"ARTISTIC IMAGE" AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANS OF EVALUATING A LITERARY TEXT

Averina M.A.

Russian University of Transport
Moscow, Russia
e-mail: a.aum@mail.ru

Introduction

The phenomenon of "mass literature," after lengthy debates in the late 19th and 20th centuries, has transformed in the 21st century into a socio-psychological reality reflecting the deep-seated needs of the mass readership. Bookstore shelves are filled with the products of this literary stream, which acts not only as a commercial product but also as a psychological indicator of the collective unconscious of modern society.

Literary works, artificially maintaining mass demand, are published in enormous print runs, demonstrating the reader's psychological need for stereotyped narratives that provide the illusion of security and predictability. For example, the most sought-after authors, such as Daria Dontsova, create hundreds of detective novels with a combined circulation of hundreds of millions of copies, demonstrating a stable psychological pattern of mass reader perception.

The relevance of this study stems from the need for a scientific understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying the functioning of popular literature. In a context of information oversaturation and the prevalence of clip-based thinking, understanding how texts of varying artistic value impact the reader's cognitive and emotional spheres is critically important.

The problem of evaluating popular literature in modern literary criticism

Literary criticism has not yet developed an adequate theoretical and methodological toolkit that would allow not only to evaluate mass textual products, but also to reveal the psychological mechanisms of their perception.

Existing evaluative categories, such as the "value 'bottom' of the literary hierarchy" [8, p. 203], do not reflect the psychological essence of popular literature. They merely formally label aesthetic quality without revealing the deep psychological needs of the readership.

Psychological analysis shows that popular literature performs a compensatory function, allowing the reader to: reduce psychological stress, sublimate internal conflicts, create an illusory picture of the world with simple and understandable models of behavior, and satisfy the need for psychological security.

The colossal circulation of mass-market literature is displacing the concepts of "high" and "classical" literature from readers' consciousness not only for aesthetic reasons but also for psychological ones. Modern readers are psychologically unprepared to perceive complex literary forms, preferring easily digestible content with clear plots and predictable characters. This ensures rapid information processing, reduces cognitive load, and fosters a habit of passive consumption, inhibiting the development of deep reading skills and critical thinking.

Moreover, under the pressure of the mass of writing and publication, literary criticism in the 21st century is making careful attempts to recognize a certain significant role of "mass literature" in the literary process. The well-known statement by Yu. M. Lotman served as an involuntary basis for this, according to which "mass literature," "acting in a certain respect as a means of destroying culture, […] can simultaneously be drawn into its system, participating in the construction of new structural forms" [4, p. 388]. With reference to this statement, one can increasingly encounter attempts in critical literature to theoretically "legitimize" the hyped literary stream, motivated by the fact that: «there are practically no uniform criteria for evaluating works of art and no agreed hierarchy of literary values» [highlighted - M.A.] [Ibid., p. 14]. At the same time, the «equalization of rights» between «high» and «low» literature supposedly occurs as «the need to look at modern literature as a kind of multi-literature, that is, as a sum equal [emphasized - M.A.], although of different orientations in their nature, and also of different quality in the level of execution of literature" [Ibid.]. This automatically removes the very question of developing value-based aesthetic criteria for distinguishing between "mass literature" and "classics.".

Partially, the reason for such assumptions was given by Yu. M. Lotman himself, who, recognizing that in the literary system «there is always a sense of a distinction between literature consisting of unique works, […] and a compact, homogeneous mass of texts» [Ibid., p. 387], at the same time believed that the very «Concept of «mass literature» […] is a sociological concept» [Ibid., p. 384], since «It concerns not so much structure of a particular text [emphasized - M.A.], how much of its social functioning in the general system of texts that make up a given culture" [Ibid., p. 381]. And therefore, Yu. M. Lotman believed that "the concept of "mass literature" primarily determines the attitude of a particular group to a particular group of texts" [Ibid.]. In other words, the norms of perception of a particular social group, according to Yu. M. Lotman, determine the value of a literary work. At the same time, the scholar added that when the dominance of one or another social group changes, texts from the "lower" category often migrate to the "higher" one.

