Samuel Butler was one of the most incisive and brilliant English satirists of the 17th century. His poem "Hudibras" (1663–1678) was a literary landmark in its time and remains a model of political and philosophical irony. In the turbulent years following the English Civil War, the Puritan knight Hudibras and his squire Ralpho wander the country, getting into absurd scrapes, arguing about faith, power, and virtue, and unwittingly exposing the hypocrisy, fanaticism, and vanity of ideologies. A kind of burlesque Don Quixote, "Hudibras" combines a subtle parody of the chivalric epic, a satire on religious wars, the grotesque, and a learned play on form. Brilliant rhymes, puns, theatrical debates, and unexpected imagery transform Butler's work into a literary fireworks display, where profound doubt lurks behind the joke, and a tragic era lies behind the comical focus. This is the first time it has been published in Russian.