Tolstoy's art and thought, 1847-1880 / Donna Tussing Orwin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Orwin, Donna Tussing, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy in literature.

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910--Criticism and interpretation.

Tolstoy, Leo.

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 269 pages)

Edition:

Core Textbook

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1993.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"My aim is to present Tolstoy's work as he may have understood it himself," writes Donna Orwin. Reconstructing the intellectual and psychic struggles behind the masterpieces of his early and middle age, this major study covers the period during which he wrote The Cossacks, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. Orwin uses the tools of biography, intellectual and literary history, and textual analysis to explain how Tolstoy's tormented search for moral certainty unfolded, creating fundamental differences among the great novels of the "pre-crisis" period. Distinguished by its historical emphasis, this book demonstrates that the great novelist, who had once seen a fundamental harmony between human conscience and nature's vitality, began eventually to believe in a dangerous rift between the two: during the years discussed here, Tolstoy moved gradually from a celebration of life to instruction about its moral dimensions. Paying special attention to Tolstoy's reading of Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and the Russian thinker N. N. Strakhov, Orwin also explores numerous other influences on his thought. In so doing, she shows how his philosophical and emotional conflicts changed form but continued unabated--until, with his religious conversion of 1880, he surrendered his long attempt to make sense of life through art alone.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Documentation

Introduction

Part One: THE 1850's

One. Analysis and Synthesis

Two. The Young Tolstoy's Understanding of the Human Soul

Three. The First Synthesis: Nature and the Young Tolstoy

Part Two: THE 1860's

Four. Nature and Civilization in The Cossacks

Five. The Unity of Man and Nature in War and Peace

Part Three: THE 1870's

Six. From Nature to Culture in the 1870's

Seven. Drama in Anna Karenina

Eight. Science, Philosophy, and Synthesis in the 1870's

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-261) and index.

ISBN:

9781400805938

1400805937

9781400820887

140082088X

9781400812899

1400812895

OCLC:

51444593