Being a Literary Critic: The Methodology of Specialist’s Life in the Profession (based on B. F. Egorov’s epistolary oeuvre)

Abstract

The article, which is historical and scientific by character, presents the current humanitarian issues of professional epistolary communication of an outstanding Russian literary critic, Doctor of Philology, Professor B. F. Egorov (1926–2020) with fellow literary critics. The main directions of scientist’s active and versatile practices are considered on the grounds of his published letters and some letters to him in 1998–2020. The article focuses on professional communication and interaction between Ukrainian and Russian literary critics in the complex modern socio-historical and political conditions of interstate relations. The letters are published for the first time and are accompanied by the necessary historical and cultural comments and bibliographic notes. The material contained in them is important not only for the history of Russian and East Slavic literary criticism of the 20th century, but also it is relevant in terms of the prospects of academic studies of literature and the development of productive communication between scholars studying fiction in order to perform the main cultural function of literary studies.