Methodology

The course offers a historical overview of methods of literary science, their systematics and individual presentations. It defines in an accessible way the use of gnoseological and logical methods, philological method and textual criticism, linguistic methods, biographical, Geistesgeschichte, positivistic, existencialist and marxist methods, and then focuses in detail on phenomenological, formalistic and structuralist methods, immanent interpretation, New Criticism, poststructuralist, semiotic, decontsruction, psychoanalytic, neomarxist, feminist methods, new historicism, empirical literary science and reception aesthetics. The course also presents the most recent methodological approaches. It emphasises the principle of methodological pluralism.