country (participation in the Battle of Britain in the air, sea convoys). The stable, comfortable, well-organized life of the British was damaged, causing them to experience anxiety and wartime instability. Thinking about this experience took place in the spirit of “Englishness”; this problem was approached in different ways, but the idea of ​​roots, historical continuity in the assessment of events, continued to persist in the public consciousness, finding its expression in literature (Arturian, legends, tales, etc.).

The major figure of post-war British literature becomes Graham Greene(1904-1990), extremely prolific writer, journalist, playwright, author of action-packed political detective stories and serious works. A traveler, a master of newspaper reporting, in his works he combined laconicism, sharp judgments, with deep knowledge of human psychology and the anatomy of his soul. Novels “Power and Glory” (1940), “The Quiet American” (1955), “Honorary Consul” (1973).

The main advantage of Greene's novels is that in a very fascinating, almost detective style, the main problems of today are presented in a religious, political or personal version. Problems of an individual who is in a state of painful struggle with himself during the critical period of choice and decision-making. Green's characters were revealed in action, especially considering that the modern novel affirms the plurality of views on the world and human actions, and the relativity of moral values. Greene was always interested in countries where the political situation forced a person to make the morally correct decision, even if it cost him his life.

Considers and solves similar topics differently William Golding(1911-1993). He began writing back in the 1930s, and almost until the end of his days he retained his reputation as a pessimist and misanthrope. The theme of the moral superiority of prehistoric man over his descendants is obvious (the novel “The Heirs” 1955 ), as well as the transformation of civilized, sweet and defenseless children into savages (“Lord of the Flies”, 1954) . The topic of human moral degradation in the conditions of modern civilization is considered by the writer in various works. He places his characters in extraordinary, unusual conditions (an experimental situation), forces their essence to manifest themselves properly, and then returns them to their original position, or leaves them with alternative options.

Iris Murdoch(1919-1999) was an active supporter and interpreter of Sartre. The structure of her works is quite rigid, reminiscent of the labyrinths through which her heroes rush, never having found harmony, entrenched in their selfishness, egoism, alienation, and not trying to understand each other. (“The Bell”, “Castle on the Sand”, etc.) The world of evil is always opposed by the world of good, the pursuit of saving love allows the hero to reveal his “I”. In Murdoch's novels, human unpredictability, the unpredictability of human fate, the illogicality of connections and relationships prevail.

PREFACE

This textbook is intended for students of the humanities faculties of pedagogical universities and for students of English literature in the faculties of foreign languages. It presents the main phenomena of the history of English literature from its origins in the early Middle Ages to the present. The development of one of the richest literatures in the world is traced, which gave humanity Chaucer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Swift, Byron, Dickens, Shaw and many other wonderful novelists, playwrights and poets. The work of each of them is associated with a certain era, reflects the characteristics of their time, conveys the thoughts, feelings and aspirations of their contemporaries. But, becoming the property of national culture, great works of art do not lose their significance for subsequent eras. Their value is eternal.

English literature is an integral part of world culture. The best traditions of English art have enriched world literature; The works of the masters of English prose and poetry, translated into many languages, won recognition far beyond the borders of England.

The acquaintance of Russian readers with Shakespeare and Defoe, Byron and Dickens has its own history. Their work, like the legacy of many other English writers, has long enjoyed recognition and love in Russia. Shakespeare's tragedies were played by the greatest actors of the Russian theater; Belinsky wrote about English realism, comparing it with the Gogolian trend in Russian literature; Byron's poetry attracted Pushkin; L. Tolstoy admired Dickens's novels. In turn, Russian literature, its brilliant writers Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov influenced the work of many English writers.

The literature of England has gone through a long and complex path of development; it is connected with the history of the country and its people, it conveys the peculiarities of the English national character. Its originality was manifested in medieval poetry, in the poems of Chaucer, in the bold flight of thought of Thomas More, in the comedies and tragedies of Shakespeare; it was reflected in the satire of Swift, in the comic epics of Fielding, in the rebellious spirit of the romantic poetry of Byron, in the paradoxes of Shaw and the humor of Dickens.

The following main periods are distinguished in the history of English literature: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 17th century, the Enlightenment of the 18th century, the 19th century, the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the 20th century. (periods 1918-1945 and 1945-1990s).

In its main points, the periodization of English literature corresponds to the periodization of the literary process of other European countries (France, Germany, Italy, etc.). However, the historical development of England is characterized by some features related to the fact that the bourgeois revolution occurred in England in the middle of the 17th century, i.e. much earlier than in France. The development of capitalism proceeded at a faster pace in England. England has become a kind of classical country of capitalist relations with all their inherent contradictions, which also affected the nature of its literary development.

