Of the ten articles included in this book, six belong to 1930-1932. and were placed in the magazines Literature and Marxism, Literature and Art, and Proletarian Literature. The remaining four were written in 1933 and are published in the collection for the first time. The book does not set itself the task of covering and analyzing all areas of literary thought in the West. This is a thematic collection, which is an attempt to give an overview and criticism of the main stages in the development of the science of literature in Germany in the 20-30s. last century.