Images of Becky Sharp and Emilia Sedley and their role in the novel by W. Thackeray "Vanity Fair". Contents

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A short literary encyclopedia in 9 volumes. Volume 7. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1972 --1008 p.

5.Mikhalskaya N. Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray. / Introductory article to the book by W. Thackeray "Vanity Fair". - M .: Fiction, 1983 .-- 734 p

Conclusion

Modern literary critics argue that none of Thackeray's later works saw the rise of satirical skill, which rightfully makes Vanity Fair the writer's brightest and most memorable book. To a certain extent, all of Thackeray's later works, one way or another, repeat it. Costumes and decorations change, but the drama of human life, metaphorically defined by Thackeray as a “vanity fair,” remains the same.The English critic Arnold Kettle wrote about the novel: “The breadth of coverage of reality, the brightness of the picture depicted, the vitality of the image of Becky, the richness and brilliance of comic characters and situations - all these advantages originate in the insight with which Thackeray was able to look into the essence of the bourgeois world, and in that the honesty with which he painted it. "Thackeray in Vanity Fair was able to say surprisingly much not only about his era, contemporary English society, but also about life, the moral nature of man, about the movement of time. Social denunciation, satire and philosophy merged into one. In the novel, the story is transferred from a gigantic social platform to the field of human, family-personal relations, in which the moral aspect of phenomena is especially clearly visible. The moral assessments of the writer, in particular, not accepting any manifestations of posturing, falsehood, unnaturalness, will help the attentive reader to develop his own criteria for goodness and beauty. Therefore, in our days, William Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair" has not lost its sharpness in sound. Evaluation of Thackeray's creativity by the leading critics of Russia in the 40-60s, in particular, A.V.

Druzhinin and N.G. Chernyshevsky, was largely due not only to the socio-political situation prevailing in the country at that time, but also to the aesthetic positions of both writers. Russian classics, along with foreign ones, made an invaluable contribution to the enrichment of the novel genre and the formation of classical realism in the 19th century. In their work, the tradition of the Spanish rogue novel, the novel of the high road, and the novel of education were variously refracted. Placed by Thackeray and Gogol on their realistic canvases, the heroes Rebecca Sharp and Chichikova were wonderful examples of the modification of the rogue image, on which the masters of Spanish, French and English prose worked for centuries. Thackeray's path to success with Vanity Fair was long, but he was equally difficult to portray a real person who became a central figure in the new European novel - in Pendennis, and then in Newcomes and The Adventures of Philip.

Over the course of three novels, we watched the fate of Arthur Pendennis - perhaps the closest hero to Thackeray. Thackeray managed to write one of the most successful variations on the theme of the upbringing novel in three parts, thereby supporting the unspoken "format" tendency, which finds typological similarities with the trilogy of I.S. Goncharova.