Traditions of the Lake School in Robert Browning’s and Oscar Wilde’s creative work

Abstract

Objectives: The article is aimed at finding traditions of the Lake School – of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey – in the creative work of Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde. Methods: The comparative and historical, comparative and typological research methods, technics of the comparative analysis were used in the article. Findings: Traditions of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey are found in works by Robert Browning. “The Dance of Death” is created under the influence of Coleridge’s war eclogue “Fire, Famine, and Slaughter”, “The First-Born of Egypt” has features similar to Southey’s dramas and “The Ruined Cottage” of Wordsworth; both works are characterized by the form of a drama monologue borrowed by Browning from Romantic poets. In the poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” Coleridge’s innovation (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) and Wordsworth’s poetic language (“Peter Bell”) are notable. Browning actively realizes the ballad genre developed by Romantic poets in his poems. Traditions of the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge are seen in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” by Oscar Wilde. The thematic and structural interrelation is manifested in the characteristic imagery and use of close motives and literary details (common elements in the interpretation of suffering and forgiveness and ballad elements designed to emphasize tension and to add monotony and tediousness to descriptions of grief and torment). Novelty: The poems by Robert Browning, which attracted Russian translators at the beginning of the 20 th century (Korney Chukovsky, Raul Rabinerson, etc.), caused the greatest interest among Russian translators (O.V.Valetova, V.V.Rogov, etc.) at the turn of the 20 th and 21 st centuries. The work of Oscar Wilde, being close to the peculiarities of the Russian perception of the world, also became popular in Russia what was manifested in the emergence of translations created by K.D.Balmont, M.F.Likiardopulo, V.Ya.Bryusov, A.I.Deutch at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries.