The Age of Enlightenment in Russian Literature. Voltaire and three other great thinkers of the Enlightenment
Russian enlighteners in the age of Catherine II
In the second half of the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas spread in Russia. This is the era of the reign of Catherine II (1762 - 1796). The empress herself tried in every possible way to create the image of an enlightened monarch. She corresponded with Voltaire, invited Diderot to St. Petersburg, and read the works of Montesquieu. However, Catherine II's approach to the ideas of enlightenment was selective. She shared the ideas of the enlighteners that education, upbringing, enlightenment are the main means of improving society. At the same time, ideas about “natural” human rights, about the equality of all from birth, which French philosophers actively advocated, were rejected by her. Anything that could shake the absolutist, feudal-serf system was unacceptable to Catherine II.
Literature.
Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816)- Russian poet and playwright of the Enlightenment, statesman of the Russian Empire, senator, active privy councilor.
played a huge role in the liberation of Russian literature from classicism and the formation of elements of the future realistic style.
Derzhavin's civil odes are addressed to persons endowed with great political power: monarchs, nobles. In them the poet rises not only to laudatory, but also to accusatory pathos. In the ode “Felitsa,” Derzhavin the enlightener sees in the monarch a person to whom society has entrusted the care of the welfare of citizens, therefore the right to be a monarch imposes on the ruler numerous responsibilities in relation to the people. Derzhavin's innovation in this ode is not only in the interpretation of the image of an enlightened monarch, but also in the bold combination of laudatory and accusatory principles - ode and satire. This connection is a phenomenon of educational literature, because the enlighteners understood the life of society as a constant struggle between truth and error.
In the ode “The Nobleman” by Derzhavin, the evil arising from the indifference of the nobles to their duty is presented with such indignation, which can be traced only in some works of that time. The poet is outraged by the situation of the people suffering from the criminal attitude of the courtiers.
In the poem “To Rulers and Judges,” the indifference and selfishness of those in power do not leave the poet indifferent, and he demands the punishment of the guilty. The poet reminds the kings that they are as mortal as their subjects, and sooner or later they will face the judgment of God.
In Derzhavin’s “Monument” there is a thought about the right of their authors to immortality. In this poem, the poet recalls that he was the first to dare to abandon the solemn pompous style of odes.
Derzhavin insisted on his human dignity and the independence of his judgment over modernity. With this, Derzhavin clarified the idea of the poet’s personal responsibility for his judgments, the idea of sincerity and truthfulness of his ideological propaganda, which is very important for the further development of advanced Russian literature.
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov(1717-1777) - one of the largest representatives of Russian literature of the 18th century, creator of the repertoire of the first Russian theater.
Sumarokov's creativity develops within the framework of classicism, in the form that it took in France in the 17th - early. XVIII centuries
Sumarokov’s literary activity attracts attention with its external diversity. He tried all genres: odes (solemn, spiritual, philosophical, anacreontic), epistles (epistles), satires, elegies, songs, epigrams, madrigals, epitaphs; In his poetic technique, he used all the meters that existed at that time, made experiments in the field of rhyme, and used a variety of strophic structures.
Sumarokov's classicism is different, for example, from the classicism of his older contemporary Lomonosov. Sumarokov “lowers” classical poetics. The “decline” is expressed in the desire for less “high” themes, in the introduction of personal, intimate motives into poetry, in the preference for “middle” and “low” genres over “high” genres. Sumarokov creates a large number of lyrical works in the genre love songs, works of many satirical genres - fables, comedies, satires, epigrams.
Sumarokov sets a didactic task for satire - “to correct the temper with mockery, to make people laugh and to use its direct rules”: Sumarokov ridicules the empty class swagger (“not in title, in action one must be a nobleman”), warns against abuse of landowner power (see especially “ Chorus to the Perverse Light”, where the “tit” says that “overseas the sea they don’t trade people, they don’t put villages on the map, they don’t skin peasants”).
Sumarokov is one of the founders of Russian parody, the author of the cycle of “Nonsense Odes”, ridiculing Lomonosov’s “furious” odic style.
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin- Russian writer of the Catherine era, creator of Russian everyday comedy (the action of which takes place in an everyday setting and conflicts are built on the basis of practical and family interests).
Fonvizin entered literature as one of the successors of Kantemir and Sumarokov. He was brought up in the belief that the nobility, to which he himself belonged, should be educated, humane, constantly concerned about the interests of the fatherland, and that the royal government should promote worthy nobles to high positions for the common benefit. But among the nobles he saw cruel ignoramuses, and at court - “nobles in the case” (to put it simply, the empress’s lovers) who ruled the state according to their whim.
He wrote satirical poems. Of these, two were later published and have come down to us: the fable “Fox-Koznodey” (preacher) and “Message to my servants Shumilov, Vanka and Petrushka.” Fonvizin's fable is a vicious satire on court flatterers, and "The Message" is a wonderful work, rather unusual for its time. Fonvizin addresses the most important philosophical question: “Why was this light created?” illiterate people of that time; It is immediately clear that they will not be able to answer it. This is what happens. Honest uncle Shumilov admits that he is not ready to judge such complex things.
In 1769 he created his first original comedy, "The Brigadier". "The Brigadier" made a strong impression on the audience of that time. In the 18th century, the word "brigadier" meant military rank. The Fonvizinsky Brigadier is a rude, limited soldier. N.I. Panin described the work as “the first comedy in our morals.” Fonvizin was compared to Moliere; his comedy never left the stage. During the action, the characters of the play did not speak, but lived on stage. They tell fortunes with cards and play chess. All this was new and unusual for Russian drama of that time. According to Vyazemsky, “in “The Brigadier” for the first time a natural, witty language was heard on our stage.” For the first time, the morals and characters of his era are shown so vividly and comprehensively.
In retirement, Fonvizin devoted himself entirely to literature. He was a member of the Russian Academy, which united the best Russian writers. The Academy worked to create a dictionary of the Russian language; Fonvizin took upon himself the compilation of a dictionary of synonyms, which he, literally translating the word “synonym” from Greek, called “estates”. His “Experience of a Russian Estatesman” was a very serious linguistic work for its time, and not just a screen for satire on Catherine’s court and the Empress’s methods of governing the state (this is how this work is often interpreted).
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766-1826)- an outstanding historian, the largest Russian writer of the era of sentimentalism (works written within the framework of this artistic movement emphasize reader perception, that is, the sensuality that arises when reading them), nicknamed the Russian Stern.
Karamzin becomes the founder of sentimentalism in Russia. He travels around Europe, and in 1791, having settled in Moscow, he becomes the editor and author of the Moscow Journal, leaving journalism only as a sign of protest during the period of Pavlov’s reign (1796-1801). In 1792, he created two works that became the most famous and beloved works of Russian literature of that time: the stories “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” and “Poor Liza.” These stories are written in the style of sentimentalism.
To describe the feelings, the depiction of which was the main object of the sentimentalists, it was necessary to choose appropriate words. Words and expressions introduced into the Russian language by N. M. Karamzin: sensitivity, delicacy, love, delicate taste, sophistication, future, representative, public, humane, improve, revolution, development...
Karamzin changed the image of the hero of a literary work. His heroes are not kings and leaders, but young girls, simple peasant women who also know how to love and suffer.
Since 1804, Karamzin took on a huge work, which he would work on for more than twenty years - until the end of his life: writing “The History of the Russian State.” The work on it can be called a feat of Karamzin’s life. “History...” will inspire many Russian writers to create works in historical topics(remember, for example, Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”).
Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) - Russian writer, philosopher, poet, de facto head of the St. Petersburg customs, member of the Commission for drafting laws under Alexander I.
He began his literary activity in 1789, with the publication of the story “The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov.” Taking advantage of the decree of Catherine II on free printing houses, Radishchev acquired a home printing house and in 1790 published his main work in it - “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790) - covering a wide range of ideas of the Russian Enlightenment, a truthful, compassionate image of the life of the people, a sharp denunciation autocracy and serfdom. The book attracted the attention of Catherine II, who wrote in the margins: “A rebel, worse than Pugachev.” The author was arrested and exiled to Siberia, the book was confiscated and until 1905 it was distributed in lists.
