The idea of ethnopoetics in contemporary research

In recent decades ethnopoetics has become one of the new philological disciplines. Its idea first appeared in the treatise of Nicolas Boileau The Art of poetry (1674), in which the classicist theorist formulated the requirement of local and historical color in art. His principle was followed by lots of poets, playwrights and novelists of Modern history. The term ethnopoetics was introduced into Anglo-American criticism, in 1968, by Jerome Rotenberg, who, along with Dennis Tedlock and Dell Himes, founded the principles and methods of studying American Indian poetry. In the 2000s this concept was included into encyclopedic dictionaries in English and other European languages, but there is still no such word in Russian terminological dictionaries. So far, the concept of poetics that sets limits to the semantics of words the term consists of, has received recognition. As early as ethnopoetics was in the process of its formation, its subject was expanded based on the middle Eastern and Jewish folklore, and later, the oral tradition of other peoples. The word formation model (ἔθνος / ethnos + ποιητική/poetics) overcomes limited interpretations of the term. In modern usage the term ethnopoetics has got a wide range of meanings remaining overlooked yet by lexicographers, but conveying the full semantics of the words that constitute the term. The idea of ethnopoetics engendered not one, but several concepts. The author of the article develops his earlier understanding of ethnopoetics as a discipline that should study the national identity of the oral and written text, describe in the categories of poetics the specific things that make national literature national. The analysis of ethnopoetics offers great opportunities in the comparative analysis of thesauri of different authors and their works.