This book explores the immense influence of the composer Richard Wagner on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian writers, musicians and artists. It contains a history of the production of Wagner's works in Russia and the Soviet Union (by directors including Meyerhold and Eisenstein), an account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a detailed investigation of the impact of his music and ideas on the Russian Modernist movement. The last two chapters explore the fate of Wagner's works after the 1917 Revolution, when he was first hailed but then reviled, and finally rehabilitated during...

This is the first synthesizing study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. It covers major writers including Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lermontov, but also introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. Setting these writings and the responses of the Russian readership in historical and cultural context, Susan Layton examines ways that literature underwrote imperialism. But her study also reveals the tensions between the Russian state's ideology of a...

This pioneering study shows for the first time the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture. It examines the Nietzschean roots of early Soviet literature, theater and architecture, Soviet political culture, the work of disaffected writers and thinkers and that of intellectuals of the non-Russian nationalities. It offers a fresh perspective on the origins, formative years, and subsequent development of Soviet literature and culture, and raises new issues for research and discussion.

This collection of original essays by leading Western and Russian specialists gives an overview of key issues in Russian women's writing and of important representations of women by men, between 1600 and the present, exploring the differences between the writing of women and men in Russia. It combines a study of the history and biography of previously neglected women writers with close readings of literary texts, demonstrating that although many Russian women writers have been unjustly disadvantaged and marginalized, their work contains much of interest for contemporary women readers.

This book interprets the baffling complex of meanings attached by Russian culture to the concept of everyday life, or byt, and assesses its impact on Russian modernist narrative. Drawing on modern literary theory and theology, Stephen C. Hutchings argues that byt emerged from a dialogue between two aesthetic systems, one predominant in Western Catholic and Protestant cultures, the other reflected in Orthodox iconic traditions. He offers provocative, yet careful, readings of key narrative texts from the period.

This first full-length account of the Russian verse tradition shows how certain formal features are associated with certain genres and specific themes. Keeping technical terms to a minimum and providing English translations of all quotations, Michael Wachtel offers close readings of poems by more than fifty poets from Pushkin to Brodsky, and demonstrates the practical interpretive value of paying attention to poetic form. Ultimately, his book is an inquiry into the nature of literary tradition in a country that has always taken much of its identity from its written legacy.

In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts. Collaborations among writers, artists, designers, and theater and film directors took place more intensively and productively than ever before or since. Yet this transcendence of the boundaries among art forms also gave rise to confrontation and creative tension. This collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian scholars draws on a rich variety of material to demonstrate the creative power and dynamism of Russian culture "on the boundaries."

This collection brings together Western and Russian perspectives on the issues raised by the religious element in Dostoevsky's work. The essays cover such topics as temptation, his use of the gospels, the Russian tradition of the veneration of icons, as well as reading aloud, and dialogism. In addition to an exploration of the impact of the Christian tradition on Dostoevsky's major novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, there are also discussions of lesser known works such as The Landlady and A Little Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree

Computers are developing into a powerful medium integrating film, pictures, text, and sound, and the use of computers for communication and information is rapidly expanding. The Computer as Medium brings insights from art, literature, and theater to bear on computers and discusses the communicative and organizational nature of computer networks within a historical perspective. The book consists of three parts: The first part characterizes the semiotic nature of computers and discusses semiotic approaches to programming and interface design. The second section discusses narrative and aesthetic...

This is the first work to examine the extraordinary history of literary journals in imperial Russia. Given the restrictions on political action and even political discussion in Russia, these journals served as the principal means by which Russia discovered, defined and shaped itself; and virtually every major Russian novel of the nineteenth century was first published there in serial form. Essays by leading scholars analyze the social forces shaping literary journals, and the major journals and journalists of the period.