На пути к литературной антропологии
On the Path to Literary Anthropology

Summary/Abstract: The deployment of ritual, mythopoetical, archetypical and cultural anthropology in the examination of literature has brought along several results. All of those procedures, however, approach the literary phenomenon in light of a joint action rhythm (“collective rite”, “collective unconscious”, “collective memory”, etc.). The concept considering the peculiarity of literature cannot be satisfied by this inasmuch as its modelled action is one-off and unrepeatable, which had already been emphasized also by Aristotle. The question is not only what function an act plays in a system. We also have to ascertain what systems can be established by the one-off action and its disposition in literature. In terms of poetics, the action can only be referred to as the act of execution given that it includes the demand of verbal manifestation. This is fulfilled by the personal discourse which at the same time dynamizes the operations of the naming and telling of the act as well as the operations of narration and signification. Consequently, the story of the act diverges from the world of the narrated action, and it constitutes not that world but the subject of the one-off and unrepeatable discourse, i.e. the subject of the text. The subject of discourse obtaining its own language in the act of narrating – this phenomenon is the specific subject of literary anthropology. The operation of the theoretic model will be presented through Ivan Turgenev’s The Diary of a Superfluous Man.

• Details
• Contents