Lecture
The literary process is a multifaceted historical and artistic phenomenon characterized by changes in the styles and directions of artistic creativity, in the expressive-figurative system of artistic means, in the thematic and genre distinctiveness of works, and so on. The literary process is conditioned by many factors of an artistic and social nature, in particular by the intensity of literary life in a given region or in a certain cultural center of the country. The development of the literary process is a diverse and, in many respects, ambiguous phenomenon. At the same time, it has clear operating parameters, a number of features that change from century to century, characterizing the cultural-artistic unity of Ukrainian literature. In this connection, in our opinion, it is fruitful to consider the contribution to Ukrainian artistic expression not only of well-known literary centers, but also of individual regions. It is worth noting that such studies should rest on the idea of the artistic integrity of Ukrainian literature, on its unique character within the world cultural process.
The historical-literary process is a set of universally significant changes in literature. Literature is continuously developing. Each era enriches art with some new artistic discoveries. The study of the patterns of literary development constitutes the concept of the «historical-literary process». The development of the literary process is determined by the following artistic systems: creative method, style, genre, literary directions and currents.
The continuous change of literature is an obvious fact, but significant changes do not occur every year, nor even every decade. As a rule, they are connected with major historical shifts (the change of historical epochs and periods, wars, revolutions associated with the emergence of new social forces onto the historical stage, and so on). The main stages in the development of European art can be identified, which determined the specifics of the historical-literary process: antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The development of the historical-literary process is conditioned by a whole range of factors, among which one should above all note the historical situation (the socio-political order, ideology, etc.), and the influence of preceding literary traditions and the artistic experience of other peoples. For example, Pushkin's work was seriously influenced by the work of his predecessors not only in Russian literature (Derzhavin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky, and others) but also in European literature (Voltaire, Rousseau, Byron, and others).
The literary process is a complex system of literary interactions. It represents the formation, functioning, and succession of various literary directions and currents.
The progressive development of world literature — which is what the concept of «literary process» is primarily associated with — is conditioned by socio-economic and internal laws of the movement of art in time and space. What is the driving force of the literary process? What determines the movement of literary creativity and the direction of this movement? These difficult questions have long interested literary scholars. Discussions on this account continue to this day. Naturally, one of the leading factors stimulating the literary process is social reality, which is in constant motion, change, and contradiction. «The historical process determines the artist,» asserted Yu. Borev. Literary development, in the end, depends on the economic condition of the state, on the level of its material production. However, the history of world literature shows that reducing all the levers stimulating artistic development solely to economics amounts to vulgarizing this process. Here one must take into account as fully as possible the dialectic of the internal and external factors determining the dynamics of the development of the literary process.
In literary development, economic relations and socio-political processes are external factors of movement. The contradictions embedded in literature itself — its tradition and innovation, which is a direct or mediated response to the demands of life — constitute the internal factors of the development of literature. The dialectical combination of external and internal factors is decisive in artistic development. The development of literature, the appearance in it of substantially new phenomena, arises on the soil of those artistic traditions that were established in it much earlier. The economic condition of the state by itself creates nothing new in literature, but it can exert a substantial influence on the change of literary traditions, stimulating or, conversely, restraining artistic creativity. The literary process is also influenced by certain forms of social consciousness, namely: philosophy, religion, politics, law, science, and morality. The interaction of the literary process with philosophy, for example, can be clearly seen in the influence of existentialist ideas on the artistic work of Sartre and Camus, or of Descartes's philosophy on the literary practice of classicism and the theoretical work of Boileau. The introduction of Christianity largely determined the development of Old Russian literature.
The development of the literary process is also influenced by other forms of art — music, theater, painting, architecture, sculpture, choreography, and, in the most recent times, cinema and television. A noticeable influence on the evolution of literature is also exerted by mythology, rituals and rites, oral folk creativity, ethnography, and the mentality of the people; recently some of these factors have undergone a kind of absolutization. This applies above all to myths. The influence of diverse aesthetic and cultural types of activity on literature has combined with the pressure of literature's own traditions upon it, contributing to the self-development of literary creativity.
