Local text of provincial literature: the question of the concept definition and the history of study

This article is devoted to the research-promising literary concept of local text, which still does not have a clear unambiguous exhaustive definition. In order to identify a number of basic features of the concept that have universal significance for it, an attempt is made to review the study of a local text in Russian literary criticism of the XX century. Special attention is paid to the consideration of the provincial text of Russian literature in the studies of the XXI century. Based on the results of the review of the approaches to the definition of a local text in the XX and XXI centuries, the author’s understanding of the term is proposed in the literature. The fundamental differences in the formation of the metropolitan and provincial local text are indicated, the concepts of obvious and non-obvious ways of their formation are proposed. The study of various points of view on the local text in general and on the provincial text in particular leads to the conclusion that the local text should be understood as a polysemous term with at least three meanings that enter into hyper-hyponymic relations: the local text as a work saturated with local features, as a paradigm of similar texts, as a semantic field representative of a given locus of images and motifs. A clear definition of the concept of a local text should advance literary studies of a regional nature.