Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Ilya Vinitsky

Russian Literature

Polity Press, 2009.

New Book.

Item #6094
ISBN: 9780745636863

Paperback. 244 pp.

For most English-speaking readers, Russian literature consists of a small number of individual writers - nineteenth-century masters such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev - or a few well-known works - Chekhov's plays, Brodsky's poems, and perhaps Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago from the twentieth century. The medieval period, as well as the brilliant tradition of Russian lyric poetry from the eighteenth century to the present, are almost completely terra incognita, as are the complex prose experiments of Nikolai Gogol, Nikolai Leskov, Andrei Belyi, and Andrei Platonov. Furthermore, those writers who have made an impact are generally known outside of the contexts in which they wrote and in which their work has been received.
In this engaging book, Andrew Baruch Wachtel and Ilya Vinitsky provide a comprehensive, conceptually challenging history of Russian literature, including prose, poetry and drama. Each of the ten chapters deals with a bounded time period from medieval Russia to the present. In a number of cases, chapters overlap chronologically, thereby allowing a given period to be seen in more than one context. To tell the story of each period, the authors provide an introductory essay touching on the highpoints of its development and then concentrate on one biography, one literary or cultural event, and one literary work, which serve as prisms through which the main outlines of a given period's development can be discerned. Although the focus is on literature, individual works, lives and events are placed in broad historical context as well as in the framework of parallel developments in Russian art and music.

Andrew Baruch Wachtel is Bertha and Max Dressler Professor in Humanities at Northwestern University.
Ilya Vinitsky is Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations vi

Chronology vii

Introduction: Labyrinth of Links: Russian Literature and its Cultural Contexts 1

1 The Origins: Russian Medieval Culture 7

2 The Spirit of Peter: Russian Culture in the Eighteenth Century 31

3 The Spirit of Poetry: Russian Culture in the Age of Alexander I (1801-25) 57

4 The Russian Idea: The Quest for National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Russian Culture 89

5 Russian Psychology: The Quest for Personal Identity in Nineteenth-Century Russian Culture 125

6 Life as Theatre: Russian Modernism 157

7 The Art of the Future: The Russian Avant-Garde 182

8 The Future as Present: Soviet Culture 204

9 After the Future: Russian Thaw Culture 233

10 Instead of the Apocalypse: Russian Culture Today 261

Conclusion: Whither Russian Literature 285

Notes 294

Bibliography 302

Index 308.

Price: $40.00