Categories of Poetics: A Study of the Russian School

This paper substantiates a theoretical approach to the integral study of various directions of Russian poetics associated with the new concept of the “Russian School of European Poetics” or “Russian School of Poetics,” which is distinguished by its pioneering modernization of European classical poetics at the turn of the 20th century and its cross-cultural development and expansion in the 1960s and the 1970s. Four questions are also discussed: firstly, why do Western scholars prefer to develop modern Russian theory of literature into “Theory”? Secondly, how to identify the main line of modern Russian poetics from its genetic origin to maturity? Third, why was the modernization of European poetics initiated in Russia? Fourth, what specific characteristics are found in the Russian school of Poetics in the state of “overflowing” of poetics in Western countries? The author of the present paper believes that an attempt to reconstruct the Russian school of poetics can serve as a valuable research example for the revival of Chinese traditional culture, including the ancient poetics of China, in the form of modernization.