Studia Litterarum (Mar 2017)
EPICUREANISM AND CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORICAL NOVELS VALERIUS. A ROMAN STORY BY J.G. LOCKHART AND THE EPICUREAN BY T. MOORE
Abstract
The article examines historical novels by J.G. Lockhart and T. Moore hitherto under- studied in Russia. It analyzes main principles and techniques of historical narrative in these novels; the influence of Walter Scott and F.R. Chateaubriand; philosophical Epicureanism in the novels; and the specificity of their work with historical sources. The author comes to the following conclusions. Lockhart’s and Moore’s reflection on time and history results in the idea that every man is connected with the whole of creation, and that the culture of each epoch depends on the culture of earlier civilizations. Lockhart’s novel Valerius, for example, was influenced by the genre of the Enlightenment philosophical novella. Such categories as time, the meaning of life, death, place, and role of man in history are intro- duced in the narrative through the form of philosophical dialogue. Following the tradi- tion of F.R. Chateaubriand, Lockhart, and Moore largely draw on literary heritage: texts by Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero as well as philosophical works of antiquity: the writings of Epicurus, Lucretius, and Plato. Historical novels by Lockhart and Moore reveal cer- tain important aspects of the ethical and philosophical system of the 19 th century Victorian England.
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