LITERATURE AS A SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: FROM “SUBJECT-SUBJECT” TO ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The article focuses on some recent approaches to teaching literature as a school discipline, that arise to “reconstruct” it on a new ground in response to the general awareness of crisis in this area. Special attention is paid to the concept of “subject-to-subject reading method” formulated by a widely known expert on F.M. Dostoevsky’s work, doctor of Philology Tatyana Kasatkina. In this article we conclude that this method is hardly applicable for public schools, as it proposes conflict of a first reading experience and a research-based “re-reading” with a priority of the latter. This approach lets the image of reader’s life experience fade in the process of comprehension of the text for the sake of cognizing the subjectivity of the author. However, being relevant for a professional philological research, the method depreciates the role of readers’ subjective comprehension and interpretation of the text and may even discourage reading motivation of pupils, who do not look forward to getting a philological education, but for whom the free time reading and communication, based on the texts they read, may become one of the most significant life priorities.