Libertinage in Russian culture and literature [electronic resource] : a bio-history of sexualities at the threshold of modernity / by Alexei Lalo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lalo, Alexei.

Series:

Russian history and culture ; RH8.

Russian history and culture, 1877-7791 ; v. 8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Russian literature.

Russian literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Libertines in literature.

Modernism (Literature).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Much of the previous scholarship on Russia's literary discourses of sexuality and eroticism in the Silver Age was built on applying European theoretical models (from psychoanalysis to feminist theory) to Russia's modernization. This book argues that, at the turn into the twentieth century, Russian popular culture for the first time found itself in direct confrontation with the traditional high cultures of the upper classes and intelligentsia, producing modernized representations of sexuality. This Russian tradition of conflicted representations, heretofore misassessed by literary history, emerges as what Foucault would call a full-blown “bio-history” of Russian culture: a history of indigenous representations of sexuality and the eroticized body capable of innovation on its own terms, not just those derivative from Europe.

Contents:

Introduction: approaching Russian silences and burlesques

Carnality and eroticism in the history of Russian literature: toward a genealogy of a discourse of silence

Golden silences in the golden age: Russian anxieties of the body and sexuality from Gogol to Chekhov

Silence is golden, speech is silver: corporeality, sensuality, and "pornography" in Russian literature of the silver age

Exploring the impetus of the silver age: the evolution of discourses of carnality and eroticism in pre-revolutionary Russian literature and in emigre writing

Nabokov's Lolita and its precursors: silver age roots and sexuality in the novel

Joseph Brodsky's libertinage: sexual and erotic themes in his poetry

Conclusion: Russia's "threshold of modernity" and literary representations of sexuality in the era of bio-power.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-27071-4

9786613270719

90-04-21120-9

OCLC:

753480414

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004211209 DOI