a set of sciences that investigate the socio-aesthetic essence of art, its origin and patterns of development, the features and content of the species division of art, the nature of the artist. creativity, the place of art in the social and spiritual life of the society, its functions, the nature of socio-psychological functioning, etc. Modern. I. focuses on the study of claims in the context of spiritual culture. The complex structure of I. is distinguished by its complexity, which is manifested by Ch. arr. in three respects. Firstly, I, is divided into general and particular, according to the division of the art itself into various (in this sense, private) types of art. creativity. As a system of private sciences about individual types of art, I. includes literary criticism, theater studies, musicology, architecture, art history (the science of fine arts), film studies, etc. Each of these private sciences has a relatively independent character and at the same time, it is included as an integral part of the general structure of art as a system of holistic knowledge about art. creativity. Secondly, in the most general view And, it is a combination of three subdisciplines: the history of art, the theory of art, art. criticism (Artistic criticism). (Accordingly, the private sciences of art include similar divisions: theater studies - theater history, theater theory, theater criticism; musicology - music history, music theory, music criticism, etc.) In this sense, I. is divided into historical, theoretical and artistic. criticism. However, the concepts of "history of art" and "historical I." are not identical. The history of art is the core of historical art, but the latter is wider; it also includes a number of auxiliary historical disciplines, such as, for example, textual criticism, paleography, etc. An important place in historical art is occupied by the study of art. process as a process of formation of the history of art-va, its directions. The theory of art and theoretical art are also not synonymous, including such aspects of the theoretical study of art that are not directly included in the theory of art. In the Marxist-Leninist I. general theory the claim is aesthetics. The distinction between historical and theoretical I. is relative. In a certain sense, historical I. can be regarded as the process of becoming theoretical, and theoretical I., in turn, as “become” historical, expressed in abstract logical categories. Ultimately, historical and theoretical intelligence are inseparable and form a single science. The status of the artist Criticism in culture is historically changeable, and its nature is not unambiguous. On the one hand, it is part of the literature and the artist himself. process, and with others - is an integral part of I. Its nature is scientific and journalistic. In socialist about-ve it acts osn. method of public influence on the artist. creativity and is addressed to both creators and consumers of art. values. Thirdly, I. enters into certain relations with a number of non-artistic scientific disciplines, methodological approaches, conclusions and observations of which are essential for a comprehensive study of art. In this respect, the sociology of art, the psychology of artistic creativity, the semiotics of art va, cultural studies, etc. Interdisciplinary study of art. creativity enriches I., contributes to a more in-depth study of various aspects of art - its communicative capabilities, the nature of social functioning, the characteristics of the perception of art, etc. In the relationship of I. with other sciences, philosophy and aesthetics, which form it, are of particular importance methodological and theoretical basis. I. is not only a special area of ​​scientific knowledge, but also an integral part of artistic culture (artistic culture).

