Foreign literature of the 17th century. History of Foreign Literature of the 17th–19th Centuries Development of European Literature in the 17th–19th Centuries

17th century literature

Since the 17th century, it has been customary to count the New Time in the history of human civilization. Occupying a border position between the Renaissance (XIV-XVI centuries) and the Enlightenment (XVIII century), the XVII century took a lot from the Renaissance and left a lot behind.

The main literary trends of the 17th century were the Baroque and Classicism.

Baroque plays a significant role in the literature of the 17th century. Signs of a new style began to appear at the end of the 16th century, but it was the 17th century that became its heyday. Baroque is a response to social, political, economic instability, an ideological crisis, the psychological tension of the frontier era, this is the desire to creatively rethink the tragic outcome of the humanistic program of the Renaissance, this is the search for a way out of a state of spiritual crisis.

The tragically sublime content also determined the main features of the Baroque as an artistic method. Baroque works are characterized by theatricality, illusory nature (it is no coincidence that P. Calderon's drama is called "Life is a dream"), antinomy (the clash of personal principles and social duty), the contrast of the sensual and spiritual nature of man, the opposition of the fantastic and the real, the exotic and the ordinary, the tragic and the comic . Baroque is replete with complex metaphors, allegories, symbolism, it is distinguished by the expressiveness of the word, the exaltation of feelings, semantic ambiguity, the mixing of motifs of ancient mythology with Christian symbols. Baroque poets paid great attention to the graphic form of the verse, created "curly" poems, the lines of which formed a pattern of a heart, a star, etc.

Such a work could not only be read, but also regarded as a work of art. The writers proclaimed the originality of the work as its most important advantage, and the necessary features - the difficulty for perception and the possibility of various interpretations. The Spanish philosopher Gracian wrote: "The more difficult the truth is to know, the more pleasant it is to comprehend it." Artists of the word highly valued wit, paradoxical judgments: “In the name of life, do not rush to be born. / Hurrying to be born - hurry to die ”(Gongora).

The most famous baroque writers were: in Spain Luis de Gongora (1561-1627), Pedro Calderon (1600-1681), in Italy Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), Giambattista Marino (1569-1625), in Germany Hans Jacob von Grimmelshausen ( ca. 1621-1676), in Belarus and Russia Simeon of Polotsk (1629-1680). Researchers note the influence of the Baroque style on the work of English writers W. Shakespeare and J. Milton.

The second literary trend, which became widespread in the 17th century, is classicism. His homeland was Italy (XVI century). Here, classicism arose along with the revived ancient theater and was originally conceived as a direct opposition to medieval drama. The humanists of the Renaissance decided speculatively, without taking into account the uniqueness of specific historical epochs and peoples, to revive the tragedy of Euripides and Seneca, the comedy of Plautus and Terentius. They were the first theorists of classicism. Thus, classicism initially acted as a theory and practice of imitation of ancient art: rationalistic rigor and logic of stage action, abstractness of the artistic image, pathos of speech, majestic poses and gestures, eleven-syllable unrhymed verse. These are the features of Trissino's (1478-1550) tragedy Sofonisba, written on the model of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and opening the era of European classicism.

Samples of classic art were created in the 17th century in France. This is where his theory crystallized.

The rationalistic doctrine of Descartes became the philosophical basis of the classic method. The philosopher believed that the only source of truth is reason. Taking this statement as a starting point, the classicists created a strict system of rules that would harmonize art with the requirements of reasonable necessity in the name of observing the artistic laws of antiquity. Rationalism became the dominant quality of classic art.

The orientation of the classic theory to antiquity was associated primarily with the idea of ​​eternity and the absoluteness of the ideal of beauty. This doctrine confirmed the need for imitation: if at one time ideal examples of beauty are created, then the task of writers of subsequent eras is to get as close as possible to them. Hence the strict system of rules, the obligatory observance of which was considered a guarantee of the perfection of a work of art and an indicator of the writer's skill.

The classicists also established a clearly regulated hierarchy of literary genres: the exact boundaries of the genre and its features were determined. Tragedy, epic, ode were high. They depicted the sphere of public life, fateful events, acted heroes befitting a high genre - monarchs, military leaders, noble persons. A distinctive feature was a high style, lofty feelings, in tragedy - dramatic conflicts, disastrous passions, inhuman suffering. The task of high genres is to shock the viewer.

The low genres (comedy, satire, epigram, fable) reflected the sphere of private life, its way of life and customs. The heroes were ordinary people. Such works were written in simple colloquial language.

Classicist playwrights had to follow the rules of the "three unities": time (no more than one day), place (one scenery), action (no side storylines). Rules were set to create the illusion of certainty.

An important component of the classic theory is the concept of general types of human character. Hence the well-known abstractness of artistic images. They emphasized universal, "eternal" features (Misanthrope, Miser). Heroes were divided into positive and negative.

The stage character of the classicists is predominantly one-sided, static, without contradictions and development. This is a character-idea: it is as open as the idea embedded in it requires. The author's tendentiousness, therefore, manifests itself quite straightforwardly. Without the depiction of the individual, personal-individual in the human character, it was difficult for the classicists to avoid the schematic, conventional images. Their courageous hero is courageous in everything and to the end; a loving woman loves to the grave; a hypocrite is hypocritical to the grave, but a miser is stingy. A distinctive quality of classicism was the doctrine of the educational role of art. Punishing vice and rewarding virtue, classicist writers sought to improve the moral nature of man. The best works of classicism are filled with high civic pathos.

Literature of Spain

At the beginning of the 17th century, Spain was in a state of deep economic crisis. The defeat of the "Invincible Armada" (1588) off the coast of England, the unreasonable colonial policy, the weakness of Spanish absolutism, its political shortsightedness made Spain a minor European country. In Spanish culture, on the contrary, new trends were clearly identified, which had not only national, but also pan-European significance.

A powerful echo of the Renaissance culture is the work of a talented Spanish playwright Lope de Vega (1562-1635). A representative of Renaissance realism, he contrasted the tragedy of the Baroque with optimistic energy, a bright outlook, confidence in the inexhaustibility of vitality. The playwright also rejected the "scientific" normativity of the classic theory. The writer affirmed life-loving ideals, strove for rapprochement with the people's audience, and stood up for the free inspiration of the artist.

Lope de Vega's extensive and varied dramaturgical heritage - according to contemporaries, he wrote more than 2,000 plays, of which about 500 were published - it is usually customary to divide into three groups. The first of these are socio-political dramas, most often built on historical material (Fuente Ovejuna, The Grand Duke of Moscow).

The second group includes everyday comedies of a love nature (“Dance Teacher”, “Dog in the Manger”, “Girl with a Jug”, “Peasant Woman from Getafe”, “Star of Seville”); sometimes they are called “cloak and sword” comedies, since the main role in them belongs to the noble youth, who performs in this attire characteristic of them (in a raincoat and with a sword).

The third group includes plays of a religious nature.

To understand the peculiarities of the dramatic works of Lope de Vega, the treatise "The New Art of Composing Comedies in Our Day" (1609) is of great importance. In essence, it formulated the main provisions of the Spanish national dramaturgy with a focus on the traditions of the folk theater, with the desire to satisfy the needs of the audience, with the plausibility shown on the stage and the skillful construction of intrigue, the tightly tied knot of which would not allow the play to fall apart into separate episodes.

The works of art that followed the treatise became the realization of the writer's aesthetic principles. The best of these plays is the drama "Fuente Ovejuna" ("The Sheep Spring", 1614). The drama has a historical basis. In 1476, in the town of Fuente Ovejuna, a peasant uprising broke out against the atrocities of the knightly order of Calatavra and its commander, Fernand Gomez de Guzman, who committed atrocities and all kinds of violence. The uprising ended with the assassination of the commander. In Lope de Vega's drama, the Commander is a tyrant and rapist who encroaches on the honor of peasant girls, one of whom, the proud Laurencia, calls on fellow villagers for righteous revenge. There are many vivid images in the play, and yet the main character here is the people united in their desire to restore justice.

Lope de Vega's plays are distinguished by life-affirming pathos, sympathetic attitude towards ordinary people, faith in their moral stamina.

After the rapid rise experienced by Spain during the Renaissance, starting from the end of the 30s of the 17th century, signs of decline are becoming more and more distinct, due primarily to socio-political reasons. The cessation of the influx of gold from America, the complete breakdown of the internal economic life in the country, a series of foreign policy failures - all this finally undermined the economic and political power of Spain.

Socio-political troubles, the crisis of humanistic consciousness, the most severe feudal-Catholic reaction, the destruction of the feudal system as a whole caused decadent moods in society. An attempt to comprehend what is happening, to get out of a state of spiritual crisis, to find moral foundations in the new historical conditions was the baroque, most clearly represented in the work of Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) And Pedro Calderon (1600-1681).

Gongora was the greatest poet of the Spanish Baroque. Gongora's style is distinguished by metaphorical richness, the use of neologisms, archaisms. The poet abandons the traditional syntax. The vocabulary is full of ambiguous words: "The rubies of your lips in the snow of the frame" - about the whiteness of the face, "flying snow" - about a white bird, "fleeing snow" - about Galatea running from Polyphemus. Despite the figurative richness, Gongora creates "poetry for the mind", requiring active intellectual work from the reader. Gongora's poetic skill was most fully manifested in the poems The Tale of Polyphemus and Galatea (1612) and Loneliness (1614). The poem "Solitude" closely intertwines the Renaissance idea of ​​the harmonious coexistence of man and nature with the Baroque concept of the eternal loneliness of man in the world.

The art of Calderon absorbed the best traditions of the Renaissance, but, being generated by a different era, it gives a completely different vision of the world. Calderon wrote 120 plays of various content, 80 "autos sacramentales" (or "sacred actions") and 20 interludes. With his artistic consciousness, Calderon is connected both with the Spanish Renaissance and with the crisis phenomena of his time.

Continuing the tradition of Lope de Vega's great predecessor, Calderon wrote "cape and sword" comedies. The most famous of them is the witty and cheerful comedy The Invisible Lady (1629), written in an easy and elegant language. It expresses the idea of ​​the game of chance dominating life. Randomness here, as in other comedies, plays a plot-forming role.

However, it was not the Renaissance comedies and folk-realistic dramas that brought Calderon worldwide fame. Vitality and optimism did not become the tone of his work. The true Calderon is to be found in his "autos sacramentales" and philosophical and symbolic plays, full of eschatological moods, existential problems that overwhelm with their insolubility, contradictions that drain consciousness. Already in the youthful drama of Calderon's "Adoration of the Cross" (1620), the skeptical mood towards religion, characteristic of the humanists, is replaced by a gloomy religious frenzy. God Calderon is a formidable, merciless force, in the face of which a person feels insignificant and lost.

In the philosophical and allegorical drama Life is a Dream (1634), the glorification of the harsh Catholic doctrine is combined with the preaching of the need for humility and submission to divine providence. The main dramatic concept of Calderon is the idea that human destiny is predetermined by fate, that temporary earthly life is illusory, it is only a preparation for the eternal afterlife.

