Culturological Theories of Literature and Serbian Literary Criticism

The project continues the theoretical literary research that has been conducted at the Institute for Literature and Art for the last fifty years. In the previous period, modern aesthetical and philosophical systems (ontology, phenomenology, structuralism) have been critically assessed, new methodologies of literary scholarship (Anglo-American New Criticism, the aesthetics of reception, semiotics and archetypology) have been affirmed, and significant theoretical research in the sphere of theoretical poetics of particular literary genres has been conducted. Research results have been published in the form of a number of monographs, ten or so thematic collections of papers and several hundred scholarly articles in academic journals. In the following four-year-period, theoretical research into issues pertaining to literature will be continued, innovated, systematized and critically evaluated. The scholarly work will be conducted on two levels: 1) a critical evaluation of contemporary theories of culture and their application in new interpretations, reactualization and re-evaluation of modern Serbian literature, and 2) research into the theoretical foundations and theoretical aspects of Serbian literary thought in the second half of the 20th century, i.e. examination of the application of major literary theories in Serbian literary criticism.