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

art history

art history) is a set of sciences about all types of art. creativity, their place in the general sphere of human. culture. Its foundation borders on history itself - the necessary base, background and environment, and philosophy, primarily aesthetics, which ideologically completes and elevates I., provides the richest materials for cultural studies, tk. art, being the quintessence, magic. a mirror of culture, represents it in the most visual way, expresses it. and psychologically accessible form. Structurally, I. is divided, first of all, into three main. section: art history, which systematizes and describes the available and newly discovered material; art theory, summarizing the accumulated data from the historiosophical and philosophical. t.sp. (moreover, the concreteness of the example, mental work in living material, which has not yet become an abstract system of logical constructions, is what distinguishes artistic and theoretical concepts from general philosophical ones; when direct references to exemplary works are introduced into some mental constructions, - for example, Plotinus about Phidias, Hegel about the Dutch genre painters of the 19th century, Bakhtin about Dostoevsky, or Heidegger about Hölderlin—this is always legitimately perceived as interspersing I. into layers of pure wisdom); artistic criticism, expressing the reaction to the work in the most direct, unreflected to the end, quasi-poetic. form, sometimes as adequate as possible to the work. The facts of art themselves, together with judgments about them, entering other spheres of mental creativity, are a kind of metaphysical-physical, boundary light, connecting with its reflexes the transcendental and immanent, “higher” and “lower” levels of being; This is the essence of the inclusiveness of I., which (like art itself) deceptively, but naturally appears to be “understandable by everyone”. And it is characteristic that even theories that at first glance seem to be abstract logistics, upon closer examination, begin to “flicker like art criticism”, thereby turning out to be much warmer and more humane (such, for example, is the motif of “artificially organized nature”, i.e. park, hinting at the possibility of removing the antinomy of the mind and the thing-in-itself, in Kant's Critique of Judgment, or the image of a picturesque, nature-like picture of the world in a frame, which implicitly appears through all the formulas of Wittgenstein's Logico-Philosophical Treatise). Throughout independent. history of I., numbering at least five centuries, its different sections change their hierarchical. positions. In the Renaissance-Baroque era, when clear elements of I. are already distinguished (albeit fragmentarily) from the theological and philosophical. treatises, history chronicle and special aesthetic guidelines and different kind artistic crafts, history, theory and criticism of I. coexist most often in nature. inseparability. The introductory chapter of the evolution of I. ends in the middle. 18th century, when I. Winckelmann was the first to give it a clear self-sufficiency. historical, more precisely historical and stylistic. structure; under his pen, it is clearly separated from history itself. However, the age of Diderot's "salons" is, first of all, the age of criticism, which forms the theory, as it were, on the fly, in a living aesthetic. controversy. Criticism plays a huge, often truly guiding role in the 19th century, but the palm of primacy nevertheless clearly passes to theory, which is especially keen (following archaeological and archival discoveries) to identify and delineate national history. schools. During this period, I. is finally divided into a number of subsections or specials. disciplinary areas: while some of them, for example, iconography (classifying plots and types) or connoisseurship (emphasizing the absolute significance of empirical-subjective experience in the evaluation of works) are more applied in nature, others, emerging in the first decades of the 20th century, as if more culturological, synthetically interacting with other humanitarian disciplines (the so-called “ formal school Hildebrandt and Wölfflin, the Viennese school, which is based on the concept of the “will to form”, formulated by Riegl (see Riegl), Iconology of Warburg and Panofsky). In the 20th century within I. the equal importance of history, theory and criticism is established. The interaction of art and philosophy becomes especially active and polyphonic - thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Croce, Bakhtin or Gadamer powerfully stimulate the formation of whole new schools of art criticism with their ideas. research; the most influential. in this sphere Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche remain the philosophers of previous centuries. On the one hand, artists (V. Kandinsky, K. Malevich, P. Klee, etc.) are increasingly acting as theorists, on the other hand, theory and criticism interact more and more co-creatively with the artist, sometimes even ideologically prevailing (in visual plastic arts). In the arts, this line is especially clearly traced from the Russian LEF of the 1920s to the postmodernist, neostructuralist in spirit “new criticism” of the last decades - criticism, which, within the artistic currents of the conceptualist plan, acts as a true prime mover). The role of artmetry, i.e. diff., both theoretical and practical. methods proclaiming, especially with the beginning of the "electronic-computer revolution", the most active use of techniques and tools of the exact sciences, new technologies for collecting and analyzing art. informatics. In addition to diff. metodol. directions, a network of specials is branching out. art critic. disciplines (which, in turn, become special methodological directions): such as sociology of art, psychology of art, museology, protection of monuments or, more broadly, art ecology. More and more private areas of I. are being formed, dedicated to diverse. types of creativity, incl. new, so-called. “tech.” I see him. Today, the number of such disciplines is enormous, including the most extensive historical and methodological. theories such as architecture or film studies, and much more modest ones such as the history of pantomime, wigs or dwarf gardens (each of the special disciplines, even the smallest ones, however, introduces its own unique line into the general spectrum of research on artistic culture). The most diff. types of creativity can - proving the impossibility in our age of any absolute artistic-specific hierarchies - effectively enliven the process of research across the entire spectrum. So, the intuitions of A. Rigel, epoch-making in their meaning, in the beginning. 20th century were born from observations of the “lower”, decorative and applied types of the provincial Late Roman. arts; in the middle of the century philosophical-theorists gained universal interest. Adorno's thoughts on avant-garde music. Art to the end of the 20th century in general (which in turn, like the “conceptualization” of criticism, is a characteristic postmodern trend) is increasingly regarded not in its aesthetic. uniqueness, but (from Benjamin to McLuhan and their successors) is mentally placed in the general information field of human. culture, which gives the analysis a new social sharpness and efficiency of critical. reactions. Ultimately, I., especially since the boundaries between it and art itself are becoming more and more unsteady, can be called the nervous tissue of cultural studies, which allows you to respond especially sensitively and adequately to the challenges of the time. Lit.: Modern art studies abroad. M., 1964; European history. art history. Tue floor. 19th century T. 3. M., 1966; European history. art history. Tue floor. 19 - beg. 20th century T. 4, book. 1-2. M., 1969; Bazin J. History of Art History: From Vasari to the Present Day. M., 1995. M.N. Sokolov. Cultural studies of the twentieth century. Encyclopedia. M.1996

Introduction

Romantic and socially acute, unique in its history and original approach to problems, persecuted at home and recognized in other countries - American literature is of particular interest for philosophical reflection.

Literary criticism as a scientific discipline considers not only creative methods, but also pays a lot of attention to the history of literature. This interest can be expressed in different ways: the history of a particular literary movement, the history of the literature of a particular country, and so on.

The turn of the 19th-20th centuries was in many ways a landmark moment for US literature - new authors received recognition, the public's gaze fell on problems that had been hidden or hushed up for a long time, new cultural and literary trends emerged.

The relevance of this work is due to the need to obtain theoretical knowledge in the field of American literature.

The object of the study is the literature of the XIX - XX centuries. The subject is US literature of this period.

The purpose of the work: to structure knowledge about the literature of the United States of the specified period, fill in the gaps and identify the main development trends.

In the course of achieving this goal, the following tasks were identified and solved:

1) Search for information on a given topic;

2) Analysis and processing of the received information;

3) Identification of the main features of American literature of the XIX-XX centuries.

The abstract consists of two chapters, introduction, conclusion and list of references.

Philosophy of literary criticism

Relationship between philosophy and science

For the most complete understanding of the connection between philosophy and science, it is necessary to define these concepts. Philosophy -- special shape public consciousness and knowledge of the world. It develops a system of knowledge about the fundamental principles and foundations of human existence, explores and generalizes the most essential characteristics of human relationships with the world. In the Modern Encyclopedia, the following definition of philosophy is given - it is a worldview, a system of ideas, views on the world and on the place of man in it. Philosophy explores various forms of human relationship with myoma: cognitive, socio-political, value, ethical and aesthetic. Based on theoretical and practical knowledge about these relationships, philosophy reveals the relationship between subject and object. Similar definitions can be found in other sources.

