Unattainable Bride Russia: Gendering Nation, State, and Intelligentsia in Russian Intellectual Culture

ISBN-13: 9780810126565 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 340 str.

Ellen Rutten

Opis

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing today, personifications of Russia as a bride occur in a wide range of Russian texts and visual representations, from literature and political and philosophical treatises to cartoons and tattoos. Invariably, this metaphor functions in the context of a political gender allegory, which represents the relationships between Russia, the intelligentsia, and the Russian state, as a competition of two male suitors for the former s love.

In "Unattainable Bride Russia, "Ellen Rutten focuses on the metaphorical role the intelligentsia plays as Russia s rejected or ineffectual suitor. Rutten finds that this metaphor, which she covers from its prehistory in folklore to present-day pop culture references to Vladimir Putin, is still powerful, but has generated scarce scholarly consideration. "Unattainable Bride Russia" locates the cultural thread and places the political metaphor in a broad contemporary and social context, thus paying it the attention to which it is entitled as one of Russia s modern cultural myths."