State University of Education, Moscow, Russia, ninellit@list.ru
The category of “simple”, “simplicity” has changed its semantics over the centuries in various literary trends, philosophical and aesthetic systems and genres. The article discusses some features of the embodiment of the “simple” in the representative texts of the French Enlightenment (Voltaire, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau) and in the works of the largest representatives of the romantic novel genre in the nineteenth century – V. Hugo and George Sand. The features of the poetics of the simple as a myth created by romantic writers are analyzed, where psychological reduction of melodramatic are combined with catharsis and absolute ethical imperative (Hugo), where exclusivity and universality, genius and nationality form an identity in the space of social, socialist utopia (Georges Sand). The Simple and complex reveal conflict, ambivalence, a new aesthetic synthesis, picked up by the realist Flaubert, the creators of popular, mass literature.
simple and simplicity; myth; poetics; romanticism; novel; Victor-Marie Hugo; George Sand
Download textFor citing: Litvinenko N.A. (2023). The poetics of the simple and simplicity in the French romantic novel: some features. Human being: Image and essence. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 3(55): “Simpleton” and “scribe” in and around literary fiction, pp. 30-49. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2023.03.02