Summarizing many definitions, we can say that philosophy is a generalized knowledge about the world and about the place of man in it. Philosophy is engaged in the search and establishment of the most general laws and patterns in the world: in nature, in society, in relation to a person with the surrounding reality.

Science can be defined as a special kind cognitive activity aimed at developing objective, systematically organized and substantiated knowledge about the world. In the Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary we find the following definition: science is a sphere of human activity, the main task of which is the development and theoretical schematization of objective knowledge about reality; a branch of culture that did not exist at all times and not among all peoples.

Particular sciences are turned to the phenomena and processes of real reality that exist objectively, independently of either man or mankind. They are not interested in the moral aspect human life, in their search they do not take into account the categories of good and evil. Science formulates its conclusions in theories, laws and formulas, excluding from the spectrum of research the scientist's attitude to the phenomena under study and the social consequences that this or that discovery may lead to.

According to B. Russell, all private sciences are faced with unknown facts about the world, but "when a person enters the border regions or goes beyond them, he falls from science into the sphere of speculation." The sciences are oriented toward everyday life, addressing specific issues that determine the quality of life. While philosophy considers the most general forms of human experience, not always giving specific practical results.

Obviously, no scientific discipline, including philosophy, can absorb the entire body of knowledge about the world. This fact determines the deep continuity between the particular sciences and philosophy. At a certain stage, philosophy has the characteristics of science: it forms its principles and patterns on the basis of specific scientific material obtained empirically from specific sciences; philosophy, in turn, forms the methodological foundation for further scientific growth. Special sciences, on the other hand, need a philosophical understanding of the knowledge accumulated by them.

In the XIX century there was a special direction of philosophical research, the so-called. philosophy of science. The need to develop a special philosophical methodological base for a particular science appears as the theoretical component of scientific knowledge grows. Elements of the problems of the philosophy of science are found already in ancient philosophy, but the own problems of this discipline are indicated only from the New Age.

The subject of studying the philosophy of science is the structure and development of scientific knowledge as a whole. The philosophy of science chooses as its basis the problems of science as an epistemological (epistemology - theory of knowledge) and sociocultural phenomenon.

The place of the philosophy of science in the structure of scientific knowledge is determined by the ability to realize the epistemological and sociocultural needs of science with the help of its internal, historically formed concepts and problems. The philosophy of science gives consciousness constructive-critical functions in relation to the existing scientific and cognitive practice.

The own problems of the philosophy of science, as a separate discipline, are formed in the works of W. Whewell, J.S. Mill, O. Comte, G. Spencer, J. Herschel. Due to the fact that in the 19th century the social role of scientific work increases so much that it becomes a form of professional activity, the works of these and other authors led to the formulation of a specific normative-critical task: to bring scientific and cognitive activity in line with some philosophical and methodological ideal.

The path traveled by the philosophy of science from the moment of self-determination as a separate scientific discipline has become the basis of the modern image of science. Its most important feature is that scientific knowledge, without differences in subject and method, turns out to be socially and culturally relative (relative), as well as historically changeable. On this basis, it is supposed to overcome the confrontation between the natural sciences and the humanities. The search for the unity of scientific knowledge is now taking place not only on the basis of the natural sciences, but also on the basis of the humanities. However, at the same time, such concepts as truth and objectivity practically disappear from the reasoning of philosophers of science. The main thing in the philosophy of science is the central concept of the methodology of the humanities - the concept of interpretation, and the role of a single methodological foundation of modern science, in this case, begins to claim philosophical hermeneutics.

The current state of the philosophy of science is determined by two reductionist tendencies. The naturalistic trend implies the dissolution of the philosophy of science in interdisciplinary research, such as synergetics, cognitive science, science of science. The humanitarian trend leads to the transformation of the discipline into literary criticism, anthropology, and cultural studies. Preservation of belonging to the sphere of philosophical research is possible only taking into account the heuristic potential of the scientific field, critical reflection against the background of a deeper development of those fundamental goals and values ​​that form the core of a rationalistic worldview.

Art criticism, in a broad sense, is the scientific study of art both in its entirety and in its individual forms. The subject of literary criticism - fiction - is one of the art forms.

For a correct understanding of this issue, it must be borne in mind that in modern Russian the word "art" is used in four different meanings. “Iskus” in general is a test, an experience; therefore, in the broadest sense, “art” is any outstanding ability to do something, the ability to achieve excellent results in any business. In other words, it's all skill. A miner and a gardener, a tractor driver and an engineer, a teacher and a doctor, an enterprise manager and a military leader, a painter and a violinist, a chess player and a football player, etc. can be masters of their craft.

In another, narrower, less general meaning, “art” is not any kind of skill, but only such that is manifested in the creation of individual finished objects, works, structures that have a great degree of sophistication and elegance in their design. Such items include works of so-called applied art: these are elegantly designed clothes, furniture, utensils, various jewelry, decorations for private and public premises (wallpaper, carpets, chandeliers, etc.); bound books, different kinds musical instruments; some types of personal weapons, etc. This may also include some means of transportation - graceful carriages, cars, airplanes, yachts, etc. Finally, works of art - paintings, sculptures, musical plays - are also distinguished by the elegance of design , theatrical and dance performances, works of belles-lettres, etc.

