THE CONCEPT OF SENTIMENTALISM IN THE POETICS OF L. STERNE’S NOV EL “A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY”

Abstract

Sentimentalism is a trend in literature and art of the second half of the 18th century. The name comes from the French word “sentiment” – a feeling. It is possible to identify the main feature of this literary direction – emphasis on the feelings of readers, interest in them and the desire to leave no one indifferent. The article analyzes the main features of sentimentalism on the example of Lawrence Sterne’s “A sentimental journal Trough France and Iraly”. It was up to sentimentalism to describe human feelings. However, the first sentimentalists were Democratic People with natural equality. They brought to literature in the history of enlightening literature the moral and sensory world of ordinary people, especially their tender feelings like Love, opposite to the classicists ' Palace scholars (kings, princes, nobles). They paved the way for the heroic concept of enlightening realism by demonstrating that the inner world of heroes from ordinary strata is not poor. In this sense, the Sentimentalists established a tradition of democratization of the author's creativity written in prose, observance of the principles of equality of people in the choice of literary heroes. The article investigated study is to identify the signs of sentimentalism in Sterne’s “A sentimental journey”, characterize the concept of «sentimentalism» and define it as an artistic system; to identify the main features and genres of sentimentalism as a direction in the literature.