The adventures of the detective story: the popular genre in the mirror of the contemporary literary criticism

The article is devoted to problems of crucial changes in the institution of literature and literary criticism in the second half of the 20th century in the time of the literary field transformation. The aim of this article is an analysis of different approaches to the detective story research. The accomplishment of this aim will allow solving a num!ber of theoretical problems, for example: to specify such important terms as «genre», «narrative» and «reader»; to suggest relevant procedures for analysis of the relationship between «serious», «elite» and «popular», «mass» literature.