Аннотация

The purpose of this paper is to explore what impact Tostoy’s views on art and morality have had on the works by a number of middle stream American writers in the 80s and 90s last century. Tolstoy’s essay «What is Art» had provided many of them with an insight into various aspects of morality in art as can be seen in the work on aesthetics by one of the most prominent American writers John Gardner in his «On Moral Fiction». Most references in this paper are made to Tolstoy’s utterances in his essay mentioned above. In this work the Russian writer pursued many issues which are still relevant today and that is what makes their exploration in contemporary American literature so meaningful.