Literature of the Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxon period Beowulf

Samuel Richardson is considered to be the creator of the family psychological novel. Among his most famous novels are the following ones: "Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded (1740) - this book was written when the author was already 50 years old. The novel was written in the form of letters which were printed one after the other. When the letters began to appear the ladies of the time were excited. They did not need the old stories about far-away princesses: they could read about the feelings of an English girl, Pamela Andrews. It is a simple stop of a good girl who receives the rewards of virtue. As the novel came out in letters (supposed to be from Pamela), the ladies could try to persuade Richardson to let Pamela do what they wanted ("Oh, Mr. Richardson, please, don't let her die" and so on.). This story tells about Pamela who was a maid. Her master wanted to seduce her but she did not yield. As a result, the master fell in love with her and proposed to her. So here is the reward for her virtue. "Clarissa: or the History of a Young Lady" (1747-1748) - Ais novel is Richardson best one This book is often called the first tragic novel. This is a story of a young iady. Clarissa Harlowe, whose severe father wants to marry her against her will. So she decides to elope with her beloved. Lovelace. But then Lovelace betrays her and after all she dies an early death
This novel is almost eight times longer than an ordinary modem novel. But the book was widely read in England and abroad in Richardson's days. Both the novels, "Pamela" and "Clarissa" are written in the epistle form.
Henry Fielding is the father of the English social novel. "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (1749) is considered to be Fielding's best work. This is a social and family novel and gives a broad panorama of the life at that time. It is a combination of the traditional picaresque novel and many innovations (such as the first person narration, etc.). Tom Jones is a boy, found at the house of Mr. Allworthy. He is brought up there with love and kindness. Then he falls in love with the beautiful Sophia, the daughter of Squire Western. He does several other things that Mr. Allworthy does not like and as a result he is driven out of the house. In London Tom has manv various adventures and finally he meets Sophia there. So all ends well.
Laurence Sterne is considered to be the father of the European sentimentahsm. Besides sometimes Steme was a parodist on the novels of other enlightenmenters. "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Gentleman" (1760-1767) – this a very eccentric novel with long or short chapters, chapters written in English, French and Latin, with dots instead of words in the chapters, and with the main character only 5 years old at the end of the novel The book contains many funny personages. The plot of the novel is inconsistent. "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Mr. Yorick" (1768) - this was a novel that introduced some novelty into literature: here Mr. Yorick's feelings and thoughts are dealt with. It was a step towards psychology. And in a way Steme anticipated the literature of the beginning of the 20th century with its modernism and the stream of conscience technique modernists had.
7. Romanticism, its peculiarities. Two generations of English Romanticists. The poetry of G. Byron.
LITERATURE OF THE EARLY 19th CENTURY ROMANTICISM
The Romantic period lasted about thirty years, from the last decade of the 18^th century to the 1830s.
Romanticism in literature was a reaction of different strata of society to the French Revolution and to the Enlightenment associated with it. The people were disappointed with the outcome of the Revolution. The common people did not obtain the liberty, fraternity and equality they had hoped for; the bourgeoisie found that the reality was not what the Enlighteners had promised it to be, although the Revolution had paved the way for capitalist development. Quite naturally, the reactionary feudal class was discontented, because the Revolution had made it much weaker.
The progressive minds of Europe expressed this general discontent, because the influence of the French Revolution was felt all over the world. The new trend in literature (Romanticism) reflected it. The Revolution brought new problems for progressive-minded writers, who were faced with the necessity of finding an answer to such questions as their attitude to the feudal state, to the revolution, to the national liberation movements, to the relations between the individual and society, to the common people, to historical development. The Romantic period in England had its peculiarities.
