Literary criticism
Literary criticism
LITERARY STUDIES - the science that studies fiction (see Literature). This term is of relatively recent origin; before him, the concept of “literary history” (French histoire de la litterature, German Literaturgeschichte) was widely used. The gradual deepening of the tasks facing researchers of fiction has led to increased differentiation within this discipline. A theory of literature was formed, which included methodology and poetics. Together with the theory of literature, the history of literature was included in the general composition of the “science of literature,” or “L.” This term is extremely popular in Germany (Literaturwissenschaft, cf. art criticism - Kunstwissenschaft), where it is used by such researchers as, for example. O. Walzel, R. Unger and many others. etc. (Unger R., Philosophische Probleme in der neuen Literaturwissenschaft, 1908; Elster E., Prinzipien der Literaturwissenschaft, 1911; Walzel O., Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft; Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft, collection Edited by E. Ermattinger, Berlin, 1930 , etc.). This term also became widely used in Russian around 1924-1925 (see, for example, the books: P. N. Sakulina, Sociological method in Leningrad, Moscow, 1925; P. N. Medvedeva, Formal method in Leningrad, Leningrad. , 1928; A. Gurshteina, Questions of Marxist L., M., 1931, collections “Against Mechanistic L.”, M., 1930, “Against Menshevism in L.”, M., 1931, and many others. also used the term "L."
The purpose of this article, in addition to the above terminological information, is twofold:
1) outline the general tasks that continue to face the science of literature at the present time;
2) understand its boundaries components.
In a number of points, this article intersects with other articles in the “Literary Encyclopedia” - Literature, Marxism-Leninism in literary criticism, and many others. etc. The specificity of this article is in the general formulation of the problem of the tasks of science and its composition.
In the article “Literature” the nature of fiction was already established - a special form of class consciousness, the means of expression of which are verbal images. The science of literature came to this view of its subject through a process of complex internal restructuring, as a result of a fierce struggle with a number of unscientific methodological systems. Some researchers approached literature with the criteria of dogmatic aesthetics (Boileau, Gottsched, Sumarokov), others looked for reflections of the influences of the cultural “environment” in works (Ten, Pypin, Höttner), others saw in them an expression of the creative “spirit” of the author (impressionists and intuitionists) , the fourth paid their attention exclusively to artistic techniques, on the technology of verbal and figurative art (“formal” school). These methodological trends of the past reflected the worldview of various groups of nobility, bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie; Despite some achievements, these groups turned out to be unable to build a science of literature (see Methods of Pre-Marxist Literary Studies). Removing all these idealistic and positivistic points of view, Marxist-Leninist literature substantiated the view of literature as a specific form of class ideology that arises and develops in close connection with other superstructures.
The conditionality of verbal and figurative creativity on an economic basis is one of the main provisions of dialectical materialism, which currently does not require particularly detailed evidence. It is from the conditions of production and the production relations of classes that the primary influences on all forms of class consciousness come. At the same time, in a developed class society, these influences are never direct: literature is influenced by a number of other superstructures, more closely related to the economic base, for example. political relations of classes formed on the basis of production relations. Since this is so, the most essential task of literature is to establish the dependence of literary facts on the facts of class existence and related forms of class consciousness, to establish the roots of literary facts in the socio-economic reality that determined their appearance. The most important task of the science of literature should be to establish the class of which this work was an expression of the ideological tendencies. The dialectical-materialist study of literature requires, as Plekhanov wrote, “translating the idea of a given work of art from the language of art into the language of sociology, finding what can be called the sociological equivalent of a given literary work” (G. V. Plekhanov, Preface to the collection “For 20 years"). It is not a person of genius, as the impressionists asserted, nor a cultural-historical environment, as Taine believed, nor separate literary traditions of “senior” and “junior” schools, as the formalists believe, but class existence is the root cause of literature, as well as any other ideology that grows on the basis of this existence in the process of intensified class struggle. First of all, it is important to find out whose sentiments this writer is the mouthpiece of, what tendencies he expresses in his work, the interests of which social group bring his works to life - in short, what is the social genesis of a literary work or, more broadly, of the work of the writer, of whom it is the work belongs to the style in which this writer, along with others, participates. Establishing social genesis is an extremely responsible and difficult task. It is necessary to be able to see the general, leading principles in a work and at the same time not throw overboard those individual shades in which these general principles are clothed (the unity of the “general” and the “particular”). Establishing the dependence of literature on class existence and other forms of class consciousness, at the same time we must not forget for a moment that we have before us a specific ideology, which cannot be reduced to any other form, which must be analyzed and studied , constantly revealing ideological content This form is “thinking in verbal images.” It is necessary to be able to find in literature the influence of the economic basis and at the same time almost always mediate this influence by a number of intermediate connections between literature and politics, philosophy, art and other forms of class consciousness. It is necessary to finally find that social group whose aspirations and interests are expressed in a given work, not in statics only, not in the form of a metaphysically constructed group, but in historical dynamics, in development, in an acute struggle with antagonists, and the literary work itself with all its ideological tendencies to study as an act of class struggle on the literary front. It is especially important to emphasize the latter: until quite recently, Pereverzianism, which dominated in Latvia, sinned precisely by this hypertrophy of the genetic analysis of literary series isolated from each other and completely ignoring the interaction of these literary streams. In the books of Pereverzev (see), in the articles of his students (U. Fokht, G. Pospelov, I. Bespalov and many others - including the author of this article), the social roots of Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gorky, Goncharov were studied as literary data that develops independently of the complexity of the class struggle in the literature of a particular era.
Determining the genesis of literary works is inseparable from the analysis of artistic features, from establishing structural features literary facts and the inner essence of a literary work. If literature is a figurative form of class consciousness, then how did the “content” (class consciousness) determine the form (“thinking in images”), what is the literary style that is born in the dialectical unity of “content” and “form”? If class ideology is expressed in poetic style (about the enormous role of ideas, see the article “Literature”), then an equally important task of literature will be to reveal the ideological nature of the “form” itself. A literary critic must show how the economy, production relations of classes, the level of their political self-awareness and diverse areas of culture determine the images of works of art, the disposition of these images, their deployment in the plot, dictated by ideological positions characteristic and specific to a given social group at a given stage of its history, at this stage of the class struggle. A comprehensive study of the components of a literary work that reflect the ideology of the class should be the subject of detailed study. A literary critic establishes the theme of the images - their character and ideology, the composition - the methods of internal construction of each of the characters in the work and the ways of their development in the plot, and finally the stylistics - those linguistic means with which the images are endowed, the degree of correspondence of the speech of the characters to their social affiliation, the linguistic pattern itself the author of the work, etc. No matter how difficult this task of the sociological Marxist study of literary style is (see “Style”), it can in no way be eliminated from the field of view of science. L. of our day struggles with the cultural-historical method, which completely ignored the analysis of poetic style, with the psychological method, which limited this study to the field of individual psychology. It fights formalism, which studies literary style as an immanent technological series, not conditioned by anything other than the state of previous traditions. It finally fights Perversianism, which fetishizes the study of the sociology of style and solves these problems in the spirit of mechanistic materialism, in complete isolation from specific historical forms of class struggle.
But establishing the genesis and artistic features of literary facts does not exhaust the work of a literary critic. The entire analysis of a literary fact and its genesis must serve the purpose of establishing the function of a literary fact. A literary work is always a reflection of the practice of the class to which it owes its appearance; it always reflects objective reality with varying degrees of breadth. However, at the same time, it is a class ideology, the attitude towards this reality of a class that protects its interests through it, a class that fights with its opponents for certain economic and political interests. Being a form of class consciousness, it at the same time represents a form of its action. Like any ideology, it not only reflects, but also expresses, not only registers, consolidates, but also organizes, actively influences everyone who perceives a literary work. A literary work influences primarily the work of writers contemporary to it or who came to literature in a subsequent period. It sometimes has a powerful influence on the literary production of less mature class groups, imposing on them its motives and techniques, subordinating them to its ideological tendencies. Even within literature itself poetic work Consequently, it represents not only a “fact”, but also a “factor” that draws other literary movements into the orbit of its influences. But another function of literature is incomparably more important - its direct impact on the reader, modern and later, related to her class and belonging to other social groups. Any “interpretation” of works by the reader, based on the objectively existing content in the work, at the same time can be completely different depending on the reader’s class personality, his likes and dislikes, his requests and needs. The history of French literature knows the intense struggle of reader opinions around Victor Hugo's Ernani, a drama that played a colossal role in the fate of the romantic theater and dealt a crushing blow to classical tragedy. The famous “battles” around Hugo’s drama (battles not only in the figurative, but also in the most literal sense of the word) were a reflection not only of literary innovations of the style in which the author of “Hernani” and “Cromwell” worked, but also of acute social disagreements between the supporters of classicism and the pioneers of romanticism, for both literary movements were based on the ideology of different classes, and their mutual struggle was one of the forms of class struggle in French literature of the 20-30s. These reactions of readers were expressed even more openly with the publication of Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” (1862), dedicated to depicting the most topical phenomenon of that era - “nihilism”: this work was met with enthusiastic praise from one part of the readers and unbridled denial from others. the other side. The basis of these disagreements was not so much the subjectivity of the interpretation of Turgenev’s text, but rather a certain social attitude towards the revolutionary raznochinsky and the desire of various class groups (the ideologists of the peasant revolution, grouped around Sovremennik, liberals, the bloc of serf owners - characteristic laudatory reviews of the novel have reached us, given him by the Third Department) to use Turgenev’s novel in open political struggle. Every literary work that more or less broadly reflects reality becomes an active and organizing factor public life, the object of a struggle between opposing reader reactions and in this sense represents a certain factor not only in literary, but also in social development. Let us recall Lenin’s articles about L. Tolstoy as a “mirror of the Russian revolution,” and we will easily understand that this enormous functional richness of literature is due to its cognitive essence: the struggle around “Fathers and Sons” would not have been distinguished by even a fraction of the fierceness that it in fact, it would have been acquired if Turgenev’s readers had not sought from the latter an objective image of the common youth. The enormous popularity of Leo Tolstoy’s “folk” works among the peasantry was determined precisely by the fact that the peasantry sought in them an answer to the question of how to get out of the unbearably difficult situation in which this class found itself in the post-reform era. Readers are always characterized by an approach to literature as a means of learning about life; hence the unprecedented passion of their reactions and the enormous functional role of literature.
