METACRITICISM AS A LITERARY PROBLEM

Abstract

The latest decades are associated with an active rethinking of the existing literary and philosophical achievements, which are reflected significantly in changes and refinements in contemporary literary terminology. Along with the already known concepts such as "literature", "postmodernism", "criticism", the concepts "metafiction", "metamodernism" and "metacriticism" exist and become popular. At the same time, one may notice that the widely used now prefix meta- lays claim to a greater depth and coverage of higher horizons. If criticism marks the analysis, comprehension, and interpretation of literary works, then metacriticism focuses on literary-critical, historical-literary, and methodological researches, thus showing "criticism of criticism". The article deals with a complex analysis of the concept of "metacriticism". On the one hand, both aesthetic and philosophical approaches to the understanding of the notion of criticism are taken into account – starting from the antique times to Karl Popper’s critical-rationalistic approach. On the other hand, it is found that metacriticism as a phenomenon dates back to the end of the XVIII century when the works of two famous German philosophers Johann Georg Hamann’s "Metacritique on Purism of Reason" and Johan Gottfried Herder’s "Metacriticism of Critique of Pure Reason" were published as a debate on Immanuel Kant’s ideas. Based on the available data, it is found that metacriticism is a rather convenient multilevel term that may qualitatively contain various interpretations, including the criticism of criticism, metascience concerning criticism, criticism of the highest level, short form of the term "metaphysical critique" as a critique of "metaphysical realism". At the same time, while taking into account the current trends of the digital age, metacriticism becomes a product of digital technology - popular platforms for writing reviews, making discussions, and even creating a virtual library, such as site Metacritic, the English-language portal Goodreads and its Russian equivalent Livelib. The article itself does not exhaust the problem of metacriticism as a multidimensional phenomenon, but it provides opportunities for further and deeper studies of the outlined issues, in particular within the context of theoretical and literary discourse.