This is a study of the Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov that attempts to integrate in-depth interpretations of all his major texts. It considers his narrative poems, The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov (1837), The Demon (1839), and The Novice (1839); a play, The Masquerade (1835); and the novel A Hero of Our Time (1840) from the perspective of one of the central concerns of Romanticism in general and of Lermontov in particular: heroism and individualism.

This is the first study of Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) that attempts to integrate the in-depth interpretations of all his major texts--including his famous A Hero of Our Time, the novel that laid the foundation for the Russian psychological novel.

Lermontov's explorations of the virtues and limitations of heroic, self-reliant conduct have subsequently become obscured or misread. This new book focuses upon the peculiar, disturbing, and arguably most central feature of Russian culture: its suspicion of and hostility toward individual achievement and self-assertion. The...

Dostoevsky Beyond Dostoevsky is a collection of essays with a broad interdisciplinary focus. It includes contributions by leading Dostoevsky scholars, social scientists, scholars of religion and philosophy. The volume considers aesthetics, philosophy, theology, and science of the 19th century Russia and the West that might have informed Dostoevsky's thought and art. Issues such as evolutionary theory and literature, science and society, scientific and theological components of comparative intellectual history, and aesthetic debates of the nineteenth century Russia form the core of the...