English literature developed in Great Britain. Its origins originate in the oral folk poetry of the tribes that inhabited the British Isles. The original inhabitants of these lands - the Celts - were under Roman rule (I-V centuries), then were attacked by the Anglo-Saxons (5th century), who, in turn, in the 11th century. were conquered by the descendants of the Scandinavian Vikings - the Normans. The language of the Anglo-Saxon tribes was subject to Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian influences. The mixture of different ethnic principles determined the originality of the literature of the early Middle Ages.

The formation of the English nation and national literary language took place in the 14th century. The establishment of literary English is associated with the activities of Chaucer, whose work marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. His “Canterbury Tales” is an important stage in the development of English literature; The process of formation of English realism with Chaucer’s inherent skill in depicting characters, humor, and satirical ridicule of social vices originates in them. During the Renaissance, English literature is characterized by the intensive development of philosophical thought, especially clearly represented in the works of Bacon, the founder of English materialism, and in More's Utopia, which proclaimed the possibility of a society without private property. More made an important contribution to the development of socialist ideas and laid the foundation for the utopian novel of modern times.

Renaissance English poetry, distinguished by its diversity of genres, reached a high level. In the work of the humanist poets Wyeth, Surry, Sidney and Spencer, the art of the sonnet, allegorical and pastoral poem, and elegy reached great heights. The sonnet form developed by Sidney was adopted by Shakespeare, and the “Spenserian stanza” became the property of the poetry of the romantics - Byron and Shelley. In the context of the national upsurge of the Renaissance, English theater and drama were flourishing. Green, Kyd, and Marlowe prepared the dramatic art of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's global significance lies in the realism and nationalism of his work. A humanist writer, whose works were the pinnacle of English poetry and dramaturgy of the Renaissance, Shakespeare conveyed the movement of history, the turning point character and tragic contradictions of his time, addressed the most pressing political problems, and created unforgettably bright, multifaceted characters of the heroes. The problem of “man and history” became the main one in his work. Shakespeare's legacy is an ever-living and inexhaustible source of thoughts, plots, and images for writers of subsequent generations. The Shakespearean tradition - the tradition of realism and nationalism - is immortal. She largely determined the development of drama, lyrics and the novel of modern times.

The bourgeois revolution of the 17th century played an important role in the history of England and the development of literature. The humanistic ideals of the Renaissance came into conflict with the inhumane essence of the bourgeois order. And yet they continued their life in the works of writers who reflected the rise of the people's liberation movement and the intensification of the class struggle. The focus of the socio-political, aesthetic and ethical ideas of this turbulent era was the work of Milton, the largest public figure, poet and thinker of the 17th century. His works reflected the events of the English bourgeois revolution and the mood of the masses. Milton's poetry is a link between the cultural traditions of the Renaissance and the educational thought of the 18th century. The images of rebellious tyrant fighters he created laid the foundations of a new tradition, continued by the English romantics of the 19th century - Byron and Shelley.

Milton's poems and lyrics, Bunyan's allegorical stories, Donne's poems, treatises, religious and political sermons, the first experiments in English literary criticism belonging to Dryden - all this together constitutes a unique genre system of English literature of the 17th century.

XVIII century - This is the age of Enlightenment, the age of the industrial revolution, important achievements in technology and science. Enlightenment became widespread in European countries; it was an advanced ideological movement associated with the liberation struggle aimed at replacing feudalism with capitalist forms of relations. The Enlighteners believed in the power of reason and subjected it to critical judgment of the existing order.

In the conditions of England, where the bourgeois revolution occurred earlier than in other countries (with the exception of the Netherlands), the 18th century. became a period of strengthening of the bourgeois order. The uniqueness of the literature of the era is connected with this. The ideas and culture of the Enlightenment originated here earlier than on the continent, and the contradictions of the Enlightenment ideology became more pronounced, which is fully explained by the inconsistency of bourgeois reality with the ideal of a harmonious society. Literary trends of the 18th century. - classicism (the poetry of Pope), educational realism (the pinnacle of which is the work of Fielding), sentimentalism, which developed as a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment (Thomson, Jung, Gray, Goldsmith, Stern). The genre forms of literature of the English Enlightenment are diverse: pamphlet, essay, farce, comedy, bourgeois drama, “ballad opera”, poem, elegy. The leading genre is the novel, represented in its various modifications in the works of Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, Stern.

