Discussion Club of Literary Critics (December 2022 – April 2023)

Abstract

At the last two meetings of the Discussion Club of Literary Critics – a permanent scientific seminar of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences – the reports continued to cover the topic “Literary contours of modern Central and South-Eastern Europe: events, realities, trends”. The first session of this cycle took place in June 2022 and was devoted to the current literary situation in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. The DCL participants discussed a number of issues related to the numerous productions of Russian literature on the Slovak stage, which testify to the permanent interest in the “Russian theme” among the Slovak theater audience; perception of the image of Russia and Russians in Slavic fiction, reflection of Russian realities and disclosure of the problem of contact of cultures, the formation and existence of national stereotypes (based on a contemporary Czech novel), as well as translations of Slavic fantastic works into Russian, the current state of science fiction literature in Russia and other Slavic countries. In addition, some of the trends observed in the current literary process in Slovakia and the Czech Republic were discussed. The reports focused on the most significant new book releases, the mechanism for awarding literary prizes, such phenomena as the inevitable influence of politics and public life on literature, and the commercialization of the latter. The DCL participants reflected on what factors of the non-literary process can affect the prestige of the institute of literature, what can attract / scare off readers, why they prefer world classics over the works of modern Slavic authors, and also compared the situation in Slovakia and the Czech Republic with the state of the literary process in other Slavic countries.