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Ad fontes. О проекте «Средневековые письменные источники как историко-художественные тексты: создатели — читатели»
he article deals with the results of the scientific project “Medieval written sources as historical and litterary texts: creators and readers”. This project aimed at analysis of the features of the individual process of the creation of the historical text (source) in the Middle Ages and Modern times. It also aimed at disclosure of the mechanism of functioning of the specific historical sources in their cultural environment (the author’s message and creation of the text, its subsistence and dissemination, its perception by the readers, its popularity or the lack of it, the importance of such a text in the creation and recovery of the sociocultural and intellectual needs of the epoch). The project participants stated as insufficient the positivist method that dominated all historic research for quite a long time and was based on the principle of direct and undistorted reflection of historic reality it the text. In the present project the historical sources were studied primarily with the use of textual criticism methods that allowed to determine and to use in the analysis not only the factual side of the information but also so called “commonplaces and platitudes” in the text, borrowings and concealed quotations, “toposes”, “wandering sujets”. The textual criticism methods also allowed to determine three types of the text information: the unique information, the verified one and the repeated one. The methods of genetic critics allowed to the projects participants to fully understand the history of creation of this or that historical and litterary source and to comprehend the intentions of its author which, undoubtedly, can make it easier to study and to analyze the ideas and the images that this or that author (as well as the readers of the text) considered the most appropriate for his (their) epoch.