The traditions of the educational novel continued their life in the works of English critical realists of the 19th century. -Dickens and Thackeray; Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" marked the beginning of the development of "Robinsonades" in world literature; Stern's psychologism became a school of excellence for novelists of subsequent generations. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. A new direction is being formed in English literature - romanticism.

The peculiarities of the socio-political life of England determined the existence of the romantic movement for a longer period than in other European countries. Its beginning is associated with the pre-romanticism of the 18th century, the final stage dates back to the end of the 19th century. The heyday of romanticism, which emerged as a special movement under the influence of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794, occurred at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries.

The originality of the romantic movement is determined by the transitional nature of the era, the replacement of feudal society by bourgeois society, which was not accepted and condemned by the romantics. Romanticism in England with particular force reflected the alienation of personality, the fragmentation of consciousness and psychology of an individual living in a period of transitional and unstable times, full of tragic contradictions, an intense struggle between the new and the old. In romantic art, there was a desire to depict the individual as valuable in itself, living with his own bright inner world.

The transitional and preparatory stage in the formation of romanticism as a reaction to the Enlightenment was pre-romanticism, represented in England by the work of such writers and poets as Godwin, Chatterton, Radcliffe, Walpole, Blake. The pre-romanticists contrasted the rationalistic aesthetics of classicism with the emotional principle, the sensitivity of the sentimentalists with the mystery and enigma of passions; They are characterized by an interest in folklore.

The formation of the aesthetic views and principles of the English romantics is determined both by the peculiarities of their contemporary reality and by the nature of their attitude to the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of the Enlightenment. The optimistic ideas of the enlighteners, their belief in the possibility of social improvement in accordance with the laws of reason, were critically revised by the romantics. The Enlightenment's views on human nature were subject to a decisive re-evaluation: the romantics were not satisfied with the rational-materialist interpretation of man and his existence. They emphasized the emotional principle in a person, not the mind, but the imagination, the contradictions inherent in the inner world of a person, constant intense quests, the rebellion of the spirit, combined with aspiration to the ideal and a sense of irony, an understanding of the impossibility of achieving it.

The work of the English romantics is influenced by the national tradition of fantastic-utopian, allegorical and symbolic depiction of life, the tradition of a special dramatic disclosure of lyrical themes. At the same time, educational ideas are also strong (in Byron, Scott, Hazlitt).

The Romantics were united in their desire to pave the way for new art. However, sharp aesthetic polemics never ceased between writers of different ideological and political orientations. Ideological and philosophical disagreements and differences gave rise to several movements within romanticism. In English romanticism, the boundaries between movements were very clearly defined. In the literature of England of the Romantic era, the “Lake School” (“Leucists”), to which Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey belonged, stood out; revolutionary romantics - Byron and Shelley; London romantics - Keate, Lamb, Hazlitt. The combination of romanticism with pronounced features of realism is characteristic of the work of Scott, the creator of the historical novel.

The genre system of romanticism is characterized mainly by a variety of poetic forms (lyric poems, lyric-epic and satirical poems, philosophical poems, novels in verse, etc.). A significant contribution to the development of the novel was the work of Scott, whose historicism played an important role in the formation of the realistic novel of the 19th century. In the 30-40s. XIX century Critical realism is established as the leading trend in English literature. It reaches its heyday during the period of the highest rise of the Chartist movement - in the second half of the 40s.

Critical realism is formed on the basis of the cultural achievements of previous eras, absorbs the traditions of educational realism and romanticism; At the same time, the development of realism was marked by the emergence of a new aesthetics, new principles for the depiction of man and reality. The most important object of artistic representation becomes a person in his connection with specific historical conditions of existence. Personality is shown in its conditioning by the social environment. Social determinism, which has become a fundamental principle for critical realists, is combined with historicism as a specific system that helps to reveal the patterns of phenomena in reality. In English art, the movement towards establishing relationships between the individual and society began long before the 19th century. However, only in the 19th century. Dickens and Thackeray, Bronte and Gaskell were able to show their heroes as organically included in the social structure of contemporary England.

In the history of England, the middle of the 19th century. - a period of intense social and ideological struggle. At this time, a galaxy of Chartist poets and publicists (Jones, Linton, Garney and others) appeared in England. Chartist literature adopted and continued the traditions of democratic art of the 18th century. (Godwin, Paine), revolutionary poetry and journalism of the romantics (Byron, Shelley). The innovation of Chartist literature was manifested in the creation of the image of a proletarian fighter.