Artists
Alexey Petrovich Antropov (1716-1795) - A.P. Antropov was born into the family of a soldier of the Semenovsky regiment. In 1732, he was enrolled in the Office of Buildings, where he studied with A. M. Matveev. Having mastered professional skills, from 1739 he worked there in the “painting team”, led by I. Ya. Vishnyakov. In the 1740-50s. the artist performed decorative paintings in the palaces of St. Petersburg and its suburbs. In 1755, Antropov was invited to Moscow, where he painted a ceiling in the palace of the Counts Golovins. When Moscow University was founded in 1759, on the initiative of Count I.I. Shuvalov, the artist was offered a position as a painter at the Faculty of Arts. He did not stay there long, since in 1761 he was appointed to the post of chief artist of the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg.
Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov (1735-1808)- F. S. Rokotov came from serf peasants of the Repnin princes. The scant biographical information tells us nothing about the artist’s teachers or the early period of his work. But his portraits are beautiful and sensual. You can admire them for a very long time.
Dmitry Grigorievich Levitsky (1735 - 1822)- D. G. Levitsky belonged to an old Ukrainian family. The artist's father was a hereditary priest and at the same time was engaged in engraving. It was the father who became the first teacher of the future artist. Levitsky studied at home, in Kyiv, with A.P. Antropov, and then in St. Petersburg. Levitsky's portraits masterfully depict materials - silky heavy satin, light airy lace; all objects in the paintings are almost tangible.
Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1757-1825)- Borovikovsky was born into a poor family, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks. His father and two brothers, Vasily and Ivan, were icon painters who worked in the surrounding churches. Naturally, Vladimir also became an icon painter. In addition to icons, he also painted portraits, in the spirit of that naive semi-professional painting that was widespread in Ukraine. Chance helped him part with the remote province. In 1787, he executed two allegorical paintings to decorate one of the “travel palaces” that were erected along the route of Catherine II to Crimea. His last work was an iconostasis for the church at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg, bearing traces of painful exaltation. Borovikovsky raised two students, one of whom was A.G. Venetsianov, who adopted a poetic perception of the world from his mentor.
Ivan Petrovich Argunov (1729-1802)- I.P. Argunov belonged to a talented family of serf intellectuals - artists and architects. Throughout his life, Argunov had to perform numerous household duties. He was the manager of the houses (actually palaces) of P.B. Sheremetev, first in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow. Apparently, in 1746-47. Argunov studied with G.-Kh. Groot, court artist of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. In any case, in 1747, together with Groot, the young painter painted icons for the church of the Great Tsarskoye Selo Palace. Argunov also painted icons later. But his main vocation was portraiture.
CONCLUSION. The main aspiration of enlightenment was to find, through the activity of the human mind, the natural principles of human life (natural religion, natural law, the natural order of the economic life of the physiocrats, etc.). Under the influence of the ideas of enlightenment, reforms were also undertaken that were supposed to rebuild the entire social life (enlightened absolutism and the French Revolution). This era left a significant mark on Russian painting and literature. The Enlightenment replaces the Renaissance and precedes Romanticism.
In 1688, the “Glorious Revolution” took place in England. Glorious because she has passed the bloody phase.
Glorious Revolution- the name accepted in historiography for the coup d'etat of 1688 in England. Also found under the names “Revolution of 1688”, “bloodless revolution”.
Revolution is not associated with a change of classes, but with a change in the type of human life. The Bill of Rights was adopted. Each person was recognized as having the right to life, freedom of thought, and so on, inherent from birth, and not given by the state. A new idea of what is important to a person has emerged. In classicism, reason reigned supreme. The social structure and the life of the individual are subordinated to reason. Feelings contradict reason; they need to be curbed and educated. Therefore, teachers play a significant role in the era of classicism.
In the era of emerging enlightenment, pedagogy becomes almost the center. Feelings need to be nurtured, and then the heart will be close to the mind. The idea of a natural man emerges, who overcomes the shackles of rational civilization on the path to himself. Feelings do not destroy the world, because they educate.
The Age of Enlightenment brings the idea of progress. IN modern world this concept accompanies people everywhere. The idea of life as a dynamic change from worse to better was an incredible discovery of the Enlightenment.
Progress means that a person can control the world and society around him and improve them.
The history of mankind is not a history of salvation, as the religious picture of the world teaches, but a path from imperfect to perfect. The Enlightenmentists did not deny the role of reason.
In 1744, an encyclopedia began to be published in England and then in France.
Encyclopedia- brought into the review system of all branches and human knowledge or a range of disciplines, which together constitute a separate branch of knowledge.
The encyclopedia consisted of a selection of articles about various branches of human knowledge. But she gave out information not in a reference manner, but in arranging philosophical system. Encyclopedias turned out to be in demand: more than thirty volumes were published with large circulations and translations into many languages. In Russia in the 18th century, 29 collections were published. The encyclopedia changed the picture of the world.
Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
- Natural man.
- Education of feelings.
- The mind is not omnipotent.
- A person has the right to change the world around him.
- The history of humanity is the path from imperfect to perfect.
Ideas began to be shared not only by intellectuals, but also by rulers. A phenomenon called “enlightened absolutism” arose. The sovereigns did not renounce absolute power, but became leaders of this era. They conveyed ideas of enlightenment to their subjects, sometimes through violent means. This is Frederick of Prussia, Maria Theresa in Austria, Catherine the Great (see Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. I. Argunov “Portrait of Catherine II”
The Russian Empress devoted her life to enlightenment and the establishment of European culture. She was a writer and a talented journalist, published her own magazine, wrote comedies and teachings, and was a satirist. The Empress denounced the morals of the society she ruled.
Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov, a Russian journalist, satirist, and writer, played a major role in the fate of Russian culture during the Enlightenment.
Rice. 2. Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov
He published magazines, but was one of the first to fall as a result of the state wrath of Catherine the Great. Nikolai Ivanovich crossed the line and in 1792 was arrested for literary affairs and for attempting to interfere in the processes of the dynasty, political games with Paul I.
In 1790, the main work of the Russian Enlightenment era, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by Alexander Radishchev, was published (see Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev
In 1789, the French Revolution occurred, which led to a coup, overthrow of power and bloodshed. Radishchev's book, written a year later, was perceived as a call for revolution. Traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow and stopping at each station, the narrator of the book sadly and satirically depicts reality. Let us read the beginning of the work and understand that the author’s intention was different:
Whatever the mind and heart want to produce, it is for you, oh! my sympathizer, let it be dedicated. Although my opinions on many things differ from yours, your heart beats in agreement with mine - and you are my friend. I looked around me - my soul became wounded by the suffering of humanity. I turned my gaze into my interior and saw that disasters
of man come from man, and often only from the fact that he looks
indirectly onto objects around him.
Alexander Radishchev
It is not written about revolution. Many words begin with “so”: sympathy, compassion. Radishchev speaks the language of empathy, he talks about human feelings as the main engine of history. If the heart is distorted, then history is distorted. This is what his book is about, but it was read as a call for revolution. The author was arrested and exiled to the Ilimsk prison. Radishchev was returned by Alexander I, who involved the writer in compiling a code Russian laws. Internally, the author was broken, his life ended tragically.
Maybe, best work The Enlightenment era with elements of the tradition of classicism became Denis Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor.” You will read it yourself and answer the questions.
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Introduction
Chapter I Literature of the Enlightenment
1.1 Characteristics of the literature of the Enlightenment
1.2 Literature of England
Chapter II English writers of the Enlightenment
2.1 Jonathan Swift
2.2 Daniel Defoe
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
In the history of European society, the 18th century is known as the Age of Enlightenment. The figures of the Enlightenment were not only writers, but also philosophers and political thinkers. The literature of the Enlightenment grew out of the classicism of the 17th century, inheriting its rationalism, the idea of the educational function of literature, and attention to the interaction of man and society. Compared to the literature of the previous century, in educational literature there is a significant democratization of the hero, which corresponds to general direction educational thought. The direction of educational realism received successful development in England. Thus, the “age of Reason” became the time of creation of outstanding English writers - D. Defoe and J. Swift.
Defoe is the most complete ideologist of the middle bourgeoisie, expresses its desires and the idea that it has about itself and its place in the state. And Swift caustically ridicules modern English society.
The purpose of the study of this test and course work is to reveal and show the features of the works of English writers of the 18th century using the example of the works of Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift.
