theory of literature, work of poetry, content and form, lartpourlartism, Geistesgeschichte, Russian formalism, phenomenology, existentialism
Abstract
A short survey of literary theories, as developed in older poeties and in positivistic treatises of literature, introduces the central issue: the views in which the work of art is seen by recent theoretical schools, their approaches to the interelationship between the content and the form of a poem, and consequently, their different critical methods. In contrast to positivism which mainly emphasizes content, the author suggests that some of the new schools, with their emphasis on form, exibit common features of aestheticism, i.e. lartpourlartism: German neoidealistic literary science, Russian formalism, and the schools of phenomenology and existentialism. These schools are analysed and their variations of lartpourlartism criticized. The author's own view of a poetic work of art as an aesthetic union of idea, subject and form is offered as an alternative. The work is to be approached, first, by an analysis of the role of poetic language in it, and second, by a research of the synthesis of its different functions.
