“There is something from Swift in Saltykov…”: peculiarity of satire of English and Russian writers

Abstract

The article proposes a comparative study of the life paths of English and Russian masters of satire of different cultures and epochs, an analysis of the commonality and differences between their artistic systems, the unity of certain literary types and artistic techniques, for example, of two prose texts “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift and “History of one city” by Mykhailo Saltykov-Shchedrin. The study traces the degree of study of the problem, systematized the existing views of literary critics. It is noted that the fate of the English and Russian writers are similar: they passed the school of administrative work, knew the bureaucracy of the system from inside, had the opportunity to influence the orders in the state, constantly encountering power structures, at the end of life suffered a serious illness for a long time, physical painkles of artists exacerbated and suppressed opinion about loneliness. At the beginning of the creative path, the writers were fairly successful, but then they were persecuted because of their views. Both artists wrote under pseudonyms. Working for the common good and the people, they felt a persistent rejection from a certain part of society. Speaking against the riots in the state, the idiocy of representatives of the supreme power, the vices of society, proving the absurdity of the world, the writers turned to various means of satirical poetics – hyperbole, irony, grotesque, sarcasm, parody, and others. J. Swift with M. Saltykov-Shchedrin as representatives of educational realism, social satire combine the search for new means of expressing the author’s position, the use of humanistic sarcasm, fantastic grotesque, hyperbole, which play a dominant role in the poetics of texts. The form of transmission events by narrator is shared by both writers. In “History of one city” and “Gulliver’s Travels” writers discovered innovative peculiarities of artistic style, where the grotesque is the dominant style. They created classic satire models, using various forms of grotesque satire. However, in the texts of an English artist, they undergo significant changes due to the disappearance of a positive beginning. J. Swift and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin are prominent satirists in the world literature, which influenced the development of other artists such as Sherydan, Fildynh, B. Shou ta V. Maiakovskyi, M. Zoshchenko, M. Bulhakov and others.