A number of literary works influence the reader’s consciousness long after they were published. Such is the fate of the so-called. "eternal companions of humanity." Shakespeare, who worked in Elizabethan England, clearly transcends the boundaries of his time, and in the historical perspective of three too many centuries we see how often we learn from him, how much interest in him is revived, how he is not only a factor in the literary and reading process, but also a fact of literary politics (see, for example, the slogan “Down with Schiller,” thrown out by some RAPP theorists in their polemics with the LitFrontists about the creative method of proletarian literature). A literary critic has no right to forget that the problem of the social function of fiction is the most important of the problems facing him: “The difficulty lies not in understanding that Greek art and epic are connected with known social forms of development. The difficulty lies in understanding that they still continue to give us artistic pleasure and, in a certain sense, retain the meaning of a norm and an unattainable model” (K. Marx, On Criticism political economy). In order to put the study of the functional role of literature at the proper height, it is necessary to study the real role of a literary work in the struggle of classes, class groups, parties, to establish what actions it prompted them to, what public resonance it created. As an auxiliary point, one should widely expand the history of the reader, take into account his interests, and examine his reactions.
It is needless to say that this study must be made on the basis of class as the main factor determining the difference in perception and reaction. Marxist literature must decisively combat trends that exaggerate the importance of the reader, such as, for example, “Thoughts on Literature and Life,” expressed by P. S. Kogan: “To understand a work of art means to understand its readers. The history of literature is the history of what is read, but not the history of what is written" (P. S. Kogan, Prologue, "Thoughts on Literature and Life", 1923, p. 10). The history of literature is both the history of “written” and the history of “read”, because both the objective essence of a literary work and the different class attitude of the reader towards it are important to us. By rejecting the “written,” we thereby slide into clearly idealistic relativism, into a practical ignorance of the objective existence of literature. But we must object even more decisively to the opposite extreme - against that denial of the functional study of literature, which in our time has been so clearly reflected in Pereverzianism. “The task of a literary critic,” wrote Pereverzev, “is to reveal in a work of art that objective being that provided the material for it and determined its structure. Marxist research comes down to the revelation of this being, the clarification of the organic, necessary connection of a given work of art with a certain being” (“Necessary prerequisites for Marxist literary criticism,” collection of Literary Studies, M., 1928, p. 11). Without touching on the other sides of this formula, it is necessary to state that the social role of the work, its influence on the reader, had no place in it. Studying exclusively the genesis of literary works and their style, “being” and “structure,” Pereverzev argued that the study of functions should be undertaken by a special discipline - “the history of the reader.” This delimitation is clearly illegal, since the study of the function of literary works is not limited to the study of the “History of the Reader”, and, on the other hand, is closely connected with the analysis of the class essence of the works. Only in establishing the class role of a work does the genetic and stylistic analysis of a literary critic receive full confirmation, and in this sense, the denial of functional study is inappropriate and illegal. It is, however, extremely characteristic of Perversianism, which considered literature only a means of reflecting the class psyche, practically denied the active role of ideologies and therefore reduced the science of literature to the level of passivist registration of poetic facts.
No matter how important the study of the real class function of literary works is, and in particular the study of the reader’s relationship to them, it still cannot be divorced from the analysis of literary works and replace it. Literature itself is functional, it contains that ideological orientation that causes such dissimilar reader assessments. And the very approach to the reader in Marxist literature should in no way be passivist registering. By asserting the opposite, we would inevitably slide into “tailism”, into the denial of philosophy as a science that studies one of the most effective ideologies. The leading, avant-garde part of literature—criticism—not so much studies the reader’s reactions as stimulates and organizes them, establishing the social roots of a given literary phenomenon, its artistic integrity and ideological orientation. The tasks of a Marxist literary critic in this area are to expose reader reactions, which are harmful and reactionary in their social essence, to deepen the tastes of the proletarian-peasant reader, to reshape and re-educate intermediate petty-bourgeois groups, etc. The same should be said about the attitude of L to the writer: assistance to the ally of proletarian literature, active improvement of the qualifications of proletarian writers, and merciless exposure of reactionary tendencies in the work of bourgeois writers of city and countryside are among the most important responsibilities of Marxist-Leninist literature and sharply distinguish it from the bourgeois-Menshevik, objectivist approach to literature. In our time of intense struggle for a new literary style and creative method of proletliterature, the problem of functional study must be raised to its full extent and introduced into the everyday use of our science.
The studies we have outlined represent only individual aspects of the essentially unified act of Marxist research into a literary work. We have divided this act into its constituent parts only in the interests of the greatest methodological clarity and the greatest possible detail of the analysis. In practice, the implementation of the above tasks is inextricably intertwined. By examining style, we establish the features of class ideology manifested in it, thereby outlining the class genesis of the work and opening the way to identifying its social functions. In turn, considering the goal of studying the last two problems, we cannot solve them without analyzing the features of the literary style. However, this unity is in no way identical: each aspect of the study is important, necessary and cannot be removed without obvious damage to the whole. By ignoring the social genesis of creativity, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to correctly answer the question about the reasons for its appearance, we fall into idealism or take a vulgar materialistic, “consumer” point of view. By removing the task of analyzing the artistic features of literary facts, we blur the specificity of literature, mix it with other ideologies, and impoverish the consciousness of the class. Finally, by forgetting about functional study, we break the strong connections of literary works with the reality that their authors seek to influence.
Repeated attempts to construct a dogmatic methodology for the study of literature inevitably suffer from mechanism. The order of studying literary facts in each individual case is determined by specific conditions - the availability of this or that material (in some cases, much information about this or that literary fact can only be speculative) and the researcher’s inclination towards one or another form of analysis. Establishing generally binding prescriptions for the order of study can only be harmful here; these recipes must give way to the greatest methodological flexibility. The only important thing is that, although individual literary scholars can pose these tasks separately, not one of these tasks can be removed by scientific literature. To comprehensively study Pushkin using the only scientific method of dialectical materialism means to establish which class ideology his work was an expression of, to establish exactly what group within the class Pushkin represented, to understand the dependence between the developing and changing creativity of Pushkin and the social transformation of his class group; understand in this same aspect of social transformation the entire Pushkin style from the stages of initial maturation to its final stages, study this style as a system of Pushkin’s ideological statements, as a natural phenomenon in the struggle of the Pushkin class for social self-affirmation, separating individual moments in Pushkin’s work, characteristic of him personally, from the moments characterizing the social group; analyze Pushkin’s form of verbal-figurative thinking in its socio-historically determined connections with the previous literary culture and at the same time in its repulsions from this culture; finally, to determine the influence that Pushkin’s creativity has had and continues to have to this day on literature and on readers of the most diverse class groups, explaining this functional role by the social orientation of creativity, the ideological demands of readers, and finally by the entire historical reality in all the complexity of its internal contradictions. It is especially important to emphasize the latter. Menshevik in its essence to find genesis on the basis of an isolated sociological analysis of this writer, Marxist-Leninist literature contrasts the study of the writer from the angle of view of the most diverse contradictions of his era. The deepest novelty and value of Lenin’s analysis of the works of Leo Tolstoy lies in the fact that he connected the creative growth of this writer with the peasant movement of the post-reform era, that he showed how dialectically this writer of noble origin reflected both the positive and negative sides of the peasant revolution and how this reflection determined the essentially revolutionary function of his work. To resolve this entire series of inextricably intertwined questions means to study the writer’s work comprehensively and exhaustively.
From the formulation of these common tasks, which stand before modern literature (for a more detailed discussion of them, see “Marxism-Leninism in Leninism”), let us now move on to establishing the composition of this science. We have already said above that the term “L.” arose as a result of the exceptional complexity of its composition. Currently, it represents a whole complex of disciplines, each of which has its own special internal boundaries within the general whole that they form.
The vanguard of literary criticism is literary criticism (see). Its historical morphology is extremely varied, its breadth of coverage is extremely significant. We know criticism based on the principles of dogmatic aesthetics (Merzlyakov), formalist criticism (Shklovsky), psychological (Gornfeld), impressionist (Aikhenwald, Lemaitre), educational-journalistic criticism (Pisarev), and finally Marxist. Without, of course, seeking here to exhaustively classify the types of criticism, we will only emphasize its avant-garde role in literature. Criticism almost always acts before academic literature and is a pioneer of scientific analysis. It has the difficult but honorable task of establishing the general milestones of this analysis, which other groups of literature will then follow. The most characteristic example of how criticism has established milestones for the history of literature is the creative practice of the cultural-historical method: S. A. Vengerov and A.N. Pypin were based in constructing the history of Russian literature of the 19th century. on the critical articles of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, reducing and simplifying their views. Modern Marxist literature would be unthinkable without the widespread development a decade or two earlier of a broad phalanx of Marxist criticism.
Criticism, of course, does not negate the arrival of further detachments of literature, no matter what methodological movement it belongs to. This is due at least to the fact that the critic is concerned not so much with establishing an internal connection between literary facts, but with an ideological and political assessment of these facts. Critics may sometimes not be interested in a literary work in itself: for them it sometimes turns out not to be a goal, but a means for posing a number of philosophical or socio-journalistic problems to the reader. Let us recall here, on the one hand, the criticism of the Symbolists, and on the other, such a characteristic example of journalistic criticism as the article by N. G. Chernyshevsky “Russian man on rendez-vous”, written to raise the problems of peasant reform in relation to Turgenev’s story “Asya”. Criticism may further not set itself the task of understanding the process of preparing a given literary fact, studying its surroundings, literary destinies - all that is a mandatory requirement for a literary historian. For criticism it is not necessary to use that detailed and complex auxiliary apparatus, without which the history of literature is unthinkable - the tasks of establishing authorship and criticizing a text do not exist for it.
L. also includes the history of literature, repeating, deepening and correcting the conclusions of criticism, clarifying it research method. Very often, critics themselves write historical and literary articles at a certain stage of their activity (let’s take as an example Belinsky’s articles on Pushkin with their review of the entire previous period of Russian literature). For a literary historian, it is typical to use additional materials, biography and technology, a more in-depth study of a number of special problems, and greater “academicism,” which, however, should in no way be equated with a lack of partisanship.
The differences between criticism and literary history are internal differences between individual parts of the same science of literature. Criticism evaluates a literary work in the context of the current day; literary history examines it from a distance, from a historical perspective. However, Marxist criticism always strives to take a literary work from a historical perspective, and Marxist literary history cannot help but connect its work with modern literary life. What is imperceptible to a critic today, therefore, becomes possible for a literary historian to ascertain, and, conversely, very often those features of a work that a contemporary critic vividly perceives in it elude the literary historian. If criticism always represents a sharp weapon of the class struggle at its current contemporary stage, then the history of literature deals primarily with material that has, to some extent, lost its combative, relevant significance. This, of course, does not mean that the history of literature is “objective” and criticism is “subjective”, as the idealists tried and are still trying to present the matter - Marxist criticism is scientific and, when applied to modernity, operates with the same method of dialectical materialism that underlies all sciences about ideologies. But if the method is the same, then the supporting material becomes significantly more complicated, its volume, the perspective with which this material is studied, etc. The Marxist critic makes equal demands on both the monograph on Shakespeare and the review of M. Gorky’s play partisanship and scientific character. The difference is determined here by the difference in the objective historical content of the objects of analysis, the difference in their historical contexts and the resulting difference in specific assessments, practical conclusions, as well as the “tactics” of research methods. Neither exclude criticism from scientific literature, much less oppose it to it, as some idealist theorists did, for example. Yu. Aikhenvald, - we have no reason.