Time and environment determined not only the nature of the worldview, the general direction of Calderon's work, but also his originality as an artist. Calderon's dramaturgy is notable for its philosophical depth, the refinement of psychological conflicts, and the agitated lyricism of monologues. The plot in Calderon's plays plays a secondary role, all attention is paid to revealing the inner world of the characters. The development of action is replaced by a play of ideas. The style of Calderon is characterized by rhetorical pathos, high metaphorical images, which makes him related to Gongorism, one of the currents of the Spanish literary baroque.

The poetic audacity of Calderon was highly appreciated by A. S. Pushkin.

Literature of Italy

In the XVII century, Italy is experiencing a crisis of humanistic ideals.

In this situation, the Baroque comes to the fore, expressed most clearly in Marinism - a trend that got its name from the Italian poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625). In the works of marine painters, followers of Marino, the form obscured the content with its verbal sophistication and narcissism. There are no socially important topics here, no topical problems of our time. The peculiarity of the letter is complex metaphors, bizarre images, unexpected comparisons. Marino was the inventor of the so-called "concetti" - virtuoso phrases, verbal paradox, unusually used epithets, unusual turns of speech ("learned ignoramus", "joyful pain").

The glory of Marino in Italy was ubiquitous. Nevertheless, the poet's contemporaries saw the danger of Marinism and opposed it with politically topical poetry expressing the needs and aspirations of the Italian people, telling about its suffering (Fulvio Testi, Vincenzo Filicaia, Alessandro Tassoni).

Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635) He rejected both the Baroque poets (Marinists) and the defenders of imitation and authoritarianism in Italian poetry (the Classicists). As a patriotic poet, he actively interfered in the political life of the country, opposed the regional fragmentation of Italy, called for the struggle for its independence (the poem "The Stolen Bucket").

Italian prose of the 17th century is represented by names Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who used the polemical art of journalism in order to spread his scientific ideas (“Dialogue on the two main systems of the world”), Traiano Boccalini (1556-1613), protesting against the dominance of the Spaniards in Italy, against aristocratic snobbery, against the apologists of classicism, who recognize only the aesthetic canons of Aristotle (the satire "News from Parnassus").

Literature of France

The policy of the absolutist state, aimed at the elimination of feudal regionalism and the transformation of France into a powerful power in Western Europe, corresponded to the historically progressive trend of the era, which determined the character of classicism as a literary phenomenon that was advanced for its time. The leading artistic method, officially recognized by the government of absolutist France, was classicism. The classic literature reflected the rise of the national self-consciousness of the progressive strata of French society during the period of transition from feudal fragmentation to national unity.

Under Cardinal Richelieu (1624-1642), the creation of a powerful monarchical state, begun by the predecessor of Louis XIII, Henry IV, was basically completed. Richelieu regulated and subordinated to the throne all aspects of state, social, cultural life. In 1634 he created the French Academy. Richelieu patronized the periodical press that was emerging in France.

During his reign, Theophrastus Renaudeau founded the first French newspaper, the Gazett de France (1631). (The Théophrastus Renaudeau Prize is one of the highest literary awards in contemporary France.)

The historical progressiveness of classicism is manifested in its close connection with the advanced trends of the era, in particular, with rationalist philosophy. René Descartes (1596-1650), the so-called Cartesianism. Descartes boldly fought against the medieval feudal ideology, his philosophy was based on the data of the exact sciences. The criterion of truth for Descartes was reason. “I think, therefore I exist,” he said.

Rationalism became the philosophical basis of classicism. Contemporaries of Descartes, theorists of classicism François Malherbe (1555-1628) And Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711) believed in the power of reason. They believed that the elementary requirements of reason - the highest criterion of the objective value of a work of art - oblige art to truthfulness, clarity, consistency, clarity and compositional harmony of parts and the whole. They also demanded this in the name of observing the laws of ancient art, which they guided in the creation of the classic program.

The admiration of the writers of the 17th century for reason was also reflected in the notorious rules about the "three unities" (time, place and action) - one of the core principles of classic dramaturgy.

The didactic poem by N. Boileau "Poetic Art" (1674) became the code of French classicism.

It was noted above that the classicists, like the artists of the Renaissance, relied on ancient art in their aesthetics and artistic creativity. However, unlike the writers of the Renaissance, the theorists of classicism turned mainly not to ancient Greek, but to Roman literature of the period of the empire. The monarchy of Louis XIV, the "Sun King", as he called himself, was likened to the Roman Empire, the heroes of classic tragedies were endowed with Roman valor and grandeur. Hence the well-known conventionality of the literature of classicism, its pompous and decorative character.

And yet the French classicists were not insane imitators of ancient writers. Their work had a deeply national character, it was closely connected with the social conditions in France during the heyday of absolutism. The classicists, having managed to combine the experience of ancient literature with the traditions of their people, created their own original artistic style. Corneille, Racine and Molière created examples of classic art in a dramatic way.

The classical conception of art, for all its monumentality, cannot be imagined as something frozen and unchanging. Within the classicist camp there was no complete unity of socio-political, philosophical, and ethical views. Even Corneille and Racine - the creators of high classic tragedy - differed in many ways.

Unlike the orthodox Carthusians Boileau and Racine, Molière and Lafontaine were students of the materialist Gassendi (1592-1655), an outstanding French scientist who considered sensory experience the main source of all knowledge. His teaching was reflected both in the aesthetics of these writers and in the democratism, optimism and humanistic orientation of their work.

The main genre of classicism was tragedy, depicting lofty heroes and idealized passions. The creator of the French tragedy theater was Pierre Corneille (1608-1684). Corneille began his literary activity with poetry and comedies, which did not have much success.

Glory comes to Corneille with the appearance on the stage of the tragedy "Sid" (1636). The play is based on the tragic conflict between passion and duty, on which the tragedy is built.

The young and valiant knight Rodrigo, avenging the insult inflicted on his father, kills the father of his beloved Jimena in a duel. Jimena justifies the act of Rodrigo, who fulfilled the duty of family honor, and fulfills his own - he demands the death of his beloved from the king. Fulfilling their family duty, Rodrigo and Jimena become deeply unhappy. After the attack on Castile by the Moors, a brilliant victory over them, Rodrigo becomes a national hero. Corneille contrasts family duty with duty to the motherland. Feudal honor must give way to civic honor. They try to convince Jimena of the inconsistency of her demands: the interests of the family must be sacrificed in the name of social necessity. Jimena accepts the new morality, especially as it responds to her personal feelings. Corneille convincingly proved that the new state morality is more human than feudal morality. He showed the emergence of a new state ideal in the age of absolutism. The king of Castile, Don Fernando, is depicted in the play as an ideal autocrat, a guarantor of the general well-being and personal happiness of his subjects, if they conform their actions to the interests of the state.

Thus, in "Sid" the idea of ​​the progressiveness of the absolutist monarchy is affirmed, which, in specific historical conditions, met the requirements of the time.

Despite its audience success, "Sid" caused serious controversy in literary circles. In the "Opinion of the French Academy on the Side" (1638), Corneille's play was condemned for inconsistency with the canons of classicism. In a depressed state, Corneille leaves for his homeland. However, four years later, Corneille brought two new tragedies from Rouen, which are already quite consistent with the classic canons (Horace, Cinna). As a tragedian, Corneille preferred historical and political tragedy. The political problems of tragedies also determined the norm of behavior that Corneille wanted to teach the viewer: this is the idea of ​​heroic consciousness, patriotism.

In the tragedy "Horace" (1640), the playwright used the plot from the story of Titus Livius. At the heart of the dramatic conflict is the single combat of two cities - Rome and Alba Longa, which should be resolved by the duel of the brothers Horatii and Curians, bound by ties of friendship and kinship. In the play, duty is understood unequivocally - it is a patriotic duty.

Unable to forgive her brother Horace for the death of her fiancé, Camilla curses Rome, which destroyed her happiness. Horace, considering his sister a traitor, kills her. The death of Camilla causes a new conflict: according to Roman law, the killer must be executed. Horace's father proves that righteous anger, civic duty, and patriotic feeling pushed him to kill his son. Horace, who saved Rome, is necessary for his homeland: he will accomplish many more feats. King Tull grants life to Horace. Civil valor atoned for the crime. The tragedy of "Horace" became the apotheosis of civic heroism.

The tragedy "Cinna, or the Mercy of Augustus" (1642) depicts the first days of the reign of Emperor Octavian-Augustus, who learns that a conspiracy is being prepared against him. The purpose of the tragedy is to show what tactics the sovereign will choose in relation to the conspirators. Corneille convinces that the interests of the state can coincide with the private aspirations of people if an intelligent and just monarch is in power.

The conspirators in the tragedy - Cinna, Maxim, Emilia - act on two motives. The first reason is political: they want to return Rome to a republican form of government, not realizing their political myopia. Supporters of political freedoms, they do not understand that the republic has become obsolete and Rome needs a firm government. The second motive is personal: Emilia wants to avenge her father, who was killed by Augustus; Cinna and Maxim, in love with Emilia, want to achieve a reciprocal feeling.

The emperor, having suppressed his ambition, revenge, cruelty, decides to forgive the conspirators. They are going through a process of rebirth. Mercy has triumphed over their selfish passions. They saw in Augustus a wise monarch and became his supporters.

The highest state wisdom, according to Corneille, is manifested in mercy. A wise public policy must combine the reasonable with the humane. An act of mercy, therefore, is a political act, performed not by the good man Octavian, but by the wise emperor Augustus.

During the period of the “first manner” (until approximately 1645), Corneille called for the cult of rational statehood, believed in the justice of French absolutism (“The Martyr Polyeuctus”, 1643; “The Death of Pompey”, 1643; “Theodora - Virgin and Martyr”, 1645; comedy "Liar", 1645).

Corneille of the "second manner" overestimates many of the political principles of the French monarchy that seemed so strong ("Rodogunda - the Parthian princess", 1644; "Heraclius - Emperor of the East", 1646; "Nycomedes", 1651, etc.). Corneille continues to write historical and political tragedies, but the emphasis is shifting. This is due to changes in the political life of French society after the accession to the throne of Louis XIV, which meant the establishment of an unlimited domination of the absolutist regime. Now Corneille, the singer of reasonable statehood, was suffocating in the atmosphere of victorious absolutism. The idea of ​​sacrificial public service, interpreted as the highest duty, was no longer a stimulus for the behavior of the heroes of Corneille's plays. The spring of dramatic action is the narrow personal interests, the ambitious ambitions of the characters. Love from a morally lofty feeling turns into a game of unbridled passions. The royal throne is losing moral and political stability. Not reason, but chance decides the fate of heroes and the state. The world becomes irrational and shaky.

The late tragedies of Corneille, close to the baroque tragicomedy genre, are evidence of a departure from strict classicist norms.

French classicism received its most complete and complete expression in the works of another great national poet of France. Jean Racine (1639-1690). A new stage in the development of classical tragedy is associated with his name. If Corneille developed mainly the genre of heroic historical and political tragedy, then Racine acted as the creator of a love-psychological tragedy, saturated at the same time with great political content.

One of the most important creative principles of Racine was the desire for simplicity and plausibility, as opposed to Corneille's attraction to the extraordinary and exceptional. Moreover, this desire was extended by Racine not only to the construction of the plot of the tragedy and the characters of its characters, but also to the language and style of the stage work.

