Historical development of literature

1.1 Three stages of literary development

The stages of the literary process are usually thought of as corresponding to those stages of human history that manifested themselves most clearly and completely in Western European countries and especially clearly in the Romanesque countries. In this regard, ancient, medieval and modern literatures with their own stages are distinguished (following the Renaissance - baroque, classicism, the Enlightenment with its sentimentalist branch, romanticism, and finally, realism, with which modernism coexists and successfully competes in the 20th century) . Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987

Scientists have understood to the greatest extent the differences between the literature of modern times and the writing that preceded them. The situation is more complicated with the distinction between ancient and medieval literatures. This is not a problem for Western Europe(ancient Greek and Roman antiquity are fundamentally different from medieval culture more “northern” countries), but raises doubts and disputes when referring to the literature of other regions, especially the eastern ones. Yes, and the so-called Old Russian literature was essentially a medieval type of writing.

Scientists move away from the usual apologetic assessment of the Western European Renaissance and reveal its duality. On the one hand, the Renaissance enriched culture with the concept of complete freedom and independence of the individual, the idea of unconditional trust in the creative capabilities of man, on the other hand, the Renaissance “philosophy of luck nourished<…>the spirit of adventurism and immorality" Borey Yu.B. Theoretical history of literature // Theory of literature. T. 4: Literary process. - M., 2001. - P. 130-468.

In the collective article of 1994, “Categories of Poetics in the Change of Literary Epochs,” three stages of world literature are identified and characterized. Panchenko A.M. Topeka and cultural distance // Historical poetics: Results and prospects of study. - M., 1986. - S. 240, 236

The first stage is the “archaic period”, where the folklore tradition is undoubtedly influential. Mythopoetic artistic consciousness prevails here and there is still no reflection on verbal art, and therefore there is no literary criticism, no theoretical studios, no artistic and creative programs. All this appears only at the second stage of the literary process, which began with literary life Ancient Greece mid-1st millennium BC and which lasted until mid-18th century V. This one is very a long period marked by the predominance of traditionalism of artistic consciousness and “poetics of style and genre”: writers were guided by pre-made forms of speech that met the requirements of rhetoric (about it, see pp. 261-262), and were dependent on genre canons. Within the framework of this second stage, in turn, two stages are distinguished, the boundary between which was the Renaissance (here, we note, we're talking about mainly about European artistic culture). In the second of these stages, which replaced the Middle Ages, literary consciousness takes a step from the impersonal to the personal (albeit still within the framework of traditionalism); literature becomes more secular. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - P. 395

And finally, at the third stage, which began with the era of Enlightenment and romanticism, “individual creative artistic consciousness” comes to the fore. From now on, the “poetics of the author” dominates, freed from the omnipotence of the genre-style prescriptions of rhetoric. Here literature, as never before, “comes extremely close to the immediate and concrete existence of man, is imbued with his concerns, thoughts, feelings, and is created according to his standards”; the era of individual author's styles is coming; literary process is closely linked “simultaneously with the personality of the writer and the reality surrounding him.” All this takes place in romanticism and realism XIX century, and to a large extent in the modernism of the recently ended century. We will turn to these phenomena of the literary process. Borey Yu.B. Theoretical history of literature // Theory of literature. T. 4: Literary process. M., 2001. - P. 130-468

1.2 Art systems XIX-XX centuries

In the 19th century (especially in its first third) the development of literature went under the sign of romanticism, which opposed classicist and enlightenment rationalism. Initially, romanticism took hold in Germany, receiving a deep theoretical basis, and soon spread across the European continent and beyond. It was this cultural and artistic movement that was marked by a globally significant shift from traditionalism to the poetics of the author. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987

Romanticism (in particular German) is very heterogeneous. The main thing in the romantic movement of the early 19th century. They consider not dual worlds and not the experience of a tragic discord with reality (in the spirit of Hoffmann and Heine), but the idea of the spirituality of human existence, of its “permeation” with the divine principle - the dream of “enlightenment in God of all life, and all flesh, and each individuality” . They note the limitations of early (Jenese) romanticism, prone to euphoria, not alien to individualistic self-will, which was later overcome in two ways. The first is an appeal to Christian asceticism of the medieval type (“religious renunciation”), the second is the development of the vital and good connections of a person with national-historical reality. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987

Following romanticism, inheriting it, and in some ways challenging it, in the 19th century. a new literary and artistic community was strengthened, denoted by the word realism, which has a number of meanings, and therefore is undisputed as a scientific term. The essence of realism in relation to the literature of the last century (when talking about its best examples, the phrase “classical realism” is often used) and its place in the literary process are understood in different ways. During the period of dominance of Marxist ideology, realism was exorbitantly elevated to the detriment of everything else in art and literature. It was thought of as the artistic development of socio-historical specifics and the embodiment of the ideas of social determinism, the rigid external conditioning of people’s consciousness and behavior (“truthful reproduction of typical characters in typical circumstances,” according to F. Engels). Gurevich A.Ya. World culture and modernity // Foreign literature. - 1976. - No. 1. - P. 214.

Today the importance of realism in the composition literature XIX-XX centuries, on the contrary, is often leveled out, or even denied altogether. This very concept is sometimes declared “bad” on the grounds that its nature (as if!) consists only in “ social analysis" and "life-likeness". At the same time, the literary period between romanticism and symbolism, usually called the era of the heyday of realism, is artificially included in the sphere of romanticism or is certified as the “era of the novel.”

The essence of classical realism of the century before last is not in social-critical pathos, although it played a significant role, but primarily in the broad development of living connections between a person and his close environment: the “microenvironment” in its specificity, national, epochal, class, purely local, etc. .P. Realism (unlike romanticism with its powerful “Byronic branch”) is inclined not to elevate and idealize the hero, alienated from reality, fallen away from the world and arrogantly opposing him, but to criticize (and very harshly) the isolation of his consciousness. Reality was perceived by realist writers as imperiously demanding from a person a responsible involvement in it. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - P. 395

At the same time, true realism (“in in the highest sense", as F.M. put it. Dostoevsky) not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, presupposes the interest of writers in “great modernity”, the formulation and discussion of moral, philosophical and religious problems, the clarification of the connections between man and cultural tradition, the destinies of peoples and all humanity, with the universe and world order. All this is irrefutably evidenced by the creativity of both the world-famous Russians writers of the XIX century, and their successors in our century, such as I.A. Bunin, M.A. Bulgakov, M.A. Sholokhov, M.M. Prishvin, A.P. Platonov, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, G.N. Vladimov, V.P. Astafiev, V.G. Rasputin. Among the foreign writers, the most to classical realism direct relation have not only O. de Balzac, C. Dickens, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, but also J. Galsworthy, T. Mann, W. Faulkner. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987

According to V.M. Markovich, domestic classical realism, mastering socio-historical specifics, “with almost the same force rushes beyond the boundaries of this reality - to the “ultimate” essences of society, history, humanity, the universe,” and in this it is similar to both previous romanticism and subsequent symbolism. The sphere of realism, which charges a person with the “energy of spiritual maximalism,” the scientist claims, includes the supernatural, and revelation, and religious and philosophical utopia, and myth, and the mysterious principle, so that “throwing human soul get<…>transcendental meaning”, correlate with such categories as “eternity, supreme justice, the providential mission of Russia, the end of the world, the kingdom of God on earth.” Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. - P. 570.