In the second half of the 19th century. New trends emerged in the literary process in England. In the works of J. Eliot, and later in the works of Meredith, Butler and Hardy, new principles for creating character and depicting the inner world of a person are developed. Satirical sharpness and journalistic passion are replaced by closer attention to the sphere of the spiritual life of the heroes, through the prism of which the conflicts of reality are revealed. The peculiarities of the literature of this period were manifested in the process of its psychologization, in the dramatization of the novel, the intensification of its tragic beginning and bitter irony.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The literary process in England is characterized by the intensity and complexity of its development. Aesthetic subjectivism is defended by Pater, who influenced Oscar Wilde; “literature of action” is represented by Kipling; the socialist ideal is proclaimed by Morris; the traditions of the realistic novel are refracted in the works of Bennett and Galsworthy.

First World War 1914-1918 marked the beginning of a new period in history and literature. The flourishing of English modernism is associated with the activities of Joyce, Eliot, Woolf and Lawrence. Their work revealed a new artistic thinking, a new artistic language. During the period between the two world wars, writers of the older generation continued their creative path - Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Forster. In the 20th century and especially intensely after the Second World War, the British Empire was going through a period of its collapse. The national liberation struggle of the peoples of colonial and dependent countries changed the position of Great Britain on the world stage. It lost its position as a colonial power, which could not but have a significant impact on the restructuring of the national self-awareness of the British, stimulating the desire to realize the novelty of the current situation in the world and within the country and its “English essence.”

Hopes associated with the end of the war gave way to disappointment; the unsettled state of affairs of the younger generation caused a mood of criticism, irritation, nostalgia, and deep dissatisfaction. The galaxy of “angry young writers” is a characteristic phenomenon in the literary life of post-war England in the 50s. In the 60-70s. The attention of many writers was attracted by the problem of the effectiveness of scientific and technological achievements for the destinies of mankind. Developing in conditions of aggravated social and racial contradictions, the labor and student movements, literature could not help but react to the instability of the emerging situation. The process of searching for a unifying “national idea” begins. Deindustrialization gave rise to a return to the dream of a “merry old England”, opposed to the cult of technicization, which did not live up to the hopes placed on it.

In the genre system of English literature of the modern era, the leading place, as in previous eras, belongs to the novel. The modern novel exhibits various and at the same time interrelated features of the genre typology (epic and dramatic novel, panoramic and metaphorical, lyrical and documentary, intensive and extensive, centripetal and centrifugal, objective and subjective). The attraction to dramatic and tragic structure is combined in it with a satirical beginning. The form of the epic cycle develops. The largest English novelists in modern English literature are Green, Waugh, Snow, Golding, Murdoch, Spark, Fowles. Among playwrights, Osborne, Bond and Pinter gained wide fame; Poets include Robert Graves and Dylan Thomas.

The content of the article

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 Age", "Age of Johnson"), others by dominant literary ideas and themes ("Renaissance", "Romantic Movement"), others ("Old English Literature" and "Middle English Literature"). 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 Venerable 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 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 a dispute 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 Integrity 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 possibility. 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, debate 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 forces. 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), a reconstruction of a person's spiritual journey 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 in English, with minor borrowings from other languages ​​and the addition of new formations, it is possible to 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 the education of a 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 even to 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) Kr.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 eruption.

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 devoid of precise meaning, 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; The 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 of the 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 dramaturgy 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 heroic couplet for him is 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 have provided liberal political movements with a theoretical basis for a century. 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: among the best materials of 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 he himself reigned in literary circles during his lifetime. 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) by Gray, perhaps the most famous poetic work of 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, probably 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 were published 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 a new type of 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, it ranks among the best pages of 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 remained viable as a genre throughout the Romantic movement and, more importantly, enriched its arsenal of visual means with 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 work 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 Last Chronicle of Barset (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 by the modern way of 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.

For at least three other outstanding writers, their creative blossoming coincided with the turn of the era. 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 his life experience and beliefs opened up a completely new sphere of perception and worldview to his amazed 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 began 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, which was 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), a master storyteller, experimented with storytelling techniques, particularly 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) expressed his attitude toward social criticism 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), the mental state of the characters shows the decay of modern England; his most significant novels Mrs Eliot's average age (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 in the traditional genres of ballad and song. 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, 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. All of them 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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English literature constitutes one of the main and most important parts of world culture. Many works of English writers and poets have been translated into other languages ​​and have gained great popularity throughout the world. These are W. Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron, Defoe, and many others. The origins of English literature go back to ancient times. And it is from it that one can observe all periods of the historical development of the country and people, and understand the features of their national character.
Several periods can be distinguished in the development of English literature.

