RUSSIAN CLASSICAL LITERARY CRITICISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF HISTORICAL POETICS

The phrase "classical Russian literary criticism" still exists as a vague notion, the volume and substance of which vary considerably. This circumstance is due to the fact that modern science does not have an authoritative model of the "criticism on the whole" as an invariant of the verbal-logical life. There is no unified notion about the main historical types of literary reflection. The analysis of the meanings of the phrase "literary criticism" in speech and in scientific definitions can serve as the benchmark for problem statement of historical types of literary criticism. The meanings can be divided into three variants: criticism as any verbal reaction to works of the verbal art, criticism as a historical type of literary reflection and criticism as a function. It is supposed that the three definitions of literary criticism were spontaneously formed and supported by the science, the invariant meaning being the last one, reflect the most important moments of the historical evolution of literary reflection. In the first case it is the moment of emerging of literary reflection itself, which at the same time is the moment of origin of literary creation, poetry, in the broad sense of this word. The second definition reflects the situation of categorial demolition of culture; it means cardinal changes in the European literary reflection at the turn of the 18th - 19th cc. The degree of topicality of this literary criticism definition for each national culture shows the degree of resoluteness of changes progressing in its art consciousness. The third definition of the literary criticism sends us to the turn of the 19th - 20th cc signifying the further field fragmentation of art consciousness, separation of literature study into the independent sphere of scientific knowledge. The marked stages of the literary reflection evolution coincide with the ideas about regularities of literary creation which were founded by A.N. Veselovskiy, then developed in the researches of O.M. Fradenberg and E.-R. Kurcius. They independently marked out two principally different periods in the epoch of personal creation. Today, the ideas were complemented by S.S. Averintsev (the description of the reflective-traditionalistic poetics) and by S.N. Broytman (the description of the epoch of art modality and, from our point of view, the principal difference of the classical and neoclassical periods within this epoch). The mentioned considerations let us formulate a hypothesis that Russian classical literary criticism is a national variant of literary reflection of the art modality epoch, commencing due to the cardinal change of creative consciousness at the turn of the 18th - 19th cc, at the classical stage of its developing.