During the second half of the 18^th century economic and social changes took place in the country. England went through the so-called Industrial Revolution that gave birth to a new class, that of the proletariat. The Industrial Revolution began with the invention of a weaving-machine which could do the work of seventeen people. The weavers that were left without work thought that the machines were to blame for their misery. They began to destroy these machines, or frames as they were called. This frame-breaking movement was called the Luddite movement, because the name of the first man to break a frame was Ned Ludd. The further introduction of machinery in different branches of manufacture left far more people jobless.
It was during those years that the "Correspondence Societies'" were founded in England. Organized in different localities, they united tradesmen of different professions and interests. As a rule, the societies were headed by well-known progressives, who struggled for revolutionary changes and improvements in the social order. The reactionary ruling class of England was, however, decisively against any progressive thought influenced by the French Revolution; as a result the last decade of the 18^th century was subjected to a rule that became known as the "white terror". Progressive-minded people were persecuted and forced into exile as was Thomas Paine (1737—1809), the author of the Rights of Man, who had to flee to France.
The Industrial Revolution in England, as well as the French Revolution, had a great influence on the cultural life of the country. In addition to the problems that their European contemporaries were facing, the English writers of the period had to find answers that arose in their own country, such as the growth of industry, the rise of the working class movement and the disappearance of the peasantry.
Some of these writers were definitely revolutionary: they opposed the existing order, called upon the people to struggle for a better future, shared the people's desire for liberty and objected to colonial oppression. Furthermore, they supported the national liberation wars on the continent against feudal reaction. Such writers were George Gordon Byron (1788—1824) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822).
Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution andits slogan of liberty, fraternity and equality, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned to nature and to the simple problems of life. They tried to avoid the contradictions that were becoming so great in all the spheres of social life with the development of capitalism. They looked back to patriarchal England and refused to accept the progress of industry; they even called on the Government to forbid the building of new factories which, they considered, were the cause of the workers' sufferings. Among these writers were the poets William Wordsworth (1770—1850), Samuel T. Coleridge (1772—1834) and Robert Southey (1774—1843), who formed the "Lake School", so called because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England. They dedicated much of what they wrote to Nature, especially Wordsworth. They showed the life of the common people in the English countryside that was overlooked by their younger revolutionary contemporaries. The "Lake" poets resorted to popular forms of verse that were known and could be understood by all.
One of the first works, published by W. Wordsworth and S. Coleridge in 1798, was a collection of poems under the title of Lyrical Ballads. In the foreword W. Wordsworth wrote that these ballads were written for everybody, in a language that everybody could understand. A. S. Pushkin, who appreciated Wordsworth's poetry, considered this very important. He wrote that the creations of the English poet were full of deep feeling. These feelings, he said, were expressed in the language of the honest common man. The romanticists paid a good deal of attention to the spiritual life of man. This was reflected in an abundance of lyrical verse. The so-called exotic theme came into being, and great attention was devoted to Nature and its elements. Description became very rich in form and many-sided in content. The writers used such means as symbolism, fantasy, grotesque, etc.; legends, tales, songs and ballads also became part of their creative world. A typical romantic hero was, as a rule, a lonely individual, given to meditations and seeking for freedom. The romanticists were talented poets and their contribution to English literature was very important.
GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788—1824)
One of the great poets of England was the romantic revolutionary George Gordon Byron. He was born on January 22, 1788 in London, in a poor, but old aristocratic family. The boy spent his childhood in Scotland, with his mother. At the age of ten he returned to England, as heir to the title of Lord and the family castle of Newstead Abbey. It was situated near Nottingham, close to the famous Sherwood Forest. He went to school to Harrow, then to Cambridge University. When he was twenty-one he became a member of the House of Lords. In 1809 he travelled abroad, visiting Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece and Turkey. He returned home in 1811.In 1812 Byron delivered several speeches in the House of Lords. His first speech was in defence of the Luddites. Later he spoke in defence of the oppressed Irish people. In his speeches he championed the people's cause, and that made the reactionaries hate him. When, after an unhappy marriage in 1815 he and his wife parted, his enemies in high places seized this opportunity and began to persecute him. The great poet was accused of immorality and had to leave his native country. In May 1816 Byron went to Switzerland where he made friends with the poet Percy B. Shelley, his great contemporary. Their friendship was based on the similarity of their political convictions. Both of them hated oppression and stood for the liberty of nations. At the end of 1816 Byron continued his travels and went to Italy, where he lived till 1823. There he became actively engaged in the Carbonari movement against Austrian rule, for the liberation of Italy. The defeat of the Carbonari uprising (1821) was a heavyblow to the great freedom fighter. In the summer of 1823 he went off to Greece to fight for its liberation from Turkish oppression. There, on April 19, 1824 Byron died of a fever. The Greeks, who considered the poet a national hero, buried his heart in their country and declared national mourning for him. His body was brought to England where it was buried near Newstead Abbey. In 1969 the authorities finally allowed his remains to be buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Byron's creative work is usually divided into four periods.
