Место религии в жизни и творчестве британского поэта, прозаика и литературного критика начала XX века Эдварда Томаса

Abstract

The aim of the research is to show as impartial as possible the attitude of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) – a British poet, prose writer and literary critic of the early XX century – to religion, including traditional religion. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in the fact that the topic of religion’s place in Thomas’ life and how his attitude to it was expressed in the writer’s diverse oeuvre has been insufficiently covered not only in Russian literary studies, but also by English-speaking scholars (the only attempt we have found belongs to an Anglican theologian, who appears to be not familiar well enough with this writer’s creative work). As a result, it has been shown that the apparent hostility of E. Thomas towards Christianity is the detachment of an unbeliever and a historian, a reverent attitude to nature, which characterises a number of his works and prompts some researchers of the writer’s creative work to attribute to him a “religious spirit”, goes back to the English tradition of literature about nature, while some elusive dissatisfaction, “existential” gloom permeating many of his poems, which is sometimes mistaken for the striving for the transcendent, the desire to find God, is rather psychological in nature.