It would be scientific pedantry to demand the establishment of precise, once and for all defined internal boundaries between criticism and the history of literature. Their competence can vary quite greatly depending on the nature of the era under study. And the goals pursued by both disciplines, and the techniques with which they operate, are often extremely close to each other. One of the main differences between them is the greater breadth of material (biographical, textual, archival, etc.), which is used by a literary historian who has a historical perspective on the work of a given writer, and thanks to it, establishes his predecessors, associates, and especially followers. This does not mean, of course, that other critics cannot be found who will be interested in the writer’s manuscripts, his biography, and so on; individual exceptions only confirm the rule. By complicating his analysis with material unknown to the critic and illuminating it from a broader perspective, which the critic does not always have the opportunity to take, the literary historian nevertheless organically continues his work. It certainly does not follow from this that the history of literature is doomed to trail behind criticism and cannot help it in any way. All parts of Marxist literature are organically interconnected and provide each other with effective assistance. The possibilities of successful and concrete criticism of phenomena directly related to the literary phenomena of the past, of course, depend significantly on the degree to which the history of literature has developed the material of previous decades. For example, a detailed development of questions of proletarian literature will greatly facilitate the work of Marxist criticism on the material of current proletarian literature.
A specific feature of the history of literature is that it poses questions of the literary process in all their breadth, operating with the material of “mass-cast production.” To illuminate the literary path of a class means to study all its vicissitudes literary development, all its individual stages - from initial accumulation to the flourishing and decline of class literature. The study of individual exemplary works on which idealists tend to write history - the study of “masterpieces” - determines the height of class creativity, but not the direction or structure of its spines. The history of literature is unthinkable without the study of secondary and tertiary fiction writers. Their work sometimes has no aesthetic value; their forms are embryonic and inexpressive. But in terms of historical analysis To study the trends in the literary development of a class and to characterize its growth, the study of mass production is absolutely necessary. This is necessary in relation to the bourgeois-noble literature of the past, each of the movements of which was characterized by mass character both in its initial and mature stages (examples: aristocratic poetry of the era of serfdom, the bourgeois urban tradition of “physiological essays”, realistic manor novel, etc.). This mass character characterizes proletarian literature to an even greater extent. The absence of great masters of words, quite natural in the era of exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie, does not relieve the historian of proletarian literature of the obligation to study it in its earliest sources, in all the diversity of its constituent movements. Talents that are small in their creative range, however, perfectly characterize the ideological tendencies of the class. There is no need to talk about how gigantically the importance of the analysis of mass production is increasing in our time of the broadest flourishing of the labor movement, the formation of thousands literary circles at enterprises and deployed in recent years calling shock workers into literature. The history of literature is now less than ever the history of literary generals only; it can and should turn into the history of literary armies.
Criticism and the history of literature form a sector of practical literature. Their activities are directed by the general theoretical thought of literature. Just as in any army there are headquarters where all strategic work is concentrated on drawing up plans of military operations, coordinating military operations, etc., the role of the theoretical headquarters of literature. is carried out by methodology - the doctrine of methods and ways of the most rational study of fiction from the point of view of certain philosophical foundations (in scientific literature - from the point of view of dialectical materialism). Methodology includes, as an auxiliary but extremely important part, historiography, a consistent historical review of the methodological systems of the past. Criticism of these systems leads us into the depths of methodology, for every new school of literary criticism begins its life with a reassessment of the methodological concepts that prevailed before it. The essence of the methodology is to create an in-depth system of views on the essence, origin and function of literature. The development of this system of views usually requires the involvement of disciplines adjacent to literature - history, aesthetics, philosophy, etc. Methodology is the real brain of any literature, especially Marxist methodology, which requires establishing the conditionality of literature by social practice and revealing the inextricable connections between literature and other related sciences. her superstructures.
However, a general methodological orientation is not yet enough to successfully study a literary work. The methodology establishes the general essence of the phenomena being studied and drives the main piles of literary theory. Poetics (q.v.) comes to the aid of methodology in a specific and painstaking analysis of literary facts, and gives the literary critic an idea of the types of the latter. The cultural-historical school ignored poetics, the Potebnians psychologized it to the extreme, the formalists exorbitantly exaggerated its importance, understanding by poetics the entire theory of literature (V. Zhirmunsky, Questions of the Theory of Literature; B. Tomashevsky), including within its scope the history of literature (a series of formalist in their methodology collections "Poetics"). The latter is especially unacceptable for a Marxist, since the history of literature clearly goes beyond the boundaries of those auxiliary tasks that theoretical poetics sets itself. Elements of any literary style, when taken outside of history, immediately turn into “meager abstractions.” Only on the basis historical study theoretical poetics can represent a rich arsenal of all kinds of information about the structural types of works, which can be extremely useful for a literary critic, providing him with methodological techniques work on the work. Poetics cannot be anything other than the application of the philosophical foundations of methodology on the widest possible literary material - “concrete methodology”. Within these boundaries, poetics is extremely helpful to the history of literature, as if forming a bridge between it and general methodology.
The exceptional complexity of studying certain monuments of literature, ancient anonymous or dubious, for which we know neither the author nor a more or less definitively established text, gives rise to the need to create a special auxiliary apparatus. Here the so-called auxiliary disciplines come to the aid of the literary scholar - “knowledge that helps to master research techniques... expanding the scientific horizon of the researcher” (V.N. Peretz, From a lecture on the methodology of the history of literature, Kiev, 1912) - bibliography (see) , history, biography, paleography (see), chronology, linguistics (see), textual criticism (see), etc. The adherents of the philological method suffered from an exceptional exaggeration of the importance of auxiliary disciplines. Its supporters were inclined to consider all historical and literary work exhausted by philological analysis. This phenomenon, which continues in certain circles of extra-Marxist literature today, is undoubtedly explained by their lack of clear general perspectives, disappointment in the methodological concepts of the past, and disbelief in the scientific nature of Marxist literature. Let us cite as an example the pathetic praise of auxiliary disciplines in the “Vision of a Poet” by the intuitionist M O. Gershenzon, who was disillusioned with the cultural and historical study of literature. Marxist literature undoubtedly limits the competence of auxiliary disciplines in the old sense of the word, although it is fully aware of the usefulness of textual criticism, editorial technique, etc. as preliminary work that dissects literary texts and makes them suitable. for scientific study. But with all the more energy, Marxists assert the importance of related disciplines devoted to the study of other superstructures. Idealistic literary criticism is often characterized by the deliberate isolation of literature from other ideologies. “A tempting task would be to construct a literary study from the data of the material itself, based on only the most elementary psychological and linguistic concepts. The author tries to approach this task in the sense that he does not rely on any preconceived psychological, sociological or biological theories, so as not to make his science dependent on changes occurring in related sciences (such as linguistics, natural science and especially philosophy )" (B. I. Yarkho, Borders scientific literary criticism, “Iskusstvo”, Moscow, 1925, No. 2, p. 45). An obviously hopeless attempt to isolate ourselves from other forms of social reality, to build a science without any “prejudices,” that is, without a worldview that synthesizes this reality! Marxists who study literature as one of the superstructures cannot help but involve in the process of studying literary phenomena, first of all, data on political life and struggle, economic processes, and then data on the development of other ideologies - philosophy, art, science, etc. Art criticism ( especially the history of theater and fine arts), philosophy, general history, sociology, economics will help the work of a literary critic, greatly facilitating and deepening the analysis of literary facts.
All of the above allows us to assert that modern Marxist literature is a complex set of disciplines that carry out their own special private tasks within the framework of a common whole. Criticism, literary history, methodology, poetics, and auxiliary disciplines are components of this literary complex. It is no coincidence that Marxist literature opposes the tendency to limit the competence of literary criticism to the study of style (formalists), the psychology of creativity (Potebnianism), the establishment of social genesis (Pereverzianism), and the performance of auxiliary philological tasks. A comprehensive study of literature as a specific form of class ideology requires extreme differentiation of tasks. But at the same time, literature is a single whole, an internal division of labor that provides the solution to the problems that the specific nature of fiction and the method of dialectical materialism poses to the science of literature.
Is L. a science? This question was deeply relevant 15-20 years ago, when idealists of all schools and stripes proclaimed the death of the science of literature. This was the collapse of positivist literature, the scientific weakness of which was revealed by the idealists with great clarity. But that turn to intuition, which became so sharply evident at the turn of the 20th century, signified the complete inability of the bourgeoisie to build a science of literature. What the decaying class could not achieve is already being accomplished by the leadership of the proletariat on the unshakable philosophical basis of dialectical materialism.