1. The London Period (1812—1816). At the beginning of this period the first two cantos (songs) of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were published. During the years of the London period Byron wrote his famous lyrics Hebrew Melodies, his "oriental" poems (The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos, Lara, and others). He also began to write his political satires, the most outstanding of which is the Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill.
2. The Swiss Period (May-October 1816). During these months Byron wrote the third canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Prisoner of Chilian, his philosophic drama Manfred.
3. The Italian Period (1816—1823) is the most important and mature in his creative work. He wrote the last, fourth canto, of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cain, Beppo. Besides many other works he wrote Don Juan. This is considered to be his most important creation. It is a novel in verse, that was to contain 24 cantos, but death stopped his work and only 16 and half cantos were written. In them he gave a great satirical panorama of the European social life of his time. He came very close to a realistic approach here, and enriched the language of poetry with the everyday language, spoken by the people.
4. The Greek Period (1823—1824). During the short months in Greece Byron wrote little: some lyrical poems, among them On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year, and his Cephalonian Journal in prose. THE CORSAIR
The romanticists set many of their works in oriental surroundings. Byron was no exception. His hero in these poems is usually a sombre, solitary, tragic figure. These traits and his individualistic rebellion against his surroundings make him a romantic figure, the so-called "byronic" hero, who stands alone against the world. Among the outstanding figures of Byron's "oriental" poems Conrad, the Corsair, is probably known best (not only through the poem, but also through the ballet composed on this subject by Adan). The Corsair was published in 1814, and it was a great success. The poem is composed of three cantos and is written in the measure of the heroic couplet.' The story is about a proud lonely man, maltreated by society. He left it and became a Corsair, the leader of a small group of pirates with whom he lived on an island. He and his men were always ready to fight the rich. His followers, however, never asked him who he had been in the past. A heroic couplet is a stanza of two rhyming lines, having five iambuses in each line and expressing a complete idea.
Conrad was a man of intellect and great passions. He revolted against those who had offended him and became a pirate. Proud and fearless, the Corsair cared for nobody, with the exception of his bride Medora, whom he loved passionately. After each of his battles he came back to her. Once, however, Medora waited for him in vain. He had been taken prisoner by Seyd Pacha. Conrad's men had been defeated. Later he managed to escape with the help of the Pacha's beautiful slave Gulnare. But when he returned home, he found Medora dead.
Conrad's grief at the loss of the only being he loved was so great, that life lost its meaning. He disappeared and his men were unable to find him. They buried Medora and mourned for Conrad, for they all loved him. The Corsair's romantic character is shown in an oriental setting which Byron knew very well. The descriptions of the battles, the oriental weapons, clothes, ornaments and customs are perfect. They are accompanied by beautiful descriptions of Nature, in which the sea has great significance. The author's attitude to the world is reflected in Conrad's actions. Byron stood out against feudal reaction, against all reactionary forms of bourgeois rule, against his own ruling class, in fearless, solitary rebellion. The language of the poem is laconic.The heroic couplet helped Byron to develop the concise style for which he was famous.