Relying on the authority of Aristotle, Racine refused the main element of Corneille's theater - the "perfect hero". “Aristotle is not only very far from demanding perfect heroes from us, but, on the contrary, wants tragic characters, that is, those whose misfortunes create a catastrophe in tragedy, to be neither completely good nor completely evil.”

It was important for Racine to assert the right of the artist to depict the “average person” (not in the social, but in the psychological sense), to portray the weaknesses of a person. Heroes, according to Racine, should have average virtues, that is, a virtue capable of weakness.

Racine's first great tragedy was Andromache (1667). Turning to the Greek mythological theme, already developed in antiquity by Homer, Virgil and Euripides, Racine, however, interpreted the classical plot in a new way. Yielding to the influence of passions, the heroes of the tragedy - Pyrrhus, Hermione, Orestes - in their egoism turned out to be cruel people capable of crime.

By creating the image of Pyrrhus, Racine solves a political problem. Pyrrhus (monarch) should be responsible for the welfare of the state, but, succumbing to passion, he sacrifices the interests of the state to her.

Hermione also becomes a victim of passion, one of the most convincing images of the tragedy, the internal state of which is excellently psychologically motivated. Rejected by Pyrrhus, the proud and rebellious Hermione becomes selfish and despotic in her aspirations and actions.

Andromache was followed by Britannicus (1669) - Racine's first tragedy dedicated to the history of ancient Rome. As in Andromache, the monarch is portrayed here as a ruthless tyrant. Young Nero treacherously destroys his half-brother Britannicus, whose throne he illegally occupied and whom Junia, who liked him, loves. But Racine did not limit himself to condemning the despotism of Nero. He showed the strength of the Roman people as the supreme judge of history.

“The singer of women and kings in love” (Pushkin), Racine created a whole gallery of images of positive heroines, combining a sense of human dignity, moral stamina, the ability to sacrifice, the ability to heroically resist any violence and arbitrariness. Such are Andromache, Junia, Berenice ("Berenice", 1670), Monima ("Mithridates", 1673), Iphigenia ("Iphigenia in Aulis", 1674).

The pinnacle of Racine's poetic work in terms of the artistic power of depicting human passions, in terms of the perfection of the verse, is the Phaedra written in 1677, which Racine himself considered his best creation.

Queen Phaedra passionately loves her stepson Hippolytus, who is in love with the Athenian princess Arikia. Having received false news about the death of her husband Theseus, Phaedra confesses her feelings to Hippolytus, but he rejects her. Upon the return of Theseus, Phaedra, in a fit of despair, fear and jealousy, decides to slander Hippolytus. Then, tormented by the pangs of repentance and love, he takes poison; confessing everything to her husband, she dies.

The main innovation of Racine is connected with the character of Phaedra. In Racine, Phaedra is a suffering woman. Her tragic guilt is the inability to cope with the feeling, which Phaedra herself calls criminal. Racine comprehends and embodies in his tragedy not only the moral and psychological conflicts of his era, but also discovers the general patterns of human psychology.

The first Russian translator of Racine was Sumarokov, who received the nickname "Russian Racine". In the 19th century, A. S. Pushkin showed a thoughtful attitude towards Racine. He drew attention to the fact that the French playwright managed to put deep content into the gallantly refined form of his tragedies, and this allowed him to place Racine next to Shakespeare. In an unfinished article of 1830 on the development of dramatic art, which served as an introduction to the analysis of M. P. Pogodin’s drama “Martha Posadnitsa,” Pushkin wrote: “What develops in tragedy, what is its purpose? Man and people. The fate of man, the fate of the people. That is why Racine is great, despite the narrow form of his tragedy. That is why Shakespeare is great, despite the inequality, negligence, ugliness of the finish ”(Pushkin - critic. - M., 1950, p. 279).

If the best examples of classic tragedy were created by Corneille and Racine, then classic comedy was entirely the creation of Molière (1622-1673).

The writer's biography of Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin) begins with the five-act poetic comedy "Naughty, or Everything Out of Place" (1655) - a typical comedy of intrigue. In 1658, fame will come to Molière. His performances will enjoy great success, he will be patronized by the king himself, but envious people, dangerous opponents, from among those whom Moliere ridiculed in his comedies, pursued him until the end of his life.

Molière laughed, exposed, accused. The arrows of his satire did not spare either ordinary members of society or high-ranking nobles.

In the preface to the comedy "Tartuffe" Moliere wrote: "The theater has a great corrective power." "We deal vices a heavy blow by exposing them to public ridicule." "The duty of comedy is to correct people by amusing them." The playwright was well aware of the social significance of satire: "The best thing I can do is expose the vices of my age in funny images."

In the comedies "Tartuffe", "The Miser", "The Misanthrope", "Don Juan", "The Philistine in the Nobility" Moliere raises deep social and moral problems, offers laughter as the most effective medicine.

Moliere was the creator of the "comedy of character", where an important role was played not by external action (although the playwright skillfully built a comic intrigue), but by the moral and psychological state of the hero. The character in Moliere is endowed, in accordance with the law of classicism, with one dominant character trait. This allows the writer to give a generalized image of human vices - avarice, vanity, hypocrisy. No wonder some of the names of Moliere's characters, for example, Tartuffe, Harpagon, have become common nouns; a hypocrite and a hypocrite are called tartuffe, a miser is called a harpagon. Molière observed the rules of classicism in his plays, but he did not shy away from the folk tradition of the farcical theater, he wrote not only "high comedies", in which he raised serious social problems, but also cheerful "comedy-ballets". One of Moliere's famous comedies, "The Philistine in the Nobility" successfully combines the seriousness and relevance of the problem posed with the gaiety and grace of "comedy-ballet". Moliere draws in it a vivid satirical image of the wealthy bourgeois Jourdain, who bows to the nobility and dreams of joining the aristocratic environment.

The viewer laughs at the unfounded claims of an ignorant and rude person. Although Molière laughs at his hero, he does not despise him. The gullible and narrow-minded Jourdain is more attractive than the aristocrats who live on his money, but despise Jourdain.

An example of a "serious" classic comedy was the comedy "The Misanthrope", where the problem of humanism is solved in the disputes between Alceste and Philint. In the words of Alceste, full of despair, about the vices and injustice reigning in the human world, there is a sharp criticism of social relations. The revelations of Alceste reveal the social content of the comedy.

Moliere made a discovery in the field of comedy. Using the method of generalization, the playwright, through an individual image, expressed the essence of social vice, portrayed the typical social features of his time, the level and quality of his moral relations.

French classicism was most clearly manifested in dramaturgy, but it was also quite clearly expressed in prose.

Classical examples of the genre of aphorism were created in France by La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Vauvenart, Chamfort. A brilliant master of aphorism was François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1689). In the book "Reflections, or Moral Sayings and Maxims" (1665), the writer created a peculiar model of "man in general", outlined a universal psychology, a moral portrait of humanity. The painted picture was a gloomy sight. The writer does not believe in truth or goodness. Even humanity and nobility, according to the writer, are just a spectacular pose, a mask covering self-interest and vanity. By generalizing his observations, seeing a universal law in the historical phenomenon, La Rochefoucauld comes to the idea of ​​the egoistic essence of human nature. Selfishness as a natural instinct, as a powerful mechanism on which a person's actions depend, underlies his moral motives. For a person, hatred of suffering and the desire for pleasure are natural, therefore morality is a refined egoism, a reasonably understood “interest” of one person. In order to curb natural self-love, a person resorts to the help of reason. Following Descartes, La Rochefoucauld calls for reasonable control over passions. This is the ideal organization of human behavior.

Jean La Bruyère (1645-1696) known as the author of the only book, Characters, or Morals of this Age (1688). In the last ninth edition of the book, La Bruyère described 1120 characters. Turning to the work of Theophrastus as a model, La Bruyere greatly complicated the manner of the ancient Greek: he not only discovers the causes of the vices and weaknesses of people. The writer establishes the dependence of human character on the social environment. La Bruyère derives typical, most general regularities from concrete and individual diversity. The "Characters" depicts the various strata of the Parisian and provincial society of the time of Louis XIV. Dividing the book into chapters "Court", "City", "Sovereign", "Nobles", etc., the author builds its composition in accordance with the internal classification of portraits (princes, misers, gossips, talkers, flatterers, courtiers, bankers, monks, bourgeois, etc.). La Bruyère, the last great classicist of the 17th century, combining various genres in his book (maxims, dialogue, portrait, short story, satire, moral morality), follows strict logic, subordinates his observations to a general idea, creates typical characters.

In 1678, the novel The Princess of Cleves appeared, written by Marie de Lafayette (1634-1693). The novel was distinguished by an in-depth interpretation of images and an accurate display of real circumstances. Lafayette tells the story of the love of the wife of the Prince of Cleves for the Duke of Nemours, emphasizing the struggle between passion and duty. Experiencing a love passion, the Princess of Cleves overcomes it with an effort of will. Having retired to a peaceful abode, she managed with the help of her mind to maintain peace and spiritual purity.

Literature of Germany

In the 17th century, Germany bears the tragic imprint of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The Peace of Westphalia formalized its division into many small principalities. Fragmentation, the decline of trade, handicraft production led to the decline of culture.

The poet played a huge role in the revival of the German culture of modern times. Martin Opitz (1597-1639) and his theoretical treatise The Book of German Poetry.

Instilling the classicist canon in German literature, Opitz calls for studying the poetic experience of antiquity, formulates the main tasks of literature, and puts emphasis on the task of moral education. Opitz introduced the syllabic-tonic system of versification, tried to regulate literature, and established a hierarchy of genres. Before Opitz, German poets wrote primarily in Latin. Opitz sought to prove that poetic masterpieces could also be created in German.

Opitz became one of the first chroniclers of the Thirty Years' War. One of the best works is the poem "A Word of Consolation Amidst the Disasters of War" (1633). The poet calls on his compatriots to rise above the chaos of life, to find support in their own souls. The theme of the condemnation of war is heard in the poems "Zlatna" (1623) and "Praise to the God of War" (1628). Opitz's "learned classicism" did not receive wide development, and already in the work of his students Fleming and Logau, the influence of baroque poetics is clearly noticeable.

An outstanding poet of the German Baroque was Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664), capturing in piercingly mournful tones the worldview of the era of the Thirty Years' War.

The poetry of Gryphius is oversaturated with emotional, visual images, symbols, emblems. Favorite tricks of Gryphius are enumeration, deliberate heaping of images, contrasting comparison. “A cold dark forest, a cave, a skull, a bone - // Everything says that I am a guest in the world, // That I will not escape either weakness or decay.”

Gryphius is also the founder of the German drama, the creator of the German Baroque tragedy (“The Lion of the Armenian, or the Regicide” (1646), “The Murdered Majesty, or Charles Stewart, King of Great Britain” (1649), etc.).

A striking figure of the German Baroque was an original poet Johann Günther (1695-1723). Gunther develops the idea of ​​Gryphius about the best feelings plundered by the war, about the homeland that has forgotten its sons (“To the Fatherland”). The poet opposes the dullness of life, wretchedness, German reality, its backwardness and inertness. Many of the motifs of his poetry would later be taken up and developed by representatives of the Sturm und Drang movement.