Early Middle Ages

The first one dates back to the early Middle Ages, 450 - 1066 years. At this time, the most popular genre was the poem. One can highlight the work of the Anglo-Saxon epic “Beowulf”. This is one of the oldest poems written in ancient English. Neither the author nor the time of writing of this literary work is known. It describes the glorious victories of the commander and warrior Beowulf.

High Middle Ages

Another period in the development of literature dates back to the High Middle Ages. This is from the 11th to the 16th centuries. They wrote mostly novels and ballads. The most popular writer of this time is D. Chaucer and his “Canterbury Tales”. This book contains several short stories about pilgrims who go to Canterbury to venerate the holy relics. Unfortunately, this work remained unfinished. What’s interesting is that previously all the books were in Latin. Chaucer is the first writer to write in his native language. Another writer of this time also stands out - T. Malory, who collected all the existing novels about King Arthur and his knights and created such a work as “The Death of Arthur”. It describes all the heroic deeds of King Arthur's knights, but Malory also added some details of the battles in which he himself participated. For this reason, the novel contains errors in the chronology of events. Among ballads, the work about Robin Hood is extremely popular.

Renaissance Literature in England

The next period is the Renaissance, 16th - 17th centuries. The dominant genres are plays, sonnets and lyric works. At this time, such masters as W. Shakespeare, T. More, E. Spencer were creating. Theater received special development in this era. The plays are performed in both schools and universities. Teachers, together with their students, write and perform performances themselves. In England the theater became truly popular. The plays of W. Shakespeare were especially popular. He was able to express all aspects of human character and feelings. These are love (“Romeo and Juliet”), lust for power (“Macbeth”), jealousy (“Othello”), vindictiveness (“The Merchant of Venice”), etc. He wrote a large number of sonnets and plays.

Neoclassicism in England

Next - neoclassicism, 17th - 18th centuries. English literature came under the influence of French culture. All works were written with wit and criticism. They wrote mostly novels and prose. D. Milton, D. Swift, D. Defoe were especially popular. Milton is called the second poet after Shakespeare. His works reflect human destiny, and his verse is distinguished by its solemnity and brightness. One of the most famous works of this poet is “Paradise Lost”. In it he departs from the church and comes into conflict with it. D. Swift is no less popular writer of that time. In his works he ridiculed human and social vices. One of his most famous creations is “Gulliver’s Travels,” in which he also ridiculed first the pride and great conceit of the Lilliputians, then the giants. One of the creators of the English novel is D. Defoe. This is the most prolific writer of that time. He wrote more than fifty books, many articles for magazines on various topics (economics, religion, psychology, etc.). In his works he always advocated freedom of speech and promoted sanity. One of his most popular works is Robinson Crusoe.

Romanticism

During the period of romanticism, 18th - 19th centuries, a genre such as the Gothic novel appeared. At this time, such famous works as “Pride and Prejudice” by D. Austen, “The Travels of Charles Harold” by Byron, “Ivanhoe” by W. Scott, “Frankenstein” by M. Shelley were written. All writers of the Romantic period focus on the individual. All events take place against a backdrop of passion, and the main characters have a rebellious character.

Victorian literature of England

Victorian era - 19th and 20th centuries. This is the next, and one of the most important stages in the development of English literature. It was during this period that writers and poets were able to prove the importance of national traditions, spiritual values, as well as the importance of each person in history. We can highlight such Victorian authors as Charles Dickens, W. Thackeray, A. K. Doyle.

W. Thackeray's most famous work, Vanity Fair, can rightly be called a novel without a hero. Focusing on the evil and vices in people, he preached positive traits and ideals. Thackeray has always been compared to Dickens, although they were completely different authors. Thanks to Dickens, such a national character trait as “English humor” was formed. His most famous works are David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. A completely different writer is A.C. Doyle. He wrote a large number of adventure, fantasy, detective, and humorous works. One of his most popular creations is “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”

Modernism

At the beginning of the 20th century, modernism was established in literary England. This is a completely new period, unlike any other. One can single out such modernist writers as B. Shaw (“Pygmalion”) and G. W. Wales (“War of the Worlds”). The pinnacle of literature of this period is D. Joyce’s novel “Ulysses”. The main theme of this work is the relationship between father and son, but the novel also includes a large number of philosophical, historical and cultural analogies.

Postmodernism

Nowadays in England such a movement as postmodernism dominates. This is A. Christie, J. Tolkien, J. Rowling. They are trying to free themselves from modernism, thereby mixing different genres. The so-called “black humor” appears in English literature.

England has always been considered one of the main literary powers. Starting from T. Malory and up to A. Christie, English literature set high standards and all writers around the world were equal to them.