The objectives are to assess the level of development of literature of this period and trace its stages. Consider the most prominent representatives.
GlavaILiteratureEnlightenment
era of enlightenment defoe swift
1.1 Characteristicsliterature of the Enlightenment
The ideological movement, called the Enlightenment, spread to European countries in the 18th century. It was imbued with the spirit of struggle against all creations and manifestations of feudalism. Enlightenment leaders put forward and defended ideas social progress, equality, free development of personality.
The Enlightenmentists proceeded from the belief that a person is born kind, endowed with a sense of beauty, justice and equal to all other people. An imperfect society and its cruel laws are contrary to human, “natural” nature. Consequently, it is necessary for a person to remember his high purpose on earth, to appeal to him to reason - and then he himself will understand what good is and what evil is, he himself will be able to answer for his actions, for his life. It is only important to enlighten people and influence their consciousness.
The Enlightenmentists believed in the omnipotence of reason, but for them this category was filled with more deep meaning. Reason was only supposed to contribute to the reconstruction of the entire society.
The future was imagined by the Enlightenment as the “kingdom of reason.” That is why they attached great importance to science, establishing the “cult of knowledge”, “cult of the book”. It is characteristic that it was in the 18th century that the famous French “Encyclopedia” was published in 28 volumes. It promoted new views on nature, man, society, and art.
Writers, poets, playwrights of the 18th century sought to prove that not only science, but also art can contribute to the re-education of people worthy of living in a future harmonious society, which should again be built according to the laws of reason.
The educational movement originated in England (Daniel Defoe “Robinson Crusoe”, Jonathan Swift “Gulliver’s Travels”, the great Scottish poet Robert Burns). Then the ideas of the Enlightenment began to spread throughout Europe. In France, for example, the enlighteners include Voltaire, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, in Germany - Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller.
Enlightenment ideals also existed in Russian literature. They were reflected in the works of many authors of the 18th century, but most clearly in Fonvizin and Radishchev.
In the depths of the Enlightenment, new trends emerged that foreshadowed the emergence of sentimentalism. Attention to the feelings and experiences of the common person is increasing, and moral values are being affirmed. So, above we mentioned Rousseau as one of the representatives of the Age of Enlightenment. But he was also the author of the novel “The New Heloise,” which is rightfully considered the pinnacle of European sentimentalism.
The humanistic ideas of the Enlightenment found a unique expression in German literature; a literary movement arose there, known as “Storm and Drang”. Supporters of this movement resolutely rejected the classicist norms that fettered the creative individuality of the writer.
They defended the ideas of national uniqueness of literature, demanded the depiction of strong passions, heroic deeds, bright characters, and at the same time developed new methods of psychological analysis. This, in particular, was the work of Goethe and Schiller.
The literature of the Enlightenment took a step forward both in the theoretical understanding of the goals and objectives of art and in artistic practice. New genres are appearing: educational novels, philosophical stories, family drama. More attention began to be paid moral values, affirmation of the self-awareness of the human person. All this became an important stage in the history of literature and art.
Enlightenment classicism became quite widespread in the literature of this era. Its largest representatives in poetry and drama, and especially in the tragedy genre, were Voltaire. Had a great
the meaning of “Weimar classicism” - its theoretical principles were vividly embodied in Schiller’s poems and in Goethe’s “Iorigenia and Tauris”. Enlightenment realism was also common. Its representatives were Diderot, Lessing, Goethe, Defoe, Swift.
1.2 Literature of England
By the beginning of the 18th century. England came, having survived the bourgeois revolution of the mid-17th century, the trial of King Charles I and his execution, the regime of the bourgeois military dictatorship of Cromwell, the restoration of the Stuart monarchy and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 - 1689, which placed William III of Orange and Queen Mary on the throne . Thus, for historical reasons, having survived in the 17th century. two bourgeois revolutions, England found itself at the origins of the European Enlightenment. Conventionally, the beginning of the English Enlightenment is usually dated to the year of the Glorious Revolution.
The Enlightenment in England was of a moderate nature, because its task was not to prepare a new revolution, but to redistribute political power in favor of the bourgeoisie. The limited monarchy that was established after the “Glorious Revolution” was revered in the country as the most advanced political system, the particular shortcomings of which supposedly could be eradicated with the help of reasonable reforms. The “Glorious Revolution” accelerated the development of capitalism and created the preconditions for the great industrial revolution of the mid-18th century.
The ideological trends of the English Enlightenment were heterogeneous. Some writers sharply criticized the remnants of feudalism and the vices of bourgeois reality (Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Sheridan), other authors adhered to an apologetic (Addison, Steele, Defoe) or moderate (Richardson) position, hoping with the help of good-natured satire and moral and religious instructions to instill civic feelings in people and thereby improve the moral climate in society. In the literature of the English Enlightenment, periods are distinguished: early (up to the 1730s), mature, covering the 1740s - 1750s, and late, stretching from the 1760s to the 1790s. The leading genres of English early Enlightenment literature were poem, tragedy, comedy, and essay. The socio-political events of this period contributed to the expansion of the readership, the birth of new genres, for example, “ballad opera” (“The Beggar’s Opera” by J. Gay), such genre varieties as the theoretical-aesthetic poem of A, Pope “An Essay on Criticism”, satirical Moral Sketches by Addison and Steele.
The national originality of English enlightenment classicism in comparison with the “high” French classicism of the 17th century. was explained by its different ideological content and the softening of classicist normativity, which was due to the development of English philosophical and scientific thought, interest in national traditions, commitment to concepts that undermine the role of rationality in creative process. In the first third of the 18th century. Enlightenment classicism occupied a dominant position in English literature. He actively opposed the Baroque, accumulated elements of Rococo at the genre level, and at the same time could enter into a synthesis with the growing Enlightenment realism. The division into elitist and democratic, characteristic of early Enlightenment literature, was reflected in his work by J. Lillo, who stood at the origins of European bourgeois drama. He attempted to democratize the genre of classicist tragedy. In his dramas, the main characters were representatives of the bourgeois trading circles of society. Lillo edifyingly glorified bourgeois virtues: work, moderation, frugality, self-control. Comedy in its various genre varieties became widespread in early Enlightenment literature. In Steele's moralizing (“tearful”) comedies with their happy endings, one can see a desire to smooth out the internal contradictions of the system established after the “Glorious Revolution.” It is no coincidence that in “Conscientious Lovers” (1722) the marriage of the aristocrat Beville to the daughter of the merchant Sealand symbolizes a compromise between the two social groups. “The Beggar's Opera” by D. Gay (1728) was a satirical-political comedy in which street ballads were skillfully used to maliciously criticize the bourgeois order, and the corrupt mechanism of the state apparatus was reflected in the events that took place in the world of criminals. At the insistence of R. Walpole, who recognized himself in the image of one of the heroes, King George II banned the production of the sequel to The Beggar's Opera - Polly (1729). The satirical denunciation of the ruling regime in the farces of G. Fielding and the anonymous play “The Golden Rump” served as the immediate reason for the adoption in 1737 of the Censorship Act, according to which theaters could only exist on the basis of a royal license; plays had to be subject to preliminary censorship by the Lord Chamberlain, they could not discuss political problems and make them actors statesmen. All theaters in London were closed except Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The development of dramaturgy suffered significant damage. The novel came to the forefront of English literature.
During this period, Enlightenment realism reached its peak, gradually displacing Enlightenment classicism from its leading position. Mature educational realism is represented by Richardson's epistolary novels, which laid the foundation for the genre of family life psychological novel, Fielding’s “comic epics”, Smollett’s social and everyday novels. Empirical metaphysical materialism became the philosophical basis for Enlightenment realism. None of the English novelists adhered to the framework of any one philosophical and ethical teaching. Fielding's theory of Shaftesbury collided with the teachings of Mandeville; Richardson, in Mandeville's polemic with Shaftesbury, took the latter's side, while developing Locke's concepts. Smollett relied on Mandeville and Locke.
The common basis for the entire educational novel was Locke’s thesis, according to which the fate of a person depends on himself (“Some Thoughts on Education”). At the same time, Richardson's preaching of the triumph of reason over passions and Fielding's rehabilitation of earthly sensual nature were associated with the preaching of bourgeois progress, with the desire to eliminate social vices. At the same time, it turned out that new social conditions did not always coincide with the interests of the individual. All this determined the critical moderation of Richardson's novels, Fielding's gentle humor, and Smollett's dark satire.
