"Adam Bede" by George Eliot and "Notes of a hunter" by Ivan Turgenev: ideological and artistic convergences

The essay deals with ideological and aesthetical typological convergences and congruencies in the works of the two great European writers of the second half of the 19th century. It is shown that democratic thinking, synthesis of liberalism and humanism, which is a peculiar feature of both Turgenev and Eliot, are very much reflected in the system of concepts of the two works under analysis; both Eliot's and Turgenev's works are famous in the literary histories of their countries due to the masterful and original introduction into literature of a new type of a literary hero - the one from peasantry. It is stressed in the essay that the grounds for typological generalizations of these two works are the writers' realistic and analytical approach to the artistic ways of depicting a human being's fate under swiftly changing social, cultural and moral circumstances. The essay shows that Turgenev and Eliot depict province as socio-cultural wholeness. One of the main ideas of the essay is to show that both writers appeal to a human being who is an autonomous creature in terms of social, moral and spiritual existence, who thinks of himself as a unique and independent being and thus draws a border between himself and the world around and tries to establish his social independence and self-sufficiency. It is the reason why George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev set so many hopes on a human being's high level of morality, his conscientious behavior in the situation of free choice, the concentration of which is higher, the more democratic and less patriarchal and paternalistic the contemporary world becomes. The author of the essay analyses what is called moral and ethical spaces of the writers' works, where liberal and humanistic inclinations of Turgenev and Eliot are a sort of keystones; this fact determines ideological and artistic convergences of the writers even if we take into account their national, social, cultural and gender differences. It is shown in the essay that the parameters of these spaces are checked first of all by the images of the heroes taken from the humble people, who are, by both writers' confidences, morally and ethically pure and solid because of their closeness to Nature. The author of the article shows how much important for Eliot and Turgenev as moral realists are pictures of the countryside landscapes, very much anthropological in the ways of their existence in the plots of the works, and, what is more, these pictures are philosophically and ethically sharpened by the authors, which once again makes them so close to one another. It is proved in the essay that romantic features in the images of the authors' protagonists is a serious ground to think of these writers in terms of poetical convergences. It is also demonstrated that the comparative method of studying Adam Bede and Notes of a Hunter gives a good chance to reveal some points more vividly should we look at these works separately.