Marxist-Leninist literature faces tasks of enormous importance - to trace the work of writers of the past from the point of view of Lenin’s directives on the use of the literary heritage; to open a merciless struggle against the literary and literary production of classes hostile to the proletariat, to help create a creative method of proletarian literature, leading the work that unfolded around this issue. In short, Marxist literature is called upon to create a theory that helps the literary practice of the proletariat, organizes and directs it. These tasks are especially responsible and relevant at this stage of the construction of proletarian literature, which is characterized by its mass character and planning. The growing army of proletarian writers must be armed with the weapons of Marxist-Leninist literature, which will accelerate and ensure its creative victory. Marxists must resolutely resist any attempts to “apoliticize” the science of literature. The literary theory of the working class must be put at the service of its literary practice. Bibliography:
Dashkevich N., Gradual development of the science of literary history and its modern tasks, “University News”, 1877, No. 10; Kareev N., What is the history of literature, “Philological Notes”, 1883, no. V-VI; Plotnikov V., Basic principles of the scientific theory of literature, “Philological Notes”, 1887, no. III-IV, VI (1888, issue I-II); Sorgenfrei G., The concept of literary criticism and its tasks, “Gymnasium”, 1895, August; Anichkov E.V., Scientific problems of the history of literature, “University News”, 1896, No. 4; Tikhonravov N. S., Problems of the history of literature and methods of its study, Sochin. N. S. Tikhonravova, vol. I, M., 1898; Pypin A. N., History of Russian literature (several ed.), vol. I. Introduction; Evlakhov A., Introduction to the philosophy of artistic creativity, vol. I-III, Warsaw, 1910, 1912 (Rostov n/D., 1916); Lanson G., Method in the history of literature, with afterwords. M. Gershenzona, M., 1911; Sipovsky V., History of Literature as a Science, ed. 2nd, St. Petersburg, 1911; Veselovsky A. N., Poetics, Collection. sochin., vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1913; Peretz V.N., From lectures on the methodology of the history of Russian literature, Kyiv, 1914; Gornfeld A., Literature, “New encyclopedic dictionary Brockhaus and Efron", vol. XXIV, 1915; Arkhangelsky A. S., Introduction to the history of Russian literature, vol. I, P., 1916; Sakulin P.N., In search of scientific methodology, “Voice of the Past”, 1919, No. 1-4; Voznesensky A., Method of studying literature, “Proceedings of Belorussk. state University", Minsk, 1922, No. 1; Mashkin A., Essays on literary methodology, “Science in Ukraine”, 1922, No. 3; Piksanov N.K., New way literary science, “Iskusstvo”, 1923, No. 1; Smirnov A., Paths and tasks of the science of literature, “ Literary thought", 1923, book. II; Sakulin P.N., Synthetic construction of the history of literature, M., 1925; Yarkho B.I., Borders of scientific literary criticism, “Iskusstvo”, 1925, No. 2, and 1927, book. I; Tseitlin A., Problems of modern literary criticism, “Native language at school”, 1925, book. VIII; Sakulin, Sociological method in literary criticism, M., 1925; Plekhanov G., Sochin., vol. X and XIV, Guise, M. - L., 1925; Voznesensky A., The problem of “description” and explanation in the science of literature, “Native language at school”, 1926, book. XI-XII; Polyansky V., Questions of modern criticism, Guise, M. - L., 1927; Efimov N.I., Sociology of Literature, Smolensk, 1927; Petrovsky M., Poetics and art criticism, Art. first, “Art”, 1927, book. II-III; Nechaeva V., Literary criticism and art criticism, “Native language at school”, 1927, book. III; Belchikov N., The importance of modern criticism in the study of modern fiction, “Native language at school”, 1927, book. III; Prozorov A., Boundaries of scientific formalism (regarding Art. Yarkho), “At the literary post,” 1927, No. 15-16; Yakubovsky G., Tasks of criticism and literary science, “At the literary post,” 1928, No. 7; Schiller F.P., Modern literary criticism in Germany, “Literature and Marxism”, 1928, book. I; Him, Marxism in German literary criticism, “Literature and Marxism”, 1928, book. II; Sakulin P.N., To the results of Russian literary criticism for 10 years, “Literature and Marxism”, 1928, book. I; Medvedev P.N., Immediate tasks of historical and literary science, “Literature and Marxism”, 1928, book. III; Timofeev L., On the functional study of literature, “Russian language in Soviet school", 1930; Vokht U., Marxist literary criticism, M., 1930; Belchikov N.F., Criticism and literary criticism, “Russian language in the Soviet school”, 1930, book. V; “Against mechanistic literary criticism,” collection, M., 1930; “Against Menshevism in Literary Criticism,” collection, Moscow, 1930; Dobrynin M., Against eclectics and mechanists, M., 1931; Fritsche V. M., Problems of art criticism (several editions); “Literary Studies”, collection edited by V.F. Pereverzev, Moscow, 1928 (for the controversy about this collection, see the bibliography to the article “Pereverzev”); Gurshtein A., Questions of Marxist literary criticism, Moscow, 1931. also bibliography for the following articles. Art.: Marxism-Leninism in literary criticism, Methods of pre-Marxist literary criticism (see also foreign bibliography), Poetics, Criticism and Aesthetics.
Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
Literary studies
A group of sciences that study fiction. Literary criticism also includes the so-called. auxiliary disciplines: textual criticism, or text criticism, paleography, bibliography, bibliography. The purpose of textual criticism is to establish the history of the text, the relationship between various author’s manuscripts and lists, and the comparison of editions (fundamentally different versions of the same work). Textual criticism establishes the canonical text of a work, which, as a rule, is an expression of the author’s last will. Paleography determines the time of writing a manuscript by the characteristics of handwriting and watermarks on paper. Book studies deals with the study of books, identifying their authors, publishers, and printing houses in which they were printed. The task of bibliography is to compile catalogs and lists of literature on a particular topic.
Literary criticism itself is a science that studies the laws of construction of literary works, the development of literary forms - genres, styles etc. It is divided into two main parts - theoretical and historical literary criticism. Theoretical literary criticism is literary theory, or poetics. She explores the basic elements of fiction: image, childbirth And types, styles etc. Literary theory is forced to turn a blind eye to particulars. She consciously ignores the differences of eras, languages and countries, “forgets” about the originality art world every writer; she is not interested in the particular, the concrete, but in the general, repeating, similar.
The history of literature, on the contrary, is interested primarily in the concrete and unique. The subject of her research is the uniqueness of various nationalities. literatures, literary periods, trends and trends, the work of individual authors. The history of literature examines any literary phenomenon in historical development. Thus, a literary historian - unlike a theorist - seeks to establish non-permanent, unchanging features baroque or romanticism, and the originality of Russian or German baroque of the 17th century. and the development of romanticism or individual romantic genres in French, Russian or English literature.
A separate part of literary criticism - poetry. Its subject is classification, determination of the originality of the main forms of versification: rhythms, metrics, stanzas, rhymes, their story. Poetry uses mathematical calculations and computer text processing; in its accuracy and rigor it is closer to the natural sciences than to the humanities.
Historical poetics occupies an intermediate place between theory and literary history. Like literary theory, it studies not specific works, but individual literary forms: genres, styles, types of plots and characters, etc. But unlike literary theory, historical poetics examines these forms in development, for example. changes in the novel as a genre are traced.
A unique place in literary criticism stylistics– a discipline that studies the use of language in literary works: the functions of words of high and low styles, poeticisms and vernacular, features of the use of words in a figurative meaning - metaphors And metonymy.
A separate field is comparative literature, which studies literature in comparison. various peoples and countries, patterns characteristic of a number of nationalities. Sci.
Modern literary criticism is moving closer to related humanities disciplines - semiotics of culture and myth, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc.
Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .
Synonyms:
- Literary language Dictionary of synonyms - the science of fiction, its origin, essence and development. Subject and disciplines of literary criticism. Modern literature is a very complex and flexible system of disciplines. There are three main branches of Leningrad: ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
literary criticism- I, only units, p. The science that studies fiction, its essence and specificity, origin, social function, patterns of the historical and literary process. Department of Literary Studies. Seminar on literary criticism. Related words... Popular dictionary of the Russian language
LITERARY STUDIES- LITERARY STUDIES, the science of fiction (see Literature), its origin, essence and development. Modern literature is a complex and flexible system of disciplines. There are three main branches of literature. Literary theory explores... ... Literary encyclopedic dictionary, Collection of articles. This book has been collected as a congratulation to the modern philologist Sergei Georgievich Bocharov, and the title of the collection contains the thesis formulated by him. In the preface to the book “Plots of Russian...
Teacher: Irina Sergeevna Yukhnova.
Literary criticism as a science.
Literary criticism is a science that studies the specifics of literature, the development of verbal artistic creativity, artistic literary works in the unity of its content and form, and the laws of the literary process. This is one of the branches of philology. The profession of philologist appeared to process ancient texts - to decipher them and adapt them for reading. During the Renaissance, a huge interest in antiquity appeared - philologists turned to the texts of the Renaissance for help. An example when philology is needed: to decipher historical realities and names in “Eugene Onegin”. The need for commentary, for example, on military literature. Literary scholars help you understand what the text is about and why it was created.
A text becomes a work when it has some task.
Literature
Recipient (reader)
Now literature is considered as the above system, where everything is interconnected. We are interested in someone else's assessment. We often start reading a text already knowing something about it. The author always writes for the reader. Exists different types readers, as Chernyshevsky talks about. An example is Mayakovsky, who through his contemporaries addressed his descendants. The literary critic also turns to the personality of the author, his opinion, and biography. He is also interested in the reader's opinion.
There are many disciplines in literary studies. They are main and auxiliary. Basics: literary theory, literary history and literary criticism. Literary criticism is addressed to the modern literary process. She responds to new works. The main task of criticism is to evaluate the work. It arises when the connection between the artist and society is clearly visible. Critics are often called skilled readers. Russian criticism begins with Belinsky. Criticism manipulates the reader's opinion. She is often biased. Example: reactions to “Belkin’s Stories” and the persecution of Boris Pasternak, when those who did not even read him spoke badly about him.
Theory and history are not addressed to topicality. Neither the historian nor the theorist cares about topicality; he studies the work against the background of the entire literary process. Very often literary processes manifest themselves more clearly in secondary literature. The theorist identifies general patterns, constants, and the core. He doesn't care about the details. A historian, on the contrary, studies particulars and specifics.
“Theory presupposes, and art destroys these assumptions, of course, most often unconsciously” - Jerzy Farino.
Theory shapes the model. But the model is bad in practice. Best works almost always destroy these models. Example: The Inspector, Woe from Wit. They don't fit the pattern, so we look at them from the point of view of breaking the model.
There is a different quality of literary criticism. Sometimes text scientific research I myself look like a work of art.
Science must have a subject of research, research methods and terminology.
Conventional images include: hyperbolic idealization, grotesque, allegory and symbol. Hyperbolic idealization is found in epics, where the real and the fantastic are combined, there are no realistic motivations for actions. The form of the grotesque: a shift in proportions - Nevsky Prospekt, a violation of scale, the inanimate displaces the living. The grotesque is often used for satire or to indicate tragic principles. Grotesque is a symbol of disharmony. The grotesque style is characterized by an abundance of alogisms and a combination of different voices. Allegory and symbol - two levels: depicted and implied. The allegory is unambiguous - there are instructions and decoding. The symbol is polysemantic, inexhaustible. In a symbol, both what is depicted and what is implied are equally important. There are no indications in the symbol.
- Small forms of imagery.
