Abstract
The chapter tries to draw a basic map, depicting a knotty complex of socio-cultural phenomena and processes mobilizing and substantially influencing contemporary literature. Apart from this, it acquaints the reader with a range of various literary concepts and approaches made to grasp and structure the literary process.
One of this article’s ambitions is to introduce the complexities of an emerging system of new criteria for the evaluation of the current literary process and the most authoritative methodological „gravitation points“. Further attention is paid to the problematic issues discussed by literary scientists (e.g. the revision of the thesis of the incompleteness of Ukrainian literature, the problem of the national identification of literature and the creation of a new literary canon).
At the same time the article presents three basic principles for structuring the current literary process.