The topical issues of history of foreign literature and methods of its university teaching

The author of this article examines the foreign literature and methods of its teaching on the basis of competence approach, in the context of current global humanitarian problems: growth of personal freedom in society; escalation of interpersonal, international conflicts; globalization and search for identity; assertion of postmodern ideology and mass culture. These problems require the study of corresponding ideological-artistic aspects of foreign literature - the theme of freedom and responsibility of an individual (in the works of novelists, existentialists, modernists, representatives of “Humanitarian Realism” etc.) ideological-artistic influence and parallels in the works of authors of different nationalities, “friend-or-foe” opposition and its overcoming in literary texts, phenomenon of cultural marginality / frontier and search for identity in literature, restoration of the hierarchy of values in the postmodern view of the world. Modern literary education at the university requires the implementation of the dialogical educational technologies - technologies of problem teaching, critical thinking development, organization of independent work of students. These technologies stimulate students’ personal comprehension of the core of the subject, promote formation of a subject position, develop the ability for self-reflection, comparison, classification, objective assessment of literary and cultural phenomena. The offered concept is being successfully implemented in the Faculty of Philology of the Transbaikal State University from 2000 to 2016.