The largest representative in baroque prose is Hans Jacob Christoffel Grimmelshausen (1622-1676). His best work is the novel Simplicissimus (1669). The author describes the unusual journey of the hero, whose name - Simplicius Simplicissimus - translates as "the simplest of the simplest." A naive, disinterested young peasant, walking along the path of life, meets with representatives of various social strata of German society. The hero is faced with arbitrariness, cruelty reigning in the world, lack of honesty, justice, kindness.

In the palace of the ruler of Hanau, they want to make a jester out of Simplicius: they put on a calfskin, lead him on a rope, grimacing, mocking him. The naivety and sincerity of the hero is perceived by everyone as madness. Through allegory, Grimmelshausen wants to tell the reader about the most important thing: a terrible world in which the misfortune of a person serves as fun. The war hardened the people. Simplicissimus seeks kindness in human hearts, calls everyone to peace. However, the hero finds peace of mind on a deserted island, far from a vicious civilization.

Grimmelshausen was the first in German literature to show what a destructive effect war has on human souls. In his hero, the writer embodied the dream of a whole, natural person living according to the laws of folk morality. That is why even today the novel is perceived as a vivid anti-war work.

Literature of England

In the development of English literature of the 17th century, inextricably linked with political events, three periods are traditionally distinguished:

1. Pre-revolutionary period (1620-1630).

2. Period of revolution, civil war and republic (1640-1650).

3. Restoration period (1660-1680).

In the first period (20-30s of the 17th century) in English literature, there was a decline in dramaturgy and theater. The ideology of the triumphant absolutist reaction finds expression in the activities of the so-called "metaphysical school", which creates speculative literature abstracted from the problems of reality, as well as the "Caroline school", which included royalist poets. In the work of D. Donn, D. Webster,

T. Dekker motives of loneliness, fatal predestination, despair are heard.

This was the younger contemporary of Shakespeare Ben Jonson (1573-1637), author of the life-affirming and realistic comedies Volpone (1607), Episin, or the Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew's Fair (1610).

In the 1640s and 1650s, journalism (tracts, pamphlets, sermons) was of great importance. Publicistic and artistic works of Puritan writers often had a religious coloring and at the same time were saturated with protest, the spirit of fierce class struggle. They reflected not only the aspirations of the Cromwell-led bourgeoisie, but the moods and expectations of the broad masses of the people, expressed in the ideology of the Levellers (“equalizers”), and especially the “true Levellers” or “diggers” (“diggers”), who relied on the rural poor.

The democratic opposition of the 1640s and 1650s brought forward the talented Leveller publicist John Lilburn (1618-1657). Lilburne's famous pamphlet "The New Chains of England" was directed against the order of Cromwell, who turned from a revolutionary commander into a lord protector with despotic manners. Democratic tendencies are distinct in the work of Gerald Winstanley (1609 - about 1652). His accusatory treatises and pamphlets (The Banner Raised by the True Levellers, 1649; Declaration of the Poor, Oppressed People of England, 1649) are directed against the bourgeoisie and the new nobility.

The most prominent representative of the revolutionary camp in English literature of the 40-50s of the 17th century was John Milton (1608-1674).

In the first period of his work (1630s), Milton wrote a number of lyrical poems and two poems "Cheerful" and "Pensive", in which the main contradictions of subsequent work are outlined: the coexistence of Puritanism and Renaissance humanism. In the 1640s and 1650s, Milton was actively involved in the political struggle. He almost does not turn to poetry (writes only 20 sonnets) and devotes himself entirely to journalism, eventually creating outstanding examples of journalistic prose of the 17th century. The third period of Milton's work (1660-1674) coincides with the era of the Restoration (1660-1680). Milton moves away from politics. The poet turns to artistic creativity and writes large-scale epic poems Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671) and the tragedy Samson the Wrestler (1671).

Written on biblical subjects, these works are imbued with a fiery revolutionary spirit. In Paradise Lost, Milton tells the story of Satan's rebellion against God. The work has many features of the contemporary Milton era. Even in the period of the most severe reaction, Milton remains faithful to his tyrannical, republican principles. The second storyline is connected with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve - this is an understanding of the difficult path of mankind to moral rebirth.

In Paradise Regained, Milton continues his reflection on the revolution. The glorification of the spiritual fortitude of Christ, who rejects all the temptations of Satan, served as an edification to the recent revolutionaries, who were afraid of the reaction and hastily went over to the side of the royalists.

The last work of Milton - the tragedy "Samson the Wrestler" - is also allegorically connected with the events of the English Revolution. In it, harassed by political enemies, Milton calls for revenge and for the continuation of the struggle of people for a worthy existence.

Foreign literature of the XVII-XVIII centuries.
Questions for the exam

11. Creativity Corneille.
Corneille (1606-1684)
Born in Rouen, in the family of an official. He graduated from the Jesuit College, received a position as a lawyer. Once, as the legend tells, one of Corneille's friends introduced him to his beloved, but she preferred Pierre to her former admirer. This story prompted Corneille to write a comedy. So his "Melita" (1629) appeared. Then - "Klitandr", "Widow", "Court Gallery", "Royal Square" - are now forgotten. After the "Comic Illusion", with its incredible heap of fantastic creatures and incidents, Corneille created "Cid" - a tragedy that opened the glorious history of the French national theater, made up the national pride of the French. "Sid" brought the author the praise of the people and the annoyance of Richelieu (because there are political motives - a Spanish hero). Richelieu was jealous, because. he himself was a bad poet. They attacked Cornel. The Academy began to look for errors and deviations from the "rules" of classicism. The playwright was silent for a moment. In 1639-1640 - the tragedies "Horace" and "Cinna", 1643 - "Polyeuct". In 1652 - the tragedy "Pertarit" - a complete failure. Silent for seven years, then in 1659 - "Oedipus". He is replaced by Racine. Cornel doesn't want to give up. Voltaire in 1731 in the poem "The Temple of Taste" depicted Corneille throwing his last tragedies into the fire - "the cold old age of creation." In 1674 K. stopped writing, and died 10 years later.
Early work
Corneille's first play is usually considered to be the comedy Mélite (Mélite, 1629), but in 1946 an anonymous manuscript of the pastoral play Alidor ou l'Indifférent, op. between 1626 and 1628, published in 2001), which, perhaps, should be considered the true debut of the great playwright (according to other versions, its author is Jean Rotru). Melita was followed by a series of comedies with which Corneille created a position for himself and won over Richelieu.
Since 1635, Corneille has been writing tragedies, at first imitating Seneca; among these first, rather feeble attempts is Médée. Then, inspired by the Spanish theater, he wrote "L'Illusion Comique" (1636) - a ponderous farce, the main character of which is the Spanish matamour.
"Sid"
At the end of 1636, another tragedy by Corneille appeared, constituting an epoch in the history of the French theater: it was The Sid, immediately recognized as a masterpiece; even a proverb was created: “beautiful as Cid” (beau comme le Cid). "Paris, and after him all of France, continued to" look at Cid through the eyes of Chimene "even after the Paris Academy condemned this tragedy, in the Sentiments de l'Académie sur le Cid ": the author of this criticism, Chaplin, found the choice of the plot of the tragedy unsuccessful, the denouement - unsatisfactory, the style - devoid of dignity.
Written in Rouen, the tragedy "Horace" was staged in Paris at the beginning of 1640, apparently on the stage of the Burgundy Hotel. The premiere of the tragedy did not become a triumph for the playwright, but the success of the play grew from performance to performance. Included in the repertoire of the Comédie Française, the tragedy has endured on this stage a number of performances second only to The Sid. Such illustrious actors as Mademoiselle Cleron, Rachel, Mounet-Sully and others performed with brilliance in the main roles of the play.
Horace was first published in January 1641 by Augustin Courbet.
By the same time is the marriage of Corneille to Marie de Lampriere (Marie de Lamprière), the height of his social life, constant relations with the hotel Ramboulier. One after another appeared his beautiful comedy "Le Menteur" and much weaker tragedies:
religious poetry
Beginning in 1651, Corneille succumbed to the influence of his Jesuit friends, who tried to distract their former pupil from the theater. Corneille took up religious poetry, as if to redeem his secular creativity of earlier years, and soon published a verse translation of "Imitation de Jesus Christ" ("Imitation de Jesus Christ"). This translation was a huge success and went through 130 editions in 20 years. It was followed by several other translations, also made under the influence of the Jesuits: panegyrics to the Virgin Mary, psalms, etc.

13. Creativity Racine.
The beginning of the creative path
In 1658 Racine began to study law in Paris and made his first contacts in the literary milieu. In 1660, he wrote the poem "Nymph of the Seine", for which he received a pension from the king, and also created two plays that were never staged and have not survived to this day. The mother's family decided to prepare him for a religious career, and in 1661 he went to his uncle, a priest in Languedoc, where he spent two years in the hope of receiving money from the church, which would allow him to devote himself entirely to literary work. This venture ended in failure, and around 1663 Racine returned to Paris. The circle of his literary acquaintances expanded, the doors of the court salons opened before him. The first of his surviving plays, The Thebaid (1664) and Alexander the Great (1665), were staged by Molière. Stage success prompted Racine to enter into controversy with his former teacher - Jansenist Pierre Nicol, who proclaimed that any writer and playwright is a public poisoner of souls.

Triumphant decade
In 1665, Racine broke off relations with the Molière theater and moved to the Burgundy Hotel Theater along with his mistress, the famous actress Teresa du Parc, who played the title role in Andromache in 1667. It was the first masterpiece of Racine, which had a tremendous success with the public. The widely known mythological plot had already been developed by Euripides, but the French playwright changed the essence of the tragic conflict so that "the image of Andromache corresponded to the idea of ​​her that was established among us." Achilles' son Pyrrhus is engaged to Menelaus' daughter Hermione, but passionately loves Hector's widow Andromache. Seeking her consent to marriage, he threatens in case of refusal to extradite the son of Hector Astyanax to the Greeks. The Greek embassy is led by Orestes, who is in love with Hermione. In "Andromache" there is no conflict between duty and feeling: the relationship of mutual dependence creates an insoluble dilemma and leads to an inevitable disaster - when Andromache agrees to marry Pyrrhus, Hermione orders Orestes to kill her fiancé, after which she curses the murderer and commits suicide. This tragedy shows the passions that tear apart the soul of a person, which make a "reasonable" decision impossible.

With the production of Andromache, the most fruitful period in Racine's work began: after his only comedy, Sutyags (1668), the tragedies Britannicus (1669), Berenice (1670), Bayazet (1672), Mithridates appeared. (1673), "Iphigenia" (1674). The playwright was on the crest of fame and success: in 1672 he was elected to the French Academy, and the king, who favored him, granted him a title of nobility. The turning point of this extremely successful career was the production of Phaedra (1677). Racine's enemies made every effort to ruin the play: the insignificant playwright Pradon used the same plot in his tragedy, which was staged at the same time as Phaedra, and the greatest tragedy of the French theater (which the playwright himself considered his best play) failed at the first performance. The lawless love of the wife of the Athenian king Theseus for her stepson Hippolytus at one time attracted the attention of Euripides, for whom the main character was a pure young man, severely punished by the goddess Aphrodite. Racine put Phaedra at the center of his tragedy, showing the painful struggle of a woman with a sinful passion burning her. There are at least two interpretations of this conflict - "pagan" and "Christian". On the one hand, Racine shows a world inhabited by monsters (one of them destroys Hippolyta) and ruled by evil gods. At the same time, the existence of the “hidden God” of the Jansenists can be found here: he does not give people any “signs”, but only in him can salvation be found. It is no coincidence that the play was enthusiastically accepted by Racine's teacher Antoine Arnault, who owns the famous definition: "Phaedra is a Christian who has not been blessed." The heroine of the tragedy finds "salvation", dooming herself to death and saving the honor of Hippolytus in the eyes of her father. In this play, Racine managed to fuse together the concept of pagan fate with the Calvinist idea of ​​predestination.