Let's add to this: realist writers do not take us to exotic distances and airless mysterious heights, to the world of abstractions and abstractions, which the romantics were often prone to (remember the dramatic poems of Byron). They discover the universal principles of human reality in the depths of “ordinary” life with its everyday life and “prosaic” everyday life, which brings people both severe trials and invaluable benefits. Thus, Ivan Karamazov, unimaginable without his tragic thoughts and the “Grand Inquisitor,” is completely unthinkable without his painfully complex relationship with Katerina Ivanovna, father and brothers. Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. - P. 570.

In the 20th century Other, new literary communities coexist and interact with traditional realism. This, in particular, is socialist realism, which was aggressively propagated by the political authorities in the USSR and the countries of the socialist camp and even spread beyond their borders. The works of writers who were guided by the principles of socialist realism, as a rule, did not rise above the level of fiction. But the following also worked in line with this method: bright artists words like M. Gorky and V.V. Mayakovsky, M.A. Sholokhov and A.T. Tvardovsky, and to some extent M.M. Prishvin with his “Osudareva Road” full of contradictions. The literature of socialist realism usually relied on the forms of depicting life characteristic of classical realism, but in its essence it opposed the creative attitudes and attitudes of most writers of the 19th century. In the 1930s and later, the opposition between the two stages of the realistic method proposed by M. Gorky was persistently repeated and varied. This is, firstly, characteristic of the 19th century. critical realism, which was believed to reject the existing social existence with its class antagonisms and, secondly, socialist realism, which affirmed the re-emerging in the 20th century. reality, comprehended life in its revolutionary development towards socialism and communism. In literary critical articles, in scientific works, and in textbooks for several decades, the formulas “the literature of socialist realism as a new stage of world literature”, “socialist realism as the highest artistic method”, etc. were persistently repeated. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987

To the forefront of literature and art in the 20th century. modernism emerged, organically growing out of the cultural demands of its time. Unlike classical realism, it showed itself most clearly not in prose, but in poetry. The features of modernism are the most open and free self-disclosure of authors, their persistent desire to renew the artistic language, and a focus more on the universal and cultural-historical distant than on the near reality. In all this, modernism is closer to romanticism than to classical realism. At the same time, principles akin to the experience of the classic writers of the 19th century are persistently intruding into the sphere of modernist literature. Vivid examples of this are the works of Vl. Khodasevich (especially his “post-Pushkin” white iambic pentameter: “Monkey”, “November 2nd”, “Home”, “Music”, etc.) and A. Akhmatova with her “Requiem” and “Poem without a Hero”, in which the pre-war literary and artistic environment that shaped her as a poet is presented in a harshly critical manner, as a focus of tragic delusions. Borey Yu.B. Theoretical history of literature // Theory of literature. T. 4: Literary process. - M., 2001. - P. 130--468

Modernism is extremely heterogeneous. He declared himself in a number of directions and schools, especially numerous at the beginning of the century, among which the first place (not only chronologically, but also in terms of the role he played in art and culture) rightfully belongs to symbolism, primarily French and Russian. It is not surprising that the modernist literature that replaced it is called post-symbolism.

As part of modernism, which largely determined the face of literature of the 20th century, it is right to distinguish two trends, closely related to each other, but at the same time multidirectional. These are avant-gardeism, which experienced its “peak” point in futurism, and (using the term of V.I. Tyupa) neo-traditionalism: “The powerful confrontation of these spiritual forces creates either a productive tension of creative reflection, or a field of gravity in which more and more or more less significant phenomena of art of the 20th century. Such tension is often found within the works themselves, so it is hardly possible to draw an unambiguous line of demarcation between avant-garde artists and neo-traditionalists. The essence of the artistic paradigm of our century, apparently, is non-fusion. In addition to avant-garde and neo-traditionalism as varieties of modernism in the 20th century. Another branch of literature called neorealism also turned out to be very influential. In this zone of literary life (in addition to those created at the beginning of the 20th century by I.A. Bunin, A.I. Kuprin, A.N. Tolstoy, S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky) - “The White Guard” by M.A. Bulgakov, poem dilogy by A.T. Tvardovsky about Vasily Terkin, “Requiem” by A.A. Akhmatova, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and much more by A.I. Solzhenitsyn, as well as “village prose” (mainly, although not exclusively). In line with neorealism is the work of a number of writers in Western Europe (T. Mann, especially as the author of the novel “Doctor Faustus”; G. Grass, G. Green) and the USA (St. C. Wolfe, R. Frast, D. E. Steinbeck , D. Gardner, R.P. Warren). Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - P. 395

Writers of the century closest to us, whose work has acquired undeniable cultural and artistic significance, apparently have walked and are walking different paths, updating verbal art and at the same time relying on what their predecessors did.

2. International connections and specifics of literature

2.1 Regional and national specificity of literature

Comparative historical study of literature different eras(not excluding modern), as can be seen from the above, with irresistible persuasiveness reveals similarities between literatures different countries and regions. Based on such studios, it is concluded that “by nature” literary phenomena different peoples and countries are “united”. However, the unity of the literary process does not at all signify its uniform quality, much less the identity of the literatures of different regions and countries. In world literature, not only the recurrence of phenomena is deeply significant, but also their regional, state and national uniqueness. We will move on to this facet of the literary life of mankind. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - P. 396

The deep, essential differences between the cultures (and, in particular, literatures) of the countries of the West and the East, these two “super-regions”, are self-evident. Latin American countries, the Middle Eastern region, Far Eastern cultures, as well as the Western and Eastern (mostly Slavic) parts of Europe have original and distinctive features. National literatures belonging to the Western European region, in turn, differ markedly from each other.

The culture of humanity, including its artistic side, is not unitary, not one-quality cosmopolitan, not “unison”. It has a symphonic character: each national culture with its original features plays the role of a certain instrument necessary for the full sound of the orchestra. Therefore, the meaning of the phrase “world civilization,” often applied today to the United States and Western European countries, should be treated with caution: the life of mankind, as historians of the 20th century persistently talk about it. (O. Spengler, A. Toynbee), was and is composed of a number of civilizations. Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. P. 570.

To understand the culture and civilization of mankind and, in particular, the world literary process, the concept of a non-mechanical whole is essential, the components of which, in the words of a modern orientalist, “are not similar to each other, they are always unique, individual, irreplaceable and independent.” Therefore, cultures (countries, peoples, regions) always relate to each other as complementary: “A culture that becomes similar to another disappears as unnecessary.” The same idea in relation to creative writing was expressed by B.G. Remizov: “National literatures live a common life only because they are not similar to one another.” Gurevich A.Ya. World culture and modernity // Foreign literature. - 1976. - No. 1. - P. 214.