We would be so bold as to disagree with such a broad interpretation, which allows low-quality literature to be included in the overall literary process. After all, by blurring the boundaries and boundaries between high-quality and low-quality literature, we eliminate the question of the existence of timeless, classic literary works. The criterion of taste, like the subsuming of a purely literary-theoretical question into a sociological one, cannot satisfy serious literary criticism that aspires to a scientific theory.

The basis for creating criteria for separating mass literature from classical literature should be the concept introduced by the scientist himself:«structures»", because where there is an "artificial object" (i.e. a written text that claims to be a finished work), some structure must already be present.

A literary text is not a mechanical reproduction of reality, but a complex, purposefully organized system of artistic elements, deeply interconnected, capable of being professionally identified and scientifically analyzed. Consequently, "mass literature" is not only a sociological phenomenon, but, above all, an object requiring study using more precise scientific categories than the subjective concept of "taste.".

The need to develop such a criterion is confirmed by Yury Lotman himself, who pointed out that the category of "mass literature" can erroneously include works that do not conform to the "norms of their time," sometimes even being significantly ahead of them. Given the colossal volume of printed material today, the lack of a clear methodological framework runs the risk of overlooking a fundamentally new literary phenomenon.

Methodological limitations of existing approaches to literature classification

Such "artistic elements" of "mass literature" have also been identified by literary criticism. These include (and a large number of researchers agree with E.M. Pulkhritudova [7, pp. 10–29]) such as "the embodiment of conservative political and moral ideas," lack of conflict, "clichéd" characters, the absence of a full-fledged psychological development of heroes, the priority of an engaging plot over meaning, the fantastic nature of events, or, conversely, an emphasized "documentary" quality. V.E. Khalizev [9] adds to this list the "conveyor belt" nature of text production, as well as a distinct schematism of plot, language, and style. J. Cawelti [3, pp. 33–64] even introduces a special term: "formulaic" literature.

However, upon closer analysis, this system of criteria reveals significant vagueness and subjectivity. Researchers interpret the presence of "formulaic" or "clichéd" elements in specific texts differently. Moreover, with the right approach, "formulaic" elements can be found in virtually any literary work.

Let's recall K. Vonnegut's observation that there are only eight basic plot variations in world literature. From this perspective, even such outstanding works as N.S. Leskov's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" or Shakespeare's "Lady Macbeth" can be classified as "formulaic literature" due to the typicality of their characters and plot situations.

This approach is fraught with absurd conclusions about the "equivalence" of fundamentally different authors—for example, equating F. M. Dostoevsky or I. S. Turgenev with popular writers like A. A. Marinina, since one can, if one wishes, also detect "formulaic" elements in their work.

Furthermore, in the "classification" of the literary process, "three layers were distinguished: classics, fiction, and popular literature" [1, p. 16]. However, the problem of criteria immediately arose again: "Fiction and popular literature are closely related phenomena, often difficult to distinguish. Some researchers do not distinguish popular literature at all, considering the entire volume of "light" literature to be fiction" [1, p. 16].

Attempts to define the concept of "fiction" in more detail also fail: "Fiction includes a range of works that do not possess artistic scope or a clearly expressed originality, but they discuss the problems of their country and era, responding to the spiritual and intellectual needs of society" [9, p. 203]. It is not difficult to notice that, firstly, it is completely unclear what is meant by the concepts of "artistic scope" and "clearly expressed originality", and secondly, this very broad definition, with the same success as in the first case, fits absolutely everything: from classical literature to popular literature.

Paradoxically, literary studies overlooks the phenomenon of "artistic image," which has long and successfully functioned in aesthetics and literary theory. This concept could become the psychological criterion that accurately distinguishes between "low-quality literature," "fiction," and "high classics," and also guides the evaluation of the quality of a literary text in terms of its cognitive and emotional impact.