To understand the self-development of literature, one should examine its internal connections, uncover the mechanism of creative mutual influences. Artistic method is the totality of principles of ideological-artistic cognition and figurative reproduction of the world, a way of comprehending reality by means of art. In the history of literature, the following artistic methods are distinguished: baroque, classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism. Each artistic method (with the exception of modernism) has a corresponding literary direction. A direction employs a particular method on which it is based. A literary direction is the concrete-historical embodiment of an artistic method manifesting itself in the ideological-aesthetic community of a group of writers during a certain period of time. A literary direction is a kind of synthesis of an artistic method and the individual style of a writer. Artistic-stylistic directions and currents in literature. Before dealing with specific literary directions, methods, and styles, one should first learn how these concepts are interpreted in literary theory. Artistic method is the totality of principles of ideological-artistic cognition and figurative reproduction of the world, a way of comprehending reality by means of art. In the history of literature, the following artistic methods are distinguished: baroque, classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism. Each artistic method (with the exception of modernism) has a corresponding literary direction. A direction employs a particular method on which it is based.
A literary direction is the concrete-historical embodiment of an artistic method manifesting itself in the ideological-aesthetic community of a group of writers during a certain period of time. A literary direction is a kind of synthesis (combination) of an artistic method and the individual style of a writer. The category of direction presupposes the union of artists on the basis of a shared method, as well as a certain resemblance among individual styles. Each literary direction corresponds to a body of works possessing common, characteristic features. Within a single literary period several literary directions may operate, for example, in the Enlightenment — classicism, rococo, sentimentalism. The name of the dominant (leading) direction often becomes the name of an entire period, and its temporal boundaries become the boundaries of the period (baroque, romanticism, modernism).
The main literary directions:
Literary directions may have constituent parts. These branchings of directions are called currents or schools.
Style is the totality of features characterizing the works of a particular period, direction, or the individual manner of a writer.
Today the concept of style is multifaceted. In literary studies, too, there is an ambiguity in this concept. Researchers consider:
- the style of an era; the style of a direction and a current;
– the style of a writer and the style of a certain period of his work; the style of a work and the style of its individual element.
The most widespread understanding of style in literary scholarship is as the individual creative manner, the "creative face" of a particular writer. Thus, individual style is
the manifestation of a set of special essential features of a writer's talent in a specific
artistic work or in his entire body of work, an individual embodiment of an artistic method.
Literary directions and currents: classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, modernism (symbolism, acmeism, futurism)
In contemporary literary studies, the terms «direction» and «current» can be interpreted in different ways. Sometimes they are used as synonyms (classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, and modernism are called both currents and directions), and sometimes a current is identified with a literary school or grouping, while a direction is identified with an artistic method or style (in this case a direction encompasses two or more currents).
As a rule, a literary direction refers to a group of writers similar in their type of artistic thinking. One can speak of the existence of a literary direction if the writers are aware of the theoretical foundations of their artistic activity and propagate them in manifestos, programmatic statements, and articles. Thus, the first programmatic article of the Russian Futurists was the manifesto «A Slap in the Face of Public Taste», in which the basic aesthetic principles of the new direction were proclaimed.
Under certain circumstances, within the framework of a single literary direction, groups of writers especially close to one another in their aesthetic views may form. Such groups, forming within a given direction, are usually called a literary current. For example, within such a literary direction as symbolism, one can distinguish two currents: the «older» Symbolists and the «younger» Symbolists (according to another classification — three: the Decadents, the «older» Symbolists, and the «younger» Symbolists).
TRADITION AND INNOVATION in the literary process are two dialectically interconnected sides of the literary process. Tradition (from the Latin traditio — transmission) is the ideological-artistic experience, crystallized in the best works of folklore and literature, passed on to succeeding eras and generations, fixed in the artistic tastes of the people, and comprehended and generalized by aesthetic thought and the science of literature. Innovation (from the Latin novator — renewer) is the renewal and enrichment of both the content and the form of literature with new artistic achievements and discoveries: new heroes, progressive ideas, a new creative method, new artistic devices and means. Innovation rests on tradition, develops it, and at the same time forms new traditions; it itself becomes tradition, which in turn serves as the starting point for further innovation. In such an interaction, tradition and innovation form the dialectic of the progressive development of literature and art. The creative quests of true talents always rest on the artistic experience of their predecessors, and above all on national artistic traditions. The literature of every people has its own experience, which, in the course of historical development, embodies the most stable, nationally distinctive features of artistic thinking, passed on to new generations of writers and continued and developed in their work. A new era usually sets new tasks for the writer, requiring new artistic discoveries for their solution, which, however, are possible only in the process of the creative development of tradition. A writer's attitude toward tradition is an essential aspect of his creative program and of his position in literary struggle; it largely determines his place in the literary movement of his time. In this sense, the development of tradition by each writer is a conscious, purposeful process, which manifests itself not only in his artistic work but also in his programmatic statements, declarations, manifestos, and critical writings.