All this determines the specificity of the evolution of literatures of different peoples, countries, and regions. Over the past five or six centuries, Western Europe has discovered a dynamism of cultural and artistic life unprecedented in the history of mankind; the evolution of other regions is associated with much greater stability. But no matter how diverse the paths and rates of development of individual literatures are, they all move from era to era in the same direction: they go through the stages that we talked about. Panchenko A.M. Topeka and cultural distance // Historical poetics: Results and prospects of study. -M., 1986. - S. 240, 236

2.2 International literary connections

The symphonic unity that was discussed is “ensured” by world literature, first of all, by a single fund of continuity, as well as by the commonality of stages of development (from archaic mythopoetics and rigid traditionalism to the free identification of the author’s individuality). The beginnings of essential similarity between the literatures of different countries and eras are called typological convergences, or conventions. Along with the latter, international literary connections (contacts: influences and borrowings) play a unifying role in the literary process.

Influence is usually called the impact on literary creativity of previous worldviews, ideas, artistic principles(mainly the ideological influence of Rousseau on L.N. Tolstoy; refraction of the genre and stylistic features of Byron’s poems in romantic poems Pushkin). Borrowing is the writer’s use (in some cases passive and mechanical, in others creative and proactive) of individual plots, motifs, text fragments, speech patterns, etc. Borrowings, as a rule, are embodied in reminiscences, which were discussed above. Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. - P. 570.

At the same time, on sharp turns historical development, the intensive familiarization of this or that literature with a foreign, hitherto alien artistic experience sometimes harbors the danger of subordination to foreign influences, the threat of cultural and artistic assimilation. For world artistic culture, broad and multifaceted contacts between the literatures of different countries and peoples are essential (as Goethe spoke about), but at the same time, the “cultural hegemony” of literatures that have a reputation of worldwide significance is unfavorable. Easy "stepping" national literature through one’s own cultural experience to someone else’s, perceived as something higher and universal, is fraught with negative consequences. “At the heights of cultural creativity,” according to the philosopher and culturologist N.S. Arsenyev, there is a “combination of spiritual openness with spiritual rootedness.” Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - P. 397

Perhaps the most large-scale phenomenon in the field of international literary relations of modern times is the intense impact of Western European experience on other regions (Eastern Europe and non-European countries and peoples). This internationally significant cultural phenomenon, called Europeanization, or Westernization, or modernization, is interpreted and assessed in different ways, becoming the subject of endless discussions and disputes.

Modern scientists pay close attention to both the crisis and even negative aspects of Europeanization, as well as its positive significance for “non-Western European” cultures and literatures. The consequence of modernization is the “enclaveness” (focality) of culture: “islands” of the new based on someone else’s model are strengthened, contrasting with the traditional and stable world of the majority, so that the nation and the state risk losing their integrity. And in connection with all this, a split occurs in the field of social thought: a confrontation arises between Westerners (Westernizers-enlighteners) and ethnophiles (soilers-romantics) - guardians of domestic traditions who are forced to defend themselves against the erosion of national life by “colorless cosmopolitanism.” The prospect of overcoming such conflicts G.S. Pomerantz sees in the awareness of the “average European” the values of the cultures of the East. And as a result, he regards Westernization as a positive phenomenon of world culture. Gurevich A.Ya. World culture and modernity // Foreign literature. - 1976. - No. 1. - P. 214.

In the history of “Western European literatures, there were moments and stages when they were “energetically, sometimes violently, brought into line with the modern European way of life, which at first could not but lead to a certain denationalization of life and literature.” But over time, a culture that has experienced strong foreign influence, as a rule, “discovers its national content, elasticity, conscious, critical attitude and selection of foreign material.” Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. - P. 570.

International connections (cultural, artistic and literary proper), as can be seen, constitute (along with typological convergences) the most important factor in the formation and strengthening of the symphonic unity of regional and national literatures.

Conclusion

International literary communities chronological framework they do not: often in the same era various literary and general artistic “trends” coexist, which seriously complicates their systematic, logically ordered consideration. Moreover, the literary process of a given country and a given era cannot be reduced to the coexistence of literary movements and trends. MM. Bakhtin reasonably warned scholars against “reducing” the literature of a given period “to a superficial struggle of literary trends.” With a narrowly focused approach to literature, the scientist notes, its most important aspects, “which determine the creativity of writers, remain undisclosed.”

When studying the literary process, scientists rely on other theoretical concepts, in particular - method and style.

In the course of solving the assigned problems, we found out that the development of literature occurred in three stages, or stages: the first stage is the “archaic period”, the second period begins from Ancient Greece until the 18th century, and, finally, the third stage begins with the Age of Enlightenment.

In the process of historical development, literature changed, priorities changed, and international connections emerged. Literary creativity is subject to change as history moves forward, this is self-evident. What attracts less attention is the fact that literary evolution takes place on a certain stable, stable basis. In the composition of culture (art and literature in particular), individualized and dynamic phenomena are distinguishable - on the one hand, and on the other - universal, transtemporal, static structures.

Bibliography

1. Borey Yu.B. Theoretical history of literature // Theory of literature. T. 4: Literary process. - M., 2001. - p. 130 - 468.

2. Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. - M., 1999. - p. 570.

3. Gurevich A.Ya. World culture and modernity // Foreign literature, 1976. - No. 1. - With. 214.

4. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1987.

5. Panchenko A.M. Topeka and cultural distance // Historical poetics: Results and prospects of study. - M., 1986. - p. 240, 236.

6. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. - M., 2002. - p. 395 - 412.

Literary process. Basic aspects of studying the literary process. Modern concepts of the literary process.

The literary process is, firstly, the literary life of a certain country and era; secondly, the centuries-old development of literature on a global, worldwide scale.
The literary process in the second meaning of the word is the subject of comparative historical literary criticism. The stages of the literary process are usually thought of as corresponding to those stages of human history that manifested themselves most clearly and completely in Western European countries and especially clearly in the Romanesque countries. In this regard, ancient, medieval and modern literatures are distinguished with their own stages.
The literary process is a change in literary directions.
Conrad said that all nations follow the same literary path.
The literary process is a complex concept. The term itself appeared relatively recently, already in the 20th century, and gained popularity even later, only starting in the 50s and 60s. Before this, attention was paid to some individual aspects of literary relationships, but the literary process was not comprehended in its entirety. In the full sense of the word, it has not been comprehended even today; only the main components of the literary process have been identified, and possible research methodologies have been outlined. Summarizing various views, we can say that understanding the literary process involves solving several scientific problems:

1. It is necessary to establish connections between literature and the socio-historical process. Literature, of course, is connected with history, with the life of society, it reflects it to some extent, but it is neither a copy nor a mirror. At some moments, at the level of images and themes, there is a rapprochement with historical reality, at others, on the contrary, literature moves away from it. Understanding the logic of this “attraction-repulsion” and finding transitional links connecting historical and literary processes is an extremely complex task and hardly has a final solution. As such a transitional link “from life to literature,” either religious-symbolic forms or social stereotypes were considered (or, in the terminology of A. A. Shakhov, “ public types"), which are formed in society in a certain period and are embodied in art; then the socio-psychological atmosphere in society (in the terminology of Yu. B. Kuzmenko - “social emotions”); then the structure of the aesthetic ideal, reflecting both ideas about man and aesthetic traditions (for example, this approach is characteristic of the works of N. A. Yastrebova), etc. There were a lot of concepts, but the mechanism for transforming historical reality into works of art it remains a mystery. At the same time, attempts to find this transitional link stimulate the emergence of interesting research, unexpected and original concepts in both domestic and foreign aesthetics. Let’s say, it is the search for these links, both concretely historical and “transhistorical” (in the terminology of P. Bourdieu), that is, of the same type for any moment in history, that gives rise to the concept of “new historicism” - one of the most popular methodologies in modern Western European science. According to the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, the author of this concept, it is useless to “impose” any general laws on history based on today’s coordinate system. You need to start from the “historicity of the object,” that is, every time you need to enter into the historical context of a given work. And only by comparing the multitude of data obtained in this way, including the historicity of the researcher himself, can we notice elements of commonality and “overcome” history. P. Bourdieu’s concept is popular today, but, of course, it does not solve all the questions. The search for an adequate methodology continues, and definitive answers are hardly possible.