One might object that the category of "artistic image" is too abstract, despite being extremely significant for all forms of art. However, theoretical literary studies have made significant progress in concretizing this concept, transforming it into a subtle psychological tool for analyzing literary works.

«"Artistic image" as a psychological tool for analyzing a literary work

The concept was consistently developed by representatives of various humanities: Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, Proclus, John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor, Theodore the Studite, Aurelius, Augustine, Bonaventure, M. Ficino and D. Bruno, then R. Descartes, D. Hume, I. Kant, Fichte and Schelling. Psychoanalysis, represented by S. Freud and K.-G. Jung, also did not ignore the "artistic image." The 20th century was marked by the development of the theory of the artistic image by such names as J. Derrida, M. Foucault, M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler, and R. Arnheim. Domestic art criticism has studied the concept of "artistic image" with no less interest (as evidenced by the enormous corpus of literature).[1]. All researchers share a fundamental psychological view of the artistic image as a complex cognitive mechanism for transforming reality through the author's individual lens of perception. Key to this is understanding the process of subjective interpretation of the artistic image by the recipient, where "distortion" directly depends on individual psychological characteristics: education level, emotional intelligence, personal experience, and cognitive attitudes.

From a psychological point of view, an artistic image is a special sign-symbolic construction that activates various cognitive processes (perception, memory, thinking), triggers mechanisms of emotional resonance, stimulates the processes of imagination and meaning-making, and forms stable psychological patterns.

The fundamental difference between an artistic image and a simple text lies in its multi-layered psychosemantic structure, capable of simultaneously influencing the rational and emotional spheres of the individual.

Based on the ideas of Yu. M. Lotman and modern research, two key psychological criteria of artistic image can be identified:

1. Emotional-cognitive richness (the ability of the text to activate deep psychological mechanisms of experience and comprehension).
2. Semantic ambiguity (the potential of a text to generate multiple interpretations and stimulate the reader’s creative activity).

In other words, as Yu. M. Lotman asserts, an aesthetically valuable text «…must be constructed in a certain way: the sender of the information actually encrypts it multiple times and with different codes (although in some cases it is possible that the sender creates the text as non-artistic, that is, encrypted once, and the recipient ascribes an artistic function to it, devising later encodings and additional concentration of meaning)» [5, p. 207].

This means that the aesthetic value of a literary text arises only when it is specifically organized: when it has a well-thought-out structure of material elements, specifically selected by the author, through which his personal subjective assessment of reality, his thought, his idea, are expressed. This is not a matter of a simple "novel plan," which even a novice or inexperienced writer can develop. Only a text that is itself, in its entirety, a unified "artistic image" can be recognized as aesthetically valuable—that is, one that can be recognized as such if it is "semantically organized in a certain way and contains signals that draw attention to such organization [Ibid., p. 206].".

What does it mean to "contain signals"? This means that the visible, perceptible elements of the image structure must not only consciously contribute to the coherence of the perception of the entire work (the unity of the "artistic image" as a whole), but also themselves represent smaller "artistic images." At the same time, they must be located within a single semantic field of the basic "artistic image" of the entire text.

Literary criticism traditionally identifies individual elements of a work's "artistic image": "character image," "space image," "time image," "environment image," and "figurative structures of the text's language." However, it is rarely acknowledged that at the core of an aesthetically valuable literary (or any other) work lies a fundamental "artistic image," of which all of the above are essential elements. And not just any elements, but elements coordinated by the author's unified idea.

The structure of the "artistic image" of the entire work is like a large nesting doll, which should contain nesting dolls of different colors and sizes, but not extraneous objects like bunnies or cats. Each element should be an organic part of the whole, subordinated to the overall concept.

