Literary Criticism in the Scandalous Controversy over L. Andreev’s Story “In the Fog”

The relevance of the research topic is caused by the necessity to reconstruct the picture of the perception of L.N. Andreev’s early work in literary criticism of the early 1900s considering modern approaches to the nature and poetics of criticism. The article aims to identify the different critical...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Viacheslav N. Krylov
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Russian Academy of Sciences, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature 2025-06-01
Series:Studia Litterarum
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Online Access:https://studlit.ru/images/2025-10-2/09_Krylov.pdf
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Summary:The relevance of the research topic is caused by the necessity to reconstruct the picture of the perception of L.N. Andreev’s early work in literary criticism of the early 1900s considering modern approaches to the nature and poetics of criticism. The article aims to identify the different critical strategies manifested during the scandalous polemic around Andreev’s story “In the Fog.” The study relies on such concepts as “creative strategy of criticism,” “polemics,” and “scandal.” The article shows that the story’s fate after publication played out according to a scandalous scenario. The results of analyzing and comparing various responses to the work highlight such critical strategies as confrontational and defensive. In turn, the so-called defensive strategy includes tactics of apologizing for the author and the story, a constructive approach, as well as a confrontational strategy directed against the opponents of the work. The author of the article concludes that in the structure of all the speeches about the story, a significant place was taken by criticism “on the occasion of,” such as journalistic statements about literature and morality, about the writer’s right to depict negative aspects of life, but mainly about the problems of adolescent sexuality. The article argues that the comparison of the short stories with Russian classics of the 19th century and the best modern writers contributed to the consolidation of Andreev’s success.
ISSN:2500-4247
2541-8564