A direction in art and literature of the 17th–18th centuries that succeeded the Renaissance, but was not a rejection of it. The Baroque synthesized the art of the Gothic and the Renaissance.
Defining features of the Baroque:
A direction in European literature and art that first appeared in Italian culture in the 16th century, and reached its greatest flowering in France in the 17th century. This direction
was, to a certain degree, characteristic of all European literatures, and in some it retained its position up to the first quarter of the 19th century. Classicism is characterized by an orientation toward ancient literature,
which was proclaimed ideal, classical, and worthy of imitation.
Distinctive features of classicism:
The Classicists believed that the purpose of literature was to educate a person, but not by way of reading moral lessons or admonitions, but through the enjoyment that art should provide. Sentimentalism. A direction in European literature of the second half of the 18th – early 19th century, characterized by a striving to reproduce the world of feelings of the ordinary person and to evoke the reader's sympathy for the characters of a work. Sentimentalism developed as an assertion of the sensuous, irrational element in artistic creativity, in opposition to the rigid, rationalistic norms of classicism and the cult of the absolutized mind characteristic of the age of the Enlightenment. Sentimentalism got its name from the novel by the English
writer L. Sterne
"A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" (1768). Gradually sentimentalism took hold in other genres as well, changing the genre system of the literature of its time. Sentimentalism rejects the classicist division of genres into «high» and «low»; all of them become equal. Sentimentalist writers discovered the capacity of the ordinary person, uncorrupted by civilization — above all the idealized peasant — for subtle emotional experiences.
Distinctive features of sentimentalism:
Outstanding representatives of this direction are J.-J. Rousseau (France), S. Richardson (England), and J.-W. Goethe (Germany).
In Ukraine, sentimentalism was most vividly manifested in the work of I. Kotlyarevsky
(«Natalka Poltavka») and H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko («Marusya», «Poor Oksana», «Kozyr-Divka», «Sincere Love», and so on).
One of the leading directions in literature, science, and art, which arose in the late 18th century in Germany and existed in the literature of Europe and America in the first half of the 19th century. The Romantics opposed the normativity of Classicist art, its canons and restrictions. As a new type of consciousness and ideology that embraced various spheres of human activity (history, philosophy, law, political economy, psychology, art), Romanticism was connected with a radical change in the entire system of worldview orientations and values.
Defining features of Romanticism:
Romanticism sometimes resorts to the comic, the humorous, the whimsical.
A distinctive phenomenon of Romantic poetics is the so-called «Romantic irony».
A literary direction characterized by a truthful and comprehensive reflection of reality on the basis of the typification of life's phenomena. Beginning in the 1830s,
it developed in France, and subsequently in other European literatures. Unlike
Romanticism, which concentrated attention on the inner world of the person, the central concern of realism
becomes the problem of the relationship between the person and the environment, the influence of socio-historical circumstances on the
formation of the spiritual world (character) of the individual. Instead of an intuitive-sensuous
worldview, a cognitive-analytical principle is placed at the forefront, and
the typification of reality is established as a universal method of artistic generalization.
Defining features of realism:
The general name for the literary directions and schools of the 20th century characterized by formal experimentation, a striving for conventional means, and an anti-realist orientation. Modernist directions arose as a rejection of the naturalistic practice grounded in the philosophy of positivism. The Modernists, unlike the rationalism of their predecessors, placed creative intuition at the forefront, an initiation into the transcendent essence of being (in Kant's philosophy, that which lies beyond consciousness and cognition, i.e., cannot be known). The highest form of knowledge was proclaimed to be not science but poetry, given its phenomenal capacity to animate the world and penetrate the most intimate depths of being. The Modernists deliberately made their creative work anti-democratic and elitist.
