LITERARY TRENDS: FOR THE PROJECT DICTIONARY OF LITERARY TRENDS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE AND AMERICA
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2016, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
The article is the outcome of the theoretical research prepared for the encyclopedia in progress entitled Dictionary of Literary Trends in the Twentieth Century Europe and America. This is the frst such encyclopedia known to exist, with no predecessors in Russia or abroad. The encyclopedia material is organized around the term “literary trend” that defnes its specifcity. The author examines the history of this concept in Russian and Soviet literary criticism introducing a number of contraversial interpretations. A different situation is observed in Western European and American literary studies where this theoretical problem does not seem to exist and such terms as “trend,” “movement,” and the like are seen as contingent on specifc contexts of their applicability. This pragmatic approach shall be used in the Dictionary as well. The author introduces the term “artistic community” that goes beyond the scope of individual poetics and should be used as a selective criterion for the encyclopedia material. As the work with the glossary has shown, this criterion is a verbal designation of a certain artistic community that is either coined by artists themselves or by critics. However, this criterion is not as primitive as it may seem. It implies — already in the given name or in the self-name — a number of critical operations: statement or declaration of aesthetic similarities and common aesthetic principles shared by a number of authors; their union on these grounds; a brief description of these aesthetic similarities coined in the name of the trend that is intended not only to identify a certain artistic community but also to differentiate it from others. In the case of self-naming, the recognition of the phenomenon’s value is added. However differently the names of communities are verbarly articulated, each name is informative, semantically rich, and reflects different types of artistic communities discussed in the article.
Authors and Affiliations
Andrey F. Kofman
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26077
- DOI 10.22455/ 2500-4247-2016-1-1-2-26-46
- Views 734
- Downloads 74
The Prose of Anastasia I. Tsvetaeva: Autobiographical Mythmaking
Anastasia Tsvetayeva’s literary work can be largely defined as autobiographical. Her first pen probe, “Royal reflections,” is a philosophical essay where the author represents herself as a “theomachist” and the debunke...
THE PROBLEM OF MEMORY AND OBLIVION: BAKHTIN’S MECHANISMS OF SAVING / ERASING TRACES OF TRADITION IN CULTURAL HISTORY
The question of genre traditionally occupies a central position in Russian literary theory. This article focuses on the problem of memory and oblivion, their role in the development of literary genres, construction of...
Crocodile Street, Nevsky Prospekt and Beyond. Bruno Schults and Gogol Meeting at the Border
The essay employs the concept of the cultural border/bordering to the comparative analysis of two significant literary texts, namely panoramic descriptions of Crocodile Street by B. Schultz and Nevsky Prospect by Gogol...
Gorky’s Work and the Rise of Social Realism
In 1932, the Communist party ideologists called Maxim Gorky the founder of socialist realism at the behest of Stalin. This tag has turned into an ideological cliché that accompanies the writer’s image even in the prese...
INTERACTION OF VARIOUS GENERIC FORMS IN THE 12TH–17TH CENTURY TEXTS AND THE MINDSETS OF OLD RUSSIAN AUTHORS
The essay focuses on the understudied question of the poetics of Old Russian literature: it is the frst study of the kind that analyzes semantic interaction of different generic forms in the works of the period. The ess...