Towards the Understanding of the Concepts “Modernity,” “Modernism” and “Avant-Gardism” in (Post)-Soviet and German Literary Theory (An Attempt of Terminological Unification)

T Simyan,I Kačāne

doi:10.18502/kss.v3i7.2462

Abstract

Highlights

The meaning interpretations of the terms “Modernity”, “Modernism” used in the textbooks, dictionaries, literary dictionaries of the Soviet and post-Soviet epoch are not accepted unequivocally among the Russian-speaking scientific community
The principal thesis of this article is as follows: owing to the so-called “Iron Curtain” and ideological differences, Western and Soviet literary criticisms were on different sides of the barricades, which resulted in a terminological “noise” in the scientific literature of the USSR, and since the post-Soviet Russian literary criticism has not conducted a revision to Soviet textbooks and training manuals the semantic “noise” about these terms is penetrating the post-Soviet Russian scientific literature
The above said allows concluding that in the discourse of literary criticism written in Russian the problem of a possible unification of understanding the terms “Modernity”, “Modernism” and “Avant-gardism” still remains unresolved

Summary

Introduction

The meaning interpretations of the terms “Modernity”, “Modernism” used in the textbooks, dictionaries, literary dictionaries of the Soviet and post-Soviet epoch are not accepted unequivocally among the Russian-speaking scientific community. The terminological “noises” are still “active” and like echo of the past, or in other words, like stereotypes live and quite often penetrate into the post-Soviet Russian teaching-methodological literature, and into the scientific literature of a small format (articles). The principal thesis of this article is as follows: owing to the so-called “Iron Curtain” and ideological differences, Western and Soviet literary criticisms were on different sides of the barricades, which resulted in a terminological “noise” in the scientific literature of the USSR, and since the post-Soviet Russian literary criticism has not conducted a revision to Soviet textbooks and training manuals the semantic “noise” about these terms is penetrating the post-Soviet Russian scientific literature

The Concept “Modernity”

The Concept “Modernism”

Conclusion