Hermeneutic literary studies as a language of a cultural epoch: Discussing the crisis in philology

Abstract

This paper is an attempt of approaching the crisis in modern philology not in a judgmentbased manner but in a way that a famous Russian scholar Vladimir Markovich did within his university course “Theory of the Literary Process”; he regarded the crisis as a new level of understanding the preceding experiences in philology. The problem of humanities in general and of philology in particular has been in the spotlight for about a quarter of a century. It is generally accepted that the crisis is extensive, methodologically, disciplinarily, institutionally and even reputationally speaking. The possible reasons of the crisis were widely discussed and these discussions resulted in multiple attempts to change the field of studies in humanities and to abandon the preceding research tradition. For Russian scholars, this tradition was primarily connected with the hermeneutic type of literary studies. According to the modern critical thought, the research settings of this kind of philology do not correspond to the current issues. It may seem that even the best examples of academic philology are merely historical artefacts. However, the experience of hermeneutic literary studies could be useful for a critical reflection of the grounds of modern humanities since this experience is analysed not from the perspective of its relevance or as a science history, but as a cultural experience. Characteristic of hermeneutic literary studies is seeing the process of research as a creative one. The result of this process is not merely an analytic description but a text that should be created and evaluated by means of the same aesthetic criteria as the subject of the study itself — i.e. fictional text. Thus, philological works of this kind became popular not only among specialists, but also with an amateur audience as well. It created a high reputation for philology as a special area of knowledge. It is believed that the cultural experience of hermeneutic literary studies demonstrates that it is possible to overcome the crisis not only by developing new research frameworks, but also by looking for the language of research that could become the language of modern culture.