The literature of the late Enlightenment is characterized by the intensive development of the sentimental direction, the origins of which go back to the landscape lyrics of the 1730s (J. Thomson. “The Seasons”, 1726 - 1730). The term “sentimental” in relation to literature appeared in 1749, but became widespread after the publication of L. Stern’s “Sentimental Journey” (1768). Already by the beginning of the 1730s, many people had dispelled their illusions about the happy life they dreamed of after the Glorious Revolution. The further enclosure of lands and the ruin of the peasantry, the destruction of protected natural areas for the construction of enterprises, the consequences of the industrial revolution, which aggravated the social stratification of society and led to the impoverishment of the peasantry and artisans - all this forced one to doubt the principles of reasonable behavior. The turn to the world of feelings of a particular person was accompanied by criticism of bourgeois orders and feudal remnants. The lyrical works of early sentimentalist poets are characterized by heightened sensitivity, a tendency to contemplation, to reflection in the lap of nature, and poeticization of death. “Cemetery poetry” by E. Jung, T. Gray, D. Harvey, R. Blair is filled with religious mysticism, melancholic moods, grief about the frailty of all things, longing for loved ones who have passed on to another world, the memory of them, confirming their immortality. In the works of late sentimentalists, social protest (O. Goldsmith, W. Cooper, D. Crabb) and interest in ordinary people intensified. In their novels, O. Goldsmith, L. Stern, G. Brooke, G. Mackenzie and others relied on the ethical concepts of D. Hume, who proposed subordinating morality not to reason, but to sensitivity. Late sentimentalists emphatically strive to show the complexity of an individual’s “human nature,” the versatility of his mental experiences, the origins of his eccentricities and oddities. Their ideal is patriarchal life in the lap of nature with its simplicity of morals.
In the 60s - 80s, educational trends were most preserved in poetry - in Robert Burns, as well as in the genre of realistic satirical comedy, the largest representative of which in the 70s was R. Sheridan. In the second half of the 18th century. socio-economic changes, social trends, and the search for new aesthetic guidelines, opposite to the classicist ones, contributed to the formation of pre-romanticism as a literary movement. In E. Burke’s treatise “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757), in “An Essay on the Genius” of Pope and His Writings” (1756 - 1782) by J. Wharton, in “Letters on Chivalry and Medieval Romances” "(1762) by R. Hurd, attention is drawn to aesthetic categories (“terrible,” “original,” “picturesque”) that destroy the classicist concept of beauty, based on symmetry and harmony. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, as poets with a powerful imagination, pushed into the background the classicists with their reliance on reason. At this time, interest in the national past is actively reviving. In 1765, the famous folklorist T. Percy published the collection “Monuments of Ancient English poetry", in which he included folk ballads (historical, from the cycle about Robin Hood, etc.), drawing them from old manuscripts and his notes, as well as the lyrics of the Elizabethans.
Great Ideas french revolution 1789 -- 1794 had a huge impact on English philosophical and social thought. Correspondence societies were created in the country, which published mass literature in the form of leaflets and brochures. However, they were soon dispersed and many of their members were arrested. William Godwin (1756 -- 1836), who believed in reason and philanthropy, in his treatise “Discourse on Political Justice” (1793) called for the destruction of private property and at the same time separated man from society. In the novel “Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams” (1794), Godwin to a certain extent moved away from his idea of human asociality, showing the tragic loneliness of his hero. The farmer's son Caleb, who served the Falkland aristocrat, seeks his conviction for the murder of the landowner Tyrrell and for sending two innocent people to the gallows, attributing his crime to them. However, Falkland's death shook Caleb's conviction in the legitimacy of his decisive actions. The plot intrigue developed according to the laws of the “Gothic” novel, but the sharp denunciation of class inequality and feudal remnants imbued it with social content and made it one of the predecessors of the realistic novel of the 19th century.
ChapterII"English Writers of the Enlightenment"
2.1 Jonathan Swift
Swift began his creative activity at the turn of two centuries, when the extremely diverse experience of English literature of the 17th century. began to be rethought in the light of emerging educational ideas. Swift was a contemporary and himself partly belonged to the great social movement called the Enlightenment.
Under the influence of the essayist Temple, the foundations of Swift's worldview were formed. In philosophical and religious matters, he shared the skepticism of Montaigne in the Anglican interpretation, which emphasized the weakness, limitations and deceitfulness of the human mind; his ethical teaching was reduced to Anglican rationalism with the requirement of strict ordering of feelings, their subordination to common sense. His historical ideas were based on the idea of historical variability.
Swift's journalistic activities in defense of Ireland were accompanied by a creative upsurge, which resulted in the creation of Gulliver's Travels (1721-1725). This work is the highest achievement of the author, prepared by all his previous activities. "Gulliver's Travels" is one of the most difficult, cruel and painful books of humanity. One might even say one of the most controversial books. In the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels, Swift seems to express his hatred of humanity. To agree that this is the only conclusion from his book means to put him in the camp of the enemies of humanism and progress.
Swift's book is connected with his modernity in many ways. It is teeming with hints about the topic of the day. In each of the parts of Gulliver's Travels, no matter how far away the action takes place, England is directly or indirectly reflected in front of us, English affairs are resolved by analogy or contrast. But the strength of Swift's satire lies in the fact that specific facts, characters and situations acquire a universal meaning and turn out to be valid for all times and peoples.
To understand this, we must consider Swift's book in the atmosphere of the time that gave birth to it. Writers of the 17th century could not show humanity the path it should follow. They did not know such a path and did not believe in its existence, therefore they are only capable of fantastic constructions. This direction and the pessimistic spirit of Swift's satire were a direct legacy of the 17th century.
The main theme of Gulliver's Travels is the variability of the external appearance of the natural and human world, represented by the fantastic and fairy-tale environment into which Gulliver finds himself during his wanderings. The changing appearance of fantasy countries emphasizes, in accordance with Swift's plan, the immutability of the inner essence of morals and customs, which is expressed by the same circle of ridiculed vices. Introducing fairy tale motifs in the narrative in their own artistic function, Swift does not limit herself to it, but expands its significance through parody, on the basis of which the satirical grotesque is built. Parody always presupposes a moment of imitation of a previously known model and thereby involves its source in the sphere of action. The double artistic function of fiction - entertainment and grotesque parody - is developed by Swift in line with ancient and humanistic tradition through plot parallels, which constitute a special layer of sources for Gulliver's Travels. In keeping with this tradition, the plot is grouped around the outline of a fictional journey. As for Gulliver, his image is based on English prose of the 17th century, in which the narratives of travelers from the era of great geographical discoveries are widely represented. Swift borrowed an adventurous flavor from descriptions of sea voyages, which gave the work the illusion of visible reality. This illusion is also increased because in the external appearance between the Lilliputians and giants, on the one hand, and Gulliver himself and his world, on the other hand, there is an exact ratio of greatness. The quantitative relationships are supported by the qualitative differences that Swift establishes between the mental and moral level of Gulliver, his consciousness and, accordingly, the consciousness of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnasians, Yahoos and Houyhnhnms. The angle from which Gulliver sees the next country of his wanderings is precisely established in advance: it is determined by how much its inhabitants are higher or lower than Gulliver in mental or moral terms. The illusion of verisimilitude serves as a camouflage for the author’s irony, imperceptibly putting masks on Gulliver, depending on the objectives of the satire. A fairy-tale plot, combined with a believable adventure flavor of a sea voyage, forms the constructive basis of Gulliver's Travels. This also includes an autobiographical element - family stories and Swift's own impressions of an unusual adventure in his early childhood (at the age of one he was secretly taken by his nanny from Ireland to England and lived there for almost three years). This is the superficial layer of the narrative that allowed Gulliver's Travels to become a reference book for children's reading. However, the plot lines of the plot, being an allegory of generalized satire, combine many semantic elements intended exclusively for an adult reader - allusions, puns, parodies - into a single composition representing Swift’s laughter in the widest range - from jokes to “severe indignation.”
