Aesthetic foundations of Christopher Smart's works

The article is devoted to the basics of the aesthetic concept of the outstanding English religious poet of the XVIII century Christopher Smart. Smart's religious poetry is characterized by complex reception of national aesthetic searching of the late XVII - mid XVIII centuries. The article reveals aesthetic relations in Smart's works, influence of classicism, sentimentalism and pre-romanticism on Smart, and it also characterizes Smart as a poet creating on the verge of the epochs. In the article specificity of the linguistic expression of the "sublime", which took the central place in the poet's aesthetics, and the theory of "impressions" developed by Smart are regarded.