Points of intersection of space-time planes of the “foreign world” in epistolary prose of the English romanticists

Abstract

The subject of this research is the points of intersection of space-time relations of the “foreign world” in such form of authorial self-expression as correspondence of the English romanticists. The goal is to examine the key elements of the chronotope of “foreign world”, and determine the peculiarities of their functionality in the romantic epistolary prose. The object of this research is the 50 letters of W. Wordsworth, 224 letters of G. G. Byron, 67 letters of P. B. Shelley, 51 letters of J. Keats, and 200 letters of R. Southey. The article employs a set of general scientific and special literary criticism methods, such as descriptive, biographical, historical-genetic, historical-functional, structural-semantic, and comparative-typological. It is established that the “foreign world” in the correspondence of English romanticists is represented by the following points of intersection of space-time planes: chronotope of the road / road meetup / traffic accident; contact / meetup / date; cities / countries / villages, with the dominant motifs of the road and contact. Leaning on the analysis of space-time plane of the “foreign world” in the correspondence of English romanticists, the conclusion is made that the chronotope of “foreign world” is a certain access code to the world pattern of English romanticists, the key category that resembles the worldview of a particular epoch, namely romanticism. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this work is first to analyze space-time relations of “foreign world” in the correspondence of English romanticists. The future research should focus on the types and peculiarities of functionality of the chronotope of “native world” in the correspondence of English romanticists, as well as the interaction of space and time in the correspondence of English realist writers, determining and comparing the integral and variable traits characteristic to epistolary prose as a whole.