Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology (Jun 2019)
AESTHETICS OF THE LITERARY IN THE PICTURESQUE IMAGES: WILLIAM HOGARTH AND THE ENGLISH LITERARY TRADITION OF THE 19th CENTURY
Abstract
The article investigates the narrative nature of the painting by the English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764). The specific character of the literary way of the image of the artist depiction and the components of the aesthetics of his work, suggesting the intertwining of literary poetics in the delineation are analyzed. The influence of W. Hogarth’s artistic and aesthetic searches on the development of the literary process in England is determined. The main object of research is a series of paintings by the artist “Marriage A-la-Mode” (1745). Hogarth’s creative method is understood in the aspect of synthesis of Enlightenment painting traditions, Rococo and Enlightenment Realism. Literary reading of the paintings of the artist reveals a number of literary methods with the help of which picturesque images are created: the reception of the speaking name, gestures, facial expressions, poses – everything that organically connects Hogarth’s picturesque portrait and literary, psychological, chronological composition of the series, in which one of the main are the motives of lust and seduction, as well as sacrifices; the time and space of the paintings, built on epic canons – the time of “Marriage A-la-Mode” is represented in two parts – historical and private, the temporal coverage of the paintings is widened by details that simultaneously create the effect of time movement; pictorial and literary intertextual solutions; literary character of the comic without caricatural hyperbole and concentrated on the depiction of a character. In contemporary art criticism, the question of Hogarth’s creative method is still controversial. The artist’s works are attributed both to the Rococo style in his English perception of freedom of creative manners and to enlightening realism, which, in our opinion, is not quite accurate. Hogarth was the son of his century, coming from the rocaille worldview with his close attention to everyday life, the desire to comprehend the natural and imperfect basis of human existence, and, of course, the worldview of enlightenment with its intention to improve human nature. However, it is from this rocaille and enlightening worldview that the sprouts of that new perception of art, which allows us to speak of the proximity of the artist’s aesthetic pursuits to realism, of the characteristic features of realism, which gradually accumulated in the works of the artist, and, most importantly, of how these “accumulations” have contributed to the formation of the aesthetic integrity of subsequent literary epochs, the acquisition of their consciousness and the specificity of future literary trends, have sprouted in Hogarth’s painting.
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