https://doi.org/10.36719/2706-6185/44/71-74
Turkan Zeynalova
Ganja State University
PhD in Philology
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6994-7307
English Literature at the Turn of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries
Abstract
The period of relative stabilization of capitalism corresponded in philosophy to the flourishing of bourgeois positivism. The greatest representative of positivism in England was Herbert Spencer. The aggressiveness of the English bourgeoisie found expression in Spencer's anti-humanistic views, in his "social Darwinism". Spencer not only considered the bourgeois system to be the only acceptable one, but he also extended the law of struggle for existence to human society and considered it the main stimulus for development. The survival of the fittest and strongest, the death of the weaker - all this was declared a natural law of society. Human society itself was considered a single organism in which the functions of the brain, the functions of management should belong to the privileged classes, and the functions of the working hands - to the proletariat. Spencer's teaching, claiming to be highly scientific, had a strong influence on many English and American writers.
Keywords: literature, literary process, picture of the literary, English literature, writers’ work