Abstract
In this article I look at changes in the role of literary criticism in Russian literature since perestroika. The article draws on the research of Sergej Čuprinin and Birgit Menzel. Based on my readings of the debate among literary critics about what literary criticism is and should be, and focusing on the interrelationship in the triangle writer-critic-reader, I establish a typology of contemporary literary criticism: 1. the critic as a master of the “literary process”, 2. the critic as co-writer, 3. the critic as a guide for the reader.
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Notes
See also, as a confirming contrast, Bak (2002).
Yurchak (2003), p. 491: “The process of collective writing and cross-imitation cancelled out individual styles, pushing ideological texts in the direction of greater anonymity, replicability, and increasingly cumbersome norms––ideological discourse became hyper-normalized.”
See also Kokšeneva (2002).
Kostyrko (1996) even writes about the “Nemzer phenomenon”.
A similar observation of the close link between Soviet literary criticism and the Soviet state can be found in Menzel (2001), p. 352.
The article was originally published in 1928.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Prof. Ingunn Lunde, Ass. Prof. Michael S. Gorham, Dr. Elena Markasova, PhD Ellen Rutten, Dr. Ursula Phillips, the editor of Studies in East European Thought Prof. Edward M. Swiderski, and one anonymous reviewer for their contributions to the development of this article.
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Paulsen, M. Literary critics in a new era. Stud East Eur Thought 60, 251–260 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9059-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9059-6