On the Significance of Historical Poetics: In Lieu of a Foreword

Tihanov, Galin

doi:10.1215/03335372-4166634

Poetics Today

2017

DOI: 10.1215/03335372-4166634

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On the Significance of Historical Poetics: In Lieu of a Foreword

Galin Tihanov

Abstract: This invited foreword to a cluster of four essays on historical poetics seeks to establish how the relevance of Historical Poetics is reclaimed today. Affinities, differences, and questions of commensurability and historical contextualization are raised as part of the discussion. The foreword also attempts to resituate Historical Poetics within current debates on “world literature.” In this light it reconsiders the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, suggesting that he performed a flight away from the largely Eurocentric… Show more

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…Hopensztand was an exceptional figure in Polish and Central and Eastern European literary studies (Tihanov, 2017: 426). But despite all his peculiarity and tragic fate, he also remained a typical left-wing intellectual of the interwar period.…”

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confidence: 99%

At the crossroads of Marxism and structuralism in modern Polish literary theory (1918–1939): The case of Warsaw and Vilnius student circles

Ulicka

2020

Thesis Eleven

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In this paper, I aim to determine the place of Marxism in Polish literary studies of the 20th century. The starting point is (1) Czesław Miłosz’s comment on the identity of Marxism and structuralism; (2) the absence of the term ‘Marxism’ in the names of Polish workers’ parties and pro-Marxist academic discourse (except an insignificant short period directly after the Second World War when Marxist rhetoric prevailed). Referring to political history, I suggest an explanation of this state of affairs, revealing the function of Marxism under different names in philosophical texts from the beginning of the 20th century. To support my argument, I draw on documents from the newly discovered archive of Dawid Hopensztand. I use this archive to reconstruct his social biography and justify the main thesis about the permanent presence of Marxism in the works of such thinkers as Leszek Kołakowski, Zygmunt Bauman, and even Czesław Miłosz.

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confidence: 99%

At the crossroads of Marxism and structuralism in modern Polish literary theory (1918–1939): The case of Warsaw and Vilnius student circles

Ulicka

2020

Thesis Eleven

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World Literature as a Speculative Literary Totality: Veselovsky, Auerbach, Said, and the Critical-Humanist Tradition

Etherington¹

2021

Modern Language Quarterly

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This essay revisits critical-humanist approaches to literary totality that have largely been sidelined during the recent revival of world literature studies. While there has been no shortage of defenses of close reading in the face of distant reading and other positivist approaches, this essay argues that it is precisely the hermeneutic attention to particular works that has allowed critical humanists to think about literary practice within the most encompassing purview. For those in this tradition, “world literature” can never be a stable object but is a speculative totality. The essay discusses three exemplary critical concepts that assume a speculative epistemology of literary totality: Alexander Veselovsky’s “historical poetics,” Erich Auerbach’s “Ansatzpunkt,” and Edward Said’s “contrapuntal reading.” Each, it is argued, is grounded in the distinctive qualities of literary experience, a claim for which Theodor Adorno’s account of speculative thinking serves as a basis.

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The Return to/of Theory

Spassova¹

2021

Differences

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In his paper “The Return to Philology,” Paul de Man insists that philology and theory should not be in conflict, but should, rather, mutually enhance one another. This claim that the turn to theory is also a return to philology is explored in the context of the structure of language. In the last twenty to twenty-five years, the return to philology has been a dominant part of the Anglo-Saxon discourse of “world literature,” which has turned away from theory. The return to philology is captured in a market-based adaptation of literature in terms of globalization, transnationalism, and translation. In his latest book The Birth and Death of Literary Theory (2019), Galin Tihanov recalls the legacy of classical literary theory and propounds the contemporary discourse of world literature as an unreflected continuation of this legacy as it was articulated in Viktor Shklovsky’s and Mikhail Bakhtin’s approaches to literature beyond language. Turning this legacy on its head, this essay focuses, rather, on language in literature. In a short-circuiting way, Roman Jakobson’s linguistics and poetics and Erich Auerbach’s nonnational-based philology can be seen as surprisingly close to one another.

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On the Significance of Historical Poetics: In Lieu of a Foreword

Cited by 4 publications

References 6 publications

At the crossroads of Marxism and structuralism in modern Polish literary theory (1918–1939): The case of Warsaw and Vilnius student circles

At the crossroads of Marxism and structuralism in modern Polish literary theory (1918–1939): The case of Warsaw and Vilnius student circles

World Literature as a Speculative Literary Totality: Veselovsky, Auerbach, Said, and the Critical-Humanist Tradition

The Return to/of Theory

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