From the point of view of many researchers, only what is created with the help of words is figurative. The possibilities and features of the word are a topic of discussion, and this is how futurism arises. A word in a work of art behaves differently than in ordinary speech - the word begins to realize an aesthetic function in addition to the nominative (nominative) and communicative. The purpose of ordinary speech is communication, discourse, transmission of information. The aesthetic function is different, it does not just convey information, but creates a certain mood, conveys spiritual information, a certain super-meaning, an idea. The word itself manifests itself differently. Context, compatibility, rhythmic beginning (especially in poetry) are important. Bunin: “Punctuation marks are musical notes.” Rhythm and meaning are combined. A word in a work of art does not have a specific meaning as in everyday speech. Example: crystal vase and crystal time by Tyutchev. The word does not appear in its meaning. The same flow of associations with the author. Crystal time - description of sounds in autumn. A word in an artistic context gives rise to individual associations. If the author’s and yours coincide, everything is remembered, if not, no. Any artistic trope is a deviation from the rules. Y. Tynyanov “The meaning of the poetic word.” “The word is a chameleon, in which each time not only different shades appear, but also different colors.” Emotional coloring of the word. A word is an abstraction; the complex of meanings is individual.
All methods of changing the basic meaning of a word are tropes. The word has not only a direct but also a figurative meaning. The definition usually given in textbooks is not entirely complete. Tomashevsky "Poetics of Speech". Example: the title of Shmelev’s story “The Man from the Restaurant.” First, a person means a waiter, and the word used is what the client usually calls him. Then the action develops, the hero reflects that the elite of society is vicious. He has his own temptations: the money he returns. The waiter cannot live with sin; the main word becomes “man” as the crown of nature, a spiritual being. Pushkin’s metaphor “The East is burning with a new dawn” - both the beginning of a new day and the emergence of a new powerful state in the east.
Types of tropes: comparison, metaphor, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, epithet, oxymoron, hyperbole, litotes, periphrasis, irony, euphemism (characteristic of sentimentalism).
Comparison is a figurative phrase or an expanded structure that involves a comparison of two phenomena, concepts or states that have a common feature. Always two-term, there are verbal indicators: as if, as if, exactly, special constructions, comparison through negation (“It’s not the wind that rages over the forest, it’s not the streams that ran from the mountains...” Nekrasov), instrumental case. The comparison can be simple and extensive. Simple: “looks like a clear evening” - a transitional state, a spiritual crossroads, is recorded. Poem "Demon". The comparison itself charted the fate. An extended comparison - N. Zabolotsky’s poem “On Beauty human faces" First, comparisons with buildings, houses, and then a violation of logic - from the material to the spiritual. True beauty is pure spirit, striving for peace. Zabolotsky: beauty is in diversity. Comparison helps to understand the writer's thought process.
Metaphor is a hidden comparison; the process of comparison occurs, but it is not shown. Example: “The East is burning...” There must be a similarity. “A bee from a wax cell, flies for a field tribute” - there are no designated words anywhere. A type of metaphor is personification (anthropomorphism) - the transfer of the properties of a living organism to a nonliving one. There are frozen personifications. Sometimes an abstract concept is expressed by a concrete phrase. Such personifications easily become symbols - the sound of an ax in Chekhov. A metaphor can be expressed by two nouns, a verb, an adjective (then it is a metaphorical epithet).
An oxymoron is a combination of the incongruous (a living corpse) and sometimes names (Lev Myshkin). Apollo Grigoriev is drawn to an oxymoron, since he himself is contradictory and rushes from side to side. Oxymoron - a consequence, a cause in worldview.
Metonymy is the transfer of meaning by contiguity (drink a cup of tea). Actively manifested in the literature of the first third of the 19th century. Synecdoche - transfer from plural to singular.
Epithet is an artistic definition. Logical definition - how a product differs from a number of similar ones. Artistic - emphasizes what is originally in the subject (constant epithets). The epithet captures the constant (the clever Odysseus). Homeric epithet is a difficult word. Lyrically, he was considered heavy. Archaic. The exception is Tyutchev (loudly boiling, all-consuming - conceptuality). Tyutchev's epithet is individualized. The structure of the epithet depends on the worldview: the charmless Circe, the grave Aphrodite in Baratynsky. Paradoxical epithets are eschatological motives. When a person falls away, he loses his main properties. Antiquity is the beginning of discord, when reason conquers spirit. Zhukovsky depicts humility before fate, additional meanings of the word. The ballad “Fisherman” is analyzed by Orest Somov line by line. The artistic effect is born because there is a violation of the norm, but within the framework of meaning. Nothing in fiction is read literally. The word initially has the ability to create words.
- Form and content of a literary work.
We constantly encounter parallel concepts. The word "text" is most often used in linguistics. Post-modernists create texts, not works. “Textus” translated from Latin means plexus, structure, structure, fabric, connection, coherent presentation. Text is a system of signs interconnected. The text exists unchanged, on a specific material medium. There is a science called “textual criticism,” which studies the original texts, the originals. The texts of different centuries are different. But the text is still moving. The text is multidimensional, that is, it can be read differently by different people. Openness of the text in outside world turns the text into a work of art, rather than a simple system of signs.
“The work is that small world in which the artistic universe of the writer is viewed from the perspective of the specific spiritual state possessing the artist at this moment, at this stage of his destiny, in this phase of his brush movements…<…>... A literary work in its classical version is a living “organism” in which a spiritual “heart” beats, as it were - formed and at the same time formative the artist’s thought, which has absorbed all the forces of his soul.” (“Verbal image and literary work”).
The text exists on its own, it is closed. In a work, everything is the other way around - what matters is what the author responds to, what excites him. A writer changes throughout his life. Example: Vasily Aksenov in the program “Times”. "Gavriliad" by Pushkin. Works are momentous, for example, Boccaccio disowned the Decameron. The dialectical development of thought is reflected in the text of the work. Thought shapes text. Example: Tolstoy with the main idea. He turns to history. The heroines: Princess Marya and Natasha Rotsova, completely different, are tested by Anatoly Kuragin. Families turn out to be cramped for both heroines, who, it would seem, do not even think about freedom. But they don’t cross the line. This is formed as a thought - the backwardness of a patriarchal society. The work not only changes, but is also perceived differently by the reader. Re-reading is very important - different sides of the work are revealed. “Homer gives to everyone: to the young man, to the husband, and to the old man, as much as anyone can take.” The text and the work are fundamentally different.
Form is a style, a genre (novel, drama, etc.), composition, artistic speech, rhythm.
Plot refers to both form and content. The plot combines these two concepts. Absolute unity. Reception for the sake of reception is never used. But this unity is not the same. At the end of the 19th century there was a crisis of content, they were looking for new forms. Post-modernists create a text that looks like a labyrinth. The text changes its linear structure. Until this time, we were looking for new content. But the new content entailed new uniform. The entire inexhaustibility of life and the subconscious is reflected in the work.
Unity of form and content. There is secondary literature. She is the soil. Example: Pushkin's childhood. Fiction replicates the thoughts of geniuses for the masses. Example: Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. Very often discoveries are made by secondary literature. Mass literature is not literature, but the word in the commercial service.
- Theme, problem, idea of the work.
Different authors talk differently about defining a theme. Translation from Greek “that which is the basis.” Yesin: Theme is “the object of artistic reflection, those life characters and situations that seem to pass from reality into a work of art and form the objective side of its content.” : “What is described in the text, what the narrative is about, reasoning unfolds, dialogue is conducted...” The theme is the organizing beginning of the work. Tomashevsky: “Unity of meanings of individual elements of the work. It brings together the components of an artistic design.” Zhiolkovsky and Shcheglov: “A certain attitude to which all elements of the work are subordinated.” The plot may be the same, but the theme is different. In popular literature, the plot weighs heavily on the theme. Life very often becomes the object of depiction. The topic is often determined by the author’s literary preferences and his belonging to a certain group. The concept of internal theme is themes that are cross-cutting for the writer; this is the thematic unity that unites all his works.
A problem is the highlighting of an aspect, an emphasis on it, which is resolved as the work unfolds. The problem comes when there is a choice.
- The plot of a literary work. Plot and plot.
Plot comes from the word “subject”. Originates in France. Often the plot is an allusion. The word "plot" means "a story borrowed from the past, subject to the playwright's treatment." Fabula is a legend, myth, fable, an older concept.
Discrepancy between plot and plot. Example: “Boris Godunov” by Pushkin, Karamzin and historians.
Pospelov: “The plot is subsequence events and actions, contained in the work event chain. Fabula is a plot diagram, a straightened plot.”
Veselovsky: “The plot is an artistically constructed distribution of events.” “Fabula is a set of events in their mutual internal connection.”
Tomashevsky: “The plot is the action of the work in its entirety, the real chain of depicted movements. A simple unit of plot is any movement. Fable is a scheme of action, a system of main events that can be retold. The simplest unit of plot is a motive or event, and the main elements are the plot, the development of action, the climax, and the denouement.”
Three-volume book on literary theory: “Plot is a system of settings with the help of which an action should be carried out. Canvas, skeleton. The plot is the very process of action, the pattern, the fabric that dresses the bones of the skeleton.”
Plot is a system of events in their artistic logic. The plot is in the logic of life. The plot is the dynamic side of the work. Elements in dynamics.
Types of plots:
Beletsky – autobiographical plot (Tolstoy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth”). Mid 19th century. Extrapersonal subjects are selected from a sphere that lies outside the author’s personal experience. Other people's plots are a conscious orientation towards another work. Postmodernism.
Single-line (concentric) plots are centripetal. Chronicle stories. Multilinear plots (centrifugal) – several storylines with independent development.
Plot elements: exposition is the initial part of the work, performing an informative function. The conflict has not yet been planned, preparations for it. The plot is the moment when a conflict arises or is discovered. The development of the action is a series of episodes in which the characters strive to resolve the conflict, but it becomes increasingly tense. Climax - moment highest voltage when the conflict is maximally developed and it becomes clear that contradictions cannot exist in their previous form and require immediate resolution. Resolution - when the conflict is resolved: 1) the conflict is resolved; 2) the conflict is fundamentally unresolvable. Extra-plot elements - prologue, epilogue, digressions.
An event is a fact of life. The 20th century is the subject of depiction of human consciousness; the flow of words itself can become a plot.
The lyrical plot is different stages in the development of lyrical experience.
- Composition of a literary work.
This is the relationship and arrangement of parts, elements within a work. Architectonics.
Composition of plot, scenes, episodes.
The relationship between plot elements: retardation, inversion, etc.
Architectonics.
The relationship between the whole and the parts.
Composition of figurative structure.
The relationship between structure and image construction.
Composition of verse and speech levels.
Changing the methods of artistic representation.
Gusev “The Art of Prose”: composition in reverse time (“Easy Breathing” by Bunin). Composition of direct time. Retrospective (“Ulysses” by Joyce, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov) – different eras become independent objects of depiction. Intensification of phenomena - often in lyrical texts - Lermontov.
Compositional contrast (“War and Peace”) is an antithesis. Plot-compositional inversion (“Onegin”, “Dead Souls”). The principle of parallelism is in the lyrics, “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky. Composition ring – “Inspector”.
