Download or read book The Origins of Russian Literary Theory written by Jessica Merrill and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian Formalism is widely considered the foundation of modern literary theory. This book reevaluates the movement in light of the current commitment to rethink the concept of literary form in cultural-historical terms. Jessica Merrill provides a novel reconstruction of the intellectual historical context that enabled the emergence of Formalism in the 1910s. Formalists adopted a mode of thought Merrill calls the philological paradigm, a framework for thinking about language, literature, and folklore that lumped them together as verbal tradition. For those who thought in these terms, verbal tradition was understood to be inseparable from cultural history. Merrill situates early literary theories within this paradigm to reveal abandoned paths in the history of the discipline—ideas that were discounted by the structuralist and post-structuralist accounts that would emerge after World War II. The Origins of Russian Literary Theory reconstructs lost Formalist theories of authorship, of the psychology of narrative structure, and of the social spread of poetic innovations. According to these theories, literary form is always a product of human psychology and cultural history. By recontextualizing Russian Formalism within this philological paradigm, the book highlights the aspects of Formalism’s legacy that speak to the priorities of twenty-first-century literary studies.
Download or read book A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism written by Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenko and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2011 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume assembles the work of leading international scholars in a comprehensive history of Russian literary theory and criticism from 1917 to the post-Soviet age. By examining the dynamics of literary criticism and theory in three arenas—political, intellectual, and institutional—the authors capture the progression and structure of Russian literary criticism and its changing function and discourse. For the first time anywhere, this collection analyzes all of the important theorists and major critical movements during a tumultuous ideological period in Russian history, including developments in émigré literary theory and criticism. Winner of the 2012 Efim Etkind Prize for the best book on Russian culture, awarded by the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia.
Download or read book The Birth and Death of Literary Theory written by Galin Tihanov and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the 1940s, when awareness of Russian Formalism began to spread, literary theory remained almost exclusively a Russian and Eastern European invention. The Birth and Death of Literary Theory tells the story of literary theory by focusing on its formative interwar decades in Russia. Nowhere else did literary theory emerge and peak so early, even as it shared space with other modes of reflection on literature. A comprehensive account of every important Russian trend between the world wars, the book traces their wider impact in the West during the 20th and 21st centuries. Ranging from Formalism and Bakhtin to the legacy of classic literary theory in our post-deconstruction, world literature era, Galin Tihanov provides answers to two fundamental questions: What does it mean to think about literature theoretically, and what happens to literary theory when this option is no longer available? Asserting radical historicity, he offers a time-limited way of reflecting upon literature—not in order to write theory's obituary but to examine its continuous presence across successive regimes of relevance. Engaging and insightful, this is a book for anyone interested in theory's origins and in what has happened since its demise.
Download or read book Russian Literary Criticism written by R. H. Stacy and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1974-04-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian Literary Criticism is a survey of the various ways in which representative Russian critics from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, have viewed not only the literary works of other Russian and non-Russian writers but also the problems of literature in general. Primarily intended for readers who do not know Russian, this book discusses the major Russian critics and critical movements. The author provides sufficient historical and political background to enable the reader to understand both the literary situation and the problems facing Russian critics at any given time – whether the influx of various ideologies, official Soviet views, or dissident opinion form the Decembrists to Solzhenitsyn.
Download or read book Russian Formalism written by Peter Steiner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the Formalists in terms of the major tropes that characterized their thought. He first considers those theorists who viewed a literary work as a mechanism, an organism, or a system. He then turns to those who sought to reduce literature to its most basic element—language—and who consequently replaced poetics with linguistics. Throughout, Steiner elucidates the basic principles of the Formalists and explores their contributions to the study of poetics, literary history, the theory of literary genre, and prosody. Russian Formalism is an authoritative introduction to the movement that was a major precursor of contemporary critical thought.
Download or read book Russian Formalist Criticism written by Lee T. Lemon and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1965-01-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Some of the most important literary theory of this century."--College English Russian formalists emerged from the Russian Revolution with ideas about the independence of literature. They enjoyed that independence until Stalin shut them down. By then they had produced essays that remain among the best defenses ever written for both literature and its theory. Included here are four essays representing key points in the formalists' short history. Victor Scklovsky's pathbreaking "Art as Technique" (1917) vindicates disorder in literary style. His 1921 essay on Tristram Shandy makes that eccentric novel the centerpiece for a theory of narrative. A section from Tomashevsky's "Thematics" (1925) inventories the elements of stories. In "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'" (1927) Boris Eichenbaum defends Russian formalism from many attacks. An able champion, he describes formalism's evolution, notes its major workers and works, clears away decayed axioms, and rescues literature from "primitive historicism" and other dangers. These essays set a course for literary studies that led to Prague structuralism, French semiotics, and postmodern poetics. Russian Formalist Criticism has been honored as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year by the American Library Association.
Download or read book Modern Literary Theory and Ancient Texts written by Thomas Schmitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides students and scholars of classical literature with a practical guide to modern literary theory and criticism. Using a clear and concise approach, it navigates readers through various theoretical approaches, including Russian Formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, gender studies, and New Historicism. Applies theoretical approaches to examples from ancient literature Extensive bibliographies and index make it a valuable resource for scholars in the field
Download or read book Only Among Women written by Anne Eakin Moss and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only Among Women reveals how the idea of a community of women as a social sphere ostensibly free from the taint of money, sex, or self-interest originated in the classic Russian novel, fueled mystical notions of unity in turn-of-the-century modernism, and finally assumed a privileged place in Stalinist culture, especially cinema.