Characteristic features of Modernism:
Certain directions of Modernist literature have become classics. Among the most outstanding are Impressionism, Neo-Romanticism, Symbolism, Imagism, Futurism, Acmeism, Expressionism, Surrealism, the «theater of the absurd», Dadaism, the «new novel», and so on. One of the earliest manifestations of Modernism was Decadence.
A direction whose name translates as decline. The literary scholar V. Shchurat (the very one who called I. Franko's collection «Withered Leaves» decadent, to which Franko responded with his poem of denial, «The Decadent») interpreted decadence as a dark inspiration, as an unclear, dimmed nocturnal beauty, and the decadent poet as a person capable of experiencing an independent, «objectless» anguish and of rising «into an ideal world,» disregarding the so-called civic theme and social problems. The term «decadent» was first applied in France to the Symbolists who had departed from the existing literary tradition. This was connected with the fact that in the 1880s, French youth, dissatisfied with the opportunism that reigned in France, demonstratively withdrew from politics and gave themselves over entirely to science, philosophy, and aesthetics.
A stylistic current of Modernism that arose at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Neo-Romantics placed at the forefront the sensuous sphere of the person, emotional-intuitive cognition.
Defining features of Neo-Romanticism:
An artistic direction based on the principle of the direct fixation of impressions, observations, and empathy. It formed in France in the second half of the 19th century, above all in
painting. The term derives from the title of Claude Monet's painting «Impression, Sunrise» («Impression. Soleil levant», 1873). By the end of the 19th century, Impressionism had spread through European
letters. The founders of literary Impressionism are considered to be the Goncourt brothers. It also appeared
in the work of Guy de Maupassant, M. Proust, K. Hamsun, O. Wilde, R. L. Stevenson, A.
Schnitzler, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin, I. Annensky, and others.
Characteristic features of Impressionism:
The poetics of Impressionism were reflected in the work of M. Kotsyubynsky, V. Stefanyk, M. Cheremshyna, partly O. Kobylianska, as well as H. Mykhailychenko, M. Khvylovy, Ye. Pluzhnyk, and others.
A direction whose name comes from the French expression (expression). Like Impressionism, it arose in the work of Western European artists, and later spread to other European
literatures.
Characteristic features of Expressionism:
One of the stylistic currents of Modernism, which arose in France in the 1870s, and spread in Ukrainian literature at the beginning of the 20th century. The main feature of Symbolism is
that a concrete artistic image is transformed into a polysemous symbol.
The theorist of Symbolism is considered to be Charles Baudelaire.
Characteristic features of Symbolism:
Distinctive features of Neoclassicism:
An avant-garde direction whose name translates from Latin as future. It arose in literature at the beginning of the 20th century. As an artistic-stylistic direction, it first announced itself as a variety of Italian avant-gardism. Its theorist was the poet F. T. Marinetti, who propagated a radical break with the entire cultural tradition.
Characteristic features of Futurism:
Distinctive features of Neorealism:
Neorealism manifested itself in the work of V. Vynnychenko, V. Pidmohylny, B. Antonenko-Davydovych, I. Senchenko, V. Domontovych (V. Petrov), and other artists.
A current in literature that formed in Europe in the 1930s–40s and reached its greatest development in the 1950s–60s. The fundamental tenet of existentialism is the postulate that existence precedes essence. In their artistic works, the existentialists strive to understand the true causes of the tragic disorder of human
life.
Defining features of existentialism:
A worldview-artistic direction that, in the last decades of the 20th century, replaced Modernism. This direction is a product of the post-industrial era, an era of the
disintegration of a unified view of the world, of the breakdown of systems — worldview-philosophical, economic, political. The term «postmodernism» was first mentioned in 1917, but it spread only at the end of the 1960s, at first to designate stylistic tendencies in architecture directed against faceless standardization, and soon thereafter — in literature and painting (pop art, op art, «new
realism», happenings, and so on).
Distinctive features of postmodernism:
1. What is an artistic method?
2. What is a literary direction?
3. How does a literary direction differ from a literary current?
4. How is the problem of artistic method interpreted?
5. How are artistic method and the artist's worldview connected?
6. What determines the configurations of artistic methods? How do they come about?
7. Name the literary directions of the 16th–18th centuries.
8. The peculiarities of the literary directions of the 19th century. Romanticism and realism as types of artistic worldview.
9. Name the varieties of modernism.
10. What do we call postmodernism?
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