“Hoffman complex” in R.L. Stevenson’s novel “The strange story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

The article is devoted to the study of the romantic traditions of the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann in English neo-Romanticism on the material of the novel by R.L. Stevenson “The Strange Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886). The features of Hoffmann’s poetics in Stevenson’s story are considered in the form of an ideological and thematic complex of motives and stylistic techniques inherent in the work of E.T.A. Hoffman’s complex, which manifests itself in understanding the problems of duality and mechanization of life and man (images-symbols of a mask and a double), in creating romantic oppositions (beautiful - ugly, living - dead, good - evil, day - night), referring to Hoffman’s style (romantic grotesque), using the reception of talking names (Mr. Hyde), vivid psychologism (analysis of the nature of duality), as well as the Hoffmann type of hero (Medardus “Elixirs of the Devil”), who rushes between God and the devil. The article concludes that the traditions dating back to Hoffman are largely reinterpreted in Stevenson’s message: bifurcation becomes a conscious experiment on a person in order to go beyond society (the idea of a Superman), there is a rejection of the mystical subtext (the image of a mirror, the scientific justification of bifurcation), the conflict of the romantic hero passes from the outer world (personality - society) to the inner world (the struggle of good and evil in the human soul), the double is created according to the principle of contrast and embodies an evil and soulless beginning. In conclusion, the article raises the question of the prospects for further research of the tradition of German Romanticism in the literature of English neo-Romanticism.