POLITICAL POETRY
The "Luddite" theme is quite important in Byron's poetical work. It is with this theme that he began his defence of the oppressed, his biting satirical poetry directed against the ruling classes. He first approached the "Luddite" theme in his speech in the House of Lords in 1812. He stood out against the ruling class of his country defending the men who broke weaving machines. Parliament passed a death sentence upon them. Byron's famous speech in defence of the weavers became a speech of accusation against the ruling classes. Four days after his speech in Parliament an anonymous Ode appeared in a morning newspaper. The title (Ode) was very ironic, because an ode is supposed to be a dignified poem, or a song, recited on formal occasions. Byron's Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill was a combination of biting satire, revolutionary romanticism and democratic thought. In the Ode the anonymous poet showed how to deal with the rebellious weavers, who came to their masters to ask for help. He suggested that the best thing to do was to hang them. This would save both the money and the meat they asked for. The poet stressed that men are cheaper than machinery; and if they were hanged around Sherwood Forest for breaking the machinery, it would improve the scenery.
Those who had heard Byron in Parliament had no difficulty in recognizing the author of the Ode, for in the verse Byron repeated most of the thoughts and accusations expressed in his speech. In 1816, in Italy, when he heard of the disturbances caused by the Luddites he wrote his famous Song for the Luddites, in which he called upon the people to revolt against their tyrants. It is considered to be one of the first revolutionary songs in English classical poetry.
8. Critical realism. Charles Dickens, W. Thackeray, the Bronte sisters.

LITERATURE FROM THE 1830s TO THE 1860s

The industrial power of Great Britain continued to grow. The number of factories increased, as well as the number of people who worked in them. The profits of the manufacturers became larger from year to year, while the conditions of the working people grew worse and worse. At the same time Britain was becoming a great commercial power in the world. Big fortunes were made by business-men trading with other countries. The wealth and power of Great Britain as a country contrasted with the terrible poverty and misery of its working people. Great changes occurred in the class structure of Britain in the 1830s. The bourgeoisie, as always, made use of the working class in its fight for more power in the Government, against the landed aristocracy. However, in 1832, as soon as the Parliamentary reform they fought for was carried out, the bourgeoisie betrayed the interests of the people and looked for a compromise with the nobility. According to the Parliamentary reform only people who had property could vote. About 20 per cent of the population acquired a number of political rights. The main conflict of the century was born — that between the proletariat and the capitalists.
When the workers saw that they had been betrayed they decided to continue to fight for their rights alone. In 1833 they presented their political demands to Parliament in a document that was called the People’s Charter. Later, in 1839, thousands of workers signed the Charter. Thus began the first organized movement against capital, known as Chartism. It lasted till the early 1850s.
Chartist poets and writers described the position of the working people and shared their demands. Among them we might mention Thomas Hood (1799—1845), a talented journalist, whose poem The Song of the Shirt (1843) raised a new problem, that of the terrible exploitation of women. .
CRITICAL REALISM
The social and political situation in the country influenced a number of novelists who realized that it was
Necessary to deal with actual facts and realities, to set their books in present and to pose topical problems in them. Karl Marx spoke of these writers as of "the brilliant school of novelists whose graphic and eloquent descriptions have revealed more political and social truths to the world, than have all the politicians and moralists added together." (Since they lived at the time of Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to
1901, these authors are sometimes referred to as Victorian writers). These writers developed the traditions of English realist literature begun by the Enlighteners and further enriched by the historical approach of Walter Scott. In their works they exposed and criticized the vices and drawbacks of their time — social unjustice and inequality, poverty, lust for money, hypocrisy, etc. They drew their characters from all social levels; among them are reprentatives of the aristocracy and the middle class, as well as servants, clerks, workers, thieves, etc. The main subject of their novels was, however, the life of lower classes, and their sympathies always lay with common people who, as a rule, possessed higher qualities than the rich did. The negative characters embodied all the vices of the society that was a slave to gold.
Still another feature of the work of critical realists was that they stressed the function of the social environment in shaping human character. The novels often traced the life stories of their characters from their early years and depicted the circumstances which they grew. The detailed descriptions of life in big cities and in the country, of rich houses and slums, of schools and prisons as wellas the introduction of colloquial speech made these novels true to life. The most prominent of the critical realists were Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
CHARLES DICKENS (1812—1870)
Charles Dickens was born in Landsport, a small town near the sea, in a middle-class family. In 1814 the family moved to London. His father was a clerk in a office; he got a small salary there and usually spent more than he earned. As a result of this he was thrown into the debtors' prison when Charles was only ten. At that age the boy went to work at a factory which was like a dark, damp cellar. There he stuck labels on bottles of shoeblacking all day long, for a few pennies. Later he went to school which he attended for only three years and at the age of 15 he started his work in a lawyer's office. He continued to educate himself, mainly by reading books. At 18 he became a reporter in Parliament. There he got acquainted with politics and never had a high opinion of his country's policy afterwards. In 1833 he began to write his first short stories about London life. In 1836 those stories were published as a book, under the title of Sketches by Boz; Boz was the penname with which he signed his first work. In 1837 Dickens became well-known to the English readers. His first big work appeared, written in instalments for a magazine at first, and later published in book form. It was The Posthumous Papers of the Pick\vick Club. From then on Dickens was one of the best known and loved writers of his day. In 1842 he made his first trip to America. He said that he wanted to see for himself what real democracy was like. He was rather disappointed with it. He wrote about his trip and his impressions in his American Notes. Dickens travelled a lot. He visited France and Italy and later went to America again. At the same time he continued to write. In 1858 he began to tour England, reading passages from his works to the public. These readings were a great success, for Dickens was a wonderful actor, but the hard work and travelling were baa for his health. On March 15, 1870 he made his last reading and said to the public "From these garish lights I vanish now for evermore". He suffered a stroke on June, 8 and died the following day at his writing desk penning a sentence for Edwin Drude. The novel was left unfinished.
Dickens literary heritage is of world importance. He developed the English social novel, writing about the most burning social problems of his time. He created a wide gallery of pictures of bourgeois society and its representative types which still exist in England; he wrote of the workhouses of England and the tragec
Of the children who lived in them (Oliver Twist); he wrote about the problem of education and showed how it handicapped children (Nicholas Nickleby). After his trip to America Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit.
A part of this work had an American setting. He criticized American customs and democracy very severely. Later he wrote about money and its terrible, destructive power over men (Dombey and Son).
David Copperfield, one of the most lyrical of his works, was to some extent autobiographical; it reflected a young man's life in bourgeois society. Dickens criticized some negative aspects of that society, especially child labour and the system of education. Such problems as marriage and love in the bourgeois world were
Also treated in this novel.
Dickens' later novels were Bleak House and Little Dorrit. In Bleak House he took up the problem of law and justice; in Little Dorrit the reader got acquainted with the debtors' prison of London. Those novels showed more clearly than before the great social gap between the bourgeoisie and the common people. In
Hard Times he wrote of the class struggle between the capitalists and the proletariat. Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend reflected an entirely new feeling, that of disillusionment. That tragic feeling became stronger than Dickens' usual optimism. Among his works there are two historical novels. In 1841 he wrote Bamaby Rudge, taking a subject from English history of the year 1780, known as the "Gordon Rebellion". In 1848 Dickens turned to history again; he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, a story about people closely connected with the French Bourgeois Revolution, and the time that preceded it. Doomney and son Dickens possessed an immense power of generalization which made all his characters look familiar and recognisable types. He used to repeat that the best compliment to him was to hear his readers say that he or she had known personally this or that one of his characters.
