Poverty of the imagination : nineteenth-century Russian literature about the poor / David Herman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herman, David, 1962-

Series:

Studies in Russian literature and theory.

Studies in Russian literature and theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Poor in literature.

Poverty in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxii, 304 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The primal scene of all nineteenth-century Western thought might well be the moment an observer gazed at someone poor, most commonly on the streets of a great metropolis, and wondered what the spectacle meant in human, moral, political, and metaphysical terms. In Russia, where so much of the population was impoverished, the moment held special significance. David Herman examines how Russian writers portrayed this poverty and what their portrayal reveals and articulates about core values of Russian culture.Focussing on specific texts but addressing the literary tradition as a whole, Herman begins with Karamzin's immensely popular story "Poor Liza", the first in a sequence of poverty narratives that self-consciously address one another. He then considers Pushkin's "Egyptian Nights"; Gogol's "Overcoat", Petersburg tales, and Selected Passages; and Dostoevsky's Idiot and 1880 "Pushkin speech".With a series of innovative readings, Poverty of the Imagination teases out a Russian discourse on lack which owes its peculiar richness to an insistence on solving simultaneously problems of social justice, national identity, and the ethics of the human imagination. As prominently as poverty figures in Russian literature, this is the first sustained analysis of its literary, conceptual, and cultural implications. As such, it deepens our understanding and appreciation of some of the most widely read literature of all time.

Contents:

Introduction: poverty and imagination Expelled from the garden of poverty: sympathy and literacy in "Poor Liza" The call of poverty: learning to love the low in "Egyptian nights" The meaning of poverty: Gogol's Petersburg tales Gogol against sympathy "The poverty of our literature" By his poverty: Dostoevsky and the imitations of Christ Conclusion: the wealth of the Russian imaginations

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-273) and index.

ISBN:

0-8101-2130-1

OCLC:

70770676