Біографізм XX століття в контексті методу "нового історизму"

Abstract

Статтю присвячено розгляду автобіографічного та біографічного дискурсу в насвітленні «нового історизму», в контексті тих поглядів на роль біографії та біографізму, що були сформульовані його представниками. Шляхом аналізу праць Г. Вайта, С. Ґрінблатта, Л. Монроуза, А. Еткінда та І. Смірнова продемонстровано, в який спосіб «новий історизм» змінює уявлення про традиційну письменницьку біографію, «деавтоматизуючи» цей тип тексту та доводячи необхідність його залучення до інтерпретації літературного тексту як засіб виведення твору в ширший культурно-історичний контекст.

The article considers the method of interpretation, which emerged in the mid-twentieth century in the American literature studies and is known as the “new historicism”, in the context of ideas of the role of biography that were formulated by its representatives. By analyzing the works of H. White, S. Greenblatt, L. Montrose, A. Etkind, and I. Smirnov, the researcher has demonstrated the way in which the “new historicism” changes the idea of the traditional literary biography through de-automatization of this type of text and proving the need for its involvement in the process of interpretation of the literary text as a means of putting it in a wider cultural and historical context. The process of such a reevaluation starts with the works of Hayden White. In his “Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe” he comments on the need of a new type of historical writing: from time-oriented to space-oriented, from chronological to reconstructive. This conclusion becomes one of the key points for Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Montrose, who formulate their main aim as a focus on the two main aspects of text analysis: “historicity of the text and textuality of history.” Through this idea, the literary text is considered as a part of a wider cultural context, and the more textual aspects of this context are analyzed in the process of interpretation, the more relevant this process becomes. The biography of the writer, which was excluded from the literary analysis by the previous interpretative methods, post-structuralism and deconstruction, is rehabilitated in “new historicism”. In addition, the representatives of this method focus on the literary value of the biography itself, emphasizing the process of creating the identity in the biographical text. To sum up, in the terms of “new historicism”, the literary text becomes an interdisciplinary object deeply involved in the development of culture. The biography, from this point of view, appears to be one of the most important cultural contexts that are to be considered in the process of interpretation.