The critical realistic approach to society was established by him at the very beginning of his creative life. His criticism of reality became sharper as his outlook and art matured. In the course of time the soft humour and light-hearted laughter of his first works gave way to mockery and satire. His novels were socially
Effective because they drew the wide public's attention to various problems and made the authorities consider and introduce reforms into such spheres as education, law and others. Up to our days Dickens has remained one of the most widely read writers. He is loved and honoured by readers all over the world.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811—1863)
W. M. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, in the family of an English official of high standing. Unlike Charles Dickens, he had a very good education both at school and at Cambridge University. Wishing to be an artist, he went to Europe to study art. For some time he lived among the artists of Paris. Later, when he returned to London, he learned that he had lost all his money, for the bank where it was deposited had gone bankrupt. Thus, he had to earn his living. He began to draw sketches, but was not very successful. He started writing satirical and humorous stories and essays. Later he wrote novels and delivered lectures. Thackeray wrote in the same years and under the same political conditions as his great contemporary Dickens did. Their works complement each other in presenting the life of the period. Dickens usually chose for his main character the "little" man with his troubles and difficulties.
Thackeray directed his satire against the representatives of the upper classes of society, whom he knew better. Dickens was inclined to look for a happy solution that smoothed over the existing contradictions. Thackeray, by contrast, was merciless in his satirical attacks on the ruling classes. He considered that art should be a real mirror of life. He showed bourgeois society and its vices without softening their description. In this approach to art he was a follower of Jonathan Swift, the great satirist of the Enlightenment. Thackeray's most outstanding works are The Book of Snobs (under this title he published a collection of satirical essays) that appeared in 1846—1847, and his novel Vanity Fair (1847—1848).
THE BOOK OF SNOBS
In this book Thackeray presents a gallery of men and women of the ruling classes of England. He writes about the parasitical life of the aristocracy; he describes the evils of the bourgeoisie, which is only interested in resembling as near as possible the aristocracy. Thackeray also writes about the English military men of high rank, who in their stupidity and self-conceit place themselves entirely above the rank and file; he also attacks the clergy with his biting satire. All these people are snobs, according to Thackeray, because they cringe before those who are superior, and are rude and despotic towards those who are below them. Most of the chapters of this book have the word "snob" in the title. Thus, there is a chapter on The Snob Royal, on Great City Snobs, Military Snobs, Party-Giving Snobs, on Clerical Snobs, on Some Country Snobs and so on. The word "snob", which had existed long before Thackeray's time, acquired a new meaning under his pen. It became a mirror of moral and psychological ideas of national character, customs and personal traits. The book is a perfect reflection of Thackeray's satirical and highly negative approach to bourgeois society. It is a real encyclopedia of the life of the ruling classes in England. These classes retain much of what Thackeray saw in them even today.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 -1855) EMILY BRONTE (1818 - 1848) ANNE BRONTE (1820 - 1849)
Charlotte Bronte ' s principal work is the novel " Jane Eyre : An Autobiography (1847) which tells a story of a poor orphan - a girl whose high moral standards , her dignity, chastity, strong will helped her to get through all her life hardships and won her the respect and love of a man (Rochester).
Her novel " Shir1ey " (1849) was inspired by the Chartist Movement and has class struggle for its background.
Emily Bronte’s work was smaller in scope but not in importance. Her only novel "Wuthering Heights" (1847) combines elements of romantic aesthetics and literature on the one hand (Heatheliff has all the features of the Byronic character - he is a strong individual, very passionate, struggling for his independence) and realistic features on the other hand (all the characters, especially the main ones, are not only psychologically, but also socially motivated).
Anne Bronte is known for her poems.
