The Origins and Prospects of Empirical Literary Criticism

Abstract

In the 1970s empirical literary criticism started a new direction in literary criticism, based on the requirements of overcoming hermeneutic methods and incorporating scientific criteria used by social and hard-core science disciplines. These requirements remain in the forefront until the present, even if, over the years, the former has lost its edge. Readiness to accept some hermeneutic traditions is evident both on theoretical level, the development of which has been marked by radical constructivism and system theory, as well as on the level of individual empirical studies. The most recent efforts to direct the empirical literary critical paradigm into the context of the so-called media science give a new theoretical framework to the integrating efforts. The paper discusses some conceptual aspects of this process and attempts to suggest the direction that could lead to a strengthened position of empirical literary criticism in the social and scholarly environment