A history of Russian literary theory and criticism: The Soviet age and beyond
Abstract
This edited volume assembles the work of leading international scholars in a comprehensive history of Russian literary theory and criticism from 1917 to the post-Soviet age. By examining the dynamics of literary criticism and theory in three arenas-political, intellectual, and institutional-the authors capture the progression and structure of Russian literary criticism and its changing function and discourse. The chapters follow early movements such as formalism, the Bakhtin Circle, Proletklut, futurism, the fellow-travelers, and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. By the cultural revolution of 1928, literary criticism became a mechanism of Soviet policies, synchronous with official ideology. The chapters follow theory and criticism into the 1930s with examinations of the Union of Soviet Writers, semantic paleontology, and socialist realism under Stalin. A more "humanized" literary criticism appeared during the ravaging years of World War II, only to be supplanted by a return to the party line, Soviet heroism, and anti-Semitism in the late Stalinist period. During Khrushchev's Thaw, there was a remarkable rise in liberal literature and criticism, that was later refuted in the nationalist movement of the "long" 1970s. The same decade saw, on the other hand, the rise to prominence of semiotics and structuralism. Postmodernism and a strong revival of academic literary studies have shared the stage since the start of the post-Soviet era. For the first time anywhere, this collection analyzes all of the important theorists and major critical movements during a tumultuous ideological period in Russian history, including developments in émigré literary theory and criticism. Copyright
This paper examines the transformations of contemporary cultural policy in the Russian Federation on three basic levels: organizational, politico-discursive, and legislative. It also establishes the continuity and differences in that policy vis-à-vis the Soviet period. The principal thesis of this article is that the organizational behavior of the state sector of cultural policy currently seeks to reproduce the model that emerged in the final period of the USSR’s existence. State cultural organizations competing for state resources publicly demonstrate ritualistic ceremonial behavior in relation to political discourse and the established legal system, but at the same time avoid direct ideological instrumentalization of their activities, while seeking to support, update, and expand their network.
O presente artigo tem por objetivo discutir o nascimento da moderna teoria literária,
considerando a Escola Formal como ponto de partida da constituição dos estudos literários
como disciplina autônoma. Os primeiros movimentos dos teóricos do Formalismo buscaram compor um corpo conceitual próprio e entender o fenômeno literário como algo emancipado de categorias da sociologia, da filosofia ou da psicologia. Tal esforço produziu resultados originais, mas também gerou impasses que estão na base da crise da teoria literária nos anos 1970 e 1980, momento em que emergem as chamadas pós-teorias, que trouxeram para o centro das atenções elementos extra-literários (gênero, política, perspectiva decolonial). Este artigo argumenta que tais impasses se tornaram evidentes já nos primeiros momentos da Escola Formal, quando ela precisou confrontar sua construção teórica com a prática da crítica literária. Ambas as esferas, ao mesmo tempo em que se retroalimentam, explicitavam as deficiências e limites de cada uma.
This article examines the problem of music criticism in Georgia during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Criticism and music criticism, in particular, as an “art of discussion and analysis” became “destructive” and dangerous for totalitarian regimes. Authentic criticism was replaced by
“quasi-criticism,” which was driven by the do’s and don’ts of the regime. Thus, the following issues are discussed in the article: how development
of music criticism reflected the social-political changes in Georgia after occupation (since 1921) and to what extent musical processes have
been influenced there. Consequently, attention is drawn to the decades from the 1920s to the 1950s and from the 1960s to the 1980s, and
the situation is analyzed through the lens of Soviet aesthetics. In that regard, Grigory Orjonikidze’s works are identified as the most influential
and mind-opening examples in the development of Georgian music criticism under Soviet rule.
The reconsideration of music criticism became topical at the end of the last century (the late ‘90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed). In the
postmodern reality, musical criticism had to rediscover its role, redesign its values, and regain its place through the perspective of both local
and global realities. The following issues are discussed: the influence of the mass media; social media’s effects on the development of music
criticism; and coexistence of “description-” as well as the “analysis-” based attitude towards the musical processes.
Keywords: Georgian music criticism, “quasi criticism”, soviet and post-soviet aesthetics, products and information process, Grigory Orjonikidze.
In Mukhtar Auezov's 1942 novel Abai Zholy, socialism is an end anticipated not just by history but more specifically by Kazakh literary history. In his earlier scholarly writings, Auezov had presented Abai as a transformational figure in the emergence of written Kazakh literature. In the novel, Abai becomes not only a literary innovator but also a political reformist: Auezov's Abai is horrified by the harsh and feudalistic behavior of his father Qunanbai, a wealthy local leader, and finds companionship and inspiration in his encounters with a series of famous 19th century Kazakh aqyns (bards). Auezov thus used Abai Zholy to argue that Kazakh folk literature had always been animated by a spirit of social critique which, in its laments and desires, had anticipated the Soviet world. This paper compares these aqyns' depiction in the novel first with Auezov's earlier scholarship on the 19th century and second with the content of the aqyns' own surviving works. These ideas reflected both contemporaneous shifts in Soviet nationalities policy and the influence of socialist realist literary models, which commonly staged both literary history and generational conflicts as allegories of political change.
At the center of the young Parisian writers’ provocative revisions to the classical canon of Russian literature was their dismissal of Pushkin, whose proverbial “harmony” was no longer relevant in their post-apocalyptic world. Underpinning their attack on the most sacred icon in the Russian cultural pantheon was certainly no rejection of Pushkin’s poetry as such. Rather, the young generation sought to assert its independent identity by deconstructing the Pushkin-centered discourse of the mainstream diaspora and establishing an alternative aesthetic and spiritual genealogy.
The life and career of the Soviet scholar of myth and religion Izrail′ Grigor′evič Frank-Kamenetskij is discussed, tracing
his development from a scholar working exclusively on semitology to a theorist of myth and literature. The scholar’s relationship
to German philosophy and Biblical scholarship is outlined, along with his relationship to Soviet scholarship of the 1920s
and 1930s. The development of the scholar’s work is related to his encounter with N. Ja. Marr in the early 1920s, and the
way in which Marr’s doctrine underwent considerable revisions when subjected to German philosophy and applied to narrative
material is detailed. Finally the way in which attention increasingly turned to the genesis of literary plots and poetic metaphor
is discussed, along with both the influence such work exerted and the enduring value of such work today.
KeywordsFrank-Kamenetskij–Marrism–Semantic palaeontology–Myth–Religion–Narrative
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