Composition of figurative structure. The character is in interaction. There are main, secondary, off-stage, real and historical characters. Catherine - Pugachev are bound together through an act of mercy.
- Subjective organization of the text.
This is the correlation between speakers of speech and their consciousnesses. By the way they are correlated, we can say that the text, as a work, is devoid of a monolithic voice; it contains heteroglossia or polyphony. "Fathers and Sons". At the end, Arkady goes to Maryino and admires what he sees, but what he sees can hardly cause admiration, since everything is gloomy and bad: there is no grass yet, “the specter of hunger loomed everywhere.” Here we use the point of view of Nikolai Petrovich, Arkady and Bazarov, but the author chose the point of view of Arkady, who sees this world after a long absence. Having left him once, he is filled with nihilistic ideas and feels joy from meeting him. But there is no nihilism, Arkady plays at it, he will never be able to perceive nature like Bazarov.
“War and Peace” is built on a change in subjective perception. For example, Natasha in Otradnoye enjoys spring. This night is not shown from the point of view of Sonya or some abstract author. When Tolstoy describes Battle of Borodino, he shows it through the eyes of a detached man - Pierre, who sees a series of senseless murders.
In the 20th century, there was a tendency to depict events from multiple points of view. This was introduced into literature by Faulkner. When he was working on his novel The Sound and the Fury, he sought dissonance. I began to tell the story through the eyes of a defective child who knows what happened, but does not know why. Then he saw that the story was not completely told, he told it through the eyes of one brother, then another. I saw that there were still gaps. And he told the story himself. The result is an intersection different options the same event. Eat different angles visions. The text is recreated through the perception of various artistic perceptions.
Author. Who is he in the text? There is the concept of a biographical author. These are real Lenin, Pushkin. He is related to the literary text as the creator. There is an author as a subject artistic activity, creative process. Example: what and how Pushkin writes. There is an author in his artistic embodiment (the image of the author). This is a kind of carrier of speech inside a work of art. There is a narrator. He can be close to the author, or he can be distanced from him.
"War and Peace" close. “The Captain's Daughter” - Grinev writes memoirs, he and the narrator, there is the voice of the publisher to whom the recordings came. It is close to the author, but is an artistic image.
The narrator is an indirect form of the author’s presence, and performs a mediating function between the fictional world and the recipient. According to Tamarchenko, its specificity is: 1) a comprehensive outlook (the narrator knows the ending and therefore places emphasis, can get ahead of himself, advise on what to focus on). This horizon does not exist above the events depicted; the narrator’s knowledge and he himself exist within the boundaries of the depicted world; 2) the speech is addressed to the reader, he always takes into account how he will be perceived. “Poor Liza” - the address to readers sounds: “honorable reader.” “Eugene Onegin” - different types of readers arise - the discerning reader, the censor, the lady. There may not be such requests.
- Spatio-temporal organization of a literary work.
Bakhtin: the term “chronotope”. For him these are two indivisible things, synthesis, unity. Chronotope is a significant interrelation of temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature or in a literary work. Pushkin's poem, with which Pushkin's romanticism begins. Most often, deployment in space (the subject plan “a ship rushes across the sea” by Pushkin) and simultaneity in time. In Pushkin, the hero returns to the past, experiences it and turns to new horizons.
- Verse and prose. System of Russian versification.
Poetry or prose. Poems are appropriate in some cases. Yuri Lotman. Verse and poetry are different things. Previously, “poetry” meant “oral creativity.” Now - only what is written in verse and in small form. The analogue is lyrics, but this is a generic classification; lyrics are not necessarily poetry. Prose is a type of artistic speech when there is no system of compositional repetitions (a complete system). Example: completion of Nabokov's novel. The term “prose” goes back to the phrase prio + versus. The verse has an orderliness. Parallel speech sequences appear in it, which precisely give the phrase noticeable harmony.
There are six types of repetitions: 1) sound repetitions at the beginning, in the middle, at the end (Mayakovsky “How to Make Poems”) - rhymes; 2) pause division of phrases based on intonation expressiveness. Semantic pauses are very important - the monotonous rhythm in a given place is often broken; 3) an equal number of syllables in a verse; 4) a metrical measure repeated in verse periodically or non-periodically; 5) anacrusis at the beginning of verse lines - this is a group of unstressed syllables up to the first strong one at the beginning of the line; 6) equivalent clauses at the end of the line. Poetic forms by themselves do not have meaning. Nekrasov reinterprets Lermontov’s “Both boring and sad...”, “Lullaby” - the rhythmic meaninglessness is shown. Pushkin’s attempt is to put new content into old genres. Pasternak's Hamlet.
Until the 18th century there was no division into poetry and prose. Syllabic verse is verse with an ordered number of syllables. In our country they did not take root because of the floating accent.
Syllabic-tonic system - V, K, Trediakovsky writes a treatise in 1735. In 1739 M, V, Lomonosov “Letter on the rules of Russian poetry”, wrote “Ode on the Capture of Khotin”. Enters dimensions. Example: translation from Anacreon by Cantemir and Pushkin.
Meter is a regularity of rhythm that has sufficient definiteness to cause, firstly, the expectation of its confirmation in the following verses, and secondly, a specific experience of interruption when it is violated. Kholmogorov. Semantic deviations are considered as meaning-forming. Appear different shapes verse, where the main thing is the tonic. But the tonic does not replace the syllabic tonic. For the tonic, the number of stressed syllables in a line is important. Stressed syllables are ikts. A. Bely “Rhythm is a certain unity in the sum of deviations from a given metric system.” Meter is the ideal model, rhythm is its embodiment.
- Division of literature into genera and types. The concept of literary genre.
Epic, lyric and drama. Socrates (as presented by Plato): the poet can speak on his own behalf, mainly dithyramb. A poet can construct a work in the form of an exchange of remarks, which may include the words of the author. The poet can combine his words with the words of others, which belong to other characters. "Poetics" of Aristotle. Art is an imitation of nature. “You can imitate the same thing in different ways.” 1) Talking about an event as something separate from oneself, as Homer does. 2) Tell the story in such a way that the imitator remains himself, but changes his face - lyricism. 3) The writer presents all characters as acting and active.
Science ontology. In different eras a person needs different literary genres. Freedom and necessity. Psychology is important. Expressiveness, appeal.
Drama is something that develops before our eyes. Lyrics are an amazing fusion of time. At one time they wanted to declare the novel a separate genus. Many transitional phenomena.
Intergeneric and non-generic works. Intergeneric – characteristics of different genera. "Eugene Onegin", "Dead Souls", "Faust". Extrageneric: Essays, Essays, and Stream-of-Consciousness Literature. Dialectics of the soul. "Anna Karenina". Joyce "Ulysses". Types are not exactly genres. A species is a specific historical embodiment of a genus. A genre is a group of works that have a complex of stable characteristics. Important: subject matter, theme is a genre object. Artistic time- definite. Special composition. Speaker of speech. Elegy – different understandings. Tale.
Some genres are universal: comedy, tragedy, ode. And some are local - petitions, circulation. Eat dead genres- sonnet. Canonical and non-canonical – established and unformed.
LITERARY GENERA
- Epic as a type of literature.
“Epic” translated from Greek means “word, speech, story.” Epic is one of the most ancient genres, associated with the formation of national identity. There were many hoaxes in the 17th and 18th centuries. Successful - songs of Ossian, Scotland, an attempt to raise national consciousness. They influenced the development of European literature.
Epic - the original form is a heroic poem. Occurs when patriarchal society breaks down. In Russian literature there are epics that form cycles.
The epic reproduces life not as personal, but as an objective reality - from the outside. The purpose of any epic is to tell about an event. The dominant content is the event. Earlier - wars, later - a private event, facts of inner life. The cognitive orientation of the epic is an objective beginning. A story about events without evaluation. “The Tale of Bygone Years” - all the bloody events are told dispassionately and matter-of-factly. Epic distance.
The subject of the image in the epic is the world as an objective reality. Human life in its organic connection with the world, fate is also the subject of the image. Bunin's story. Sholokhov "The Fate of Man". Understanding fate through the prism of culture is important.
Forms of verbal expression in the epic (type of speech organization) - narrative. Functions of a word - the word depicts objective world. Narration is a way/type of speaking. Description in the epic. Speech of heroes, characters. Narration is the speech of the author’s image. The speech of the characters is polylogues, monologues, dialogues. In romantic works, the confession of the main character is required. Internal monologues are a direct inclusion of the characters’ words. Indirect forms - indirect speech, improper direct speech. It is not isolated from the author’s speech.
The important role of the system of reflections in the novel. The hero may be endowed with a quality that the author does not like. Example: Silvio. Pushkin's favorite heroes are verbose. Very often it is unclear to us how the author relates to the hero.
A) Narrator
1) The character has his own destiny. "The Captain's Daughter", "Belkin's Tales".
2) Conventional narrator, faceless in speech terms. Very often - us. Speech mask.
3) Tale. Speech color - says society.
1) Objective. “History of the Russian State” Karamzin, “War and Peace”.
2) Subjective - orientation towards the reader, appeal.
A tale is a special speech manner that reproduces a person’s speech, as if not literary processed. Leskov "Lefty"
Descriptions and lists. Important for the epic. Epic is perhaps the most popular genus.
- Drama as a type of literature.
Merging of subjective and objective. The event is shown as being formed, not ready. In the epic the author gives a lot of comments and details, but in the drama this is not the case. Subjective – what is happening is given through the perception of the actors. Many eras in the development of theater tried to destroy the barrier between the audience and the actors. The idea of “theater within a theater” - romanticism, developed rapidly at the beginning of the 20th century. “Princess Turandot” - the actors ask the audience. Gogol has the same principle in The Inspector General. The desire to destroy convention. Drama comes out of rituals. The dramatic text is largely devoid of authorial presence. The speech activity of the characters is shown, the monologue and dialogue are relevant. Author's presence: title (Ostrovsky loved proverbs), epigraph (Gogol's "The Inspector General" - the theme of the mirror), genre (Chekhov's comedies - a peculiarity of perception), list of characters (often determined by traditions), speaking names, comments, stage directions - description of the scene. Characteristics of the characters’ speech, actions, internal action in the drama. “Boris Godunov” by Pushkin, “Masquerade” by Lermontov. Chekhov is different. Early theater - exercises in monologues. Dialogue was more often an auxiliary means of communication between monologues. This changes Griboyedov - a dialogue of the deaf, a comic dialogue. Chekhov too. Gorky: “But the threads are rotten.”
Thomas Mann: “Drama is the art of silhouette.” Herzen: “The stage is always contemporary with the viewer. She always reflects the side of life that the partner wants to see.” Echoes of modernity are always visible.
