Historicism in the modern world
The article dedicated to the anniversary XXV Sheshukovsky readings, held annually in the Institute of Philology of Moscow Pedagogical State University, presents the concept of the conference. Special attention is paid to the personality of an outstanding scholar after whom the conference is named - Stepan Ivanovich Sheshukov; the range of scientific problems that become the subject of special reflection at the Sheshukovsky readings is outlined, a new understanding of historicism as a fundamental category of literary research is revealed. The distinctive feature of Sheshukovsky readings is the reliance on historicism and on text as the basis of all scientific interpretations. Within the framework of the scientific school of S.I. Sheshukov, whose monograph “Frantic Devotees. Excerpts on the history of literary struggle of the 20s”, became a milestone in the development of the Russian literature studies, historicism is considered as a general methodological principle, allowing to avoid fractional analysis of historical and literary process, to explore literature as a whole, to see a continuous process, rather than individual phenomena. Hence the constant connection of all conferences held within the framework of the Sheshukovsky readings, in which mythological, historical, documentary and fantastic, personal and public, etc., are united by the movement of the Russian literature in historical times. In 2020, the dominant feature of the anniversary conference was an appeal to the moral and philosophical-historical problem of literature, thematically connected with the Great Patriotic War, the question of the correlation of documentary, historical and philosophic components in the Russian literature of the XX-XXI centuries was raised. The conference summed up the results of the quarter-century reflections on the analysis of the movement of the Russian literature of the past century through the tests that fell on our people during the most tragic period of its history, but managed to preserve and transfer to descendants the unshakeable moral and ethical values that determine the existence of human and the world, as well as the further motion vector of the Sheshukovsky readings.