Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Russian & Former Soviet Union

Brian James Baer explores the central role played by translation in the construction of modern Russian literature. Peter I's policy of forced Westernization resulted in translation becoming a widely discussed and highly visible practice in Russia, a multi-lingual empire with a polyglot elite. Yet Russia's accumulation of cultural capital through translation occurred at a time when the Romantic obsession with originality was marginalizing translation as mere imitation. The awareness on the part of Russian writers that their literature and, by extension, their cultural identity were "born in...

Brian James Baer explores the central role played by translation in the construction of modern Russian literature. Peter I's policy of forced Westernization resulted in translation becoming a widely discussed and highly visible practice in Russia, a multi-lingual empire with a polyglot elite. Yet Russia's accumulation of cultural capital through translation occurred at a time when the Romantic obsession with originality was marginalizing translation as mere imitation. The awareness on the part of Russian writers that their literature and, by extension, their cultural identity were "born in...

First published in Russian in 1921 and never translated, Andrey Bely's long narrative poem--considered to be one of the great achievements of Russian Modernism--is translated to English here. A poet, critic, philosopher, and novelist, Bely was a leading figure among the Russian Symbolists, and The First Encounter is thought to be his greatest work in verse. The poem is autobiographical and reflects turn of-the-century Moscow with its mixture of entrenched positivism and new spiritualistic trends, cultural variety and the upheaval of the time.

Originally published in 1979.

The...

Alone of the great Russian novels of the nineteenth-century, Dead Souls has remained almost as profound a mystery to critics as it was when it first appeared. James Woodward disputes the traditional view of Gogol's work, contending that it is not a sprawling mass of loosely connected episodes, details, and digressions. His close reading of the text offers a new interpretation by tracing the essential features of Gogol's creative method.

Although Dead Souls is a subject of lively debate in almost every respect, no Western scholar has ever before made it the subject of...

What place do Dostoevsky's works occupy in the history of the novel? To answer this question, Michael Holquist focuses on the formal aspects of Dostoevskian narrative.

The author argues that the novel is a genre that constantly seeks its own identity: we still do not know what it is, since the uniqueness of its members defines the class to which it belongs. This anomaly explains the central role of the novel for Russians, perplexed as they were in the nineteenth century by idiosyncrasies that hindered development of a coherent national identity.

Michael Holquist shows that...

The dramatic political struggle of Boris Pasternak and the continued success of his novel. Dr. Zhivago, have often taken center stage in discussions of this writer. Olga Raevsky Hughes chooses instead to focus on the aesthetics underlying Pasternak's snuggles and successes to explore the ways in which his views of art and the artist were applied in his writings.

Professor Hughes examines those aspects of Pasternak's views on art that he himself considered crucial: the beginnings of poetry in his life, the relation of his art to life, his relationship to his time, and his...

Goncharov's novels have been popular in Russia since their publication, and Oblomov, the central character of his most famous novel, has become the prototype of a fat and lazy man. Milton Ehre offers new interpretations of the complex personality of Goncharov and shows how in many ways Oblomov was a self-portrait of his creator. The introductory chapter neither idealizes Goncharov nor glosses over his weaknesses but shows a sensitive understanding of this major nineteenth-century Russian writer.

The author goes beyond the standard critical cliches about Goncharov to a contemporary...

Arguing that psychoanalytic method enlarges and enriches the significance of literature by discovering a fundamental unconscious structure governing meaning and form in the literary text, Elizabeth Dalton presents both a new and lucid reformulation of the theory of psychoanalytic criticism and a penetrating study of Dostoevsky's great novel, The Idiot. In answering the objections to psychoanalytic criticism, she contends that the method--if properly understood--can be used without falling into reductionism and without recourse to the author's biography. She then deals with such...

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about radical changes in the Russian literary world. With the state's relinquishment of control over literary production, writers acquired freedom of expression and publication. State publishing houses, now self-supporting enterprises, stopped printing money-losing books and turned to foreign detective novels and erotic literature, effecting a considerable shift in popular taste. The writer, no longer a producer of ideology, has been recast as a struggling competitor in a free-market environment.

Focusing on the current Russian literary...

This book on the impact of Chinese civilization upon Tolstoy's thinking and writing reveals new resources in the study of a great Russian novelist. Making use of newly available Russian materials, Mr. Bodde explores Tolstoy's correspondence and his reading and writing on Chinese subjects to determine his conception of Chinese culture and how deeply it affected his thought in such fields as music, politics, ethics.

Originally published in 1950.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books...

Arguing that psychoanalytic method enlarges and enriches the significance of literature by discovering a fundamental unconscious structure governing meaning and form in the literary text, Elizabeth Dalton presents both a new and lucid reformulation of the theory of psychoanalytic criticism and a penetrating study of Dostoevsky's great novel, The Idiot. In answering the objections to psychoanalytic criticism, she contends that the method--if properly understood--can be used without falling into reductionism and without recourse to the author's biography. She then deals with such...

Goncharov's novels have been popular in Russia since their publication, and Oblomov, the central character of his most famous novel, has become the prototype of a fat and lazy man. Milton Ehre offers new interpretations of the complex personality of Goncharov and shows how in many ways Oblomov was a self-portrait of his creator. The introductory chapter neither idealizes Goncharov nor glosses over his weaknesses but shows a sensitive understanding of this major nineteenth-century Russian writer.

The author goes beyond the standard critical cliches about Goncharov to a contemporary...

What place do Dostoevsky's works occupy in the history of the novel? To answer this question, Michael Holquist focuses on the formal aspects of Dostoevskian narrative.

The author argues that the novel is a genre that constantly seeks its own identity: we still do not know what it is, since the uniqueness of its members defines the class to which it belongs. This anomaly explains the central role of the novel for Russians, perplexed as they were in the nineteenth century by idiosyncrasies that hindered development of a coherent national identity.

Michael Holquist shows that...