All such works, if they are made with great skill, are distinguished by the perfection of execution, have the expediency of the ratio and arrangement of their parts, their correspondence and proportionality, finishing and completeness of details. This way they make a positive aesthetic impression. "Art" in the second, narrower sense is creativity according to the laws of beauty.

The beauty of works created by hands of a person, lies in the correspondence of their form to the content embodied in it, the purpose of one or another kind of such works. This is the basic law of beauty. But the purpose of works created according to this aesthetic law is profoundly different. Therefore, their beauty contains significant differences.

Works of applied art and similar structures belong to the field of material culture of human society. All of them serve the practical, material needs of people. The form of elegant clothing, furniture, utensils, decoration of premises, carriages, etc., primarily corresponds to the practical purpose of these works, in each of their kind - its own, special. At the same time, it is determined, of course, by the properties of the materials from which such objects are made, as well as by the means and quality of the technical processing of these materials.
An essential feature of works of applied art is also that, while fulfilling their main practical purpose, they do not contain the reproduction of life that exists outside of them, and do not express its generalizing understanding and evaluation.

Works that are also created according to the law of conformity between form and content, but related not to the realm of the material, but to the realm of the spiritual culture of human society, have a completely different purpose and a different beauty. These are works of artistic creativity proper—literary, musical, pictorial, sculptural works, etc. They satisfy not the material and practical needs of people, but their spiritual interests, aspirations, and demands.

As a result, they always include in themselves a figurative reproduction of the phenomena of reality that is outside them (the external appearance of people, relationships, events, circumstances of human life, inner peace people, natural phenomena), and at the same time express in their images one or another comprehension and emotional assessment of the phenomena of life reproduced in them. Works of artistic creativity are one of the types of social consciousness.

This is the third, even narrower, meaning of the word "art." This is art in all its forms.
Finally, "art" is often called only its spatial types - painting, sculpture, architecture. The science about them is called “art history”, and the people who study them are called “art historians”. This is the fourth and narrowest meaning of the word "art".
Thus, the subject of literary criticism is only such literature, which belongs to the field of art, artistic creativity. By studying art literature, literary criticism thus becomes one of the art history sciences, such as art history, musicology, theater studies, etc. It cannot develop without connection with other art sciences, without taking into account their observations and generalizations about artistic creativity.

From all this it follows that the tasks and principles and/studies of artistic literature are indeed completely different in literary criticism and linguistics. Linguistics studies the lexical, phonetic, and grammatical features of the languages ​​in which these works are created in literary works.

Literary criticism studies literary works not only in terms of their language, but also in terms of the unity of their ideological content and form. For him, the language of works, more precisely artistic speech, - this is only one of the sides of the art form, which exists in close connection with its other sides - with the selection of details of the depicted phenomena of life, with the composition of works. The literary critic examines all the features of the work, in particular the features of speech, from the point of view of ideological content and, at the same time, from an aesthetic point of view, which does not interest the linguist.

Introduction to literary criticism: Proc. for philology.. spec. high fur boots / G.N. Pospelov, P.A. Nikolaev, I.F. Volkov and others; Ed. G.N. Pospelov. - 3rd ed., Rev. and additional - M.: Higher. school, 1988. - 528s.

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Chapter I LITERARY STUDIES AS A SCIENCE

LITERARY STUDIES AND LINGUISTICS

literary criticism 1 - one of the two philological sciences - the science of literature. Another philological science, the science of language, is linguistics, or linguistics (lat. lingua - language). These sciences have much in common: both of them - each in its own way - study the phenomena of literature. Therefore, over the past centuries, they have developed in close connection with each other, under the general name "philology" (Greek phileo - I love and logos - the word).

In essence, literary criticism and linguistics are different sciences, since they set themselves different cognitive tasks. Linguistics studies all kinds of phenomena of literature, more precisely, the phenomena of people's verbal activity, in order to establish in them the features of the regular development of those languages ​​spoken and written by various peoples around the world. Literary criticism studies the fiction of various peoples of the world in order to understand the features and patterns of its own content and the forms that express them.

Nevertheless, literary criticism and linguistics constantly interact with each other and help each other. Along with other phenomena of literature, fiction serves as a very important material.

1 This word is formed by analogy with the corresponding German name Literaturwissenschaft.

Scrap for linguistic observations and conclusions about common features languages ​​of certain peoples. But the peculiarities of the languages ​​of works of art, like any other, arise in connection with the peculiarities of their content. And literary criticism can give linguistics a lot to understand these substantive features of fiction, which explain the peculiarities of language peculiar to it. But for its part, literary criticism in the study of the form of works of art cannot do without knowledge of the features and history of the languages ​​in which these works are written. This is where linguistics comes to the rescue. This help is different in the study of literature at different stages of its development.

The subject of literary criticism is not only fiction, but also the entire artistic literature of the world - written and oral. In the earliest epochs of the historical life of peoples, they had no "literature" at all. Literature for each nation arose only when it somehow mastered writing - created or borrowed a certain system of signs to record individual statements or entire verbal works. Before the creation or assimilation of writing, all peoples created verbal works orally, stored them in their collective memory and distributed them in oral transmission. So they had all sorts of fairy tales, legends, songs, proverbs, conspiracies, etc.

