The poetics of impudence and intimacy in the age of Pushkin / Joe Peschio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peschio, Joe.

Series:

Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies.

Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Russian literature.

Russian wit and humor--19th century--History and criticism.

Russian wit and humor.

Arzamas (Literary circle).

Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837--Criticism and interpretation.

Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (175 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In early nineteenth-century Russia, members of jocular literary societies gathered to recite works written in the lightest of genres: the friendly verse epistle, the burlesque, the epigram, the comic narrative poem, the prose parody. In a period marked by the Decembrist Uprising and heightened state scrutiny into private life, these activities were hardly considered frivolous; such works and the domestic, insular spaces within which they were created could be seen by the Russian state as rebellious, at times even treasonous. Joe Peschio offers the first comprehensive history of a set of associated behaviors known in Russian as " shalosti, " a word which at the time could refer to provocative behaviors like practical joking, insubordination, ritual humiliation, or vandalism, among other things, but also to literary manifestations of these behaviors such as the use of obscenities in poems, impenetrably obscure allusions, and all manner of literary inside jokes. One of the period's most fashionable literary and social poses became this complex of behaviors taken together. Peschio explains the importance of literary shalosti as a form of challenge to the legitimacy of existing literary institutions and sometimes the Russian regime itself. Working with a wide variety of primary texts-from verse epistles to denunciations, etiquette manuals, and previously unknown archival materials-Peschio argues that the formal innovations fueled by such "prankish" types of literary behavior posed a greater threat to the watchful Russian government and the literary institutions it fostered than did ordinary civic verse or overtly polemical prose.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction

1. Roots and Contexts

2. Arzamas: Rudeness

3. The Green Lamp: Sexual Banter

4. Ruslan and Liudmila: Rudeness and Sexual Banter

Epilogue: Pushkin the Pornographer, Two Hundred Years Later

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780299290436

0299290433

9781299192317

1299192319

OCLC:

828618001