Information about the author:
Tatyana A. Kasatkina
Tatiana A. Kasatkina, DSc in Philology, Director of Research, Head of the Research Centre “Dostoevsky and World Culture”, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0875-067X
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Abstract:
The introduction describes why it is necessary to know the author’s theory of art in order to adequately approach a work of fiction and why it is required not only to take it into account, but also to base our interpretation on it, if we want to understand what the text says, and not just to awaken in ourselves a chain of personal associations for which details in the text served as nothing more than a trigger. Furthermore, the paper addresses the fact that almost all of the author’s theories of art are based on the idea of the effectiveness of art in life, while most theories created by an external view concentrate either on the influence of life on art, or single out art as a separate, self-contained field, developing a theory according to its own laws, to be studied in this isolated state.
Keywords: authorial theory of art, implicit theory of an artwork, generic literary theory, relation between literature and life, literature and history.