Leaving the theater

The intrigue around "Phaedra" caused a heated controversy, in which Racine did not take part. Abruptly leaving the stage, he married a pious but quite ordinary girl who bore him seven children, and took up the position of royal historiographer with his friend Boileau. His only plays during this period were Esther (1689) and Athalia (1690), written for the girls' school in Saint-Cyr at the request of their patroness, the Marquise de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of Louis XIV.

Racine's work represents the highest stage of French classicism: in his tragedies, the harmonic rigor of construction and clarity of thought are combined with deep penetration into the recesses of the human soul.

15. Creativity Molière.
Molière comes from a wealthy, educated family. When Molière was 15 years old. The father insisted that he go to Sarbona. Molière graduated from the faculty of journalism successfully, but when he was 19, a very sharp turn took place in his life, he "fell ill" with the theater. A theater from the provinces toured Paris. Molière left home for 10 years and remained in the provinces. Performances were given either in the threshing floor, or in the knight's hall, or somewhere else. Molière returned to Paris at the age of 30. Gradually, Moliere began to write plays, comedies, he himself played as a comic actor.
One of the earliest comedies was "funny coynesses" - comedy lessons, characters for the first years of Moliere's stay in Paris (a lesson for wives and a lesson for husbands), the comedy "Georges Danden" was written in the same vein. Her hero, a wealthy farmer, a relatively young and ambitious man, decided to marry a noblewoman at any cost. And he makes his dream come true. An impoverished noblewoman marries wealthy Georges. On marrying, she accepts to settle scores with Georges Dandin - he is ignorant for her, ignoramus: she utters her displeasure to her husband and believes that lovers should have compensation for the sacrifices. She cuckolds her husband at any opportunity. The image of the main character is drawn in a special way. This is a person prone to self-reflection: he blames himself first of all. This makes him vulnerable and unhappy at the same time and increases the reader's attitude towards the hero. "You yourself wanted it, Georges Danden."
A special place in the work of Molière is occupied by Amphitrion. Husband of Alcmene (mother of Hercules). No one encroaches on her honor and beauty, she was a faithful wife. Zeus falls in love with Alcmene and decides that she should be his. Zeus took the form of Amphitryon. The comedy "Amphitrion" was a work both gallant and ambiguous: it depicted Louis 14 in the image of the resourceful Zeus. The king was flattered by this work, and this comedy was on. In the first years of his stay in Paris, Molière and his theater enjoyed the sympathy of the king, the king attended performances, and especially loved comedy-ballet.
For example, "The Imaginary Sick" - the main character is a person who has only one ailment - unthinkable suspiciousness. He dies all day without harm to health. Understands that this is a pretense, only a maid. She guesses how an imaginary patient can be cured at once: he must be initiated into an oriental doctor. At the end of the comedy, a whole group of doctors enter the sick room, they are armed with professional weapons - tweezers. All this guard dances and sings, dedicating the patient to the ta-to-shi clan, i.e. into enlightened doctors. In macaronic language - French + Lat. These dances were comedy-ballets. The age of Louis 14 was the age of ballets, rather peculiar. In these ballets the king, queen, princes, ambassadors dance. The courtiers contemplated.
The favor of the king was so great that he was twice the godfather of the children of Molière, allocating sumina, but the children of Molière a did not survive.
In the 70s. royal reverence has come to an end, this is due to the comedy "Tartuffe". When the first version came out, an immediate ban followed. The comedy was seen as a satire on the authority of the church. The second option also did not pass followed by a ban. And in order to ensure the economic stability of the troupe, he writes the comedy Don Juan in 40 days, then creates the third version of Tartuffe.
Molière died almost on stage: acting as the main character of The Imaginary Sick and finishing the play, the pains were real, and after that the curtain was closed and he was transferred to his house.
They could not find a single priest for Moliere to confess, but when the priest arrived, Moliere had already died. Based on this, the church refused to bury him in the cemetery, he was buried in the cemetery, but not on sacred ground.

17. Creativity Lope de Vega.
One of the brightest representatives of the Renaissance realism of the 17th century was Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635) - the great Spanish playwright, poet, the pinnacle of the golden age of Spanish literature.
Lope de Vega was born into a family of gold embroiderers. Studied at the University of Alcala. He has been writing poetry since the age of five. At 22, he was successful as a playwright. His life was filled with passionate hobbies and dramatic events.
On December 29, 1587, during a performance, Lope de Vega was arrested and sent to prison. The reason for the arrest was insulting satirical verses addressed to his former lover Elena Osorio and her family, whose head X. Velazquez was the director of Lope's first plays. By decision of the court, the young man was expelled from Madrid and Castile for many years. Leaving the capital, he kidnapped dona Isavel de Urbina and married her against the will of his father. At the wedding, the groom was represented by a relative, since Lope faced the death penalty for appearing in Madrid in violation of the sentence.
May 29, 1588 Lope de Vega volunteers on the ship "San Juan" and goes on a campaign "Invincible Armada". After many adventures, the loss of his brother Lope returns to Spain, settles in Valencia and publishes the poem "The Beauty of Angelica" (1602).
After the death of his first wife in 1593, Lope marries the daughter of a meat merchant, Juan de Guardo. In the same years, he indulged in a passion for the actress Michaela de Lujan, whom he sang in the image of Camilla Lucinda. For many years, the poet travels after his beloved and lives where she plays.
Since 1605, Lope has served as secretary to the Duke de Sess, and writes a lot for the theater. In 1610, after the annulment of the court verdict, he finally moved to Madrid.
In 1609, thanks to the participation of the Duke de Sess, Lope de Vega receives a title that protects him from church attacks - “an approximate Inquisition”, that is, who is beyond suspicion. In 1614, after the death of his son and the death of his second wife, Lope takes the priesthood, but does not change his secular principles of life. Church dignity did not prevent him from experiencing once again an all-consuming feeling for Martha de Nevares. Lope did not refuse his love even after Marta became blind and lost her mind.
In 1625, the Council of Castile prohibited the printing of Lope de Vega's plays. Misfortune haunts the poet in his personal life.
Martha de Nevares dies in 1632. In 1634, the son dies, one of the daughters - Marcela - goes to the monastery, the other daughter - Antonia-Clara - is kidnapped by a dissolute nobleman. The misfortunes made Lope completely lonely, but did not break his spirit and did not kill his interest in life. Shortly before his death, he completed the poem "The Golden Age" (1635), in which he expressed his dream, continuing to assert the Renaissance ideal.
Lope's work is based on the ideas of Renaissance humanism and the traditions of patriarchal Spain. His legacy is great. It includes various genre forms: poems, dramas, comedies, sonnets, eclogues, parodies, prose novels. Lope de Vega owns more than 1500 works. According to the titles, 726 dramas and 47 autos have come down to us, 470 texts of plays have been preserved. The writer actively developed, along with the literary traditions of the Renaissance, folk motifs and themes.
In the poems of Lope, his poetic skill, patriotic spirit, and desire to express himself in the world of literature were manifested. He created about twenty poems on various subjects, including ancient ones. Competing with Ariosto, he developed an episode from his poem - the love story of Angelica and Medoro - in the poem "Angelica's Beauty"; arguing with Torquatto Tasso, he wrote "Jerusalem Conquered" (ed. 1609), praising the exploits of the Spaniards in the struggle for the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher.
Gradually, patriotic sentiments give way to irony. In the poem "War of the Cats" (1634), the poet, on the one hand, describing the March adventures of cats and their war for a beautiful cat, laughs at modern customs, on the other hand, denies artificial norms, the methods of classical poems created according to book samples.
In 1609, by order of the Madrid Literary Academy, Lope wrote a treatise "The New Art of Composing Comedies in Our Time." By this time, he was already the author of brilliant comedies - The Dance Teacher (1594), Toledo Night (1605), The Dog in the Manger (c. 1604) and others. In a poetic, half-joking treatise, Lope outlined important aesthetic principles and his views on dramaturgy, directed, on the one hand, against classicism, and on the other, against the baroque.

