Anthropology of literature - cultural literary theory - the poetics of experience

In the recent dozen-or-so years, the direction taken by changes in the literary studies has been extremely strongly stimulating a set of diversified tendencies which has become referred to (probably for good) as an anthropological-cultural turn. This article does not present a detailed panorama of those strivings (such a task has been taken up several times with success), but rather, an afterthought of opportunities and threats opened to or imposed on the literary theory (with its heritage, identity as a discipline and substantive obligations) as it enters into a strict relationship with the two disciplines proving most expansive in the humanities of today, i.e.: cultural anthropology, on the one hand, and cultural studies, on the other. The author argues that: (i) separateness of those inspirations has to be discerned; (ii) one should be aware of the consequences of the choices made: (a) practising anthropology of literature, one should take into account that its assumptions have to be subject to anthropology of culture as a meta-discipline of cultural sciences; (b) practising a cultural literary theory, one enters the route of never-ending interdisciplinary negotiations (primarily, with cultural studies) over remaining relatively autonomous and retaining identity as a discipline; (c) practising the poetics of experience, particularly one of a literary case study, one faces a risk of transdisciplinary studies that might lead to delineating a new configuration of disciplines in humanities and social sciences.