- Lyrics as a type of literature.
Cognitive orientation of the lyrics. The subject of the image in the lyrics is the inner world of man. Content dominant: experiences (of some feeling, thought, mood). The form of verbal expression (type of speech organization) is a monologue. Functions of a word - expresses the state of the speaker. The emotional sphere of human emotions, the inner world, the path of influence - suggestibility (suggestion). In epic and drama they try to identify general patterns, in lyric poetry - individual states of human consciousness.
Emotionally colored thinking - sometimes external emotionlessness. This is a lyrical meditation. Lermontov “Both boring and sad...” Strong-willed impulses, oratorical intonations in the lyrics of the Decembrists. Impressions can also be the subject of a lyrical text.
Irrational feelings and aspirations. Uniqueness, although there is an element of generalization for conveying one’s thoughts to contemporaries. Consonance with the era, age, emotional experiences. As a form of literature, lyrics are always important.
The end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century is very important - the period of destruction of the idea of lyricism, the destruction of genre thinking in lyric poetry, new thinking - stylistic. Associated with Goethe. In the 70s of the 18th century, Goethe created a new feature lyrical work, which broke with tradition. There was a strict hierarchy of genres: it was clearly defined which forms of lyrics were used when. The poetic forms are very branched.
Ode is an idealization of a superior person, therefore a certain form. Decimal, ceremonial introduction, descriptive part, part about the prosperity of the country.
Goethe destroys the connection between theme and form. His poems begin as a cast of a momentary experience—an image. Could also be included natural phenomena, but not conditional ones. The process of style individualization. In the 19th century it is often impossible to define a genre.
Each poet is associated with a certain range of emotions, a special attitude towards the world. Zhukovsky, Mayakovsky, Gumilev.
Experiences are at the core. The lyrical plot is the development and shades of the author's emotions. It is often said that lyrics have no plot, but this is not true.
The poet defends the right to write in a light, small genre. Small genres have been elevated to absolute status. Imitating other genres, playing with rhythms. Sometimes cycles of poems appear due to the background of life.
Lyrical hero - this concept is introduced by Yu. Tynyanov and “On Lyrics”. There are synonyms “lyrical consciousness”, “lyrical subject” and “lyrical self”. Most often, this definition is the image of a poet in lyric poetry, the poet’s artistic double, growing out of the text of lyrical compositions. This is a carrier of experience, expression in lyrics. The term arose due to the fact that it is impossible to equate the poet with the bearer of consciousness. This gap appears at the beginning of the 20th century in Batyushkov’s lyrics.
There may be different media, so there are two types of lyrics: autopsychological and role-playing. Example: Blok “I am Hamlet...” and Pasternak “The hum has died down...”. The image is the same, but the lyrics are different. Blok plays in the play, this is the experience of interpersonal relationships - autopsychological lyrics. Pasternak has a role-playing one, even included in the Yuri Zhivago cycle. Most of it is in poetic form. Setting for an awkward verse - Nekrasov.
- Method. The concept of artistic method.
Method – a combination of the most general principles artistic thinking. A realistic artistic method and a non-realistic method are distinguished. Different models are emerging.
1. Selection of facts of reality for the image.
2. Evaluation.
3. Generalization – there are ideal models.
4. Artistic embodiment – a system of artistic techniques.
Method is a supra-epochal concept. Realism is always there, but it is different, with different accents. Literary movements are the historical embodiment of an artistic method. Any direction has theoretical support, a manifesto. The state of philosophy determines the views of writers. Realism grows out of Hegel. Enlightenmentists - French materialism. Literary direction is always heterogeneous. Example: critical realism. Fight within the direction.
Bibliography:
Functions of fiction. The concept of artistic image.
Art has its own unique way of reflecting reality - the artistic image. An artistic image is the result of the artist’s comprehension of any life process. An image becomes artistic when it is personified in the author’s imagination in accordance with his internal artistic concept. Every image is emotional and unique. The term “artistic image” was first used by Goethe.
Fiction is a spiritual process that performs many functions:
1) cognitive (helps to understand the world, society, nature, oneself);
2) communicative (the language of works of art is based on a system of symbols, which allows it to be a means of communication between generations);
3) evaluative (every literary work directly or indirectly provides an assessment of modernity);
4) aesthetic (the ability of literature to influence people’s views, shape their artistic tastes, spiritual needs);
5) emotional (impacts on the reader’s feelings, ennobling him);
6) educational (the book carries spiritual knowledge and educates a person).
The originality of literature as part of art. The difference between literature and other forms of art.
Fiction is related to other types of art. The most important of them are painting and music.
In ancient times, word and image were marked by complete unity: the word was an image, and the image was a word (ancient Egyptian funerary frescoes with pictograms) - a narrative text (narrative). But as human thinking evolved, the word became more abstract.
Modern science claims that there is a close connection between words and images. But everyone perceives a verbal image subjectively, while a pictorial image – specifically.
On the one hand, music is close to literature. In ancient times, music and lyrics were perceived as a single whole. On the other hand, when a poetic word enters the sphere of music, it loses its concreteness and its perception proceeds outside of visual associations. One of the tasks of poetry is to express experiences using words, and music is to influence emotions.
The concept of content and form in literary criticism, their connection.
Form – how this content is presented to the reader.
Main feature literary work – the relationship between form and content.
Any writer subconsciously tries to achieve unity of content and form: he tries to match a smart thought with a good, beautiful image. It is almost impossible for a literary scholar to construct even approximate diagram creating text. The writer is a unique personality and it is impossible to create a typology of his works.
Theme (Greek - what is the basis) is the subject of artistic depiction and artistic knowledge.
Theme is a circle of events that form the vital basis of literary works.
Artistic themes:
Main theme
Private topic.
The main and special themes form the theme of the work.
The so-called eternal themes also become the subject of knowledge in literature. Eternal theme– a complex of phenomena significant for humanity throughout the era (the theme of the meaning of life, the theme of death, love, freedom, moral duty).
The text of topics related to universal human phenomena, eternal categories - philosophical topics.
Idea (Greek – that which is visible). This term came to literary studies from philosophy, where idea is a synonym for the word “thought”. In literature, an idea is not just a dry scientific one, but a generalizing emotional-figurative thought. This is a kind of fusion of the writer’s generalized thoughts and feelings - pathos. Pathos includes the author's assessment.
Literary content is what is being narrated in a given literary text.
The problem (Greek - task) is the main question of the work.
Problem:
Main,
Private.
The main and particular problems create the problematic of a work of art.
Issues:
Social,
Ideological and political,
Philosophical,
Moral.
Drama as a kind of literature.
drama is a type of literature in which, like in an epic, there is a system of characters, drama is characterized by conflicts between heroes, a plot. a person reveals himself through events, actions, struggles. feature: there is no long descriptiveness. the author is manifested in a direct form, the character is revealed in speeches .the basis of drama is action in the present time. action is shown through conflict and lies at the center of the work. dialogue is the main means of developing action, conflict. there is a monologue - the speech of a person addressed to himself, to others. unlike dialogue, a monologue does not depend on response remarks. The dramatic genre of literature has three genres: tragedy, comedy, drama (in the narrow sense) tragedy is a goat song, based on the tragedy of heroic characters. tragedy portrays reality as a bunch of internal contradictions of a person. comedy is a funny song. situations are characterized in funny forms .origins in ancient Greece, founder Aristophanes.can be high and everyday.drama-play with an acute conflict, which is not so sublime, more down-to-earth, more common than tragedy, the conflict is resolvable, the resolution depends on the personal will of a person.in Russia and in Europe the drama genre spread in the 18th century, popular was bourgeois drama, lyric, document, epic drama.
Literary criticism as a science. Goals and objectives of the science of literature, structure of literary criticism (sections of the science of literature).
Literary criticism is the science of fiction, its origin, essence.
The main object is the human word in an artistic, figuratively expressive function.
This science requires great reading from the researcher.
Modern literary criticism:
1) theory of literature (studies the nature of verbal creativity, develops and systematizes the laws and concepts of fiction);
2) history of literature (the history of the emergence and change of literary movements, trends, schools, periods, explores the originality of various national literatures);
3) literary criticism (engaged in the analysis and evaluation of new, modern works of art; a literary critic is a living intermediary on the path of a literary work from author to reader: it is always important for a writer to know how his work is perceived, and criticism helps the reader to see the advantages and disadvantages of a modern work.
Thus, in literary criticism, a close relationship is established between all three disciplines: criticism is based on data from the theory and history of literature, and the latter takes into account and comprehends the experience of criticism.
2. The relationship of literary criticism with related scientific disciplines. Auxiliary sciences in literary criticism.
Literary criticism as a science is closely related to such related sciences as linguistics (linguistics), philosophy and psychology:
1) the connection with linguistics in literary criticism is due to the common object of study: both literary criticism and linguistics study human language, but linguistics reveals the laws of construction of any text, and literary criticism studies a literary text in all the diversity of the genre, attention is drawn to the content of the text, and linguistics examines its means.
2) philosophy (Greek - I love wisdom) - a science that studies the nature of human thinking, society, the world in which a person lives; in literary criticism, artistic thinking is a special form of mastering reality.
3) psychology (Greek - the study of the soul) - in conjunction with it, literary criticism more fully studies the character of a person.
Literary criticism includes auxiliary scientific disciplines: textual criticism and bibliography.
1) textual criticism is the science of the text of literary works, its task is to critically check and establish the authenticity of the author’s text;
2) bibliography (Greek - writing a book) - a science related to the description and precise systematization of information about works, in print - factual information (author, title, year and place of publication, author, volume in pages and a brief abstract).
Bibliography:
Scientific support (comments),
Basic and auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism
Basic literary disciplines
1. History of literature solves several main problems. Firstly, she studies the connections between literature and life reality. For example, when we talk about what social and philosophical problems brought to life “Woe from Wit” by A. S. Griboedov or “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky, we find ourselves in the bosom of the historical-literary approach. Secondly, literary history builds a chronology of the literary process. For example, the fundamental “History of World Literature” - the fruit of the joint work of many outstanding philologists - not only describes how literature developed in different eras in different countries, but also offers comparative tables that allow the philologist to clearly see general and different trends in world literatures different eras. Thirdly, the history of literature examines the chronology of the life and work of individual authors. For example, the historical and literary type of publications includes the multi-volume dictionary “Russian Writers. 1800 – 1917”, containing a wealth of factual material about the life and work of most Russian writers of the 19th – early 20th centuries.
Any philological study in one way or another affects the sphere of literary history.