19. Creativity Calderon.
The dramaturgy of Calderon is the baroque completion of the theatrical model created in the late 16th and early 17th centuries by Lope de Vega. According to the list of works compiled by the author himself shortly before his death, Calderon wrote about 120 comedies and dramas, 80 autos sacramentales, 20 interludes and a considerable number of other works, including poems and poems. Although Calderon is less prolific than his predecessor, he perfects the dramatic "formula" created by Lope de Vega, clearing it of lyrical and low-functional elements and turning the play into a magnificent baroque performance. For him, unlike Lope de Vega, he is characterized by special attention to the scenographic and musical side of the performance.
There are many classifications of Calderon's plays. Most often, researchers distinguish the following groups:
Dramas of honor. These works are dominated by traditional Spanish baroque issues: love, religion and honor. The conflict is associated either with a retreat from these principles, or with the tragic need to comply with them, even at the cost of human life. Although the action often takes place in the past of Spain, the setting and themes are close to contemporary Calderon. Examples: "Salamei alcalde", "Doctor of his honor", "Painter of his dishonor".
Philosophical dramas. Plays of this type touch upon the fundamental questions of being, first of all, human destiny, free will, and the causes of human suffering. The action takes place most often in "exotic" countries for Spain (for example, Ireland, Poland, Muscovy); the historical and local flavor is emphatically conditional and is intended to accentuate their timeless issues. Examples: "Life is a dream", "Magician", "St. Patrick's Purgatory".
Comedy intrigue. The most "traditional" group of Calderon's plays includes comedies built according to the canons of the Lope de Vega theater, with an intricate and fascinating love affair. The initiators and the most active participants in the intrigue are most often women. Comedies are characterized by the so-called "calderon move" - ​​objects that accidentally got to the heroes, letters that came by mistake, secret passages and hidden doors. Examples: "The Invisible Lady", "In the still waters ...", "Aloud in secret."
Regardless of the genre, Calderon's style is characterized by increased metaphor, vividly figurative poetic language, logically built dialogues and monologues, where the character of the characters is revealed. Calderon's works are rich in reminiscences from ancient mythology and literature, Holy Scripture, and other writers of the Golden Age (for example, there are hints of the characters and situations of Don Quixote in the text of The Ghost Lady and The Alcalde of Salamey). The characters of his plays simultaneously have one dominant feature (Cyprian ("The Magician") - a thirst for knowledge, Sehismundo ("Life is a dream") - the inability to distinguish between good and evil, Pedro Crespo ("The Alcalde of Salamey") - the desire for justice) and complex internal device.
The last significant playwright of the golden age, Calderon, after a period of neglect in the 18th century, was rediscovered in Germany. Goethe staged his plays at the Weimar theatre; the influence of the "Magician" on the concept of "Faust" is noticeable. Thanks to the works of the Schlegel brothers, who were especially attracted by the philosophical and religious component of his works (“Calderon is the Catholic Shakespeare”), the Spanish playwright gained wide popularity and firmly took his place as a classic of European literature. The influence of Calderon on German-language literature in the 20th century was reflected in the work of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
20. The main motives of the lyrics of Burns.
After the unification of Scotland and England, educated Scots tried to speak English. Burns came to Scottish literature when two traditions fought in it: imitation of English models and the desire to preserve national characteristics, the vernacular. At first, Robert Burns tried to write his "serious" poems in English, and only in songs and humorous messages to friends does he allow himself to speak Scottish. But reading Ferguson, he saw that he writes in the "Scottish dialect" sonorous light and melodious poetry, writes simply, clearly and at the same time elegantly, with a cheerful invention. All poems, all songs and letters of Burns speak of love as the highest happiness available to mortals. In gentle lyrical lines, in the bitter complaints of an abandoned girl, in indignant rebuttals to virtuous hypocrites and unrestrainedly frank free songs - everywhere the mighty indomitable force of passion, the voice of blood, the immutable law of life are sung. Burns hates corrupt, selfish, feigned love.
Burns discovered the incomprehensible art of making poetry out of the most mundane, everyday situations, out of the most "rude.", "unpoetic" words, which were resolutely rejected by classicist poetics. , as "low", "plebeian". Burns made his muse speak the language of peasants, artisans. With his powerful, truly folk poetry, Burns created a new readership. This largely determined the further fate of not only Scottish, but also English literature. The Romantics, who entered the literary arena in the mid-1990s, relied on the circle of readers from the lower classes of society that Burns's poetry had created.
The origins of Burns' poetry are folk, his lyrics are a direct development of a folk song. In his poems, he reflected the life of the people, their sorrows and joys. The work of the farmer and his independent character. But for all the inseparable connection of Burns' poetry with folk songs and legends, it cannot be denied that the predecessors of the sentimentalists had an influence on its formation. But having reached creative maturity, Burns rejected the languid writing style of his predecessors and even parodied their favorite "graveyard" rhymes. In "An Elegy on the Death of My Sheep Who Was Called Maylie," Burns comically laments and "sings" the virtues of the sheep in a no less touchingly sublime manner than did the sentimentalists. With such parodies, Burns, as it were, blows up the genre of elegy, beloved by poets, from within. The assertion of the human dignity of the worker is combined in Burns with the condemnation of the lords and the bourgeois. Even in the love lyrics, the poet's critical attitude towards the representatives of the propertied classes is noticeable:

People are not recognized as people
The owners of the chambers.
For some, hard work
The destiny of others is debauchery.
In idleness
hungover
They spend their days.
Not in the Garden of Eden
Not in hell
They don't believe. ("Really, Davy, me and you...")
But most of the heroes and heroines of Burns are brave, courageous. Faithful in love and friendship people. His heroines often go "to storm their own destiny", courageously fight for happiness, with a patriarchal way of life. Girls choose a husband according to their hearts, against the will of harsh parents:

With such a young man, I don't need
Fear the fate of change.
I will be glad of poverty
If only Tam Glen were with me ...
My mother said to me angrily:
- Beware of men's betrayals,
Hurry up, refuse you
But will Tam Glen change? ("Tam Glen")
Images of Scottish patriots - Bruce, Wallace, McPherson - created by
Burns laid the foundation for the emergence of a whole gallery of portraits of people's leaders, people from the lower classes. Gradually, the poet came to the conclusion that if the social order of the British Empire was unjust and criminal, then there was no shame in contradicting a judge or a constable; on the contrary, the good fellows who enter the fight against the royal law are worthy of glory no less. Than Robin Hood. So the theme of national independence merged in the work of Burns with a protest against national injustice.

21. Creativity Grimmelshausen.
The largest representative of the democratic line of the novel was Hans Jakob Christoph Grimmelshausen (c. 1622-1676). All of Grimmelshausen's works were published under various pseudonyms, usually anagrams of the writer's name. Only in the 19th century as a result of a long search, it was possible to establish the name of the author of "Simplicissimus" and some data of his biography. Grimmelshausen was born in the imperial city of Gelnhausen in Hesse, the son of a wealthy burgher. As a teenager, he was drawn into the maelstrom of the Thirty Years' War. He traveled almost all of Germany by military roads, ending up in one or the other hostile camp, he was a groom, a convoy, a musketeer, a clerk. He ended the war as a secretary of the regimental office, then he often changed his occupation: he was either a tax and tax collector, then an innkeeper, then the manager of the estate. From 1667 until the end of his life, he served as headman of the small Rhine town of Renchen, not far from Strasbourg, where almost all of his works were created.
During his travels, the writer has accumulated not only rich life experience, but also solid erudition. The number of books he read, which are reflected in his novels, is large in volume and variety. In 1668, the novel The Intricate Simplicius Simplicissimus was published, immediately followed by several of its sequels and other "Simplician" works: "Simplicia in defiance, or a lengthy and outlandish biography of the seasoned deceiver and vagabond Courage", "Springinsfeld", "Magic Bird nest", "Simplician perpetual calendar" and others. Grimmelshausen also wrote pastoral and "historical" novels ("The Chaste Joseph", "Ditwald and Amelinda").
Grimmelshausen, like no other German writer of the 17th century, was connected with the life and fate of the German people and was the spokesman for the true people's worldview. The writer's worldview absorbed various philosophical elements of the era, which he drew both from "bookish" scholarship and from mystical teachings that became widespread throughout Germany and determined the mindset of wide sections of the people.
The work of Grimmelshausen is an artistic synthesis of all the previous development of German narrative prose and various foreign literary influences, especially the Spanish picaresque novel. The novels of Grimmelshausen are a vivid example of the originality of the German Baroque.
The pinnacle of Grimmelshausen's work is the novel Simplicissimus.

Characterization of the 17th century as a special era in the history of Western literature

The 17th century is a century of wars, political and religious conflicts, a century when utopian Renaissance ideas about domination are fading away, leaving behind a feeling of absolute world chaos. A person in this chaos ceases to be the highest measure of all things, he is forced to submit to new laws and rules. And the intensification of the persecution of heretics, the tightening of censorship only intensify the tragic moods that are reflected in literature. Two concepts of worldview appear: the Catholic concept of free will and the Protestant concept of predestination. The first concept is characterized by the perception of a person as free, free to choose between good and evil, thereby predetermining his future. The Protestant concept assumes that the salvation of a person does not depend on how he lives, and everything is already predetermined from above. But this does not release a person from the obligation to be virtuous. Despite the disadvantages of the Catholic concept of free will, which involves some kind of exchange between God and man (good deeds with the expectation of a divine reward), this concept most influenced the literature of the 17th century.

Other popular ideas that found reflection in the literature of the 17th century were the ideas of stoicism and neostoicism. The main principle and motto of the adherents of these ideas was the preservation of inner peace. Neostoicism is also characterized by a very strong religious feeling, parallel to the gospel beliefs and forebodings.

In the 17th century, two opposing artistic systems were formed: baroque and classicism.

General characteristics of the Baroque.

Baroque is translated from Italian as "quaint", and this word best characterizes this literary movement. It comes to replace the Renaissance and introduces bizarre, expressive forms, dynamics, disharmony, and expression into literature. The linear perspective is replaced by a strange baroque perspective: double foreshortenings, mirror images, shifted scales. All this is intended to express the elusiveness of the world and the illusory nature of our ideas about it. In baroque, high and science, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and bodily, reality and illusion are opposed. There is no clarity, no integrity. The world is split, in endless movement and time. This run makes human life terribly fleeting, hence the theme of the shortness of man, the frailty of everything that exists.

In dramaturgy, the baroque game is initially manifested in spectacle, illusionism, the transition from reality to fantasy. Human life is like a theater. God plays the theater of life by lifting the curtain of chaos. This dramatic idea of ​​the world and of man in general is characteristic of the Baroque. It exposes the comicality of human existence, when the pursuit of happiness is just a cruel historical process.

General characteristics of classicism.

Usually, the most important feature of classicism is its normative nature, namely, a set of laws and rules that are mandatory for all artists. However, many supporters of classicism did not always strictly observe these rules.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Hosted at http://www.allbest.ru/

Foreign literature of the 17th century

Major literary movements

The 17th century was interpreted for almost the entire half of the 20th century as the “era of classicism”. All artistic phenomena emerging from the category of classicism were considered either as artistically imperfect works (in foreign literary criticism, par excellence), or as realistic creations, the most important in the perspective of literary development (in Soviet literary criticism). A peculiar baroque fashion that arose in Western science in the 30-40s of the 20th century and is increasingly spreading, including ours, brought to life the opposite phenomenon, when the 17th century turned into the “Baroque era”, and classicism began to be regarded as a variant of baroque art in France, so that in recent times the study of classicism requires perhaps more effort and scientific courage than the study of the baroque.

Special attention should be paid to the problem of "realism of the 17th century". This concept was very popular at a certain stage in the development of domestic literary criticism: despite the demand proclaimed in the mid-1950s by major, authoritative literary scholars not to use "realism" as a complimentary and evaluative concept, nevertheless, experts saw the development of literature as a kind of "accumulation" elements of realism, willingly associated democratic literary movements, grassroots comic and satirical literature, etc. with realistic tendencies. Statements that in the literary process of the 17th century, realism participates in one form or another. Artistic truthfulness, authenticity and persuasiveness of images, motives, conflicts, etc. were achieved and embodied according to other aesthetic laws than it would be in realism, a phenomenon of nineteenth-century literature.

Boroque and Classicism

In modern science, it is now practically universally recognized that the main literary trends of the 17th century were the Baroque and Classicism. Their development was contradictory and uneven, between the poetics of these trends there were similarities and differences, mutual influence and controversy. Baroque and classicism spread to varying degrees in different regions and at different stages within that historical and literary era.

First of all, let us dwell on the key points in the study of baroque literature. It is necessary to understand the complex etymology of the term "baroque": scientists argued about it from the beginning of the 30s to the middle of the 50s of our century. It should also be remembered that the writers whom today's science refers to the Baroque movement did not know this term (as a literary one, at least) and did not call themselves Baroque writers. The very word "baroque" as a term in the history of art began to be applied to a certain range of artistic phenomena of the 17th century only in the next, 18th century, and with a negative connotation. So, in the "Encyclopedia" of the French Enlighteners, the word "baroque" is used with the meanings "strange, bizarre, tasteless." It is difficult to find a single language source for this term, because the word was used, with shades of meaning, in Italian, and in Portuguese, and in Spanish. It should be emphasized that, although etymology does not exhaust the modern meaning of this literary concept, it allows us to capture some features of baroque poetics (quirkiness, unusualness, ambiguity), correlates with it, proves that the birth of terminology in the history of literature, although accidental, is not quite arbitrarily, has a certain logic.

