The section ‘Russian Literary Process in the 19th Century’ discusses a broad range of issues on the history of Russian literature in the 19th century: from some particular aspects of the poetics of a literary work to some general issues of revealing and assessing some of the regularities in the dynamics and development of literary process in the 19th century. The main selection criteria for the reports are originality of the approach and novelty of the material. Please, note synopses are not accepted.In 2016, along with the traditional sessions the section will comprise a session with a particular focus on ‘Poetics and Politics in the Russian Literature in the 19th Century’ (headed by Kirill Yuryevich Zubkov).Within the last decades, literature studies discuss the links between literature and social-political processes. Fallen beyond the scope of literature for a long time in the Soviet Union, these issues extend far beyond what and how social conflicts of various epochs and ideological views of authors are reflected in the interrelated sequences of the events and portrayed in heroines and heroes of literary works. As many works of various kind suggest (from А.L. Zorin to М. Mayofis), the poetics of literary works intricately correlates with the contemporary social events, while political thought tends to originate from metaphors and narratives of literary works. These issues call for various approaches: from Russian formalism (‘literary mode of life’, correlation of various ‘lines’ throughout literary evolution) to sociology of late 20th century (P. Bourdieu), interpretive anthropology (C. Geertz) and criticism of Marxism (F. Moretti ‘The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature’).The reports based on various approaches to history of literature of the 19th century, the section focuses on how social-political and literary ‘lines’ interrelate within the Russian culture and society, whether there are some phenomena in literature which fail to associate with political issues without distorting them, and others.  Of special interest are the reports with a specific focus on material which is unique and original for research and with an attempt to anew conceptualise historic and literary process.
If you are applying to the thematic section ‘Poetics and Politics in the Russian Literature in the 19th Century’, please, specify it in the Application Form after your brief outline of the report as follows: ‘Report for the thematic section’.