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Abstract:

The article discusses the question of the legitimacy of using the term “Neoroman- ticism” in relation to English poets of the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Such an example is Rudyard Kipling, the most authoritative and influential of those who have been called “Neoro- mantics” since the 1950s in Soviet criticism. To answer this question, at first, we apply methods of immanent and contextual analysis. Then we use the method of comparative analysis. The first part of the paper traces the paths of Romanticism’s renewal in the famous Kipling’s poem The “Mary Gloster”. The second one considers Russian poetry of the Soviet period (namely, The Ballad of Nails by N. Tikhonov and The Ballad of the Fugitive by E. Polonskaya) from the point of view of Kipling’s influence and struggle against it. Conclusions of the article are twofold. On the one hand, the term “Neoromanticism” represents a typical later construct, and therefore its unconditional application can hardly be recognized as correct. On the other hand, this term should be characterized by a certain heuristic value, since the article proves that the renewal of Romanticism was made by means of Kipling’s poetics, his ideological and thematic strategies. Furthermore, it proves that the force field of the renewed Romanticism had a signif- icant influence on Russian poetry, in particular of the Soviet period.

Keywords: Neoromanticism, ballad, pathos, self-reflection, limit / limitlessness, automati- zation, ostranenie (defamiliarization).