Short Stories

English romanticism is a trend in art and philosophy that prevailed in England at the end of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. and possessed certain characteristics. English romanticism appeared almost simultaneously with German, which makes England and Germany the countries in which the European romantic tradition was born. By the end of the 18th century, English philosophers and artists began to gradually become disillusioned with classicism in art and the ideals of enlightenment in philosophy.

The romantic period was undoubtedly shaped by many political, social, and economic changes. Many writers of the period were aware of the pervasive intellectual and creative climate that some called the "spirit of the age." A feature of romanticism in England was the flourishing of lyric poetry. English poets preferred to clothe their observations and reflections in the form of allegories, fantastic visions, cosmic symbolism.

The founder of English romanticism is William Blake (1757-1827). Blake devoted his life to two types of art: engraving and poetry, so his artistic thinking was based on a combination of poetry and painting. He creates an artistic and poetic picture of the world. The most famous are two collections of Blake's poems: Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). These collections reflect the poet's religious and philosophical views. Each person goes through three stages in his development: innocence, experience, wisdom. Each of the stages corresponds to three age categories: childhood, maturity, old age, which reveal the movement of world civilization: from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present.

In the Russian Empire, the perception of the works of English romantics had many peculiarities. Not all authors received lifelong fame - only a few of them, such as W. Scott and Byron, Thomas Moore, were widely known during their lifetime.

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) was a romantic poet who captured the imagination of all Europe with his "dark selfishness." Together with Percy Shelley and John Keats, he represents the younger generation of British romantics. The fashion for Byronism continued after Byron's death, although towards the end of his life, in the poetic novel John Juan and the comic poem Beppo, Byron himself switched to satirical realism based on the legacy of Alexander Pope.

The first mention of the poets of the Lake School in Russian journalism dates back to 1818, in the journal “Vestnik Evropy” by Karamzin, where information about them was given as secondary. However, literally three years later, several articles of the "Son of the Fatherland" magazine were devoted to the work of this galaxy of authors.

The poetry of the English romantics influenced Alexander Pushkin. In the early 1820s. the poet got acquainted with the poetry of the "Lake School" through Zhukovsky's translations. Later, while studying English, Pushkin himself repeatedly translated V. Wordsworth's poems and read Coleridge's works in the original.