Veselovsky Historical Poetics Of The Genre

This dissertation centers on Vecelovsk's historical poetics, esp. the theory of stylistic poetics. Based on the context of the conversations and debates among the various literary schools of Russia in 1900s, the dissertation tries to explore the necessity and purposes for Vecelovsk to put forward his theory, so as to understand and obtain access to the general rules of change for the artistic forms. On the other hand, it tries to grasp the core and motivation of V s system of poetics, and to discover the contradictions in it, so as to explore the importance and limitation of V s application of tracing origin in establishing his poetic system.Based on a survey of the current scholarship on V s theory of poetics, the introduction shows the relevance of the research into V s stylistic poetics: firstly, stylistic poetics is the core issue of historical poetics; secondly, V s theory is quiet different from the traditional western definition on and the discourse of genre and style. The main part of the dissertation is divided into three chapters. Chapter one devotes to the background contributing to the rise of the historical poetics, including V s academic background, his debates with the contemporaries as well as his close relationship with the academic scholars. Chapter two aims at examining the importance and limitation of V s methodology which he applied to establish his stylistic poetics. Chapter three deals with the great influence which the historical poetics, especially the stylistic poetics, has exerted upon the literary theory.