W. Shakespeare

The article is devoted to the problem of searching for “places of memory”, variants of national self-identity in the English culture of the Enlightenment era. It is shown that the long-term Anglo-French political rivalry prevented the use of the experience of continental neighbors in art, and the long-standing tradition of the historical genre, representing timeless eternal ethical values, has almost exhausted itself.

The review is devoted to the analysis of the monograph, which examines the place and role of the educator S. Johnson in the spiritual life of British society in the second half of the 18th century. The reviewer shows that the author of the monograph was able to convincingly prove that the intellectual heritage of the compiler of the “Dictionary of the English Language”, a moralist and literary critic, most fully reflected the trend towards self-identification that dominated contemporary English culture.