In science, all works of oral folk art are called "folklore" (English, folk - people, lore - knowledge, teaching). In each nation, the working masses continued to create works of oral creativity even after the emergence of national writing, which for a long time served mainly the ruling classes and state, as well as church institutions. Folklore developed in parallel with fiction, interacted with it and often had a great influence on it. It still exists today.

But also fiction in different historical epochs had different possibilities of its existence and distribution. The peoples usually mastered writing at the time when the class system of society was just emerging among them and government. However, they take a long time to print their verbal works.

have not yet been able to. Among the most advanced peoples of Western Europe, printing began to spread only in the middle of the 15th century. So, in Germany, the first printer was Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the printing press in 1440. In Russia, under Ivan IV (the Terrible), the first printer was deacon Ivan Fedorov, who opened his printing house in 1563 in Moscow. But his undertaking did not receive wide recognition at that time, and the printing business developed in our country only at the beginning of the 18th century, during the reign of Peter I.

Rewriting large works by hand was a very time-consuming and painstaking task. They were engaged in scribes, often people of clergy. Their work was long, and the works existed in a relatively small number of copies - "lists", of which many were made from other lists. At the same time, the connection with the original work was often lost, scribes often freely treated the text of the work, introducing their own corrections, additions, abbreviations, as well as random errors. The scribes signed the lists, and the names of the authors of the works were constantly forgotten. The authorship of some, sometimes the most significant works, such as The Tale of Igor's Campaign, has not yet been firmly established.

As a result, the scientific study of ancient and medieval literatures is a very complicated matter. It requires finding manuscripts in ancient book depositories, archives, comparing various lists and editions of works, and dating them. The determination of the time of creation of works and on the basis of their lists occurs by examining the material on which they are written, the manner of writing and handwriting of correspondence, the peculiarities of the language of the authors and the scribes themselves, the composition of facts, persons, events depicted or only mentioned in the works, etc. e. And here linguistics comes to the aid of literary criticism, giving it knowledge on the history of the development of certain languages, deciphering certain systems of signs and records. On this basis, a separate philological discipline (a part of science) arose, called "paleography", that is, descriptions of antiquities (gr. palaios - ancient, grapho - I write). The study of ancient and medieval literatures of different peoples by literary critics is impossible without an in-depth knowledge of linguistics and paleography.

When studying the literatures of the last centuries, help is also required from linguistics (but to a lesser extent).

The literary languages ​​of various peoples, in which works of art were created and are being created, appearing relatively late, gradually developing historically. They change the lexical composition and grammatical structure: some words become obsolete, others acquire a new meaning, new turns of speech appear, syntactic constructions are used in a new way, etc. In addition, in their works, writers often use to some extent ( in the speech of characters, in the narration of narrators) by local social dialects that differ in their vocabulary and grammar from the literary language of the same people. Based on linguistic knowledge, literary critics must take all this into account when considering works.

But the creation of works of art and their appearance in print are often very complex processes. Often, writers do not create their works immediately, but over a long period of time, making new and new amendments and additions to them, coming to new versions and revisions of the text. Known, for example, are several versions of Lermontov's poem The Demon, two editions of Taras Bulba and Gogol's The Government Inspector. For one reason or another, writers sometimes entrust the editing and preparation for publication of their works to other persons, who, showing their interests and tastes, make certain changes to the text. So, Turgenev, editing Fet's poems, corrected them in accordance with his aesthetic requirements. Katkov, publishing the novel "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev in the journal "Russian Messenger", distorted its text in favor of reactionary political views. Often the same work, both during the life of the writer and after his death, is published several times and in different editions. So, L. Tolstoy published the novel "War and Peace" three times with significant changes in the text. Often, censorship demanded changes and abbreviations of the text from the writer and the editor, or even forbade the appearance of individual works in print. Then the works remained in manuscripts, archives of writers, magazines, publishing houses, printed either without the name of the author (anonymously), or abroad, in publishing houses of other countries. So, it has not yet been established with complete certainty who was the author of the poetic response sent from Siberia to Pushkin to the "Message to Siberia" - A. Odoevsky or someone else from the exiles

Decembrists. The novel "Prologue", written by Chernyshevsky in exile, could not appear in print in Russia and was published in London only many years after its creation.

Literary critics often have to carry out difficult and complex work to establish the authenticity of texts, their completeness and completeness, their compliance with the will of the author and his intentions, their belonging to one and not another writer, etc.

Therefore, as part of literary criticism, a special discipline has developed, called "textology". If literary scholars studying ancient and medieval literature should master the relevant sections of linguistics and paleography well, then literary scholars studying new and latest literature should rely on linguistic research and textual data. Otherwise, they may make gross mistakes in understanding and evaluating the works.

LITERARY AND ART STUDIES

Art criticism, in a broad sense, is the scientific study of art both in its entirety and in its individual forms. The subject of literary criticism - fiction - is one of the art forms.

For a correct understanding of this issue, it must be borne in mind that in modern Russian the word "art" is used in four different meanings. "Iskus" in general is a test, an experience; therefore, in the broadest sense, "art" is any outstanding ability to do something, the ability to achieve excellent results in any business. In other words, it's all skill. A miner and a gardener, a tractor driver and an engineer, a teacher and a doctor, an enterprise manager and a military leader, a painter and a violinist, a chess player and a football player, etc., can be masters of their craft. Each of them can perform the tasks he faces with great skill in his own way.