The disclosure of the most important social contradictions in the novel is carried out in a generalized image of the state that permeates all four parts of the work. England and, more broadly, Europe appears before us in several dimensions, on different planes. Thus, the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput, the ugly inhabitants of Laputa and the disgusting Yahoos from the country of the Houyhnhnms are fantastically and satirically transformed Europeans, the embodiment of the incurable vices of society. Matching and playing creatures different sizes gives the author the opportunity to show a person from an unusual point of view and reveal new sides of his nature. If you look at a person through the eyes of Lilliputians, he will seem huge, if through the eyes of giants, he will seem small. It all depends on the point of view. Everything that claims absoluteness is compared with the insignificant and small. However, despite the small size of the Lilliputians, they have their own cities, morals, customs, state, emperor, court, and ministers. And, what is especially important, they had ancient wise institutions, which were gradually replaced by modern mores. Swift uses a reified metaphor to illustrate the servility and dexterity required to make a career in the Lilliputian court. From childhood you need to train yourself to dance on a tightrope. You must show your dexterity in jumping over the stick held by the emperor or crawling under it. The assertion of power and greatness sounds comical from the lips of the Lilliputians and suggests the relativity of all power. The struggle between the two parties existing at court - the party of high heels and low heels - serves to divert people's attention from pressing issues of life. The party struggle is complemented by the image religious strife. They are shown in the form of a struggle between blunt ends and pointed ends. Because of which end to break the egg, fanatics go to their death. Swift speaks here against religious fanaticism and religious prejudices.
The intrigue that began against Gulliver is the first excursion into the field of human nature as it manifests itself in the sphere of politics. Gulliver not only protected the state from enemy invasion, but also saved the palace from fire, which the Lilliputians could not understand and appreciate. For inexplicable reasons, hatred towards Gulliver grows and something terrible is brewing behind his back. But if Gulliver's enemies propose to kill him, then his friend suggests a humane measure - gouge out his eyes. He believes that this will satisfy justice and delight the whole world with his gentleness.
Swift's irony here exposes the wretchedness of the good deeds that a friend is capable of who does not break with the vile logic of the prevailing order. The troublesome bustle of intrigue takes on the character of an empty and insignificant game among the Lilliputians. Lilliputians are vile, but they short stature symbolizes the pettiness and insignificance of their affairs - human affairs in general.
In the second part of the novel - the journey to Brobdingnag - everything turns the other way. The inhabitants of the country are giants. Swift continues to play up the size difference. Gulliver finds himself in the position of a Lilliputian. He himself looks like an insignificant creature, an animal, an insect. On the other hand, Gulliver's small stature and the correspondingly different focus of his eyes give him the opportunity to see what big people do not see, for example, the unattractive sides of the human body up close.
The giants are shown in two ways. These are creatures of mighty proportions, grossly material beings, not ennobled by spirituality. Their great growth is combined with mental limitations, unpretentiousness and rudeness. But this does not exhaust the characteristics of giants. The king and queen are big people, big not only physically, but also morally and intellectually.
The theme of England is introduced here differently than in the first part. The central place is occupied by Gulliver's conversations with the king. Gulliver appears as an average Englishman, with all his prejudices and unconscious cruelty. He wants to elevate his fatherland, portrays the political system as ideal, highlights everything that, in his opinion, can decorate this state. In response to this, the king, a man endowed with natural common sense, remarked how insignificant human greatness is if such tiny insects can strive for it. Swift expressed this idea when comparing Lilliputians with Gulliver, and he repeats it when comparing Gulliver with giants. The sober, sensible character of the king of the giants seems very attractive to Swift. Swift also has a positive assessment of the social system of giants. Politics is not elevated to the level of a science among them. The King of the Giants is an opponent of state secrets, intrigue and sophistication. He believes that a man who grows one grain is worth more than all politicians.
The third part of the book philosophically treats the issue of the relationship between science and life. Swift's art lies in the fact that he can express the most abstract and abstract things concretely and clearly. The island of Laputa soars in the skies. It is inhabited by noble people and representatives of the aristocracy. These people are immersed in deep thoughts. Everything here is subordinated to science, abstract and speculative. The island is not just populated by scientists. He is a miracle of science that is divorced from the people. Science is the property of the upper classes. The capital of the state itself and most of the villages are located on the land where the subjects live. When the inhabitants of one city rebelled, the flying island suppressed the rebellion. The miracle of science is being used against the people. All this is not just Swift's invention. He expressed in a witty and visual form the real contradiction of the old society - the separation of the people from culture and science. The inhabitants of the island of Laputa retreated into abstract spheres and were indifferent to real life, where ignorance and poverty flourished. On earth, the Academy of Searchlights was created, which is a society of half-knowledgeable people trying to make humanity happy with their naive discoveries. They demonstrate an inexhaustible supply of stupidity. The spotlights want to change everything just for the sake of changing it. None of their projects have been completed. They destroyed the old, but did not create the new. Therefore, the country is in desolation and ruins. Swift develops a very profound thought here. He ridicules people obsessed with the mania to change everything, a blind adherence to the new and the desire to destroy the old at any cost, people who stop halfway and do not complete their undertakings, who are busy with meaningless projects that do not arise from the demands of life and to that absolutely impracticable. It is necessary to redo what is really bad, what life requires, and redo it based on real grounds and real opportunities. Among the projectors there are people who strive to improve society and correct its vices, for example, to find smart ministers, to end the discord between parties. Swift speaks about this with undisguised irony and views these attempts as equally hopeless and impracticable projects.
The third part also treats the question of the development of mankind - its historical and biological development, about the movement of history, about life and death. Getting to the island of Globdobdrib - the island of sorcerers and wizards, the entire history of mankind passes before Gulliver. This is where Swift's historical concept comes into play. He has deep respect for antiquity and its heroes. This respect develops into a kind of classicism. Swift needs a comparison of ancient and modern history in order to show the degradation and decline of humanity. Oppression, bribery, perfidy, betrayal - this is what accompanied the birth of a new civilized society. The concept of human development that Swift sets out emphasizes, first of all, the contradictions of this development, the final decline of the human race. It opposes the optimistic concept of the Enlightenment, depicting historical process like the victory of light over darkness.
The third part of the novel ends with a visit to eastern countries. The absurdity and cruelty of court life appears in it in especially frank forms. A special group of people in this country are the Struldbrugs, or immortals. The description of these people seems to echo resurrection of the dead, which took place on the island of sorcerers and wizards. Longevity is every person's dream. Gulliver was delighted with this idea. He believes that immortal life can give a person experience and wisdom that the wealth of life experience that an immortal will accumulate will prevent the decline and degeneration of humanity. But everything happens the other way around.
A person cannot hope for eternal youth. And the Struhlbrugs turn out to be eternal old men. They are deprived of natural feelings and have difficulty understanding the language of the new generation. Greedy and greedy, they want to seize power, and since they are not capable of governing, they can only lead the state to destruction. This chapter tells about the biological and social degradation of man and the powerlessness of science to find recipes for his salvation.
Gulliver's Travels captures a period when bourgeois relations were thoroughly strengthened in all spheres of public life, and Swift's novel conveys their relative immobility through its construction. The circumstances in this satirical work have only one direction of development, expressed in the expansion and deepening of the sphere of evil. Life, all living things, seem to be devoid of movement: under the deep cover of this inviolability, the tragedy of the lonely Gulliver grows. But on their own social relations, the structure of society is deathly frozen. It is no coincidence that during the years of his wanderings Gulliver did not notice any changes for the better in his native country. Time stopped. Or, to be more precise: time moves in a direction hostile to man. A tragic time that did not portend genuine and tangible progress. Therefore, Swift's satire is tragic in its life basis and in its artistic essence.
Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels is on the main highway of literary development. Its outstanding significance is determined primarily by the formulation and solution of the most complex and important socio-philosophical problems that worried European society in the 18th century, as well as in later times. The role of Swift's satire is so great that not only Swift's contemporaries W. Gay and J. Arbuthnot, but also the major English writers of other generations, in one way or another, took the lessons of the author of Gulliver's Travels and were influenced by him.
2.2 Daniel Defoe
The harsh school of life that Defoe went through, his vigorous, varied activities, and his rich journalistic experience prepared the birth of Defoe the novelist. The writer was 59 years old when he published his first and most remarkable novel, which has glorified his name for centuries. It was “Life and Strange” amazing Adventures Robinson Crusoe, sailor from York, described by himself" (1719).
