The National Literary Canon in the Field of Tension Between Aesthetic and Ideological Principles. The Estonian Case with Indications to the Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

The article is an attempt to outline some problems regarding the literary and non-literary factors which are at work in the formation of the canon. The central example used in this analysis is the interactions between aesthetic and ideological principles in the treatments of Estonian literature of the Soviet period. As this example shows, these principles intertwine on many levels – from interpretation of single texts to the factors constituting the understanding of literary history and the literary canon – which makes the interactions of different principles a complicated sphere indicating the need for reviewing the national canons in the comparative context and especially for further comparative studies of the literatures that share a similar historical experience from the 20th century.