Литература Великобритании и США

10. George Gordon Byron was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.Byron's notab

ility rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured aristocratic excesses, huge debts, numerous love affairs, and self-imposed exile. He was famously described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. Byron wrote prolifically. Although Byron falls chronologically into the period most commonly associated with Romantic poetry, much of his work looks back to the satiric tradition. Byron's magnum opus, Don Juan, a poem spanning 17 cantos, ranks as one of the most important long poems published in England since John Milton's Paradise. The masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, has roots deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians as somewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world at all levels — social, political, literary and ideological.

Byron published the first two cantos anonymously in 1819 after disputes with his regular publisher over the shocking nature of the poetry; by this time, he had been a famous poet for seven years, and when he self-published the beginning cantos, they were well received in some quarters. The figure of the Byronic hero pervades much of his work, and Byron himself is considered to epitomise many of the characteristics of this literary figure. Scholars have traced the literary history of the Byronic hero from John Milton, and many authors and artists of the Romantic movement show Byron's influence during the 19th century and beyond, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The Byronic hero presents an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include[citation needed]: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although they possess both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner. Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English poet of the early nineteenth century. He is widely thought of as one of most important poets of the Romantic movement in English literature. Some of his poems, like Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind, are among the most famous in English.Shelley was the son of a member of Parliament. He attended the University of Oxford, for only one year; he was expelled for being an atheist. In his own time Shelley was very unpopular for his political and religious views and for his personal conduct. He married young, but left his wife to run away with Mary Godwin. After Shelley's first wife committed suicide, Shelley married Mary Godwin; she later became famous as Mary Shelley, the author of the novel Frankenstein.Shelley left England and spent much of his life travelling in Europe, especially in Italy. He became a close friend of the poet Lord Byron, who also left England and travelled in Europe because of controversy at home. Shelley continued to write poetry throughout this time; he wrote several major works, like the verse drama The Cenci and long poems like Alastor and Adonais, as well as many shorter poems.About a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Italy. He was one of a trio of important English Romantic poets of the same generation who died young; the other two were Lord Byron and John Keats. was an English poet ranked as one of the five most important poets of the Romantic movement in English literature; the other four are William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though Keats was the youngest of these poets, he also died before the others: he suffered from tuberculosis and died in Rome at the age of 25.Keats was the son of an inn-keeper who died when Keats was nine years old; and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1810. The young Keats began studying to be a surgeon, though his interest in literature grew stronger than his interest in medicine. He became a friend and follower of the poet and editor James Henry Leigh Hunt, and made his first attempts to write his own poetry. Keats's active writing life lasted only about six years, from the spring of 1814 through 1819.His short life meant that he wrote less than many other poets. His longest poems, Endymion and Hyperion, tell stories from ancient Greek mythology. Many of his shorter poems are among the best known in English literature, including "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and his Sonnets and Odes.Keats was an active letter-writer throughout his life, like many people of his time. Hundreds of his letters to friends and relatives have survived, and Keats is often called one of the great letter writers in the English language.

11. Крити́ческий реали́зм — художественный метод и литературное направление, сложившееся в XIX веке. Главная его особенность — изображение человеческого характера в органической связи с социальными обстоятельствами, наряду с глубоким социальным анализом внутреннего мира человека. Charles Dickens - was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and he remains popular, responsible for some of English literature's most iconic characters. Many of his novels, with their recurrent concern for social reform, first appeared in magazines in serialised form, a popular format at the time. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The practice lent his stories a particular rhyth, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next instalment. The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print. His work has been praised for its mastery of prose and unique personalities, though it was criticized by Virginia Woolf for sentimentality and implausibility. He worked in a blacking factory there while his father went to prison for debt. Dickens's hard times in this blackening factory served as the base of ideas for many of his novels. Many like Oliver Twist soon became famous. Charles did not like working and wished to stop working after his father was released but he was forced to continue working. Charles then finished his schooling, and got a job as an office boy for an attorney. After finding that job dull, he taught himself shorthand and became a journalist that reported on the government. His first book was Sketches by Boz in 1836, a collection of the short pieces he had been writing for the Monthly Magazine and the Evening Chronicle. This was followed by the The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in 1837. Both these books became popular as soon as they were printed. Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens about setting up a home for the redemption of "fallen" women. Coutts envisioned a home that would differ from existing institutions, which offered a harsh and punishing regimen for these women, and instead provide an environment where they could learn to read and write and become proficient in domestic household chores so as to re-integrate them into society. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in the Lime Grove section of Shepherds Bush. He became involved in many aspects of its day-to-day running, setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents, some of whom became characters in his books. Dickens loved the style of 18th century Gothic romance, although it had already become a target for parody. One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work. His writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. Many of his characters' names provide the reader with a hint as to the roles played in advancing the storyline, such as Mr. Murdstone in the novel David Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of "murder" and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. Dickens is famed for his depiction of the hardships of the working class, his intricate plots, and his sense of humour. But he is perhaps most famed for the characters he created. His novels were heralded early in his career for their ability to capture the everyday man and thus create characters to whom readers could relate. Dickensian characters—especially their typically whimsical names—are among the most memorable in English literature( Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Pip), All authors might be said to incorporate autobiographical elements in their fiction, but with Dickens this is very noticeable, even though he took pains to mask what he considered his shameful, lowly past. Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime and was responsible for the clearing of the actual London slum, Jacob's Island, that was the basis of the story. In addition, with the character of the tragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens "humanised" such women for the reading public; women who were regarded as "unfortunates", inherently immoral casualties of the Victorian class/economic system. Dickens is often described as using 'idealised' characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. Many of his novels are concerned with social realism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (for instance, factory networks in Hard Times and hypocritical exclusionary class codes. William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.

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