“Studying is comparing”: an anniversary as a reason for discussing the problems
of contemporary literary studies and literary criticism

Book review: Noscere est comparare: Comparative studies in the context of historical poetics: For the anniversary of Igor Shaytanov. Coll. works. editor-in-chief
and author of the introductory word O. I. Polovinkina. Moscow, Russian State University for the Humanities, 2017, 496 p.

The paper analyses the collection of works published for the anniversary of Russian literary
scholar, Editor-in-Chief of “Voprosy literatury” and Head of the Comparative Literature Department
at Russian State University for the Humanities Igor Olegovich Shaytanov. The book presents
two large subjects. The first one includes the introductory articles for each of the sections
(“Historical Poetics and Comparative Approach,” “English Studies: Shakespeare and Company,”
“Literary Today”) and is a consistent description of problem areas of contemporary philology that
attracted I. O. Shaytanov’s attention during his scholarly career. The second subject is a projection
of Shaytanov’s ideas on particular scientific problems, with the range of the issues involved
being rather wide. They include historical poetics and comparative studies, the contemporary state
of Russian poetry, the rhetorical formulas of the Middle Ages and Shakespearian allusions to the
archive history of Soviet Shakespeare studies of the 1930s and characteristics of the current state
of “Life of Outstanding People.” Among the most remarkable papers of methodological nature
are the works on comparative and historical poetics. Also, attention should be paid to the sections
introducing archival documents and original Russian-language publications on the reception of
Shakespeare’s work in Russia, the USA and Spain. The collected works present a significant contribution
to the development of Russian literature study and suggest the necessity to combine the
traditional historical poetics and comparative historical literary studies in general with new approaches.