In another, narrower, less general meaning, “art” is not any kind of skill, but only that which is manifested in the creation of individual finished objects, works, structures that have a great degree of sophistication and elegance in their design. These items include works of so-called applied art: these are elegantly designed

Clothing, furniture, utensils, various jewelry, furnishings for private and public spaces (wallpaper, carpets, chandeliers, etc.); bound books, various kinds of musical instruments; some types of personal weapons, etc. This may also include some means of transportation - elegant carriages, cars, airplanes, yachts, etc. Finally, works of art - paintings, sculptures, musical plays, theater and dance performances, belles lettres, etc.

All such works, if they are made with great skill, are distinguished by the perfection of execution, have the expediency of the ratio and arrangement of their parts, their correspondence and proportionality, finishing and completeness of details. This way they make a positive aesthetic impression. "Art" in the second, narrower sense is creativity according to the laws of beauty.

The beauty of works created by human hands lies in the correspondence of their form to the content embodied in it, the purpose of one or another kind of such works. This is the basic law of beauty. But the purpose of works created according to this aesthetic law is profoundly different. Therefore, their beauty contains significant differences.

Works of applied art and similar structures belong to the field of material culture of human society. All of them serve the practical, material needs of people. The form of elegant clothing, furniture, utensils, decoration of premises, carriages, etc., primarily corresponds to the practical purpose of these works, in each of their kind - its own, special. At the same time, it is determined, of course, by the properties of the materials from which such objects are made, as well as by the means and quality of the technical processing of these materials.

An essential feature of works of applied art is also that, while fulfilling their main practical purpose, they do not contain the reproduction of life that exists outside of them, and do not express its generalizing understanding and evaluation.

Works that are also created according to the law of conformity of form and content, but do not belong to the field, have a completely different purpose and beauty.

material, but to the field of spiritual culture of human society. These are works of artistic creativity proper - works of literature, music, painting, sculpture, etc. They satisfy not the material and practical needs of people, but their spiritual interests, aspirations and demands.

As a result, they always contain a different reproduction of the phenomena of reality that is outside them (the external appearance of people, relationships, events, circumstances of human life, the inner world of people, natural phenomena), and at the same time express in their images this or that comprehension and emotional evaluation of the phenomena of life reproduced in them. Works of artistic creativity are one of the types of social consciousness.

This is the third, even narrower, meaning of the word "art." This is art in all its forms.

Finally, "art" is often called only its spatial types - painting, sculpture, architecture. The science about them is called "art history", and the people who study them are called "art historians". This is the fourth and narrowest meaning of the word "art".

Thus, the subject of literary criticism is only such literature, which belongs to the field of art, artistic creativity. By studying artistic literature, literary criticism thus becomes a number of art history sciences, such as art history, musicology, theater studies, etc. It cannot develop without connection with other art sciences, without taking into account their observations and generalizations about artistic creativity.

From all this it follows that the tasks and principles and / the study of artistic literature are indeed completely different in literary criticism and linguistics. Linguistics studies lexical, phonetic, grammatical

1 Other types of social consciousness are science, philosophy, socio-political theories, legal norms, moral rules, religious teachings. All of them contain one or another system of views, one or another generalizing understanding of life. Due to their generalizing content, they, like art, have not personal, not private, but social significance.

Features of the languages ​​in which these works are created. Literary criticism studies literary works not only in terms of their language, but also in terms of the unity of their ideological content and form. For him, the language of works, or rather artistic speech, is only one of the sides of the artistic form, which exists in close connection with its other sides - with the selection of details of the depicted phenomena of life, with the composition of works. The literary critic examines all the features of the work, in particular the features of speech, from the point of view of ideological content and, at the same time, from an aesthetic point of view, which does not interest the linguist.

LITERARY STUDIES - SOCIAL HISTORICAL SCIENCE

Works of artistic literature always belong to one or another people in the language of which they are created, and to a certain era in the history of this people. Literary criticism cannot fail to take into account the close connection between the development of artistic literature and the historical life of individual peoples. Moreover, it makes the understanding of these connections the basis of its study. As a result, literary criticism itself acts as a social and historical science, standing among the historical sciences that study the development of the social life of the peoples of the world from different angles.

Works of artistic literature always reflect the originality of the historical era of national life in which they were created. This applies in particular to works of fiction. Folklore works live for centuries in the memory of the people in the oral transmission of many generations of singers and storytellers. Naturally, at the same time they gradually change in their content and form, sometimes very significantly. And it is often difficult to discern in them the features of the time in which they originally arose.

Fiction, especially printed literature, lives differently. Her works, created in a certain era, then remain unchanged for centuries, even millennia, and retain the originality of the time that created them. In the peculiarities of their content and form, they often reflect not only the characteristic features of an entire historical era, but also of its individual period, sometimes

Even a certain moment of the socio-political, ideological, cultural development of a particular nation.

Without an understanding of this, without knowledge of the many facts, events, relationships characteristic of the time when certain works arose, without the ability to penetrate into the very “spirit” of that era or its period, it is impossible to scientifically study fiction.

Therefore, a literary critic should always turn to other "historical sciences, so that they arm him with the appropriate knowledge and information. He needs the ability to realize the unique originality of each period of national historical life and its reflection in the features of artistic content and form literary works- historicism of literary thinking.

