Introduction to literary criticism

This book is a presentation of a lecture course read at the University of Leningrad by an outstanding philologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences V. M. Zhirmunsky. In it, the author summed up many of his original observations in the field of theory and practice of verse. Much attention in the lectures is paid to the study of the biography of the creator - writer or poet, literary and critical assessments of the work of writers by their contemporaries, scientific bibliography and other issues. All the provisions of the lecture course are argued by examples from the history of Russian, Western European and oriental literature. The book is equipped with bibliographic references to other works on this topic. Designed for philologists - students, graduate students and teachers, as well as for high school teachers. Can be used as a textbook on literary criticism.