Home>>Archive>>Back

 

Title Literary Trends: For the Project Dictionary of Literary Trends in the Twentieth Century Europe and America
Author(s) Andrey F. Kofman.
Information about the author(s) Andrey F. Kofman, DSc in Philology, deputy director of the A.M.Gorky Institute of World Literature and head of the Department of Modern European and American literature at the A.M.Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: andrey.kofman@gmail.com
Received July 15, 2016
Published September 25, 2016
Issue Vol. 1, no 1–2
Department Literary Theory
Pages 26-46
DOI DOI:10.22455/ 2500-4247-2016-1-1-2-26-46
UDK 8.1751
BBK 83
Abstract The article is the outcome of the theoretical research prepared for the encyclopedia in progress entitled Dictionary of Literary Trends in the Twentieth Century Europe and America. This is the first such encyclopedia known to exist, with no predecessors in Russia or abroad. The encyclopedia material is organized around the term “literary trend” that defines its specificity. The author examines the history of this concept in Russian and Soviet literary criticism introducing a number of contraversial interpretations. A different situation is observed in Western European and American literary studies where this theoretical problem does not seem to exist and such terms as “trend,” “movement,” and the like are seen as contingent on specific contexts of their applicability. This pragmatic approach shall be used in the Dictionary as well. The author introduces the term “artistic community” that goes beyond the scope of individual poetics and should be used as a selective criterion for the encyclopedia material. As the work with the glossary has shown, this criterion is a verbal designation of a certain artistic community that is either coined by artists themselves or by critics. However, this criterion is not as primitive as it may seem. It implies — already in the given name or in the self-name — a number of critical operations: statement or declaration of aesthetic similarities and common aesthetic principles shared by a number of authors; their union on these grounds; a brief description of these aesthetic similarities coined in the name of the trend that is intended not only to identify a certain artistic community but also to differentiate it from others. In the case of self-naming, the recognition of the phenomenon’s value is added. However differently the names of communities are verbarly articulated, each name is informative, semantically rich, and reflects different types of artistic communities discussed in the article.
Keywords literary criticism, dictionary, literary trend, literary movement, artistic community, name.
Works cited 1 Bakhtin M.M. Voprosy literatury i jestetiki [The problems of literature and aesthetics]. Moscow, Hudozhestvennaja literatura Publ., 1975. 504 p. (In Russ.) 2 Borev Ju. B. KHudozhestvennoe napravlenie — invariant khudozhestvennoj kontseptsii mira i lichnosti [Artistic movement as invariant of the artistic conception of the world and the personality]. Teoriya literatury. T. IV: Literaturnyj protsess [Theory of literature. Literary process]. Мoscow, IMLI RAN Publ., 2001. 624 p. (In Russ.) 3 Volkov I.F. Teorija literatury. Uchebnoe posobie dlja studentov i prepodavatelej [Literary Theory. Manual for students and professors]. Moscow, Vlados Publ., 1995. 256 p. (In Russ.) 4 Zhirmunskij V.M. Literaturnye techenija kak javlenie mezhdunarodnoe [Literary trends as international phenomena]. Zhirmunskij V. M. Sravnitel’noe literaturovedenie. Vostok i Zapad [Comparative theory of literature. The Orient and the Occident]. Leningrad, Nauka Publ., 1979. 495 p. (In Russ.) 5 Zinchenko V.G., Zusman V.G., Kirnoze Z. I. Metody izuchenija literatury. Sistemnyj podhod [The methods of studying literature. Systematic approach]. Moscow, Flinta. Nauka Publ., 2013. 195 p. (In Russ.) 6 Literaturnyj jenciklopedicheskij slovar’ [Encyclopaedic dictionary of literature]. Moscow, Sovetskaja Jenciklopedija Publ., 1987. 752 p. (In Russ.) 7 Lihachev D.S. Razvitie russkoj literatury X–XVII vv. Jepohi i stili [The development of Russian literature in the Xth through the XVIIth centuries. Epochs and styles]. St. Petersburg, Nauka Publ., 1999. 204 p. (In Russ.) 8 Neupokoeva I.G. Istorija vsemirnoj literatury. Problemy sistemnogo i sravnitel’nogo analiza [The history of world literature. The problems of system and comparative analysis]. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1976. 358 p. (In Russ.) 9 Pospelov G.N. Problemy istoricheskogo razvitija literatury [The problems of historical development of literature]. Moscow, Prosveshhenie Publ., 1972. 272 p. (In Russ.) 10 Pospelov G.N. Problemy literaturnogo stilja [The problems of literary style]. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1970. 332 p. (In Russ.) 11 Reizov B. O literaturnyh napravlenijah [On the literary trends]. Voprosy literatury [Literary issues], 1957, no 1, pp. 86–116. (In Russ.) 12 Slovar’ literaturovedcheskih terminov [Dictionary of literary terms]. Moscow, Prosveshhenie Publ., 1974. 509 p. (In Russ.) 13 Sokolov A.N. Literaturnoe napravlenie [Literary trend]. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR. Otdelenie literatury i jazyka [The newsletter of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Literary and language department], 1962, vol. XXI, issue 5, sentjabr’-oktjabr’, pp. 401–410. (In Russ.) 14 Timofeev L. I. Osnovy teorii literatury [ABC of the literatury theory]. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1976. 359 p. (In Russ.) 15 Fedotov O. I. Osnovy teorii literatury. Uchebnoe posobie dlja VUZov. Chast’ 2 [ABC of the literary theory. Manual for students. Part 2]. Moscow, Vlados Publ., 2003. 242 p. (In Russ.) 16 Halizev V.V. Teorija literatury [Theory of Literature]. Moscow, Vysshaja shkola Publ., 2004. 559 p. (In Russ.) 17 Aguilar e Silva V.M. de. Teoría de la literatura. Madrid, Gredos, 1972. 342 p. 18 Dictionnaire universel des littératures. Paris, Gallimard, 1994. 992 p. 19 Ferreras J. I. Fundamentos de sociología de la literatura. Madrid, Gredos, 1980. 293 p. 20 Les avant-gardes littéraires au XX siècle. Budapest, Hungria, 1984. 563 p. 21 Warren A., Wellek R. Theory of literature. New York, Harcourt, Brac & World, 1949. 356 p.
Full version of the article Download

 

EN/RUS