Of fundamental importance for literary criticism are the knowledge that can be given by civil history, which studies facts, events, and relations in the social, political, and ideological life of peoples. This science provides, in particular, chronological information - exact data (dates) about when, in what external connection and sequence phenomena and events arose. public life. Using general historical chronology, literary criticism also creates its own chronology, sufficiently accurate and reliable, helping it to establish the external sequence of the appearance of works, and hence the possibilities of their internal communications. Without a general historical and proper literary chronology, the history of literature as a science cannot exist. Ambiguities and errors in chronology can lead to a misunderstanding of the whole process of the literary development of a particular country.

The originality of this or that historical epoch of national life is reflected primarily in the content of literary works created in this epoch, first of all, in what particular phenomena of life are reproduced, what embodiment they found in images.

A writer always belongs to a certain stratum of society of his time, rotates in certain social and cultural circles, he has some peculiarities of education, he is characterized by a certain level of development, he is often a supporter of some political and ideological movement, a participant or even an initiator events taking place in his country. He must always have a report -

Lively views on life, certain social ideals, which he expresses in his works.

What can be understood in the writer's intentions, in the ideological orientation of his works, in the very warehouse of his work without knowing these specific connections, relationships, circumstances of his life and work? Therefore, other historical sciences come to the aid of literary criticism - civil history, the history of social thought, the history of culture. They provide knowledge with the help of which literary critics can understand the real situation, that "atmosphere" of ideological and cultural life, which the writer breathed when he conceived and created his works.

But the facts that make up the actual literary life of the era and everything that characterizes creative thinking and creative activity writers, literary critics find out, study and independently. Like historians, they must be able to sort through archives, find documents and materials, in particular new, unpublished literary texts, and comment on them fully armed with historical knowledge.

A very important task for literary critics is to clarify the ideological and creative biography of individual writers. For this they use various documents, the statements of the writers themselves - their letters, diaries, memoirs, testimonies of their contemporaries, and finally, the works of art themselves. Biographical data are always very important, although auxiliary material for studying the historical development of national literatures, for understanding the peculiarities of their ideological content.

Such are the complex tasks of the historical study of literature in general. But the literature of each nation, created in its language, has its own national characteristics, its own patterns of historical development. Therefore, the scientific study of the literature of each nation requires literary critics and special knowledge - philological, historical, art criticism, and special research experience. As a result, the study of each national literature is a special part of literary criticism, its special "discipline" and needs its own scientific specialists.

At the same time, many national literatures develop over several centuries, a number of historical eras. And in every age they discover

significant features and differences in their content and form. The study of such features and differences also requires special knowledge. Therefore, the history of such literatures as a special scientific discipline is usually subdivided into separate parts, to which literary critics devote their research. For example, the history of Russian literature is subdivided into the history of: "ancient" Russian literature, literature of the 18th century, 19th century, early 20th century, and Russian Soviet literature. Similar subdivisions also exist in the history of other national literatures.

The study of national literatures in their historical originality requires constant comparison and comparison of the works of different countries, different epochs and periods, different writers of the same country and epoch. Sometimes such a comparison is called the "comparative method" of literary criticism. But comparison is not a method of literary criticism. This is a general condition for the knowledge of life, necessary for all sciences, as well as for everyday practical awareness of reality. Without comparison and comparison, it is impossible to distinguish one phenomenon from another, to recognize them, to recognize their features. The method of literary criticism is not just a comparison, it is a certain understanding of the connections that exist between the development of literature and the general development of the life of peoples and all mankind. "Method" (gr. meta - through and hodos - path) literally means the path of research thought through the material, through its subject. Methodology is the theory of method, the doctrine of it.

Literary criticism consists of two large sections - theory and history of literature.

The subject of study for them is the same: works of artistic literature. But they approach the subject differently.

For a theorist, a specific text is always an example general principle, the historian is interested in a particular text in itself.

Literary theory can be defined as an attempt to answer the question, “What is fiction?” That is, how does ordinary language become the material of art? How does literature “work”, why is it able to influence the reader? The history of literature, in the final analysis, is always the answer to the question: “What is written here?” For this, the connection of literature with the context that gave rise to it (historical, cultural, domestic), and the origin of a particular artistic language, and the biography of the writer are studied.

A special branch of literary theory is poetics. It proceeds from the fact that the evaluation and understanding of a work change, while its verbal fabric remains unchanged. Poetics studies precisely this fabric - the text (this word is in Latin and means “fabric”). The text is, roughly speaking, certain words in a certain order. Poetics teaches us to single out in it those “threads” of which it is woven: lines and stops, paths and figures, objects and characters, episodes and motifs, themes and ideas...

Side by side, with literary criticism there is criticism, it is even sometimes considered part of the science of literature. This is justified historically: for a long time, philology dealt only with antiquities, leaving the entire field modern literature criticism. Therefore, in some countries (English - and French-speaking) the science of literature is not separated from criticism (as well as from philosophy, and from intellectual journalism). There, literary criticism is usually called that - critics, critique. But Russia learned the sciences (including philology) from the Germans: our word “literary criticism” is a tracing paper from the German Literaturwissenschaft. And the Russian science of literature (like the German one) is essentially the opposite of criticism.