2. Literary theory designed to solve completely different problems. The most important issue, which determines the sphere of interests of literary theory, is the following: what are the features literary text, distinguishing it from all other texts? In other words, literary theory studies the laws of construction and functioning of a literary text. Literary theory is interested in the problem of the emergence of fiction, its place among other forms of human activity, and most importantly, the internal laws by which a work of fiction lives. The study of these laws constitutes the scope poetics- the main part of literary theory. Distinguish general poetics(the science of the most general laws of text construction), private poetics(the artistic features of the texts of an author or group of authors are studied, or particular forms of organization of a literary work are analyzed, for example, verse), historical poetics(the science of the origin and development of individual forms and techniques of verbal art). In addition, the field of literary theory is sometimes, not without reason, attributed to rhetoric- the science of eloquence, although more often (at least in the Russian tradition) rhetoric is considered as an independent discipline.
Of course, there is no strict boundary between types of poetics; this division is rather arbitrary. There is no strict boundary between theory and literary history. For example, if we say: “The novel in verse by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” was written mainly in the 20s of the 19th century,” then in this phrase “novel in verse” clearly refers to theory (since we say about the genre), and the second part of the phrase - to the history of literature.
At the same time, the absence of clear boundaries does not mean that these boundaries do not exist at all. There are many publications and studies that have either a pronounced theoretical orientation (for example, the theory of genres) or a historical and literary one (for example, biographical dictionaries). Of course, a serious philologist must be equally prepared both historically and literaryly, and theoretically.
3. Literary criticism Not everyone recognizes it as a part of literary criticism. As already mentioned, in many traditions, primarily in the English language, the words “criticism” and “the science of literature” are synonymous, with the term “criticism” dominating. On the other hand, in Germany these words mean completely different things and are partly opposed to each other. There, “criticism” is just evaluative articles about modern literature. In the Russian tradition, “criticism” and “literary criticism” are also often opposed to each other, although the boundaries are less defined. The problem is that a “critic” and a “literary critic” may turn out to be one and the same person, which is why in Russia criticism often merges with literary analysis, in any case, relies on it. In general, criticism is more journalistic, more focused on topical topics; literary criticism, on the contrary, is more academic, more focused on aesthetic categories. As a rule, literary criticism deals with texts that have already won recognition, while the field of criticism deals with the latest literature. Of course, it is not so important whether we consider criticism a part of literary studies or a separate discipline, although in reality this affects the nature of literary education. For example, in Russia philologists not only actively use the achievements of critics, but even study a special course “History of Criticism”, thereby recognizing the kinship of these two spheres. More distant areas related to verbal culture, for example, journalism, actually find themselves outside the standards of philological education.
And yet, we repeat, the question of the place of literary criticism in the structure of literary criticism (or, on the contrary, beyond it) is partly of a scholastic nature, that is, we are arguing for the sake of arguing. It is more important to understand that the ways of approaching literary texts can vary greatly, and there is nothing wrong with that. These approaches also differ radically within “classical” literary criticism.
So, main disciplines literary criticism can be considered history of literature, literary theory and (with certain reservations) literary criticism.
Auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism
Auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism are those that are not directly aimed at interpreting the text, but help in this. In other cases, the analysis is carried out, but is of an applied nature (for example, you need to understand the writer’s drafts). Auxiliary disciplines for a philologist can be very different: mathematics (if we decide to conduct a statistical analysis of text elements), history (without knowledge of which historical and literary analysis is generally impossible) and so on.
According to the established methodological tradition, it is customary to talk about three auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism, most often highlighted in textbooks: bibliography, historiography, and textual criticism.
1. Bibliography - the science of publishing. Modern literary criticism without bibliography is not only helpless, but simply unthinkable. Any research begins with the study of bibliography - accumulated material on a given problem. In addition to experienced bibliographers who can give the necessary advice, the modern philologist is helped by numerous reference books, as well as the Internet.
2. Historiography. Due to inexperience, students sometimes confuse it with the history of literature, although these are completely different disciplines. Historiography does not describe the history of literature, but the history of the study of literature(if we are talking about literary historiography). In private studies, the historiographic part is sometimes called the “history of the issue.” In addition, historiography deals with the history of the creation and publication of a particular text. Serious historiographical works allow one to see the logic of the development of scientific thought, not to mention the fact that they save the researcher’s time and effort.
3. Textual criticism - This common name for all disciplines that study text for applied purposes. A textual scholar studies the forms and methods of writing in different eras; analyzes handwriting features (this is especially true if you need to determine the authorship of the text); compares different editions of the text, choosing the so-called canonical option, i.e. the one that will later be recognized as the main one for editions and reissues; conducts a thorough and comprehensive examination of the text in order to establishing authorship or for the purpose of proving forgery. In recent years, textual analysis has become increasingly closer to literary criticism itself, so it is not surprising that textual criticism is increasingly being called not an auxiliary, but a main literary discipline. Our wonderful philologist D.S. Likhachev, who did a lot to change the status of this science, highly valued textual criticism.
Literary criticism and its sections. The science of literature is called literary criticism. It covers various areas of the study of literature and at the present stage of scientific development is divided into such independent scientific disciplines as literary theory, literary history and literary criticism.
Literary theory studies the social nature, specificity, patterns of development and public role fiction and establishes principles for reviewing and evaluating literary material.
Familiarity with literary theory is extremely important for every student of literature. At one time, Chekhov showed in one of his stories the teacher of Russian language and literature Nikitin, who during his years at the university never bothered to read one of the classic creations of aesthetic thought - Lessing's "Hamburg Drama". Another character in this story (“Literature Teacher”), a passionate lover of literature and theater, Shebaldin, upon learning of this, “was horrified and waved his hands as if he had burned his fingers.” Why was Shebaldin horrified, why is the talk about “Hamburg Drama” resumed several times in this Chekhov story, and why does Nikitin even dream about it? Because a teacher of literature, without joining the great achievements of the science of literature, without making them his property, cannot deeply understand either the general properties of fiction, or the nature of literary development, or the features of an individual literary work. How will he teach his students to understand literature?
More specific, but no less important problems are resolved by the history of literature. It explores the process of literary development and, on this basis, determines the place and significance of various literary phenomena. Literary historians study literary works and literary criticism, the work of individual writers and critics, the formation, characteristics and historical fate of artistic methods, literary types and genres.
Since the development of the literature of each people is characterized by national identity, its history is divided into the histories of individual national literatures. This does not mean, however, that one can and should limit oneself to studying each of them separately. Tracing the literary process in a particular country, literary historians, if necessary, correlate with it the processes that took place in other countries - and on this basis reveal the universal significance of the national contribution that has been made or is being made by a certain people to world literature. It becomes global, like world history, only at a certain stage of development in the process of the emergence and strengthening of ties and interactions between peoples. As K. Marx wrote, “World history has not always existed; history as world history is the result.”
The same result in relation to individual national literatures is world literature. It is precisely the result of the connections and interactions of these national literatures, which allows us, when considering each of them in the international context, to “see not only the logic of its internal development, but also the system of its interrelations with the world literary process.”
Based on this, indisputable, in our opinion, position, I. G. Neupokoeva called for “not just expounding known facts histories of national literatures, but to more clearly identify in them what is most significant from the point of view of the history of world literature: not only the unique contribution of each national literature to the treasury of world art, but also the manifestation in the national literary system of general patterns of development, its genetic, contact and typological connections with other literatures."
Literary criticism is a lively response to the most important literary events of the time. Its task is a comprehensive analysis of certain literary phenomena and assessment of their ideological and artistic significance for modern times. The subject of analysis in literary critical works can be either a separate work, or the work of a writer as a whole, or a number of works by different writers. The goals of literary criticism are varied. On the one hand, the critic is called upon to help readers correctly understand and appreciate the works he examines. On the other hand, the duty of the critic is to be a teacher and educator of the writers themselves. A clear indication of the enormous role that literary criticism can and should play is, for example, the activities of the great Russian critics - Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. Their articles inspired and ideologically educated both writers and wide circles of readers.
One can refer to V.I. Lenin’s high assessment (N. Valentinov recalls it) of the educational value of Dobrolyubov’s articles. “Speaking about Chernyshevsky’s influence on me as the main one, I cannot help but mention the additional influence experienced at that time from Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky’s friend and companion. I also took seriously reading his articles in the same Sovremennik. Two his articles - one about Goncharov's novel "Oblomov", the other about Turgenev's novel "On the Eve" - struck like lightning. I, of course, had read "On the Eve" before, but I read the thing early, and I treated it differently. childishly. Dobrolyubov knocked this approach out of me. I re-read this work, like Oblomov, with Dobrolyubov’s interlinear remarks. From the analysis of Oblomov, he made a cry, a call to will, activity, revolutionary struggle, and from. analysis of “On the Eve”, a real revolutionary proclamation, written in such a way that it is not forgotten to this day. This is how it should be written! When “Zarya” was organized, I always told Starover (Potresov) and Zasulich: “We need literary reviews of exactly this kind. Where there! We didn’t have Dobrolyubov, whom Engels called the socialist Lessing.”
Naturally, the role of literary criticism is just as great in our time.
Literary theory, literary history and literary criticism are in direct connection and interaction. The theory of literature is based on the entire set of facts obtained by the history of literature and on the achievements of critical studies of literary monuments.
The history of literature is based on the general principles for considering the literary process developed by literary theory and is largely based on the results of literary criticism. criticism literary artistic
Literary criticism, starting, like the history of literature, from theoretical and literary premises, at the same time strictly takes into account historical and literary data that help it determine the extent of what is new and significant that is introduced into literature by the analyzed work in comparison with previous ones.
Thus, literary criticism enriches the history of literature with new material, clarifies the trends and prospects of literary development.
Literary criticism, like any other science, also has auxiliary disciplines, which include historiography, textual criticism and bibliography.
Historiography collects and studies materials that introduce the historical development of the theory and history of literature and literary criticism. By illuminating the path traversed by each given science and the results achieved by it, historiography makes it possible to fruitfully continue research, relying on all the best that has already been created in this field.
Textual criticism determines the author of an unnamed work of art or scientific work, the degree of completeness of various editions. By restoring the final, so-called canonical, edition of certain works, textual critics provide an invaluable service to readers and researchers.
Bibliography - an index of literary works - helps to navigate a huge number of theoretical-literary, historical-literary and literary-critical books and articles. She registers both existing and emerging works in these sections of literary criticism, compiles general and thematic lists, and provides the necessary annotations.
Analysis and generalization of the practice of literary creativity and literary development are naturally inseparable from an understanding of the entire development of social life, in the process of which various forms of social consciousness arise and take shape. Therefore, it is natural for literary scholars to turn to a number of scientific disciplines closely related to the science of literature: philosophy and aesthetics, history, the science of art and the science of language.