Abstract
The article examines the influence of the German writer E.T.A. Hoffman on English neo-Romanticism using the example of the short story “The Silver Mirror” by Arthur Conan Doyle. The question of topicality of the question of the continuity of the German romantic tradition in English neo-Romanticism is raised. The features of Hoffman’s poetics in Doyle’s short story are considered in the form of an ideological and thematic complex inherent in Hoffman’s work (‟Hoffman complex”), which manifests itself in understanding the following problems: the two worlds (the real world – the unreal world), the mechanisation of man and society (realised in the romantic opposition of the inanimate (pragmatic worldview) – living (romantic worldview)), duality (represented by a ‟mirror complex” (mirror, eyes)) and psychologism (analysis of the mental state that occurs at a time of strong emotional stress (‟reasonable” insanity)). In conclusion, the article concludes that Hoffman’s tradition is refracted in Doyle’s work: instead of a hero with a romantic worldview in the core of the neo– romantic text, the hero is a pragmatist who is devoid of creative vision and is able to see a new world only in a state of ‟reasonable” madness.
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