The design of baroque as a terminological concept does not mean that there are no debatable points in its interpretation today. Often this term receives opposite interpretations from historians of culture. So, a certain part of the researchers puts a very broad content into the concept of "baroque", seeing in it a certain repetitive stage in the development of artistic style - the stage of its crisis, "disease", leading to some kind of taste failure. The well-known scientist G. Wölfflin, for example, contrasts the "healthy" art of the Renaissance with the "sick" art of the Baroque. E. Ors singles out the so-called Hellenistic, medieval, Romanistic baroque, etc. In contrast to this interpretation, most scholars prefer a specific historical understanding of the term "Baroque". It is this interpretation of baroque art that has become most widespread in Russian literary criticism. But even among our scientists there are differences in the analysis of baroque poetics, discussions on certain aspects of his theory.

You need to know that for a long time the interpretation of the Baroque in our country was influenced by its vulgar sociological, straightforwardly ideological concept. Until now, one can find assertions in the literature that the art of the Baroque is the art of the Counter-Reformation, that it flourished primarily where the noble circles prevailed over the bourgeoisie, that it expresses the aesthetic aspirations of the court nobility, etc. Behind this is the belief in the “reactionary” style of the Baroque: if the writers of this trend are valued for the formal sophistication of the style, they cannot forgive them for their “ideological inferiority”. This, apparently, is the meaning of the infamous definition of baroque in the textbook by S.D. Artamonova: "Baroque is a sickly child, born from a freak of a father and a beautiful mother." Thus, for a truly deep and correct understanding of the features of Baroque literature, it is not outdated textbooks that are especially needed, but new scientific research.

Let us try to briefly characterize the main parameters of baroque poetics, as they appear in these studies, before recommending the corresponding additional literature.

The importance that scientists, including Russian ones, attach at the present stage to the culture and literature of the Baroque sometimes leads to the assertion that the Baroque is "not at all a style, and not a direction." This kind of assertion seems to be a polemical extreme. Baroque, of course, is both an artistic style and a literary movement. But it is also a type of culture, which does not cancel, but includes the previous meanings of this term. It must be said that the general pathos of the article by A.V. Mikhailov is very important, since baroque is very often perceived as a style in the narrow sense of the word, i.e. as the sum of formal aesthetic devices.

Baroque man's attitude to the world, baroque as an artistic system is still studied, as it seems, somewhat less and worse. As the well-known Swiss baroque specialist J. Rousset noted, “the idea of ​​baroque is one of those that elude us, the more closely you examine it, the less you master it.” It is very important to understand how the goal and mechanism of artistic creation are thought in the Baroque, what its poetics is, how it correlates with the new worldview, captures it. Of course, A.V. is right. Mikhailov, who emphasizes that the Baroque is the culture of the “ready word”, i.e. a rhetorical culture that has no direct outlet to reality. But this very idea of ​​the world and man, passed through the “ready-made word”, makes it possible to feel the deep socio-historical shift that occurred in the mind of a person of the 17th century, reflected the crisis of the Renaissance worldview. It is necessary to trace how, on the basis of this crisis, Mannerism and Baroque correlate, which makes Mannerism still part of the literary process of late Renaissance literature, and Baroque takes it beyond it, including it in a new literary stage - the 17th century. Observations that allow one to feel the difference between Mannerism and Baroque are in the excellent article by L.I. Tanaeva "Some Concepts of Mannerism and the Study of the Art of Eastern Europe at the End of the 16th and 17th Centuries".

The philosophical basis of the Baroque worldview is the notion of the antinomic structure of the world and man. It is possible to compare some constructive aspects of the baroque vision (the opposition of the bodily and spiritual, high and low, tragic and comic) with the medieval dualistic perception of reality. Let us emphasize, however, that the traditions of medieval literature are included in baroque literature in an altered form and correlate with a new understanding of the laws of being.

First of all, baroque antinomies are an expression of the desire to artistically master the contradictory dynamics of reality, to convey in words the chaos and disharmony of human existence. The very bookiness of the Baroque art world comes from the ideas inherited from the Middle Ages about the Universe as a book. But for a baroque person, this book is drawn as a huge encyclopedia of being, and therefore literary works in the baroque also strive to be encyclopedias, to draw the world in its entirety and decomposability into separate elements - words, concepts. In baroque creations, one can find both the traditions of Stoicism and Epicureanism, but these opposites not only fight, but converge in a common pessimistic sense of life. Baroque literature expresses a sense of the impermanence, variability, and illusory nature of life. Actualizing the thesis “life is a dream” already known in the Middle Ages, the Baroque draws attention primarily to the fragility of the boundaries between sleep” and “life”, to the constant doubt of a person whether he is in a state of sleep or awake, to contrasts or bizarre rapprochements between face and mask. , "to be" and "to seem".

The theme of illusion, semblance, is one of the most popular in baroque literature, often recreating the world as a theater. It should be clarified that the theatricality of the Baroque is manifested not only in the dramatic perception of the ups and downs of a person’s external life and his internal conflicts, not only in the antinomic confrontation between the categories of face and mask, but in a predilection for a kind of demonstrative artistic style, decorativeness and splendor of visual means, their exaggeration. That is why the baroque is sometimes justly called the art of hyperbole, they speak of the dominance in baroque poetics of the principle of wastefulness of artistic means. Attention should be paid to the polysemantic nature of the world and language, the multivariate interpretation of images, motifs, words in baroque literature. On the other hand, one should not lose sight of the fact that baroque combines and expresses the emotional and rational in the poetics of its works, has a certain “rational extravagance” (S.S. Averintsev). Not only is baroque literature not only not alien, but deep didacticism is organically inherent, but this art sought, first of all, to excite and surprise. That is why it is possible to find among the literary works of the Baroque those in which didactic functions are not expressed in a straightforward manner, which is greatly facilitated by the rejection of linearity in composition, the development of artistic conflict (this is how specific spatial and psychological baroque labyrinths arise), a complex branched system of images, and the metaphorical nature of the language.

On the specifics of metaphorism in the Baroque, we find important observations in Yu.M. Lotman: "... here we are faced with the fact that tropes (the boundaries separating one type of tropes from others acquire an exceptionally shaky character in baroque texts) are not an external replacement of some elements of the expression plan with others, but a way of forming a special structure of consciousness. " Metaphor in the baroque is thus not merely a means of embellishing the narrative, but a particular artistic point of view.

It is also necessary to learn the features of the baroque genre system. The most characteristic genres developing in line with this literary trend are pastoral poetry, dramatic pastorals and pastoral romance, philosophical and didactic lyrics, satirical, burlesque poetry, comic novel, tragicomedy. But special attention should be paid to such a genre as the emblem: it embodied the most important features of Baroque poetics, its allegorism and encyclopedism, a combination of visual and verbal.

Undoubtedly, one should be aware of the main ideological and artistic currents within the Baroque movement, but it is necessary to warn against a narrow sociological interpretation of these currents. Thus, the division of Baroque literature into “high” and “low”, although it correlates with the concepts of “aristocratic” and “democratic” Baroque, does not come down to them: after all, most often the appeal to the poetics of the “high” or “grassroots” wing of the Baroque is not dictated by the social position of the writer or his political sympathies, but is an aesthetic choice, often guided by the genre tradition, the established hierarchy of genres, and sometimes deliberately opposed to this tradition. Analyzing the work of many baroque writers, one can easily be convinced that they sometimes created works of both "high" and "low" almost simultaneously, willingly resorted to contamination of "secular-aristocratic" and "democratic" plots, introduced into the sublime baroque version of the artistic the world of burlesque, reduced characters, and vice versa. So those researchers who feel that in the Baroque "the elitist and the plebeian constitute different sides of the same whole" are absolutely right. Within the baroque direction, as you can see, there is an even more fractional division. One must have an idea of ​​the peculiarities of such phenomena as cultism and conceptism in Spain, Marinism in Italy, Libertine literature in France, and the poetry of English metaphysicians. Particular attention should be paid to the concept of “precision” applied to the phenomena of the Baroque in France, which is interpreted both in our textbooks and in scientific works incorrectly. Traditionally, “precision” is understood by domestic experts as a synonym for the literature of the “aristocratic” Baroque. Meanwhile, modern Western studies of this phenomenon not only clarify its socio-historical roots (precision arises not in the court-aristocratic, but primarily in the urban, salon bourgeois-noble environment), the chronological framework - the mid-40s - 50s XVII century (thus, for example, the novel by Yurfe "Astrea" (1607-1627) cannot be considered as precise), but also reveal its artistic specificity as a special classic-baroque type of creativity based on the contamination of the aesthetic principles of both directions.

It should also be remembered about the evolution of the Baroque throughout the 17th century, about its relative movement from the “materiality” of style inherited from the Renaissance, the picturesqueness and colorfulness of empirical details to the strengthening of philosophical generalization, symbolic and allegorical imagery, intellectuality and refined psychologism (cf., for example, baroque the picaresque novels of the early seventeenth century in Spain with the philosophical Spanish novel of the middle century, or the prose of C. Sorel and Pascal in France, or the poetic writings of the early Donne with the poetry of Milton in England, etc.). It is also important to feel the difference between the national variants of the Baroque: its special turmoil, dramatic tension in Spain, a significant degree of intellectual analyticism that brings Baroque and Classicism together in France, etc.

It is necessary to consider further prospects for the development of baroque traditions in literature. Of particular interest in this aspect is the problem of the relationship between baroque and romanticism. The articles listed in the list of references will help to get acquainted with the modern level of solving this problem. The problem of studying the traditions of the Baroque in the 20th century is also relevant: those who are interested in modern foreign literature can easily find among its works those whose poetics clearly echoes the Baroque (this applies, for example, to the Latin American novel of the so-called “magic realism”, etc.).

Starting to study another important literary trend in foreign literature of the 17th century - classicism, one can follow the same sequence of analysis, starting with clarifying the etymology of the term “classical”, which is clearer than the etymology of “baroque”, as if capturing the inclination of classicism itself to clarity and logic. As in the case of the Baroque, "classicism" as a definition of the art of the 17th century, focused on a kind of competition with the "ancient", ancient writers, contains in its original meaning some features of classic poetics, but does not explain them all. And just like the writers of the Baroque, the classicists of the 17th century did not call themselves such, they began to be defined by this word in the 19th century, in the era of romanticism.

Almost until the middle of the 20th century, the 17th century was considered by historians of literature to be the "epoch of classicism". This was due not only to an underestimation of the artistic achievements of the Baroque or, on the contrary, to an overestimation of classicism (since for some countries the classicists are also the classics of national literature, this direction is “hard to overestimate”), but above all with the objective significance of this art in the 17th century, with the fact, in particular, that theoretical reflections on artistic creativity were predominantly classic in this period. This can be seen by referring to the anthology "Literary manifestos of Western European classicists" (M., 1980). Although there were baroque theorists in the 17th century, their concepts often tended to contaminate baroque and classic principles, included a fair amount of rationalistic analyticism and sometimes even normativity (like the theory of the novel by the French writer M. de Scuderi), who tried to create the “rules” of this genre ).