9. Aestheticism 0. Wilde and his program. Neoromanticism and its representatives. R. Kipling.

LITERATURE OF THE LAST DECADES OF THE 19™ CENTURY

A new stage of social development began during the last two decades of the 19' century. Great Britain had become a highly developed capitalist country and a great colonial power. The merging of individual firms into monopolies began. With it Britain passed to a higher form of capitalism, known as imperialism. A violent economic crisis that occurred in the early 80s deepened the social contradictions in the country. On the one hand, the workers' movement became stronger. Socialist ideas began to influence it and many important strikes took place. On the other hand, reaction intensified. The bourgeoisie looked for ways of imperialist expansion in search of new markets. The monopolies demanded still larger profits and plundered colonial peoples robbing them of raw material. In 1899 Great Britain unleashed the shameful colonial Boer War in the Transvaal, a province in South Africa inhabited by the Boers (the Dutch settlers) who fought for their independence. Puritanical hypocrisy became the accepted form of benaviour in society. It was accompanied by a degradation of moral and cultural values. New literary trends — Decadence, neoromanticism and socialist literature — were a reaction to the atmosphere in Britain.
DECADENCE
The general crisis of bourgeois ideology and culture was reflected in literature and fine arts by the trend that was given the name of Decadence. This French word means "decline" (of art or of literature). Decadence manifested itself in various trends that came into being at the end of the 19th century: symbolism, impressionism, imagism, neoromanticism, futurism and others. The most widely known manifestation of Decadence in the social life of bourgeois England was Aestheticism (a movement search of beauty). The roots of Aestheticism can be traced back to the beginning of the19th century, to some of the romanticists. It was governed by the principle of "Art for Art's Sake", that is to say "of pure art”. Like the neoromanticists, the aestheticists protested against the severe and vulgar reality, against bourgeois pragmatism. However, while the neoromanticists chose the world of adventure and the cult of the strong man, opposing these to the routine of life, the aestheticists concentrated their art on pure form.
The aestheticists rejected both the social and the moral function of the art. One of the leaders of the aesthetic movement expressed its main idea in the phrase: "Art is indifferent to what is moral and what is immoral". The aestheticists tried to lead the readers away from the problems of the day into the world of dreams and beauty.
OSCAR WILDE (1854—1900)
Oscar Wilde was the most outstanding representative of Decadence. He was the son of a well-known Irish physician. In his youth he was very much influenced by his mother, who was a highly educated woman. She wrote poetry and was an ardent Irish patriot. Her scornful attitude towards the hypocrisy of British bourgeois morals was probably responsible for the disrespect that characterized Wilde's approach toward; bourgeois customs and habits. Wilde's youth was a time of increasing crisis in bourgeois culture and the heyday of Aestheticism. The vulgarity ofbourgeois life in general, the money-making fever of the bourgeoisie, its hypocritical approach to moral standards, all this made the young man turn to the movement of the day — aestheticism. Attracted by its search for beauty and its motto "Art for Art's Sake", Wilde became an avowed aesthete and was very soon considered the leading figure of the movement. He studied at Oxford. After the publication of his first volume of poetry in 1881 he went on a lecture tour to America. Between the years 1881 and 1895 he wrote two volumes of fairy tales — The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and several plays. Oscar Wilde's work, like his outlook on life, is ven contradictory. His tales, probably his most popular works, were undoubtedly, much deeper in their approach to the problem of Good and Evil than most of the decadent literature.
The writer laid great stress on the good qualities of the poor, and the vices of those who had power and money. Thus, in the tale The Devoted Friend, for example, Wilde produced a very bitter satirical portrait of a money-grabbing and hypocritical man of property. The Miller was Hans' "devoted friend" in summer, when he took flowers and fruit from him. Little Hans was always happy to give them to his "devoted friend". But when winter came the Miller would not give little Hans any flour to help him during the hungry months. Wilde achieved artistic heights of symbolic generalization in the story of little Hans, robbed in summer and sent to his death in winter by the rich Miller who called himself his "devoted friend". The tales do not, perhaps, have great depth of critical judgment on all aspects of the society of Wilde's time. However, his paradoxical form of expression is at times bitterly satirical as in The Devoted Friend. It is his originality in this genre, and it brings out the hypocrisy in human relations that so disgusted him. The endings in his tales are usually tragic — Good cannot triumph in a world of Evil. It is in these tales and in his comedies that the traditions of critical realism may be best seen. When Oscar Wilde turned to writing plays, he took up a new theme. He criticized the upper classes and gave satirical pictures of their members who were ruled by the love of power and money.
