“Castles in Spain” of N. I. Khmelnitsky in the Russian romanticism context

The article examines the main forms of reflecting romantic aesthetics in the genre of the “noble” comedy on the material of N. I. Khmelnitsky’s comedy “Castles in Spain”. This free-style remake of French comedy of C. d’Harleville shows obvious signs of a romantic world modeling on the formal and imagery level: from the destruction of the classic comedy canons to the “romantic” phraseology. The image of a luckless dreamer, building castles in the air, becomes the prototype of the romantic hero in his reduced, domestic version, which is closely associated with French literary tradition.