Information about the author:
Georgy A. Veligorsky
Georgy A. Veligorsky , PhD in Philology, Research Fellow, Scientific Laboratory “Rossica: Russian Literature in the World Cultural Context”, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4316-4630
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Abstract:
The main purpose of our study is to trace the genesis of the British concept of “Neoromanticism”, which has been developing in British literary criticism since the 1880s. We will identify features that allowed researchers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries to consider this concept in relation to the “first” (1850–1920) and “second” (1950–1980) “golden ages” of the British children’s literature. We will analyze the main ideas and concepts of children’s literature, which can be classified as “Neoromantic.” Among them we are going to consider the phenomenon of child’s play (developed in the creative works by R.L. Stevenson, K. Grahame and others); the idea of the “secret kingdom” (K. Grahame, J.M. Barry); the oneiric model of the world (world as a palimpsest); nonlinear time (kairos). Finally, in the concluding section of our article we will study the perception of “Neoromantic” ideas and “Neoromantic” children’s literature in the criticism of the Russian Silver Age (articles and letters by N. Gumilyov, M. Voloshin, K. Chukovsky and others).
Keywords: Romanticism, Neoromanticism, the children’s literature, “secret kingdom”, kairos, “archaeological imagination.”