Defoe's book appeared on the crest of a powerful wave of travel literature that swept England at that time - true and fictional accounts of circumnavigations, memoirs, diaries, travel notes of successful merchants and famous sailors. However, no matter how diverse and numerous the sources of Robinson Crusoe were, both in form and content the novel was a deeply innovative phenomenon. Having creatively assimilated the experience of his predecessors and relying on his own journalistic experience, Defoe created an original work of art that organically combined an adventurous beginning with imaginary documentation, the traditions of the memoir genre with the features of a philosophical parable.
The idea for “Robinson Crusoe” was suggested to Defoe by a real incident: in 1704, the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, having quarreled with the captain of the ship, landed on an unfamiliar shore with a small supply of provisions and weapons and for more than four years led a hermit’s life on the island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean until he was picked up by a passing ship under the command of Woods Rogers. Defoe could get acquainted with the history of Selkirk from Rogers' book “Sailing Around the World” (1712) and from Steele's essay in the magazine “The Englishman” (1713).
This story served as the writer’s starting point for a detailed artistic narrative, imbued with the poetry of travel and adventure and at the same time containing a deep social and philosophical meaning. Having forced his hero to live far from civilization for twenty-eight years, Defoe carried out an educational experiment on “ human nature”, subjected it to a kind of test, trying to understand for himself and his readers the decisive factors for human survival in this emergency situation.
In the island episode of the novel, this heroic chronicle of Robinson’s “works and days,” the author poeticized the history of man’s centuries-old struggle for existence, glorified the indestructible power of his thought, cognizing and conquering nature, and sang the elements of free creative labor. Labor and hard work of thought help the hero not only survive, but also not go wild, not fall into madness, and maintain a human appearance. It is labor and the creative activity of the mind that, according to the writer, constitute the basis for the transformation of the world and the spiritual elevation of man.
Defoe embodied in the novel a typically enlightening concept of the history of human society. The life of his hero on the island in a generalized, schematic form repeats the path of humanity from barbarism to civilization: at first Robinson is a hunter and fisherman, then a cattle breeder, farmer, artisan, slave owner. Later, with the appearance of other people on the island, he becomes the founder of a colony organized in the spirit of Locke’s “social contract”.
At the same time, it is important to emphasize that Defoe’s hero, from the very beginning of his stay on the island, is not a “natural” but a civilized person, not the starting point of history, but a product of long historical development, an individual only temporarily placed in a “natural state”: he armed with the labor skills and experience of his people and successfully uses the equipment, tools and other material assets found on the wrecked ship. By the will of circumstances, cut off from society, Robinson never for a moment ceases to feel like a part of it, remains a social being and considers his loneliness as the most difficult? of the trials that befell him. Unlike Rousseau and the Rousseauists (who built their ideal of the “natural man” not without an eye on the “island Robinsonade”) Defoe never doubted the advantages of civilization over the primitive state and was a staunch supporter of material and technical progress.
Robinson is a hard worker, but at the same time he is also a “model English merchant.” His whole way of thinking is characteristic of the British bourgeoisie of the early 18th century. He does not disdain either plantation farming or the slave trade and is ready to go to the ends of the world, driven not so much by the restless spirit of quest as by the thirst for enrichment. He is thrifty and practical, diligently accumulating material values. The possessive streak is also evident in the hero’s attitude towards nature: he describes the exotically beautiful corner of the earth into which fate has thrown him as a zealous owner, compiling a register of his property.
Robinson even builds his relationship with God according to the principle business contract, in which “good” and “evil,” like profit and loss items, balance each other with accounting precision. As befits a bourgeois Puritan, Defoe’s hero willingly turns to the Bible, and in difficult moments appeals to God. However, in general his religiosity is very moderate. The practical sensationalist of the Lockean school, accustomed to relying on experience and common sense in everything, constantly prevails in him over the puritan mystic who trusts in the goodness of Providence.
Interesting in the novel are Robinson’s conversations with Friday about religion: “natural man” Friday, anticipating Voltaire’s “The Simple-minded,” with his naive questions easily baffles Robinson, who intends to convert him to Christianity.
Revealing in detail in the novel the relationship between Robinson and Friday, whom he saved from cannibals, Defoe seeks to emphasize the noble civilizing mission of the English bourgeoisie. In his portrayal, Robinson, although he turns the young savage into a humble servant, nevertheless treats him gently and humanely, introduces him to the benefits of spiritual and material culture and finds in him a grateful and capable student. Clearly idealizing the image of Robinson, the author seems to be teaching a lesson to European colonialists and slave traders, teaching them to treat the natives humanely, and condemning the barbaric methods of conquering wild tribes.
Defoe's hero unexpectedly turns out to be a student of the educational philosophy of the 18th century: he is a cosmopolitan and gives the Spaniards equal rights with the British in his colony, he professes religious tolerance, respects human dignity even among the “savages” and is himself filled with a proud consciousness of personal superiority over all the autocrats of the earth. “Robinson Crusoe” is connected in many ways with the philosophical ideas of John Locke: in fact, the entire “island Robinsonade” and the history of Robinson’s colony in the novel sound like a fictional adaptation of Locke’s treatises on government. The very theme of an island out of contact with society had already been used by Locke in his philosophical works two decades before Defoe.
Defoe is also close to Locke in educational ideas about the role of labor in the history of the human race and the formation of an individual personality. It was not for nothing that Rousseau called Defoe’s novel “the most successful treatise on natural education” and gave it the most place of honor in his library young hero(“Emil, or On Education”, 1762). The simple story of how Robinson built his hut, how he fired the first jug, how he grew bread and tamed goats, how he built and launched a boat, continues to excite the imagination of readers of all ages for almost three centuries. To this day it has not lost its enormous educational significance for children and youth.
The exceptionality of the situation in which Defoe placed his hero, removing him from the world of money and placing him in the world of work, allowed the author to most clearly highlight in Robinson’s character those qualities that are manifested in his free from commercial calculations, universal in its essence, creative, constructive. activities. The pathos of knowledge and conquest of nature, the triumph of free human labor, reason, energy and the will to live give Defoe’s book extraordinary freshness, poetry and persuasiveness, constitute the secret of its charm and the guarantee of its immortality.
The extraordinary success of the novel prompted the author to immediately begin its continuation. This is how “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” (1719) appeared, and then “The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, with His Vision of the Angelic World” (1720). Both in terms of ideological content and artistic execution, both parts are noticeably inferior to the first. The second book describes the hero's journey to India, China and Siberia. He visits his island, where he completes the creation of an “ideal” colony. Robinson appears in this part as “an exemplary English merchant.” Didactic “Serious Reflections” - typical for literature of the 17th - 18th centuries. an attempt to explain the deep, allegorical content of the previous parts. Robinson sets out in detail here his ethical, religious, philosophical and literary views.
Defoe's works that followed "Robinson Crusoe" are extremely diverse in their genre nature: there are also adventure novels that continue the traditions of the picaresque genre - "Moll Flanders" (1722), "Colonel Jack" (1722), "Roxana" (1724), and the sea adventure novel “Captain Singleton” (1720), and the diary novel “Diary of the Plague Year” (1722), and, finally, novels-memoirs, which are a distant prototype historical novel-- “Memoirs of a Cavalier” (1720), “Memoirs of an English Officer, Captain George Carleton” (1728).
All of Defoe's novels are written in the form of memoirs, diaries or autobiographies. The extraordinary gift of transformation allows the writer to speak on behalf of a thief, a prostitute, a pirate. Almost all of his heroes are criminals, almost all are orphans and foundlings who do not remember their kinship. Captain Singleton, the head of a pirate gang, was kidnapped as a child, Moll Flanders was born in Newgate prison and wanders throughout all the brothels and slums of England, “Colonel” Jack, a homeless boy, spends the night in glass furnaces, begins to steal for a piece of bread, and at the end of the novel becomes a planter -slave owner. The heroes are waging a desperate struggle for existence, not disdaining any means. Defoe traces their life path from infancy to old age, shows them in collisions with a cruel world, reveals the influence of the environment on their characters and destinies, and comes to the conclusion that society is the true culprit of their crimes.