The most outstanding of those plays is An Ideal Husband (1895), in which the author discloses the sordid intrigues in the business and political circles of England. The figure of Sir Robert Chiltem is very convincing. He is an outstanding statesman, who enjoys the love of his wife and everybody's respect, because he is good, honest, and correct in his political activities. However, it turns out that this impeccable statesman began his career of a politician and started to make his fortune by selling a state secret. Wilde brands the corruption that exists in the world of business. However, his criticism is mild, everything is settled in favour of the main character.
NEOROMANTICISM
Together with the Decadents another group of writers took up the protest against bourgeois rule. They also searched for an escape from a life without either beauty or interest. One of those writers was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894). He was the son of a Scotch engineer. His great love for the English language made him turn to writing, but he refused to follow the realistic method of reflecting life. The life that surrounded people, according to Stevenson, could give no pleasure to anyone; he believed that the writer should create beautiful or extraordinary pictures for the benefit of the reader, for the reader's pleasure. He expressed his belief in the following way: "Art in contemporary society is only necessary for entertainment". Stevenson became a recognized story-teller. His first novel, Treasure Island, was a great success. The story of the search for the treasure is well told and has its dramatic moments. His characters — strong, brave men — go through great difficulties to achieve their aim. However, Stevenson pays more attention to the story than to his characters. His other novels. Kidnapped, The Black Arrow, Catriona and The Master of Ballantrae were written along the same-lines: they had a historical setting and were full of adventure and mystery. The Master of Ballantrae, with a historical setting too, came last. Its main theme is the struggle of two brothers for an inheritance. Stevenson's outstanding prose work is his short novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which has at times been compared with the darkest fantasies of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Stevenson raises the age-old problem of the struggle between Good and Evil that exists in every man.
Dr. Jekyll, who is aware that he has in him both Good and Evil, experiences a terrible urge to create his own double that would possess the darker side of his nature. He is able to make a medicine,which transforms him into another person, whom he calls Mr. Hyde. Hyde possesses all of Jekyll's hidden, evil traits. While Dr. Jekyll appears to people in the daytime as a good and highly respected man, loved by all his acquaintances, Hyde appears in the dark of night and carries out all kind of evil deeds. He is frightfully ugly, bearing on his face and body the mark of sin and evil.
However, this experiment leads to a terrible misfortune: the mixture created by Jekyll begins to lose its strength and while he become Hyde easily every time he drinks it,. It is more and more difficult for him to turn back into Jekyll, to his normal self. When about to be captured for a murder committed by Hyde, Dr. Jekyll commits suicide.
A parallel may be drawn between this novel and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray written in 1890, two years after Stevenson's novel. The difference, however, lies in Wilde's purely aesthetical approach to the problem, while Stevenson's is an ethical one.
Stevenson's hero is strong-willed and the author tries to show in him the better qualities of man: his energy, his thirst for knowledge. Stevenson stresses these qualities in order to keep them alive in the world, from which they are in danger of disappearing. The fantastic and the extraordinary that he opposes to everyday life make his romanticism somewhat more objective than the approach of the romanticists of the early 19th century.
Stevenson's love of beauty, his outstanding mastery of the language, made him a very good poet; among his best poetical works there is a book of poems for little children, published under the collective title of A Child's Garden of Verse, as well as one of the loveliest poems of the period, the ballad Heather Ale.
Stevenson's romantic return to childhood in A Child's Garden of Verse as well as the return to the historical past of Scotland in Heather Ale, are ways of looking for beauty outside the terrible monotony of the money-grabbing world, which the author conquers through his creative art.