A History of Russian Literature: from Philologists to Theologians (A review of: Russian Literature of the 19th Century: A Course of Lectures for a Bachelor of Theology Degree: in 2 V. М.: POZNANIE Publishers, 2020.)

Abstract

This review presents a detailed analysis of Yu. V. Lebedev’s textbook “Russian Literature of the 19th Century”, written for bachelor of theology degree students. The author of the article considers the new publication in the context of one of the leading branches of modern literary criticism – religious philology. The scope of analysis does not only include the methodology that lies at the basis of the construction of the history of the Russian literature but also the amount and range of the material used by the textbook author to corroborate his hypothesis. On the one hand, the review reveals the efficiency of the approach suggested by Yu. V. Lebedev, on the other hand, it outlines a number of issues, the most important one of which is associated with the need to answer the question whether the content of scientific knowledge will change depending on the target audience. A comparison of two textbooks by Yu. V. Lebedev (“History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century” for students-philologists and “Russian Literature of the 19th Century” for future theologians) shows how the vision of Russian literature is transformed and how the religious paradigm of a humanitarian science is formed. The author makes a conclusion that the ‘adequacy spectrum’ in modern philology is not so much associated with a specific area of research as with the use of various methods and approaches, and the ability to find common ground between them.

Keywords

• russian literature
• history of russian literature
• methods of teaching literature
• methods of teaching literature at higher school
• university textbooks
• textbooks in literature
• reviews
• religious philology, theology.