Classicism is not only a style or trend, but, like the Baroque, a more powerful artistic system that began to take shape back in the Renaissance. When studying classicism, it is necessary to trace how the traditions of Renaissance classicism are refracted in the classic literature of the 17th century, to pay attention to how antiquity turns from an object of imitation and exact recreation, “revival”, into an example of the correct observance of the eternal laws of art and an object of competition. It is extremely important to remember that classicism and baroque were generated by the same time, contradictory, but a single worldview. However, the specific socio-cultural circumstances of the development of a particular country often led to very different degrees of its prevalence in France, and, for example, in Spain, England and Germany, etc. Sometimes in the literature one can come across the assertion that classicism is a kind of "state" art, since its greatest flowering is associated with countries and periods characterized by an increase in the stabilization of centralized monarchical power. However, one should not confuse orderliness, discipline of thought and style, hierarchy as aesthetic principles with hierarchy, discipline, etc. as principles of rigid statehood, and even more so, to see in classicism some kind of semi-official art. It is very important to feel the inner drama of the classicist vision of reality, which is not eliminated, but, perhaps, even enhanced by the discipline of its external manifestations. Classicism, as it were, tries to artistically overcome the contradiction that Baroque art whimsically captures, to overcome it through strict selection, ordering, classification of images, themes, motives, all the material of reality.

You can also find statements that the philosophical basis of classicism was the philosophy of Descartes. However, I would like to warn against reducing classicism to Descartes, as well as Descartes to classicism: let us recall that classicist tendencies began to take shape in literature before Descartes, back in the Renaissance, and Descartes, for his part, generalized much that hovered in the air, systematized and synthesized the rationalistic tradition of the past. At the same time, the undoubted "Cartesian" principles in the poetics of classicism deserve attention ("separation of difficulties" in the process of artistic reconstruction of complex phenomena of reality, etc.). This is one of the manifestations of the general aesthetic "intentionality" (J. Mukarzhovsky) of classic art.

Having become acquainted with the most important theories of European classicists, one can trace the logical substantiation by them of the principles of the primacy of design over implementation, “correct” rational creativity over whimsical inspiration. It is very important to pay special attention to the interpretation in classicism of the principle of imitation of nature: nature appears as a beautiful and eternal creation, built “according to the laws of mathematics” (Galileo).

A specific principle of likelihood plays a significant role in classicism. Note that this concept is far from the common everyday use of this word, it is not at all a synonym for “truth” or “reality”. As a famous modern scholar writes, "classical culture lived for centuries with the idea that reality could in no way be mixed with plausibility." Plausibility in classicism implies, in addition to the ethical and psychological persuasiveness of images and situations, decency and edification, the implementation of the principle of "teach, entertain."

The characterization of classicism, therefore, cannot be reduced to enumeration of the rules of the three unities, but these rules cannot be ignored either. For the classicists, they are, as it were, a special case of applying the universal laws of art, a way to keep the freedom of creativity within the boundaries of reason. It is necessary to realize the importance of simplicity, clarity, the logical sequence of composition as important aesthetic categories. The classicists, in contrast to the baroque artists, refuse "superfluous" artistic details, images, words, adhere to the "economy" of means of expression.

It is necessary to know how the hierarchical system of genres was built in classicism, based on the consistent breeding of "high" and "low", "tragic" and "comic" phenomena of reality according to different genre formations. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the genre theory of classicism and practice do not completely coincide: giving preference in theoretical reasoning to "high" genres - tragedy, epic, the classicists tried their hand at "low" genres - satire, comedy, and even in the genres non-canonical, falling out of the classicist hierarchy (such as the novel: see below about the classic novel by M. de Lafayette).

Classicists judged works of art based on what they considered to be the "eternal" laws of art, and laws not according to custom, authority, tradition, but according to reasonable judgment. Therefore, it should be noted that the classicists think of their theory as an analysis of the laws of art in general, and not the creation of some separate aesthetic program of a school or direction. The classicists' reasoning about taste does not mean individual taste, not the capriciousness of aesthetic preference, but "good taste" as a collective reasonable norm of "well-bred people." However, in reality, it turned out that the specific judgments of the classicists on certain issues of artistic creativity, the assessments of specific works, diverge quite significantly, which led to both polemics within classicism and the real difference between the national versions of classic literature. It is necessary to understand the historical, social and cultural patterns of the development of the literary trends of the 17th century, to understand why in Spain, for example, baroque art prevailed, and in France - classicism, why researchers talk about "baroque classicism" by M. Opitz in Germany, about a kind of harmony or the balance of baroque and classic principles in the work of Milton in England, etc. It is important to feel that the real life of the literary trends of that era was not schematic, that they did not successively replace each other, but intertwined, fighting and interacting, entering into different relationships.

baroque classicism literary poetics

Hosted on Allbest.ru

Similar Documents

Literature of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Classicism and baroque in Western European literature of the 17th century. Literature of the Age of Enlightenment. Romanticism and realism in foreign literature of the 19th century. Modern foreign literature (from 1945 to the present).

training manual, added 06/20/2009


Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote" as the pinnacle of Spanish fiction. Milton is the creator of the grandiose poems "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained". The main artistic trends in literature of the 17th century: Renaissance realism, classicism and baroque.

abstract, added 07/23/2009


Baroque literature: a tendency towards complexity of forms and a desire for grandeur and pomp. Appearance in Russian literature in the XVII-XVIII centuries. baroque style, ways of its formation and significance. External features of the similarity of the works of Avvakum with the works of the Baroque.

test, added 05/18/2011


General analysis of foreign literature of the 17th century. Characteristics of the Baroque era from the point of view of the time of intense searches in the field of morality. Transformation of the legend of Don Juan in the work of Tirso de Molina. "Eternal" image of Don Giovanni in the interpretation of Moliere.

term paper, added 08/14/2011


The heavy atmosphere of ruin in Germany in the 17th century after the Thirty Years' War. Poet Martin Opitz and the treatise "The Book of German Poetry". The Optimism of Fleming's Poetry. Anti-war theme and Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus. German baroque, dramaturgy.

abstract, added 07/23/2009


Baroque and classicism in the literature and art of France in the 17th century. Pierre Corneille and his vision of the world and man. The initial period of creativity. Formation of classic drama. Tragedies of the Third Manner. Larisa Mironova and D. Oblomievsky about the work of Corneille.

term paper, added 12/25/2014


Russian literature in the 16th century. Russian literature in the 17th century (Simeon of Polotsk). Russian literature of the 19th century. Russian literature of the XX century. Achievements of literature of the XX century. Soviet literature.

report, added 03/21/2007


Foreign literature and historical events of the twentieth century. Directions of foreign literature of the first half of the 20th century: modernism, expressionism and existentialism. Foreign writers of the twentieth century: Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka.

abstract, added 03/30/2011


General characteristics of the situation of the XVII century. Influence of the schism of the Russian Orthodox Church on the development of Old Russian literature. The Old Believer Movement and the Phenomenon of "Anonymous Fiction". The phenomenon of the Russian satirical story against the backdrop of the "rebellious" XVII century.

control work, added 10/16/2009


The political situation of France in the 17th century, the development of literature and art. The position of the peasantry at the end of the century and its description in the works of La Bruyère. Traditions of Renaissance realism in the works of the late Racine ("Atalia"). Activities of the poet Prayer.

After studying this chapter, the student will:

know

• about the existence of various principles of periodization of the cultural-historical process;
• causes of the crisis of Renaissance humanism;
• the content of the new concept of man, formed in the 17th century;
• the basic principles of aesthetics and poetics of classicism and baroque;

be able to

• highlight the leading feature in the content of the 17th century, which determines its specificity as a special cultural and historical era;
• to characterize the changes in the attitude and outlook of a person of the 17th century;
• identify elements of baroque and classic poetics in a work of art;

own

• an idea of ​​the main trends in the historical and cultural process of the 17th century;
• the idea of ​​the relativity of the confrontation between baroque and classicism;
• the main provisions of the poetics and aesthetics of classicism.

Among modern historians and researchers of culture there are those who are distrustful of the existing principles of periodization of the history of human society. Some of them believe that "human nature at all times strives for constancy" and therefore the search for differences between successive generations is fundamentally meaningless. Others are sure that changes do not take place in accordance with some historical logic, but under the influence of individual bright personalities, therefore it would be more reasonable to call historical periods by the names of such figures (“The Age of Beethoven”, “The Age of Napoleon”, etc.) . However, these ideas have not yet had a noticeable impact on historical science, and most of the humanities are based on traditional periodization.

At the same time, the 17th century creates some difficulties in determining its specificity as an independent cultural and historical era. The complexity is already indicated by the very terminological designation - "Seventeenth century". Adjacent eras are called "Renaissance" and "Enlightenment", and already in the names themselves there is an indication of the content of these eras and the fundamental ideological guidelines. The term "Seventeenth century" marks only the position on the chronological axis. Repeated attempts were made to find other designations for this period (the era of the Counter-Reformation, the era of Absolutism, the Baroque era, etc.), but none of them took root, since they did not fully reflect the nature of the era. And yet, despite the inconsistency and heterogeneity of this historical period, many scholars point to transitivity as the main feature of the 17th century as a cultural and historical era.

In a broad historical perspective, any era is transitional from one historical stage to another, but the 17th century occupies a special position in this series: it acts as a link between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Many trends in various spheres of the life of European society, which originated in the depths of the Renaissance, received their logical conclusion and formalization only in the 18th century, so the “interim” century became a time of radical change. These changes primarily affected the economy: feudal relations were actively replaced by capitalist ones, which led to the strengthening of the position of the bourgeoisie, which began to claim a more influential role in Western European society. To a large extent, the struggle of the new class for a place in the sun caused social cataclysms in various countries - the bourgeois revolution in England, which ended in the execution of King Charles I, the attempted coup d'état in France in the middle of the century, called the Fronde, the peasant uprisings that swept through Italy and Spain.

Since the strengthening of new economic relations in the countries of Western Europe took place at different rates, the balance of power in the international arena also underwent changes in the 17th century. Spain and Portugal lost their former economic power and political influence, England, Holland and France, where capitalism developed more dynamically, entered the forefront of European history. This new redistribution of Western Europe became the pretext for the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), one of the longest and bloodiest wars of modern times. In this military conflict, in which the Habsburg League, which united mainly Catholic countries (Spain, Austria, the Catholic principalities of Germany), was opposed by the Protestant princes of Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, supported by England and Holland. According to historians, more than 7 million people out of a population of 20 million died from the Habsburg League alone. It is not surprising that contemporaries compared this event with the Last Judgment. Description of the horrors of the Thirty Years' War is often found in the works of German literature of this period. An extended and very gloomy picture of the disasters that befell Germany during the war years was presented by Hans Jakob Christoffel Grimmelshausen in his novel The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus (1669).

The basis for the conflict between European states was not only economic and political contradictions, but also religious ones. In the 17th century the Catholic Church, in order to correct its shattered positions and regain its former influence, begins a new round of struggle against the Reformation. This movement is called Counter-reformations. The Church, well aware of the propagandistic possibilities of art, encourages the penetration of religious themes and motives into it. Baroque culture turned out to be more open to such introduction; it more often and more willingly turned to religious plots and images. It is natural that one of the countries where the Baroque experienced its heyday was Spain, the main stronghold of the Coitreformation in Europe.