It is important to add the following fundamental provision to the definition of «artistic image»: «An aesthetically functioning text appears as a text of increased, and not decreased, semantic load in relation to non-artistic texts. It means more, not less»"[highlighted - M.A.]" [Ibid.] "than ordinary speech" [Ibid., p. 204].

Anyone who has attempted to "retell" an artistic image has encountered the impossibility of doing so exhaustively. For example, reducing the song's phrase, "Why do you stand swaying, slender rowan tree..." to just the story of a girl in love, or reducing the images of oak and rowan to the simple concept of "lack of reciprocity," would significantly impoverish the artistic meaning.

Region feelings, The experience of such an artistic comparison is incomparably richer than the intellect's ability to decipher this trope. Artistic imagery always engages both the intellectual and sensory natures of human perception, drawing attention to elements that are usually perceived automatically and not registered by consciousness.

While an aesthetically invaluable text is easily exhausted by retelling (that is, it is equal to itself), because it appeals only to the intellectual function of perception, a genuine artistic text reveals itself to the reader gradually, in multilayered forms, allowing him to undertake his own semantic journey.

Yu. M. Lotman puts it this way: «Artistic functioning does not generate a text «cleansed» of meanings, but, on the contrary, a text that is maximally overloaded with meanings. As soon as we grasp some order in the sphere of expression [highlighted - M.A.], we immediately attribute a certain content to it or assume the presence of content here that is not yet known to us» [Ibid., p. 206].

«"Meaning" in the structure of an artistic image

The concept of «meaning» begins where sensory perception is included (the imagination of the perceiver, drawing in his memory the signified object): «If the meaning of a sign is sensually perceptible [highlighted - M.A.] an object, then my representation of this object is an internal image that arose from memories of sensory impressions and about the acts of my internal or external activities [highlighted - M.A.]" [10]. That is, meaning is what, through a certain sign, includes sensory perception and connects the personal experience of the perceiver with the personal experience of the author of the sign (the author of the work).

For this effect to occur, "signs" must be brought together into a dynamic, unified system—the structure of an "artistic image." Only then does the "artistic image," through the author's system of specifically arranged signs and through the deliberately established connections between them, "encode" meaning. Moreover, the "artistic image"'s potential for conveying "intellectual-sensory" information is limitless, since it is itself composed of an infinite number of smaller, strictly interconnected semantic objects—"artistic images" (hero, environment, time, motif, character language, etc.).

This structure is like a hologram, where each fragment of the image contains information about the entire object. Each element of the artistic image embodies the integrity of the author's intention, and the combination of these elements creates a multilayered, polysemantic system of meanings that constantly unfolds and transforms in the reader's perception. This is confirmed by a general understanding of the nature of language, which states: "The functionality of language is considered in close connection with its communicative properties. […] the active nature of language is reflected in its dialogic nature, its communicativeness. Here, a single linguistic unit alone is insufficient to realize language" [6, p. 21]. It is precisely this capacity for endless interpretation that makes the artistic image a unique tool for understanding and experiencing reality.

Conclusion

Thus, we have shown that the concept of «artistic image» is central and most worthy for text analysis, requiring deep psychological study.

Low-quality literature, as has been demonstrated, does not imply the creation of a coherent "artistic image," which, from the perspective of personality psychology, signifies a lack of deep semantic elaboration of the text. M. Heidegger aptly notes the transformation of human perception: the transition from a semantic to a technical depiction of reality. From a psychological perspective, this indicates a reduction in the cognitive processes of perception and interpretation of the text.

«"Mass literature" is a simulacrum of a communicative act, dominated by superficial emotional and intellectual constructs that fail to tap into the deeper layers of the individual and collective unconscious. At the level of psychological perception mechanisms, such a text fails to activate meaning-making processes, but merely triggers stereotypical reactions that do not enrich the reader's existential experience.