Download or read book A History of Russian Literature written by Andrew Kahn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. The volume proceeds chronologically in five parts, extending from Kievan Rus' in the 11th century to the present day.The coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic focus. Parts are organized thematically in chapters, which a number of keywords that are important literary concepts that can serve as connecting motifs and 'case studies', in-depth discussions of writers, institutions, and texts that take the reader up close and. Visual material also underscores the interrelation of the word and image at a number of points, particularly significant in the medieval period and twentieth century. The History addresses major continuities and discontinuities in the history of Russian literature across all periods, and in particular bring out trans-historical features that contribute to the notion of a national literature. The volume's time-range has the merit of identifying from the early modern period a vital set of national stereotypes and popular folklore about boundaries, space, Holy Russia, and the charismatic king that offers culturally relevant material to later writers. This volume delivers a fresh view on a series of key questions about Russia's literary history, by providing new mappings of literary history and a narrative that pursues key concepts (rather more than individual authorial careers). This holistic narrative underscores the ways in which context and text are densely woven in Russian literature, and demonstrates that the most exciting way to understand the canon and the development of tradition is through a discussion of the interrelation of major and minor figures, historical events and literary politics, literary theory and literary innovation.
Download or read book Vasily Zhukovsky s Romanticism and the Emotional History of Russia written by Ilya Vinitsky and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ilya Vinitsky's Vasily Zhukovsky's Romanticism and the Emotional History of Russia is the first major study in English of Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852)—a poet, translator of German romantic verse, and, crucially, mentor of Pushkin. It focuses overdue attention to an important figure in Russian literary and cultural history. Vinitsky’s "psychological biography" argues that Zhukovsky very consciously set out to create for himself an emotional life that reflected his unique brand of romanticism, different from what we associate with Pushkin or poets such as Byron or Wordsworth. For Zhukovsky, ideal love was harmonious, built on a mystical foundation of spiritual kinship. Vinitsky shows how Zhukovksy played a pivotal role in the evolution of ideas central to Russia’s literary and cultural identity from the end of the eighteenth century into the decades following the Napoleonic Wars.
Download or read book Russia s Capitalist Realism written by Vadim Shneyder and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia’s Capitalist Realism examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. This book recovers the rich and lively public discourse of this volatile historical period, which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov transformed into some of the world’s greatest works of literature. Russia’s Capitalist Realism will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth‐century Russian literature and history, the relationship between capitalism and literary form, and theories of the novel.
Download or read book Russian Formalism written by Victor Erlich and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Critical Theory in Russia and the West written by Alastair Renfrew and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional view that the rise of Western theoretical thought in the 1960s and 1970s could be traced back to the Soviet 1920s, once accepted in Russia and the West alike because it directly associated the academic prestige of contemporary Western theory with the intellectual climate of post-revolutionary Russia, is increasingly challenged today. With the gradual retreat in recent years of theory from the high ground of the Western humanities, new work has emerged to suggest unexpected parallels and to undermine others. This book, with contributions from some of the most visible specialists in the field, re-examines the significant transfers, cross-fertilisations and synergies of cultural and literary theory between Russia and the West, from the 1920s through to the present day. It focuses primarily on those tendencies which have made the most significant contribution to critical theory over the last century, and looks ahead at the theoretical paradigms that are most likely to shape the future dialogue between Russia and the West in the humanities.
Download or read book Russian Subjects written by Monika Greenleaf and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays resituates poetic works by Derzhavin, Krylov, Batisushkov, Pushkin, Girboedov, Lermontov, Baratynsky and Pavlova, within the force fields of contradicoty cultural pressures, as are the once best-selling prose narratives of Narezhnyi, Karamzin, Viazemsky and others.
Download or read book Dostoevsky s Secrets written by Carol Apollonio Flath and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-14 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Fyodor Dostoevsky proclaims that he is a "realist in a higher sense," it is because the facts are irrelevant to his truth. And it is in this spirit that Apollonio approaches Dostoevsky’s work, reading through the facts--the text--of his canonical novels for the deeper truth that they distort, mask, and, ultimately, disclose. This sort of reading against the grain is, Apollonio suggests, precisely what these works, with their emphasis on the hidden and the private and their narrative reliance on secrecy and slander, demand. In each work Apollonio focuses on one character or theme caught in the compromising, self-serving, or distorting narrative lens. Who, she asks, really exploits whom in Poor Folk? Does "White Nights" ever escape the dream state? What is actually lost--and what is won--in The Gambler? Is Svidrigailov, of such ill repute in Crime and Punishment, in fact an exemplar of generosity and truth? Who, in Demons, is truly demonic? Here we see how Dostoevsky has crafted his novels to help us see these distorting filters and develop the critical skills to resist their anaesthetic effect. Apollonio's readings show how Dostoevsky's paradoxes counter and usurp our comfortable assumptions about the way the world is and offer access to a deeper, immanent essence. His works gain power when we read beyond the primitive logic of external appearances and recognize the deeper life of the text.
Download or read book Russian Minimalism written by Adrian Wanner and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book A Plot of Her Own written by Sona Stephan Hoisington and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Plot of Her Own presents compelling new readings of major texts in the Russian literary canon, all of which are readily available in translation. The female protagonists in the works examined are inextricably linked with the fundamental issues raised by the novels they inform; the interpretations offered strive not to be reductive or doctrinaire, not to be imposed from the outside but to arise from the texts themselves and the historical circumstances in which they were written. Authors discussed include Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov, and the novels considered range from Fathers and Children to Zamyatin's anti-Utopian We. Throughout, the contributors new visions expand our understanding of the words and reveal new significance in them.
