Russian Literature and Its Demons

Russian Literature and Its Demons
Author: Pamela Davidson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2000
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571817587

Merezhkovsky's bold claim that "all Russian literature is, to a certain degree, a struggle with the temptation of demonism" is undoubtedly justified. And yet, despite its evident centrality to Russian culture, the unique and fascinating phenomenon of Russian literary demonism has so far received little critical attention. This substantial collection fills the gap. A comprehensive analytical introduction by the editor is follwed by a series of fourteen essays, written by eminent scholars in their fields. The first part explores the main shaping contexts of literary demonism: the Russian Orthodox and folk tradition, the demonization of historical figures, and views of art as intrinsically demonic. The second part traces the development of a literary tradition of demonism in the works of authors ranging from Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Dostoevsky, through to the poets and prose writers of modernism (including Blok, Akhmatova, Bely, Sologub, Rozanov, Zamiatin), and through to the end of the 20th century.

"The Nose"

Author: Ksana Blank
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1644695227

This literary guide leads students with advanced knowledge of Russian as well as experienced scholars through the text of Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist masterpiece “The Nose.” Part I focuses on numerous instances of the writer’s wordplay, which is meant to surprise and delight the reader, but which often is lost in English translations. It traces Gogol’s descriptions of everyday life in St. Petersburg, familiar to the writer’s contemporaries and fellow citizens but hidden from the modern Western reader. Part II presents an overview of major critical interpretations of the story in Gogol scholarship from the time of its publication to the present, as well as its connections to the works of Shostakovich, Kafka, Dalí, and Kharms.

Life Is Elsewhere

Life Is Elsewhere
Author: Anne Lounsbery
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2019-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501747932

In Life Is Elsewhere, Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. Using a comparative approach, she brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, Lounsbery argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.

Slavic Folklore

Slavic Folklore
Author: Natalie Kononenko
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007-09-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Slavic folklore has great cultural significance and international influence. Written for students and general readers, this book offers a brief but thorough introduction to Slavic folklore. Included are explanations of the different types of Slavic folklore, the role of Slavic folklore in literature and popular culture, and the state of criticism and scholarship on this field of interest. The volume provides numerous examples and cites print and electronic sources for further reading. The people of Eastern Europe have a long and rich cultural history. Central to that history are the folktales, traditions, and customs of the region. Some elements of Slavic folklore, such as vampire legends and Easter eggs, are well known, while others are more obscure. And when the Slavs came to America, they brought much of their folklore to the new world, where it continues to flourish today. This book is a short but thorough introduction to Slavic folklore. Written expressly for students and general readers, it systematically overviews Slavic folklore. It discusses the many different types of folklore and summarizes scholarship and research on the subject. It provides a wide range of texts and examples from the Slavic folk tradition and explores the role of Slavic folklore in literature and popular culture. The volume cites numerous print and electronic sources and closes with a glossary and selected, general bibliography. Literature students will enjoy learning about Slavic tales and customs, while students in social studies classes will learn more about the culture of Eastern Europe.

A History of Russian Literature

A History of Russian Literature
Author: Victor Terras
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1991
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780300049718

Surveys Russian literature from the eleventh century to the present, set within the context of political, social, religious, and philisophical developments

Deathless

Deathless
Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2011-03-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429968400

A glorious retelling of the Russian folktale Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless from Catherynne M. Valente, set in a mysterious version of St. Petersburg during the first half of the 20th century Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century. Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The House in Russian Literature

The House in Russian Literature
Author: Joost van Baak
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9042029153

The domestic theme has a tremendous anthropological, literary and cultural significance. The purpose of this book is to analyse and interpret the most important realisations and tendencies of this thematic complex in the history of Russian literature. It is the first systematic book-length exploration of the meaning and development of the House theme in Russian literature of the past 200 years. It studies the ideological, psychological and moral meanings which Russian cultural and literary tradition have invested in the house or projected on it in literary texts. Central to this study’s approach is the concept of the House Myth, consisting of a set of basic fabular elements and a set of general types of House images. This House Myth provides the general point of reference from which the literary works were analyzed and compared. With the help of this analytical procedure characteristics of individual authors could be described as well as recurrent patterns and features discerned in the way Russian literature dealt with the House and its thematics, thus reflecting characteristics of Russian literary world pictures, Russian mentalities and Russian attitudes towards life. This book is of interest for students of Russian literature as well as for those interested in the House as a cultural and literary topic, in the semiotics of literature, and in relations between culture, anthropology and literature.

David Bergelson's Strange New World

David Bergelson's Strange New World
Author: Harriet Murav
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2019-02-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0253036925

David Bergelson (1884–1952) emerged as a major literary figure who wrote in Yiddish before WWI. He was one of the founders of the Kiev Kultur-Lige and his work was at the center of the Yiddish-speaking world of the time. He was well known for creating characters who often felt the painful after-effects of the past and the clumsiness of bodies stumbling through the actions of daily life as their familiar worlds crumbled around them. In this contemporary assessment of Bergelson and his fiction, Harriet Murav focuses on untimeliness, anachronism, and warped temporality as an emotional, sensory, existential, and historical background to Bergleson's work and world. Murav grapples with the great modern theorists of time and memory, especially Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin, to present Bergelson as an integral part of the philosophical and artistic experiments, political and technological changes, and cultural context of Russian and Yiddish modernism that marked his age. As a comparative and interdisciplinary study of Yiddish literature and Jewish culture, this work adds a new, ethnic dimension to understandings of the turbulent birth of modernism.

In The Forests Of Serre

In The Forests Of Serre
Author: Patricia A. McKillip
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2003-06-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101208201

In the tales of World Fantasy Award-winning author Patricia McKillip, nothing is ever as it seems. A mirror is never just a mirror; a forest is never just a forest. Here, it is a place where a witch can hide in her house of bones and a prince can bargain with his heart...where good and evil entwine and wear each others' faces... and where a bird with feathers of fire can quench the fiercest longing...

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020
Author: Maria Rubins
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1787359417

Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan and national boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration? Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the field from an excessive emphasis on the homeland and origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating a variety of conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of translation and self-translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These diverse discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition.