The Cambridge introduction to Russian literature / Caryl Emerson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Emerson, Caryl, author.

Series:

Cambridge introductions to literature.

Cambridge introductions to literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian literature--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Russian literature--Themes, motives.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 292 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Russian literature arrived late on the European scene. Within several generations, its great novelists had shocked - and then conquered - the world. In this introduction to the rich and vibrant Russian tradition, Caryl Emerson weaves a narrative of recurring themes and fascinations across several centuries. Beginning with traditional Russian narratives (saints' lives, folk tales, epic and rogue narratives), the book moves through literary history chronologically and thematically, juxtaposing literary texts from each major period. Detailed attention is given to canonical writers including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn, as well as to some current bestsellers from the post-Communist period. Fully accessible to students and readers with no knowledge of Russian, the volume includes a glossary and pronunciation guide of key Russian terms as well as a list of useful secondary works. The book will be of great interest to students of Russian as well as of comparative literature.

Contents:

Critical models, committed readers, and three Russian ideas. Literary critics and their public goods ; Three Russian Ideas

Heroes and their plots. Righteous persons ; Fools ; Frontiersmen ; Rogues and villains ; Society's misfits in the European style ; The heroes we might yet see

Traditional narratives. Saints' lives ; Folk tales (Baba Yaga, Koshchey the Deathless) ; Hybrids : folk epic and Faust tale ; Miracle, magic, law

Western eyes on Russian realities : the eighteenth century. Neoclassical comedy and Gallomania ; Chulkov's Martona : life instructs art ; Karamzin's "Poor Liza"

The astonishing nineteenth century : romanticisms. Pushkin and honor ; Duels ; Gogol and embarrassment ; Pretendership

Realisms : Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov. Biographies of events, and biographies that are quests for the Word ; Time-spaces (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) ; Dostoevsky and books ; Tolstoy and doing without words ; Poets and novelists (Dostoevsky and Nekrasov) ; Anton Chekhov : lesser expectations, smaller forms

Symbolist and modernist world-building : three cities, three novels, and the devil. The fin de siècle : Solovyov, Nietzsche, Einstein, Pavlov's dogs, political terrorism ; Modernist time-spaces and their modes of disruption ; City myths : Petersburg, Moscow, OneState

The Stalin years : socialist realism, anti-fascist fairy tales, wilderness. What was socialist realism? ; Cement and construction (Fyodor Gladkov) ; The Dragon and destruction (Evgeny Shvarts) ; Andrei Platonov and suspension ; The "right to the lyric" in an Age of Iron

Coming to terms and seeking new terms : from the first Thaw (1956) to the end of the millennium. The intelligentsia and the camps (Solzhenitsyn) ; The Underground Woman (Petrushevskaya) ; Three ways for writers to treat matter (Sorokin, Pelevin, Akunin)

Glossary.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-284) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-17538-0

0-511-81695-2

0-511-64994-0

0-511-41284-3

0-511-56764-2

0-511-41376-9

OCLC:

437219400