Of particular interest among Defoe’s crime stories is the novel “The Joys and Sorrows of the Famous Moll Flanders, who was born in Newgate Prison and during the sixty years of her varied life (not counting childhood) was a kept woman for twelve years, married five times (of which once to her brother), a thief for twelve years, an exile in Virginia for eight years; but in the end she became rich, began to live honestly and died in repentance. Written from her own notes." The reader is presented with a life full of ups and downs, successes and failures. The daughter of a thief, who grew up among criminals, raised at the expense of the parish, Moll from an early age endured many sorrows and humiliations. Beautiful, smart, energetic, she stubbornly strives to “get out among the people.” The poverty and callousness of those around them become main reason her moral decline and ultimately turn her into a predator who enthusiastically enters into the struggle of all against all. Gorky gave a remarkable description of the realistic image of Moll in his lectures on the history of Russian literature: “Moll Flanders is depicted as a drunk, angry, rude person, who does not believe in anything, deceitful, cunning, but at the same time you clearly see in her all the feelings of a citizen free country... you see that before you is a person who knows her worth, a person who perfectly understands the degree of her personal guilt and the guilt of society, which forced her to live by selling her body - in a word, the author does not forget for a minute that Before him is a victim of an ugly social system, he condemns her for the fact that Moll did not resist stubbornly enough, but he condemns society even more sharply for this victory over a woman.”
Defoe’s novel “Roxana” is also dedicated to the fate of a lonely woman making her way to the top. Defoe's heroine is an adventurer and courtesan, moves in various social circles, travels around Europe, shines in Paris under Louis XIV and in London salons during the Restoration. At a time when Roxana, having destroyed, as it seems to her, all traces of her dark past, is preparing to retire and live the rest of her days in contentment, she unexpectedly meets her own daughter, once abandoned by her. Enmity flares up between them, and the mother, for the sake of profit, becomes an unspoken accomplice in the murder of her daughter. In terms of drama and psychological persuasiveness, “Roxana” significantly surpasses the writer’s previous works.
Defoe entered the history of literature as the creator of the first remarkable examples of epic privacy, as the founder of the educational realistic novel. He was the first to see the hero of his time in the merchant and vagabond, the glorious “sailor from York”, to reveal within the framework of a separate destiny the richness and diversity of real life, to give a deeply true and impressive portrait of a century obsessed with the spirit of entrepreneurship and practical life. Defoe wrote for the widest audience and was truly a people's writer, not only in the content, but also in the form of his works. The lively and spontaneous manner of narration, the simple and artless language of Defoe’s novels were close and understandable to millions of readers. Defoe's masterpiece "Robinson Crusoe" by the end of the 18th century in England alone went through about 700 editions and was translated into almost all European languages. The name Defoe has become an integral part of the history of world democratic culture.
Conclusion
The main artistic language of the Enlightenment was classicism, inherited from the 17th century. This style corresponded to the rationalistic nature of Enlightenment thinking and its high moral principles. Defending the democratic direction of art, enlighteners introduced a new hero into literature, the commoner, as positive image, they sang and glorified his work, his morality, they depicted his suffering sympathetically and soulfully. They glorified the power of the human mind and called upon the ideology and state institutions of feudalism to be judged by reason. Everything that did not correspond to the principle of rationality, that did not contribute to the well-being of the people, was condemned by them to destruction. The study achieved the goal set at the beginning of the work. The biographies of the authors, their creative paths and the features of their most famous novels - "Gulliver's Travels" and "Robinson Crusoe" - were studied. As it turned out, Robinson's success exceeded Defoe's expectations. He turned out to be the creator of the English realistic novel, the creator of a new literary genre, which flourished so magnificently during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Gulliver's Travels" is a satirical philosophical and political novel at the early stage of the development of educational literature in England, when the genre of the novel is in the process of formation. A specific feature of the novel is the presence in it of a pronounced journalistic principle, bringing it closer to a pamphlet.
Swift had a huge influence on later English realists and educators. Swiftian motifs run through the entire work of Fielding and Smollett. Subsequently, Swift's genre of generalized satire, based on the realistic use of fantasy, found brilliant successors in the person Saltykov-Shchedrin and Anatoly France.
Bibliography
1. Alenko E.M., Vasilyeva T.N. History of foreign literature of the 18th century, M., “Higher School, Academy”, 2001.
2. Artamanov S.D. History of foreign literature of the 17th - 18th centuries, M., “Enlightenment”, 1978.
3. Swift J. Gulliver's Travels. M., 1972.
4. Urnov D.M. Robinson and Gulliver. The fate of two literary heroes. M., 1973.
5. http://www.peoples.ru/
6. http://studentguide.ru/
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course work, added 06/25/2004
Literature of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Classicism and Baroque in Western European literature XVII century. Literature of the Enlightenment. Romanticism and realism in foreign literature of the 19th century. Modern foreign literature(from 1945 to present).
training manual, added 06/20/2009
Features of national schools of Enlightenment in France, England and Germany. Description of the process of human moral rebirth in D. Defoe's fictional novel "Robinson Crusoe". Consideration of the values and ideas of enlightenment in the work of F. Goya "Caprichos".
abstract, added 10/20/2011
Culture Italian Renaissance. Northern Renaissance. Renaissance, Titans of the Renaissance. European literature of the Enlightenment. German romanticism. Realism and romanticism in France and England.
report, added 03/21/2007
The main literary movements of the Enlightenment and the leading genres of English educational literature. The formation of the creative path of Robert Burns and the themes of his works. Nationality and the unique character of pre-romanticism in the author’s works.
course work, added 03/19/2012
Identification of changes in the life of a woman in the era of Peter I using the example of analysis of works of literature. Study of the story "About Peter and Fevronia" as a source ancient Russian literature and the sermons of Feofan Prokopovich as an example of literature of the Petrine era.
course work, added 08/28/2011
Origins, features and significance of the European Enlightenment, features of the literature of this era. Analysis of the meaning of the work "Faust" in world literature and an attempt to consider it as a mirror of the educational artistic thought and the pinnacle of world literature.
course work, added 04/24/2009
Circumstances and prerequisites for the beginning of the Sturmer movement in Germany in the 18th century, the influence of Rousseau’s work on them. The main idea of Sturm and Drang literature and its prominent representatives. Herder's activity and its influence on young German poets of that era.
test, added 07/24/2009
Daniel Defoe - English writer, journalist, businessman. Journalistic work of Daniel Defoe. The poetics of the pamphlets “Pureblood Englishman”, “Experience on Projects”, “The Shortest Way to Deal with Dissenters”, reflection in them of pressing problems in society.
Briefly:
Enlightenment is an ideological movement in art XVIII c., it was anti-feudal in nature and was associated with the development of bourgeois socio-economic relations.
Enlighteners were those who advocated the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the people. Main goal They saw their creativity in the education of society, in the improvement of morals, the current state of which seemed unreasonable and unnatural to them. The ideal of the enlighteners became the so-called “natural man”, i.e. one who is free from class prejudices and vices. Enlightenment figures believed that society should develop through the gradual and consistent improvement of the human mind, which is why the era itself was often called the “age of reason.” They saw the cause of human and social disasters in ignorance, religious fanaticism and obscurantism. Many of them were materialists and atheists.
The works of the Enlightenment are philosophical and sometimes more reminiscent of treatises. To the genre forms that already existed in literature, they added the realistic educational novel, philosophical story, moral and political drama, bourgeois drama, grotesque-comedy pamphlet. The positive hero in works of enlightenment was a commoner, hardworking, honest, and sensible. But representatives of the privileged classes were portrayed impartially (like Skotinin and the Prostakovs in D. Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor”). Among the figures European Enlightenment were D. Defoe, D. Swift, S. Richardson, D. Diderot, M.F. Voltaire, G. E. Lessing, I. V. Goethe, F. Schiller and others. In Russian literature, enlightenment is represented by educational classicism (fables by I. Krylov, odes by M. Lomonosov, lyrics by G. Derzhavin, plays by D. Fonvizin), educational realism (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by A. Radishchev), sentimentalism - “Poor Liza” by N. Karamzin.