2. In addition to “external” connections, that is, connections with history, psychology, etc., literature also has a system of internal connections, that is, it constantly relates itself to its own history. Not a single writer of any era ever begins to write “from clean slate", he always consciously or unconsciously takes into account the experience of his predecessors. He's writing a certain genre, in which centuries-old literary experience has been accumulated (it is no coincidence that M. M. Bakhtin called the genre “the memory of literature”), he searches for the genre of literature that is closest to himself (epic, lyric, drama) and inevitably takes into account the laws adopted for this type. Finally, he absorbs many of the author’s traditions, correlating his work with one of his predecessors. From all this, internal laws of development of the literary process are formed, which do not directly correlate with the socio-historical situation. For example, the genre of an elegiac poem, permeated with sadness and sometimes tragedy, can manifest itself in different sociohistorical situations, but will always correlate itself with the genre of elegy - regardless of the desire and will of the author.
Therefore, the concept of “literary process” includes the formation of generic, genre and style traditions.

The need to “keep track” of the slow development of architectural forms of literature stretched over centuries gave rise to the large-scale historicism of historical poetics. This science has developed the most generalized picture of the literary process to date and identified 3 large stages in the development of world literature.
Veselovsky called the first stage in the history of poetics the era of syncretism. According to modern ideas, this tradition lasts from the ancient Stone Age to the 7-6 centuries BC. e. in Greece and the first centuries AD. e. in the East.
Veselovsky proceeded from the fact that the most obvious and simple and at the same time the most fundamental difference between archaic consciousness and modern consciousness is its indivisible nature, or syncretism. It permeates everything ancient culture, starting from the direct sensory perceptions of its carriers to their ideological constructs - myths, religion, art.
In general, the poetics of the era of syncretism - and this is its very special place in the history of art - is a time of slow development of the basic and primary principles of artistic thinking, subjective forms, figurative languages, story archetypes, genera and genres, everything that will be given by subsequent stages of development of literature as ready-made forms, without which everything further would be impossible.
The second major stage of the literary process begins in the 6th-5th centuries. BC e. in Greece and the first centuries AD. e. and lasts until the middle - second half of the 18th century. in Europe and the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. in the East. A generally accepted name for this stage has not been established; its most common definition is rhetorical (others: the era of reflective traditionalism, canonical, eidetic).

Fundamentals of Literary Theory

Literary process and its categories. (Seminar 7)

Question 1: How is the literary process component sociocultural process.

Question 2: Stages of development of the literary process, periodization.

In literary criticism, the idea of the presence of moments of commonality (repetition) in the development of literatures of different countries and peoples, of its single “forward” movement in a long historical time, is rooted and no one disputes it. In the article “The Future of Literature as a Subject of Study” D.S. Likhachev speaks of the steady increase in the personal principle in literary creativity) about the strengthening of its humanistic character, about the growth of realistic tendencies and the increasing freedom of choice of forms by writers, as well as about the deepening historicism artistic consciousness. “The historicity of consciousness,” the scientist asserts, “requires a person to be aware of the historical relativity of his own consciousness. Historicity is associated with “self-denial,” with the mind’s ability to understand its own limitations.”

Scientists have understood to the greatest extent the stage differences between the literatures of modern times and the writing that preceded them. Ancient and medieval literature was characterized by the prevalence of works with non-artistic functions (religious, cult and ritual, informative and business, etc.); the widespread existence of anonymity; the predominance of oral verbal creativity over writing, which resorted more to recording oral traditions and previously created texts than to “writing”. An important feature of ancient and medieval literature was also the instability of texts, the presence in them of bizarre alloys of “our own” and “foreign”, and as a result, the “blurring” of the boundaries between original and translated writing. In modern times, literature is emancipated as a strictly (358) artistic phenomenon; writing becomes the dominant form of verbal art; open individual authorship is activated; literary development acquires much greater dynamism. All this seems indisputable.

The situation is more complicated with the distinction between ancient and medieval literatures. It does not pose a problem in relation to Western Europe (ancient Greek and Roman antiquity are fundamentally different from the medieval culture of more “northern” countries), but it raises doubts and disputes when referring to the literature of other, especially eastern, regions. And the so-called Old Russian literature was essentially writing of the medieval type.

The key question in the history of world literature is debatable: what are the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance with its artistic culture and, in particular, literature? If N.I. Conrad and the scientists of his school consider the Renaissance to be a global phenomenon, repeating and varying not only in Western countries, but also in the eastern regions, while other experts, also authoritative, consider the Renaissance as a specific and unique phenomenon of Western European (mainly Italian) culture: “Worldwide meaning Italian Renaissance acquired not because it was the most typical and best among all the renaissances that happened, but because there were no other renaissances. This one turned out to be the only one.”

At the same time, modern scientists are moving away from the usual apologetic assessment of the Western European Renaissance and revealing its duality. On the one hand, the Renaissance enriched culture with the concept of complete freedom and independence of the individual, the idea of unconditional trust in the creative capabilities of man, on the other hand, the Renaissance “philosophy of luck nourished<...>spirit of adventurism and immorality.”

Discussion of the problem of the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance revealed the insufficiency of the traditional scheme of the world literary process, which is focused mainly on Western European cultural and historical experience and is marked by limitations, which is usually called “Eurocentrism”. And scientists for two or three last decades(the palm here belongs to S.S. Averintsev) put forward and substantiated a concept that complements and, to some extent, revises the usual ideas about the stages of literary development. Here, to a greater extent than before, firstly, the specifics of verbal art and, secondly, the experience of non-European regions and countries are taken into account. In the final collective article of 1994, “Categories of Poetics in the Change of Literary Epochs,” three stages of world literature are identified and characterized.

First stage– this is the “archaic period”, where the folklore tradition is undoubtedly influential. Mythopoetic artistic consciousness prevails here and there is still no reflection on verbal art, and therefore there is no literary criticism, no theoretical studies, no artistic and creative programs. All this appears only on second stage literary process, which began with the literary life of Ancient Greece in the mid-1st millennium BC. and which lasted until the middle of the 18th century. This very long period was marked by a predominance traditionalism artistic consciousness and “poetics of style and genre”: writers were guided by pre-made forms of speech that met the requirements of rhetoric (about it, see pp. 228–229), and were dependent on genre canons. Within the framework of this second stage, in turn, two stages are distinguished, the boundary between which was the Renaissance (here, we note, we are talking primarily about European artistic culture). At the second of these stages, which replaced the Middle Ages, literary consciousness takes a step from the impersonal to the personal (albeit still within the framework of traditionalism); literature becomes more secular.

