Haunted empire : Gothic and the Russian imperial uncanny / Valeria Sobol.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sobol, Valeria, author.

Series:

NIU series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies.

Cornell scholarship online.

NIU series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies

Cornell scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), Russian--History and criticism.

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), Russian.

Ukrainian fiction--History and criticism.

Ukrainian fiction.

Imperialism in literature.

Uncanny, The (Psychoanalysis), in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 198 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Northern Illinois University Press, 2021.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This text shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. The book argues that the persistent Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire enact deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. It brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as the book explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms 'the imperial uncanny.' Focusing on two spaces of 'the imperial uncanny' - the Baltic 'North'/Finland and the Ukrainian 'South' - the book reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction. From the Island of Bornholm to Taman′: The Literary Trajectory of the Russian Imperial Uncanny

1. A Gothic Prelude: Nikolai Karamzin’s “The Island of Bornholm”

2. In Search of the Russian Middle Ages: The Livonian Tales of the 1820s

3. “Gloomy Finland” and Russian Gothic Tales of Assimilation

4 . Ukraine: Russia’s Uncanny Double

5. On Mimicry and Ukrainians: Empire and the Gothic in Antonii Pogorel′sky’s The Convent Graduate

6. ’Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish’s Gothic Ukraine

Afterword

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2020.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on May 7, 2021).

ISBN:

9781501750588

1501750585

9781501750571

1501750577

OCLC:

1198930128