Criticism is literature about literature. The philologist tries to see someone else's consciousness behind the text, to take the point of view of a different culture. If he writes, for example, about “Hamlet”, then his task is to understand what Hamlet was for Shakespeare. The critic always remains within the framework of his culture: he is more interested in understanding what Hamlet means to us. This is a completely legitimate approach to literature - only creative, not scientific. “It is possible to classify flowers into beautiful and ugly, but what will this give for science?” - wrote the literary critic B. I. Yarkho.

The attitude of critics (and writers in general) towards literary criticism is often hostile. The artistic consciousness perceives the scientific approach to art as an attempt with unsuitable means. This is understandable: the artist is simply obliged to defend his truth, his vision. The scientist's striving for objective truth is alien and unpleasant to him. He is inclined to accuse science of pettiness, of soullessness, of blasphemous dismemberment of the living body of literature. The philologist does not remain in debt: the judgments of writers and critics seem to him lightweight, irresponsible and not going to the point. This was well expressed by R. O. Jacobson. The American University where he taught was going to entrust the chair of Russian literature to Nabokov: “After all, he is a great writer!” Jacobson objected: “The elephant is also a big animal. We do not offer him to head the department of zoology!”

But science and creativity are quite capable of interacting. Andrei Bely, Vladislav Khodasevich, Anna Akhmatova left a noticeable mark in literary criticism: the artist's intuition helped them see what eluded others, and science provided methods of proof and rules for presenting their hypotheses. And vice versa, literary critics V. B. Shklovsky and Yu. N. Tynyanov wrote remarkable prose, the form and content of which were largely determined by their scientific views.

Philological literature is connected by many threads with philosophy. After all, any science, cognizing its subject, simultaneously cognizes the world as a whole. And the structure of the world is no longer a topic of science, but of philosophy.

Of the philosophical disciplines, aesthetics is closest to literary criticism. Of course, the question: “What is beautiful?” - not scientific. A scientist can study how this question was answered in different centuries in different countries (this is quite a philological problem); can explore how and why a person reacts to such and such artistic features (this is a psychological problem), but if he himself begins to talk about the nature of beauty, he will not be engaged in science, but in philosophy (we remember: “good - bad” - not scientific concepts). But at the same time, he is simply obliged to answer this question for himself - otherwise he will have nothing to approach literature with.

Another philosophical discipline that is not indifferent to the science of literature is epistemology, that is, the theory of knowledge. What do we learn through literary text? Is it a window to the world (into a foreign consciousness, into a foreign culture) - or a mirror in which we and our problems are reflected?

No single answer is satisfactory. If a work is only a window through which we see something that is foreign to us, then what do we really care about other people's affairs? If books written many centuries ago are able to excite us, then they contain something that concerns us.

But if the main thing in a work is what we see in it, then the author is powerless. It turns out that we are free to put any content into the text - to read, for example, “Cockroach” as love lyrics, and “Nightingale Garden” as political propaganda. If this is not so, it means that the understanding is right and wrong. Any work is multi-valued, but its meaning is located within certain boundaries, which, in principle, can be outlined. This is the difficult task of a philologist.

The history of philosophy is in general a discipline as philological as it is philosophical. The text of Aristotle or Chaadaev requires the same study as the text of Aeschylus or Tolstoy. In addition, the history of philosophy (especially Russian) is difficult to separate from the history of literature: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tyutchev are the largest figures in the history of Russian philosophical thought. Conversely, the writings of Plato, Nietzsche or Fr. Pavel Florensky belong not only to philosophy, but also to artistic prose.

No science exists in isolation: its field of activity always intersects with adjacent fields of knowledge. The area closest to literary criticism is, of course, linguistics. “Literature is the highest form of the existence of language,” the poets said more than once. Its study is unthinkable without a subtle and deep knowledge of the language - as without understanding rare words and phrases (“On the way, a combustible White stone”- what is it?), and without knowledge in the field of phonetics, morphology, etc.

Literary criticism borders on history. Once upon a time, philology was generally an auxiliary discipline that helped the historian work with written sources, and the historian needs such help. But history also helps the philologist to understand the era when this or that author worked. In addition, historical works were part of fiction for a long time: the books of Herodotus and Julius Caesar, Russian chronicles and N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” are outstanding monuments of prose.

Art history - in general, is engaged in almost the same thing as literary criticism: after all, literature is only one of the art forms, only the best studied. The arts develop interconnectedly, constantly exchanging ideas. So, romanticism is an era not only in literature, but also in music, painting, sculpture, even in landscape gardening art. And since the arts are interconnected, their study is interconnected.

AT recent times cultural studies is rapidly developing - an area at the intersection of history, art history and literary criticism. It studies the interconnections of such different areas as everyday behavior, art, science, military affairs, etc. After all, all this is born from the same human consciousness. And it sees and comprehends the world differently in different eras and in different countries. The culturologist seeks to find and formulate just those very deep ideas about the world, about the place of man in the universe, about the beautiful and the ugly, about good and evil, which underlie this culture. They have their own logic and are reflected in all areas of human activity.

But even such a seemingly remote area from literature as mathematics is not separated from philology by an impenetrable line. Mathematical methods are actively used in many areas of literary criticism (for example, in textual criticism). Some philological problems may attract a mathematician as a field of application of his theories: for example, Academician A. N. Kolmogorov, one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, dealt a lot with poetic rhythm, based on the theory of probability.

It makes no sense to enumerate all the areas of culture, one way or another connected with literary criticism: there is no area that would be completely indifferent to him. Philology is the memory of culture, and culture cannot exist without the memory of the past.