And finally, on third stage, which began with the era of Enlightenment and romanticism, “individual creative artistic consciousness” comes to the fore. From now on, the “poetics of the author” dominates, freed from the omnipotence of the genre-style prescriptions of rhetoric. Here literature, as never before, “comes extremely close to the immediate and concrete existence of man, is imbued with his concerns, thoughts, feelings, and is created according to his standards”; the era of individual author's styles is coming; The literary process is closely linked “simultaneously with the personality of the writer and the reality surrounding him.” All this takes place in romanticism and realism of the 19th century, and to a large extent in the modernism of our century. We will turn to these phenomena of the literary process. (360)

FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION

Textbook for universities

Compiled by

Approved by the scientific and methodological council of the Faculty of Philology, protocol No. dated 2006.

The textbook was prepared at the Department of Russian Literature of the 20th Century, Faculty of Philology, Voronezh State University. Recommended for second-year students of the evening department and correspondence department of the Faculty of Philology of Voronezh State University.

For specialty: 031 Philology

5) heroes act as signs;

6) the hero in modernist prose feels lost, lonely, can be described as “a grain of sand thrown into the whirlpool of the universe” (G. Nefagina);

7) the style of modernist prose is complicated, the techniques of stream of consciousness, “text within a text” are used, often the texts are fragmentary, which conveys the image of the world.

Modernism of the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the twentieth century was generated by similar reasons - it is a reaction to a crisis in the field of philosophy (at the end of the century - ideology), aesthetics, strengthened by the eschatological experiences of the turn of the century.

Before talking about modernist texts themselves, let us dwell on trends in modern prose that could be characterized as being between traditions and modernism. These are neorealism and “hard realism” (naturalism).

Neorelism– a group with the same name as a movement that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century (E. Zamyatin, L. Andreev), identical in search direction to Italian cinema of the 60s. (L. Visconti et al.). The group of neorelists includes O. Pavlov, S. Vasilenko, V. Otroshenko and others. The most active position Oleg Pavlov ranks as a writer and theorist. Neorelists fundamentally distinguish between reality (the material world) and reality (reality + spirituality). They believe that the spiritual dimension is increasingly disappearing from literature and life in general, and they strive to return it. The style of neorealist texts combines the positions of realism and modernism: here, on the one hand, there is a deliberately simple language of the street, and on the other hand, references to myths are used. O. Pavlov’s story “The End of the Century” is based on this principle, in which the story of a homeless man who ended up in a regional hospital at Christmas is read as the unnoticed second coming of Christ.

Lyrics “cruel realism” (naturalism), often representing iconic images of heroes, come from the idea of the world as spiritless, having lost its vertical dimension. The action of the works takes place in the space of the social bottom. They contain a lot of naturalistic details and depictions of cruelty. Often these are texts on an army theme, depicting an unpretentious, non-heroic army. A number of texts, for example, the works of O. Ermakov, S. Dyshev, are devoted to the Afghan problem. It is significant that the narration here is based on personal experience, hence the documentary-journalistic beginning in the texts (like, say, A. Borovik in the book “We’ll Meet at Three Cranes”). There are frequent plot clichés: a soldier, the last of the company, makes his way to his own people, finding himself on the border of life and death, fearing any human presence in the unfriendly Afghan mountains (as in the story “May He Be Rewarded” by S. Dyshev, the story by O. Ermakov “Mars and the Soldier” ). In later Afghan prose, the situation is interpreted in a mythological vein, when the West is interpreted as orderliness, Space, harmony, life, and the East as Chaos, death (see O. Ermakov’s story “Return to Kandahar”, 2004).

A separate topic for this block of texts is the army in peacetime. The first text to highlight this problem was Yu. Polyakov’s story “One Hundred Days Before the Order.” Among the more recent ones, one can name O. Pavlov’s stories “Notes from Under a Boot,” where soldiers of the guard troops become heroes.

Inside modernism, in turn, two directions can be distinguished:

1) conditionally metaphorical prose;

Both directions originated in the literature of the 60s, primarily in youth prose, in the 70s. existed in the underground and entered literature after 1985.

Conventional metaphorical prose- these are texts by V. Makanin (“Laz”), L. Latynin (“Stavr and Sarah”, “Sleeping during the Harvest”), T. Tolstoy (“Kys”). The convention of their plots is that the story about today extends to the characteristics of the universe. It is no coincidence that there are often several parallel times in which the action takes place. So in the plot-related texts of L. Latynin: There is archaic antiquity, when Emelya, the son of Medvedko and the priestess Lada, was born and grew up - a time of the norm, and the 21st century, when Emelya is killed for his otherness on the holiday of the Common Other.

The genre of texts of conventionally metaphorical prose is difficult to define unambiguously: it is a parable, and, often, satire, and hagiography. The universal genre designation for them is dystopia. Dystopia implies the following characteristic points:

1) dystopia is always a response to a utopia (for example, a socialist one), bringing it to the point of absurdity as proof of its failure;

2) special problems: man and team, personality and its development. Dystopia claims that in a society that claims to be ideal, the truly human is disavowed. At the same time, the personal for dystopia turns out to be much more important than the historical and social;

3) conflict between “I” and “we”;

4) a special chronotope: threshold time (“before” and “after” an explosion, revolution, natural disaster), limited space (a city-state closed by walls from the world).

All these features are realized in T. Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”. The action here takes place in a city called “Fedor Kuzmichsk” (formerly Moscow), which is not connected with the world, after nuclear explosion. A world is written that has lost its humanitarian values, which has lost the meaning of words. One can also talk about the uncharacteristic nature of some positions of the novel for a traditional dystopia: the hero Benedict here never reaches the final stage of development, does not become a person; The novel contains a range of issues discussed that goes beyond the scope of dystopian issues: this is a novel about language (it is no coincidence that each of the chapters of T. Tolstoy’s text is indicated by letters of the old Russian alphabet).

Ironic avant-garde- the second stream in modern modernism. These include texts by S. Dovlatov, E. Popov, M. Weller. In such texts the present is ironically rejected. There is a memory of the norm, but this norm is understood as lost. An example is the story “Craft” by S. Dovlatov, which talks about writing. The ideal writer for Dovlatov was one who knew how to live both in life and in literature. Dovlatov considers work in emigrant journalism to be a handicraft that does not involve inspiration. The object of irony becomes both the Tallinn and then emigrant environment, and the autobiographical narrator himself. S. Dovlatov’s narrative is multi-layered. The text includes fragments of the writer’s diary “Solo on Underwood”, which allow you to see the situation from a double perspective.

Postmodernism as a method of modern literature is most in tune with the feelings of the end of the twentieth century and echoes the achievements of modern civilization - the advent of computers, the birth of “virtual reality”. Postmodernism is characterized by:

1) the idea of the world as a total chaos that does not imply a norm;

2) understanding of reality as fundamentally inauthentic, simulated (hence the concept of “simulacrum”);

3) the absence of all hierarchies and value positions;

4) the idea of the world as a text consisting of exhausted words;

5) a special attitude towards the activities of a writer who understands himself as an interpreter, and not an author (“the death of the author”, according to the formula of R. Barthes);

6) non-distinction between one’s own and someone else’s word, total quotation (intertextuality, centonality);

7) use of collage and montage techniques when creating text.

Postmodernity emerges in the West in the late 60s and early 70s. twentieth century, when the ideas of R. Batra, J.-F., important for postmodernity, appeared. Lyotard, I. Hassan), and much later, only in the early 90s, comes to Russia.

The work of V. Erofeev “Moscow-Petushki” is considered the ancestral text of Russian postmodernism, where an active intertextual field is recorded. However, this text clearly identifies value positions: childhood, dreams, so the text cannot be completely correlated with postmodernity.

Several trends can be distinguished in Russian postmodernism:

1) social art – replaying Soviet clichés and stereotypes, revealing their absurdity (V. Sorokin “Queue”);

2) conceptualism - the denial of any conceptual schemes, understanding the world as a text (V. Narbikova “Plan of the first person. And the second”);

3) fantasy, which differs from science fiction in that a fictional situation is presented as real (V. Pelevin “Omon Ra”);

4) remake - reworking classic plots, revealing semantic gaps in them (B. Akunin “The Seagull”);

5) surrealism is proof of the endless absurdity of the world (Yu. Mamleev “Jump into the Coffin”).

Modern dramaturgy largely takes into account the position of postmodernity. For example, in the play “Wonderful Woman” by N. Sadur, an image of a simulated reality is created, posing as the 80s. XX century. The heroine, Lidia Petrovna, who met a woman named Ubienko in a potato field, receives the right to see the world of the earth - terrible and chaotic, but can no longer leave the field of death.

Modern dramaturgy is characterized by the expansion of tribal boundaries. In part, therefore, texts become non-scene, intended for reading, and the idea of the author and character changes. In the plays by E. Grishkovets “Simultaneously” and “How I Ate the Dog,” the author and the hero are one person, imitating the sincerity of the narrative, which takes place as if in front of the viewer’s eyes. This is a monodrama in which there is only one speaker. Ideas about stage conventions are changing: for example, the action in Grishkovets’ plays begins with the formation of a “scene”: setting up a chair and limiting the space with a rope.

A few words about modern poetry. For a long time it was customary to talk about the end of modern poetry, about silence as its voice. IN Lately The attitude towards modern poetry is changing somewhat.

Poetry, like prose, can be divided into realistic and post-realistic. The lyrics of N. Gorlanova, I. Evs, O. Nikolaeva with religious issues gravitate towards realism. The poetry of the neo-Acmeist T. Beck is built on following traditions. Among the innovative poetic trends we can highlight: 1) conceptualism (D. Prigov);

2) metarealism (O. Sedakova, I. Zhdanov);

3) poetry of meta-metaphorists (A. Eremenko, A. Parshchikov);

4) poetry of ironists (I. Irtenev, V. Vishnevsky);

5) poetry of “courtly mannerists” (V. Stepantsov, V. Pelenyagre).

The question of whether literature of the 21st century exists remains debatable. Indeed, it implements the trends that were laid down at the end of the twentieth century, especially in the 90s. At the same time, new writers' names and theoretical ideas appear. Among the brightest are S. Shargunov, A. Volos, A. Gelasimov. S. Shargunov acts as a theorist of a new direction - “neoneorealism”, the stages of which are defined as “postmodernism postmodernism”. The movement is focused on the value positions defended by realists, but is not averse to stylistic experiments. In the story by S. Shargunov “What is my name?” The heroes are in search of God, which they themselves do not immediately realize. The language of individual fragments is fundamentally reduced.

Most likely, the era of postmodernism in Russian literature is coming to an end, giving way to realism, understood as an open system.

This textbook is intended to reflect the entire range of problems illustrating the trends in the development of modern literature. For this purpose, it includes an introductory lecture for the course “Modern Literary Process”, illustrating the diversity of currents and directions in modern Russian literature. Followed by Thematic plan and grid of discipline hours, Lecture course program. The manual includes practical lesson plans, a list of fiction for compulsory reading, a list of basic and additional research literature for the course.

THEMATIC PLAN AND DISCIPLINE HOURS GRID

Topic name

Number of hours.

General characteristics of the modern literary process. Discussions about modern literature.

The fate of realism in the modern literary stream. Religious prose. Artistic journalism.

Between traditions and modernism. Women's fiction and the feminist movement. Naturalism.

Between traditions and modernism. Neorealism. Analysis of O. Pavlov’s story “The End of the Century.”

Modernism. Conventional metaphorical prose, dystopia, ironic avant-garde. Analysis of T. Tolstoy’s story “Sonya”.

Postmodernism. Directions in postmodern prose.

Contemporary dramaturgy. "Post-Vampilian dramaturgy." The influence of postmodern aesthetics on modern dramaturgy.

Contemporary poetry. General characteristics. Evaluation of modern poetry in criticism.

LECTURE COURSE PROGRAM

Topic 1.

General characteristics of the modern literary process. The artistic diversity of modern literature. The coexistence of realism, modernism and postmodernism. The phenomenon of “returned literature”. The range of topics and problems of modern literature. Hero of modern literature.

Discussions about modern literature. Fundamentally different characteristics and assessments of modern literature. Leading Researchers modern prose and poetry.

Topic 2.

The fate of realism in the modern literary stream. Discussions about the fate of realism. Religious prose, its specificity. The hero of religious prose, the cross-cutting plot in religious prose. “Orthodox bestseller”: the validity of the definition in relation to the latest texts of religious prose.

Artistic journalism. Connection with the evolution of village prose. Reasons for strengthening the journalistic principle in village prose. Journalistic beginning in texts of other subjects.

Topic 3.

Between traditions and modernism. Women's prose and the feminist movement: a fundamental difference in value orientations. Value positions of women's prose. The thematic and gender nature of its selection. The evolution of women's prose.

Naturalism. “Cruel realism” in modern literature. Causes of occurrence. The hero of modern naturalistic prose. Stages of modern naturalistic texts.

Topic 4.

Between traditions and modernism. Neorealism. Representatives of the neorealist group. Their aesthetic positions. Reality and validity in the understanding of neorealists. The language of neorealistic prose.

Analysis of O. Pavlov’s story “The End of the Century.” Biblical allusions in the story. Language and style of storytelling.

Topic 5.

Modernism. Characteristics of modernism as a method of fiction. The problem of the ideal in the literature of modernism. Modernist storytelling style.

Conventional metaphorical prose, dystopia, ironic avant-garde as trends in modern modernism. The problem of the ideal in the literature of modernism. Modernist storytelling style.

Analysis of T. Tolstoy’s story “Sonya”. Intertext in the story. Plot-forming antitheses in the text. Correlation with modernism and postmodernism.

Topic 6.

Postmodernism. Postmodernism as an attitude and style. The idea of the world in postmodernism. Philosophy and program documents of postmodernity. Russian version of postmodernism: debatable position.

Directions in postmodern prose. Representatives.

Topic 7.

Contemporary dramaturgy. "Post-Vampilian dramaturgy." The influence of postmodern aesthetics on modern drama. Monodrama like new type dramatic action. Transformation of attitudes towards the stage and the real. Modern drama as an open generic formation. Problems of plays by modern playwrights. The unstageability of modern drama.

