Article

Name: Critical analysis of the ternary opposition epos-epopee-epic class in the Soviet and post-Soviet literary criticism

Authors: T. S. Simyan

Yerevan State University, Faculty of foreign Literature

Abstract: The article is an attempt to analyze the key concepts of «epic», «epopee» and «epic class». The presented analysis reveals the ambiguity of perception of these concepts in the Soviet and post-Soviet literary works. Description of this this problem is given in the «central» texts (encyclopedia, literary encyclopedia, literary dictionaries, textbooks, and so on) of Soviet literary criticism. In the course of the analysis of the theoretical and educational literature, the «sources» (German idealist philosophy, «Russian imitators») of conceptual «noise» (in the semiotic sense) are identified that have influenced and still partly govern as stereotypes the understanding of these concepts in the post-Soviet Russian-language literary thought. The confusion was that (mostly) «epopee» and «epic» were perceived as completely different concepts. Polysemy was also connected with the concepts of «epic» and the drama as a genre and class signifier. There was no clear line of demarcation between the concepts of «literary class» and «genre», as it was not perceived and accentuated in the Soviet literary criticism. «Sources» of the confusion in the Soviet literary criticism were the German philosophers of the XIX century (Schelling, Hegel, etc.) as well as their «Russian epigones» (Belinsky).

Keywords: epos, epopee, epic class, epics, literary class, genres, types, history methodology of the humanities, history of the Soviet and post-Soviet literary science

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