The History of Literature and its Ethnopoetics: Realization of a Large Scale Project

Abstract

The review analyzes, in the context of ethnopoetics, A History of Ural Literature. Late 14th – 18th Centuries, co-authored by a number of scholars. The author points out the innovative character of the publication which covers newly discovered literary sources, summarizes the information about the collections of manuscripts and private libraries, and explores the factors of the emergence and development of a regional literature. The book under consideration provides an interesting concept of the multinational literature of the Urals, and outlines a system of cultural centres in which literature and book-learning played a significant role. Among the considerable achievements of the research in question is the reporting of the artistic biographies of writers, some relying on new materials. This is the first research of the kind establishing correlations between the history of the exploration of the Russian East and the unique nature of the literary works of the region.