Topic 8.

Contemporary poetry. General characteristics. Evaluation of modern poetry in criticism. Directions in modern poetry. Leading names on the poetic horizon. “Poetic” and “non-poetic” in modern lyrics.

PRACTICAL PLANS

The poetics of the title of O. Pavlov’s story “The End of the Century.”

1. Fable and plot meanings in the story.

2. Time of action in the text by O. Pavlov.

3. The role of biblical references in the story.

4. The meaning of the ending.

5. Eschatological meaning of the title of the text.

6. Language and style of narration.

Literature:

1. Evseenko I. Test of realism // Rise. – Voronezh, 2000. – No. 1. – P.4-5.

2. Nefagin’s prose of the late 20th century: Textbook. allowance / . – M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2003. – 320 p.

Intertext in T. Tolstoy's story “Sonya”.

1. Fable and plot in the story.

2. Allusions and reminiscences in the text of the story.

3. The meaning of the heroine's name.

4. Role artistic details in the story.

5. The plot of the game in the story of T. Tolstoy.

6. The circle of main ideas of the story.

7. Correlation with the aesthetics of modernism and postmodernism.

Literature:

1. Bogdanov’s literary process (on the issue of postmodernism in Russian literature of the 70-90s of the XX century): Materials for the course “History of Russian. lit. XX century (part III)" / . – St. Petersburg: Faculty of Philology St. Petersburg State Univ., 2001. – 252 p. – (Student Library).

2. Genis A. Conversations about new Russian literature. Conversation eight: Drawing in the margins. T. Tolstaya / A. Genis // Star. – 1997. - No. 9.- P. 228 – 230.

3. Russian literature of the 20th century: Prose of the 1980s-2000s. / comp. . – Voronezh, 2003.

LIST OF LITERARY TEXTS

1. Akunin B. Seagull / B. Akunin // New world. – 2000. – No. 4; Akunin B. Hamlet. Version / B. Akunin // New World. – 2002. - No. 6.

2. Astafiev V. Cheerful Soldier / V. Astafiev // New World. – 1998. - No. 5-6.

3. Varlamov A. Birth / A. Varlamov // New World. – 1995. - No. 7.

4. Volos A. Maskavian Mecca / A. Volos. – M., 2003, or Shargunov S. Hurray! / S. Shargunov // New world. – 2002. - No. 6, or Gelasimov A. Thirst / A. Gelasimov // October. – 2002. - No. 5, or Denezhkina I. Give me / I. Denezhkina // *****.

5. Grishkovets E. How I ate the dog / E. Grishkovets // Grishkovets E. Winter: All plays / E. Grishkovets. – M., 2006.

6. Dovlatov S. Craft / S. Dovlatov // Collection. Op. in 4 volumes – T. 3. – M., 2000.

7. Erofeev V. Moscow-Petushki / V. Erofeev // Collection. Op. in 2 volumes - T. 1. - M., 2001.

8. Ermakov O. Return to Kandahar / O. Ermakov // New World. – 2004. - No. 2..

9. Makanin V. Laz / V. Makanin. - New world. – 1991. - No. 5.; Tolstaya T. Kys / T. Tolstaya. – M., 2002.

10. Narbikova V. Plan of the first person. And the second / V. Narbikov. – M., 1989.

11. Nikolaeva O. Disabled Childhood / O. Nikolaeva // Youth. – 1991. - No.

12. Pavlov O. End of the century / O. Pavlov. - October. – 1996. - No. 3.

13. Pelevin V. Yellow Arrow / V. Pelevin // New World. – 1993. - No. 7.

14. Petrushevskaya L. Time is night / L. Petrushevskaya // New world. –1992. – No. 2.

15. Polyakov Yu. Apofegey / Yu. Polyakov // Youth. – 1989. - No. 5.

16. Tolstaya T. Sitting on the golden porch, Sonya, Sweet Shura / T. Tolstaya // Tolstaya T. Okkervil River / T. Tolstaya. – M., 2002.

17. Ulitskaya L. Kukotsky’s incident (Journey to the seventh side of the world) / L. Ulitskaya // New World. – 2000 - No. 8, 9.

Research literature

MAIN LITERATURE

1. Bogdanov’s literary process (on the issue of postmodernism in Russian literature of the 70-90s of the XX century): Materials for the course “History of Russian. lit. XX century (part III)" / . – St. Petersburg. : Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg. state Univ., 2001. – 252 p. – (Student Library).

2. Bolshev A. Vasilyeva O. Modern Russian literature (e years) / A. Bolshev. O. Vasilyeva. – St. Petersburg, 2000. – 320 p.

3. Gordovich of Russian literature of the 20th century. / . – St. Petersburg, 2000. – 320 p.

4. , Lipovetsky Russian literature. Book 3. At the end of the century (1986 – 1990s) / , . – M., 2001. – 316 p.

5. Minerals literary process /. – 2005. – 220 p.

6. Nefagin’s prose of the late 20th century. : Textbook. allowance / . – M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2003. – 320 p.

7. Modern Russian literature (1990s - beginning of the 21st century) /, etc. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University; M.: Publishing house. Center "Academy", 2005. - 352 p.

8. Chernyak Russian literature / . – St. Petersburg. : Forum Publishing House, 2004. – 336 p.

ADDITIONAL LITERATURE

9. Ilyin: From the beginnings to the end of the century: The evolution of a scientific myth / .- M.: Strada, 199 p.

10. Kuritsyn: new primitive culture // New World. – 1992. – No. 2. – pp. 225-232.

11. Nemzer A. A wonderful decade of Russian. lit. / A. Nemzer. – M., 2003. – 218 p.

12. Russian literature of the 20th century. Prose 1980 – 2000s. : A reference guide for philologists. – Voronezh: Native speech, 2003. – 272 p.

13. Skoropanova postmodern literature: Textbook. allowance / . – M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2001. – 608 p.

14. Tukh B. The first ten of modern Russian. lit. : Sat. essays / B. Tuch. – M.: House Onyx 21st century, 2002. – 380 p.

15. Chalmaev prose 1. at the crossroads of opinions and disputes // Literature at school. – 2002. – No. 5. - P. 20-22.

16. Epstein in Russia: Literature and Theory / .- M.: Elinin Publishing House, 200 p.

Electronic catalog of ZNL VSU. – (http//www. lib. *****).

Questions for testing

I. 1. The modern literary situation. General characteristics.

2. Currents and directions in the modern literary stream.

3. Discussions about the state of modern literature in literary and artistic publications.

4. The fate of realism in modern literature. Criticism about the prospects of realism.

5. Village theme in modern literature.

6. Religious prose. General characteristics.

7. “Cruel realism” and naturalism. The evolution of “cruel realism”.

8. “Women’s prose” as a movement in modern literature. Its characteristic features and leading representatives.