In contrast, classical literature is a complex system, where the artistic image is a multi-layered structure integrating the intellectual, emotional, and subconscious components of human perception. Such a text functions as a psychological mediator, transforming the reader's individual experience through the mechanisms of projection, identification, and catharsis. When perceiving a classical work, deep psychological mechanisms are activated: resonance with archetypal structures, the actualization of latent meanings, and the recoding of personal experience. The reader not only consumes information but becomes a participant in the creative process, acting as a subject of secondary meaning-making.

Mass-market literature, unlike works of high art, is fundamentally different in its internal organization and lacks a complex, hierarchical structure conducive to multilayered meaning-making. Its textual flow is organized predominantly by plot—one component of the artistic image. This predominance of plot leads to the suppression and deactivation of other critical components of artistic imagery, such as character depth, symbolism, atmospheric impact, or subtext.

From the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, this structure reduces intellectual workload and facilitates superficial information processing. The reader does not form complex cognitive schemas or mental models, as the text does not offer a sufficient number of interconnected elements for deep integration. It is perceived as a linear sequence of events, failing to evoke a lasting emotional or intellectual resonance. Consequently, the analysis confirms that the difference between classical and popular literature lies in the organization and functionality of the artistic image, which directly determines the depth of the text's psychological impact on the reader. The text of "popular literature" functions as an ephemeral, unintegrated textual stream, quickly forgotten and erased from the reader's consciousness immediately after the act of reading, leaving no significant psychological or semantic imprint.

Literature 

1. Gurvich I.A. Fiction in Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Moscow: ROU, 1991. 90 p.
2. Dolzhenko O.V., Tarasova O.I. Problems of understanding // Knowledge. Understanding. Skill. Yelets, 2009. No. 1. P. 206–214.
3. Cawelti J. Study of literary formulas // NLO. 1996.
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8. Fedorova Zh.V. Popular Literature in 19th-Century Russia: Artistic and Social Aspects // Russian and Comparative Philology. A Young View. Kazan, 2003. Pp.
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10. Frege G. Meaning and significance // Philosophy of language: Texts. URL: http://kant.narod.ru/frege1.htm (date accessed: 27.08.2025).

References

1. Gurvich, IA. (1991). Belletristika v russkoj literatury 19 veka. Moscow: ROU, 90 p.
2. Dolzhenko, OV, & Tarasova, OI. (2009). Problems of understanding. Knowledge. Understanding. Management, 1, 206–214.
3. Kavelti, Dj. (1996). Study of literary formulas. NLO, 22, 33–64.
4. Lotman, Yu.M. (1997). Mass literature as a historical and cultural problem. In Yu. M. Lotman, *On Russian literature: articles and studies (1958-1993)* (pp. 817–827). Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB.
5. Lotman, Yu.M. (1992). On the content and structure of the concept of «fiction». In Yu. M. Lotman, Selected Articles (Vol. 1, pp. 203–216). Tallinn.
6. Myskin, SV. (2015). The problem of the "image of the author" in professional texts. Questions of Psycholinguistics, 1, 20–32.
7. Pul'khritudova, EM. (1987). Literatura, belletristika i paraliteratura. In Theory of Literature (pp. 10–29). Moscow: Moscow University Press.
8. Fedorova, Zh.V. (2003). Mass Literature in 19th-Century Russia: Artistic and Social Aspects. In Russian and Comparative Philology. A Young People’s View (pp. 203–209). Kazan.
9. Khalizev, VE. (1999). Theory of Literature. Moscow: Vysshaya shkola.
10. Frege, G. (n.d.). Meaning and Significance. Philosophy of Language: Texts. Retrieved August 27, 2025, from http://kant.narod.ru/frege1.htm

Date of receipt of the article by the editors: 09/04/2025.

Date of acceptance of the article for publication: 09.27.2025.

[1] Here we can list only a few names from the vast list of scientists: Yu. B. Borev, G. D. Gachev, L. Ya. Dorfman, L. I. A. Zaks, A. F. Losev, A. Ya. Zis, M. G. Kagan, V. S. Rotenberg, A. V. Tolstykh, M. G. Yaroshevsky, and others.