This is the first book to provide a synthesizing study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership to receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as such, Susan Layton introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist...

Catteau's highly acclaimed book on Dostoyevsky has already won three French literary awards, and now appears in English for the first time. This is an original and detailed attempted to reexamine Dostoyevsky the artist, tracing the creative process from its notebook beginnings to its novelistics expression, and at the same time analyzing the structures of time and space, the role of color, and other important textual features. For this edition, the author has revised his book and updated the bibliography giving, where possible, references to the Soviet Academy of Sciences' edition of...

This book examines the influence of Christianity on the thought and work of the great Russian theorist Mikhael Bakhtin, paying particular attention to the motifs of God the Creator, the Fall, the Incarnation and Christian love. This is the first full-length work to approach Bakhtin from a religious perspective, and introduces the reader to a vitally important but hitherto ignored aspect of his work. In this context Ruth Coates presents readings of Bakhtin very different from those of Marxist and Structuralist critics.

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 is the first full-length study of the huge popularity and cultural impact of fortune telling in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present. It examines the ways in which popular fortune telling books found acceptance among urban and literate Russians, the role of women in fortune telling, and the function of fortune telling in their culture. It goes on to consider the relationship between urban fortune telling and traditional oral culture, and discusses why fortune telling continues as a powerful force in modern Russian society.

This is the first book-length study of Andrei Bitov, one of contemporary Russia's most original writers. It plots his evolution from the post-Stalin years to his mature masterpieces of the glasnost era and assesses his place in the Russian and international literary tradition. Ellen Chances explores his themes, from the psychological effects of Stalin on Soviet society to universal questions such as the human being's relationship with nature, history and culture, and describes how his writings go beyond modernist and postmodernist fragmentation in search of the wholeness of life.

N.M. Karamzin (1766-1826) was the foremost Russian representative of the late eighteenth-century Sentimentalist movement. In this study, Gitta Hammarberg makes use of recent advances in literary theory (especially those based on the work of Bakhtin and Voloshinov) in order to develop a new theory of Sentimentalist literature, which she applies to Karamzin's prose fiction. Professor Hammarberg situates Sentimentalism in its historical context, as a reflection of contemporary shifts in world view, a reaction against the Neo-Classicist view of literature, and a vehicle for legitimizing prose...

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958) was one of the great poets of twentieth-century Russia. As the last link in the Russian Futurist tradition and the first poet to come of age in the Soviet period, Zabolotsky wrote both experimental and classical poetry. This is the first critical biography of Zabolotsky to appear in English. Goldstein examines not only his poetic career but also his life, highlighting the deep ambiguity of Zabolotsky's era by exploring the ways in which the poet was influenced both by the artistic avant-garde and by the Soviet scientific establishment.

Iurii Trifonov (1925-81) has recently become well-known in the West as a writer of Soviet urban life. This study concentrates on his exploration of major events in Russian history and their implications and consequences for his time. David Gillespie traces this interest through all of Trifonov's writings, from his earliest, Stalin prize-winning period to the self-consciously modernist later works. Through historical analogies and allusions, Trifonov developed a language with which to combat the repressive censorship of his time. He upheld the concepts of truth and justice when glasnost was...

This study is an innovative and controversial study of how the best-known Jews writing in Russian in early Soviet period attempted to resolve the conflict between their cultural identity and their place in Revolutionary Russia. Babel, Mandelstam, Pasternak and Ehrenburg struggled to form creative selves out of the contradictions of origins, outlook and social or ideological pressures. Comparison of literary texts and the visual arts reveals unexpected correspondences in the response to political and cultural change. Sicher provides a fascinating view of intercultural and intertextual...