Source: Student's Handbook: grades 5-11. - M.: AST-PRESS, 2000
More details:
The Renaissance era in the 17th century was replaced by the Enlightenment era, which inherited the ideas of humanism and supplemented them with the ideas of rationalism. The peculiarity of the development of Western European literature of the 18th century is that at this time the transition from the literature of the Middle Ages, which was actively carried out during the Renaissance, was completed. Writers of the 18th century continued to develop ideas about the importance of the human personality, the value of human life and the significance of human activity for society.
The nature of the literature of this period was determined by two key factors in public life - religion and science. Firstly, literature experienced the consequences of the religious and socio-political movement that swept across Europe - the Reformation of the Catholic Church and the faiths that arose on its basis, such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism and others. Secondly, these processes were accompanied by acute attention in modern society to reason, which was proclaimed equal in social status to faith. Thus, the Age of Enlightenment began in Europe as a natural consequence of the Renaissance and Reformation.
These were the religious, cultural and socio-political origins that determined the content of European literature of the 18th century. In English literature, the creative potential of man, his reason and faith, was shown in his novel “Robinson Crusoe” (1719) by the writer Daniel Defoe. And the foundations for a critical attitude towards society were laid by satirist Jonathan Swift in his philosophical fantasy novel Gulliver's Travels (1726).
The center of the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century was France; it was here that the most powerful movement of enlightenment writers was observed. The expression “French encyclopedists” is widely known, that is, figures of art and literature who strived for comprehensive knowledge. The leader of the French Enlightenment was a writer, philosopher, public figure Voltaire. However, literature as a process was broader than the ideas of the Enlightenment, understood as rationalism, an orientation towards “dry”, practical reason. The brightest writer XVIII century in France - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - contrasted the rational view of the world with naturalness and feeling, and called for a return to the mores of that time, when man had not yet been corrupted by civilization. Rousseau's teaching was called "Rousseauism", and it outlined the origins of a new literary movement - sentimentalism. All of Europe turned to Rousseauian ideas, including Russian writers and poets, especially Zhukovsky and the young Pushkin.
In the last third of the 18th century, the leading role in European literature was played by German literature, which was formed in the mid-1770s under the influence of the ideas of the Sturm und Drang movement. These ideas were expressed in the works of Goethe and Schiller, who managed to combine in their works educational ideas, the best achievements of classicism, gentleness, nobility in the feelings of sentimentalism, the impetuosity of the personality of early romanticism, as well as features of the realism of the future literature of the 19th century century.
The Age of Enlightenment call the period of the late 17th and entire 18th centuries in Europe, when the scientific revolution, which changed humanity’s view of the structure of nature. The educational movement arose in Europe at a time when it became obvious crisisfrom the feudal system. Social thought is on the rise, and this leads to the emergence of a new generation of writers and thinkers who are trying to comprehend the mistakes of history and develop a new optimal formula for human existence.
The beginning of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe can be considered the emergence of labor John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding(1691), which subsequently made it possible to call the 18th century the “age of reason.” Locke argued that all people have the inclinations for various forms of activity, and this led to the denial of any class privileges. If there are no “innate ideas,” then there are no people.” blue bloods”, which claim special rights and benefits. Enlightenment educators have a new type of hero - an active, self-confident person.
The concepts that became fundamental to the writers of the Enlightenment Mind and Nature. These concepts were not new - they were present in the ethics and aesthetics of previous centuries. However, the enlighteners gave them new meaning, made them the main ones both in condemning the past and in affirming the ideal of the future. The past was in most cases condemned as unreasonable. The future was vigorously asserted, as the enlighteners believed that through education, persuasion and continuous reforms it was possible to create a “kingdom of reason.”
Locke, “Thoughts on Education”: “The educator must teach the pupil to understand people... to tear off the masks imposed on them by profession and pretense, to discern what is genuine, which lies in the depths under such an appearance.”
The so-called “laws of nature” were also discussed. Locke wrote: “The state of nature is a state of freedom, it is governed by the laws of nature, which everyone is obliged to obey.”
Thus, a new type of hero appears in literature - "natural man", who was brought up in the bosom of nature and according to its fair laws and is contrasted with a man of noble origin with his perverted ideas about himself and his rights.
Genres
In the literature of the Enlightenment, the former rigid boundaries between philosophical, journalistic and actual artistic genres. This is especially noticeable in the essay genre, which became most widespread in the literature of the early Enlightenment (French essai - attempt, test, essay). Intelligible, relaxed and flexible, this genre made it possible to quickly respond to events. In addition, this genre often bordered on a critical article, a journalistic pamphlet, or an educational novel. The importance of memoirs (Voltaire, Beaumarchais, Goldoni, Gozzi) and epistolary genre(the form of an open letter often took the form of extended speeches on a wide variety of issues of social, political and artistic life) Personal correspondence of prominent figures of the Enlightenment (Persian Letters by Montesquieu) also becomes available to readers. Another documentary genre is gaining popularity - travel or travel writing, which gives wide scope for pictures of social life and customs, and for deep socio-political generalizations. For example, J. Smollett in “Travels in France and Italy” foresaw the revolution in France 20 years in advance.
The flexibility and fluidity of storytelling manifests itself in a variety of forms. Author's digressions, dedications, inserted short stories, letters and even sermons are introduced into the texts. Often jokes and parodies replaced a learned treatise (G. Fielding “The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of the Great Boy Thumb”). Thus, in the educational literature of the 18th century, what is first of all striking is its thematic richness and genre diversity. Voltaire: “All genres are good, except the boring” - this statement seems to emphasize the rejection of any normativity, the reluctance to give preference to one genre. Yet the genres developed unevenly.
The 18th century is predominantly a century of prose, so the novel, which combines high ethical pathos with the skill of depicting the social life of different strata of modern society, acquires great importance in literature. In addition, the 18th century is distinguished by the variety of types of novels:
1. romance in letters
(Richardson)
2. education novel
(Goethe)
3. philosophical novel
The theater was the platform for enlighteners. Along with classic tragedy, the 18th century discovered bourgeois drama
- a new genre that reflected the process of democratization of the theater. Reached a special peak comedy
. In the plays, the audience was attracted and excited by the image of the hero - the accuser, the bearer of the educational program. For example, Karl Moor "The Robbers". This is one of the features of the literature of the Enlightenment - it carries a high moral ideal, most often embodied in the image of a positive hero (didactism - from Greek didaktikos - teaching).
The spirit of denial and criticism of everything that is obsolete naturally led to the rise of satire. Satire penetrates all genres and puts forward world-class masters (Swift, Voltaire).
Poetry was represented very modestly in the Age of Enlightenment. Probably, the dominance of rationalism hampered the development of lyrical creativity. Most of educators had a negative attitude towards folklore. Folk songs they perceived them as “barbaric sounds”; they seemed primitive to them, not meeting the requirements of reason. Only in late XVIII centuries, poets appeared who entered world literature (Burns, Schiller, Goethe).
Directions
In the literature and art of the Enlightenment, there are different artistic movements. Some of them existed in previous centuries, while others became a merit of the 18th century:
1) baroque
;
2) classicism
;
3) educational realism
– the heyday of this trend dates back to the mature Enlightenment. Enlightenment realism, unlike the critical realism of the 19th century, strives for the ideal, that is, it reflects not so much the real as the desired reality, therefore the hero of Enlightenment literature lives not only according to the laws of society, but also according to the laws of Reason and Nature.
4) rococo
(French rococo - “small pebbles”, “shells”) - writers are interested in the private, intimate life of a person, his psychology and his weaknesses. Writers depict life as a pursuit of fleeting pleasure (hedonism), as a gallant game of “love and chance” and as a fleeting holiday ruled by Bacchus (wine) and Venus (love). However, everyone understood that these joys were fleeting and fleeting. This literature is intended for a narrow circle of readers (visitors of aristocratic salons) and is characterized by small works (in poetry - sonnet, madrigal, rondo, ballad, epigram; in prose - heroic-comic poem, fairy tale, love story and erotic novella). The artistic language of the works is light, elegant and relaxed, and the tone of the narrative is witty and ironic (Prevost, Guys).
5) sentimentalism
;
6) pre-romanticism
- arose in England at the end of the 18th century and criticized the main ideas of the Enlightenment. Character traits:
a) dispute with the Middle Ages;
b) connection with folklore;
c) a combination of the terrible and the fantastic - a “Gothic novel.” Representatives: T. Chatterton, J. McPherson, H. Walpole
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