Specifics of romanticism of W. Irving’s prose of «Spanish period»

Abstract

The article considers the specifics of romantic creativity of American writer of the nineteenth century, W. Irving. W. Irving’s prose integrates such trends of world literature of romanticism, as the impact of the folk paradigms on level of genres, plots, motifs, images and receptions. In spite of the considerable interest in the heritage of Irving of American and European literature, many aspects of his work are outside of the research focus, in particular, reception of folk traditions. In the art world of Irving’s prose the integration of folklore and literary aesthetics, poetics and style comes naturally and organically. In his prose of the «Spanish» period («Conquest of Granada», «Satellites of Columbus»), and especially in the collection of short stories «Alhambra» it is traced the exact opposite of the Gothic tradition, its ironic rethinking. The main story line of the narrative in the book is the description of the Alhambra and its history, related to the world of fairy tales and legends of old Spain.
Thus, in the description of the palace of the Moorish rulers of Spain in XIII-XIV centuries Irving brings the magic shade, the combination of myth and reality. The story features a free and bold look at the world, the lack of mysticism, phobias. Irving uniquely combines enlightening and denied6 rejecting romantic tradition. On the basis of short stories «Alhambra» collection it is explored the nature of the connection of reality and fiction, dream and reality from the perspective of a healthy national consciousness, which is expressed in the image of the narrator, designed to detect the confrontation of European civilization to prosaic bourgeois American society of the nineteenth century.