9. Neorealism. Theory and artistic practice of neorealists.

10. Ironic avant-garde, “new autobiography” in modern literature.

11. Conventional metaphorical prose, dystopia in modern literature.

12. Literature of modern modernism. Attitude and style.

13. Reasons for the emergence of postmodernism. Flows in postmodernism.

14. The most characteristic techniques of postmodern writing.

15. Postmodern drama. Expanding genre and generic boundaries.

16. Modern poetry. Directions, names.

17. Literature of the 21st century. Prospects, names, positions.

II. 1. V. Astafiev “The Jolly Soldier”: naturalism in the narrative, the author’s position.

2. B. Akunin “The Seagull”, “Hamlet” as texts of postmodernism. Welcome to the remake.

3. A. Varlamov “Birth”. Specifics of the chronotope.

4. O. Pavlov “The End of the Century” as a work of neorealism. Eschatological motives in the story.

5. A. Volos / S. Shargunov / A. Gelasimov / I. Denezhkina in modern literature. Development of the positions of “neorealism”.

6. Monodrama by E. Grishkovets “How I Ate the Dog.”

7. V. Erofeev “Moscow-Petushki” as a practical text of Russian postmodernism.

8. O. Ermakov “Return to Kandahar.” Elements of mythopoetics.

9. V. Makanin “Laz” / T. Tolstaya “Kys” / A. Volos “Maskavian Mecca”. Signs of dystopia in the text.

10. V. Narbikova “Plan of the first person. And the second one." Language as the beginning that shapes the plot.

11. Model of life in V. Pelevin’s story “Yellow Arrow”.

12. O. Nikolaeva “Disabled Childhood”. The image of a neophyte.

13. L. Petrushevskaya “Time is Night.” “Text-within-text” technique.

14. Yu. Polyakov “Apothegeus”. Irony in the story.

15. T. Tolstaya. The role of time in stories (“They sat on the golden porch,” “Sonya,” “Dear Shura”).

16. L. Ulitskaya “The Case of Kukotsky.” The meaning of the novel's title.

Educational edition

MODERN LITERARY PROCESS

Textbook for universities

Compiled by

The term “literary process” can confuse a person unfamiliar with its definition. Because it is not clear what kind of process this is, what caused it, what it is connected with and according to what laws it exists. In this article we will examine this concept in detail. We will pay special attention to the literary process of the 19th and 20th centuries.

What is the literary process?

This concept means:

creative life in the totality of facts and phenomena of a particular country in a particular era;
literary development in a global sense, including all centuries, cultures and countries.

When using the term in the second meaning, the phrase “historical-literary process” is often used.

In general, the concept describes historical changes in world and national literature, which, as they develop, inevitably interact with each other.

In the course of studying this process, researchers solve many complex tasks, among which the main one is the transition of some poetic forms, ideas, trends and directions to others.

Writers' influence

Writers are also included in the literary process, who with their new artistic techniques and experiments with language and form change the approach to describing the world and people. However, the authors do not make their discoveries out of nowhere, since they necessarily rely on the experience of their predecessors, who lived both in his country and abroad. That is, the writer uses almost everything artistic experience humanity. From this we can conclude that there is a struggle between new and old artistic ideas, and each new literary direction puts forward its own creative principles, which, relying on traditions, nevertheless challenge them.

Evolution of directions and genres

The literary process, therefore, includes the evolution of genres and trends. So, in the 17th century French writers instead of baroque, which welcomed the willfulness of poets and playwrights, they proclaimed classicist principles that presupposed adherence to strict rules. However, already in the 19th century, romanticism appeared, rejecting all rules and proclaiming the freedom of the artist. Then realism arose, expelling subjective romanticism and putting forward its own demands for works. And the change in these directions is also part of the literary process, as are the reasons for which they occurred and the writers who worked within their framework.

Don't forget about genres. So, the novel, the largest and popular genre, has experienced more than one change in artistic movements and directions. And in every era it has changed. For example, a striking example of a Renaissance novel - “Don Quixote” - is completely different from “Robinson Crusoe”, written during the Enlightenment, and both of them are unlike the works of O. de Balzac, V. Hugo, and Charles Dickens.

Russian literature of the 19th century

Literary process of the 19th century. presents a rather complex picture. At this time, evolution occurs and representatives of this direction are N.V. Gogol, A.S. Pushkin, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, F.M. Dostoevsky and A.P. Chekhov. As you can see, the work of these writers is very different, however, they all belong to the same movement. At the same time, literary criticism in this regard speaks not only about the artistic individuality of writers, but also about changes in realism itself and the method of knowing the world and man.

At the beginning of the 19th century, romanticism was replaced by " natural school”, which already in the middle of the century began to be perceived as something impeding further literary development. F. Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy begin to give everything higher value psychologism in his works. This became a new stage in the development of realism in Russia, and the “natural school” became outdated. However, this does not mean that the techniques of the previous movement are no longer used. On the contrary, the new absorbs the old, partially leaving it in its original form, partially modifying it. However, we should not forget about the influence of foreign literature on Russian, as well as, indeed, of domestic literature on foreign literature.

Western literature of the 19th century

The literary process of the 19th century in Europe included two main directions - romanticism and realism. Both of them reflected the historical events of this era. Let us remind you that at this time factories are opening, construction is taking place. railways etc. At the same time, the Great French revolution, which led to uprisings throughout Europe. These events, of course, are reflected in literature, but completely with different positions: romanticism strives to escape reality and create its own ideal world; realism - analyze what is happening and try to change reality.

Romanticism, which arose at the end of the 18th century, gradually became obsolete around the middle of the 19th century. But realism, which was just emerging at the beginning of the 19th century, was gaining momentum by the end of the century. The realistic direction emerges from realism and declares itself around the age of 30-40.

The popularity of realism is explained by its social orientation, which was in demand by the society of that time.

Russian literature of the 20th century

Literary process of the 20th century. very complex, intense and ambiguous, especially for Russia. This is connected, first of all, with emigrant literature. Writers who found themselves expelled from their homeland after the 1917 revolution continued to write abroad, continuing the literary traditions of the past. But what is happening in Russia? Here, the motley variety of directions and trends, called the Silver Age, is forcibly narrowed to the so-called socialist realism. And all attempts by writers to move away from it are brutally suppressed. However, works were created but not published. Among such writers are Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, and from later antagonist authors - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Venedikt Erofeev, etc. Each of these writers was a successor literary traditions the beginning of the 20th century, before the advent of socialist realism. The most interesting in this regard is the work “Moscow - Petushki”, written by V. Erofeev in 1970 and published in the West. This poem is one of the first examples of postmodern literature.

Until the end of the existence of the USSR, practically no works were published that were not related to socialist realism. However, after the collapse of the power, the dawn of book publishing literally began. Everything that was written in the 20th century but was prohibited is published. New writers are appearing, continuing the traditions of Silver Age, banned and foreign literature.

Western literature of the 20th century

The Western literary process of the 20th century is characterized by close connection with historical events, in particular the first and second world wars. These events greatly shocked Europe.

In the literature of the 20th century, two major trends stand out - modernism and postmodernism (emerging in the 70s). The first includes such movements as existentialism, expressionism, and surrealism. It developed most brightly and intensively in the first half of the 20th century, then gradually losing ground to postmodernism.

Conclusion

Thus, the literary process is the totality of the works of writers and historical events in their development. This understanding of literature makes it possible to understand by what laws it exists and what influences its evolution. The beginning of the literary process can be called the first work created by humanity, and its end will come only when we cease to exist.