Caryl Emerson
Russian literature arrived late on the European scene. Within several generations, its great novelists had shocked – and then conquered – the world. In this introduction to the rich and vibrant Russian tradition, Caryl Emerson weaves a narrative of recurring themes and fascinations across several centuries. Beginning with traditional Russian narratives (saints’ lives, folk tales, epic and rogue narratives), the book moves through literary history chronologically and thematically, juxtaposing literary texts from each major period. Detailed attention is given to canonical writers including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov, and Solzhenitsyn, as well as to some current bestsellers from the post-communist period. Fully accessible to students and readers with no knowledge of Russian, the volume includes a glossary and pronunciation guide of key Russian terms and a list of useful secondary works. The book will be of great interest to students of Russian as well as of comparative literature.
Caryl Emerson is A. Watson Armour III Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
Introduction1
1Critical models, committed readers, and
three Russian Ideas11
Literary critics and their public goods14
Three Russian Ideas22
2Heroes and their plots34
Righteous persons35
Fools39
Frontiersmen43
Rogues and villains47
Society’s misfitsinthe European style53
The heroeswemight yet see57
3Traditional narratives59
Saints’ lives62
Folk tales (Baba Yaga, Koshchey the
Deathless)66
Hybrids: folk epic and Faust tale71
Miracle, magic, law75
4Western eyes on Russian realities: the
eighteenth century80
Neoclassical comedy and Gallomania84
Chulkov’s Martona: life instructs art90
Karamzin’s “Poor Liza”94
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5The astonishing nineteenth century:
Romanticisms99
Pushkin and honor101
Duels108
Gogol and embarrassment114
Pretendership118
6Realisms: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov125
Biographies of events, and biographies that
are quests for the Word129
Time-spaces (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy)134
Dostoevsky and books146
Tolstoy and doing without words148
Poets and novelists (Dostoevsky and
Nekrasov)153
Anton Chekhov: lesser expectations, smaller
forms156
7Symbolist and Modernist world-building:
three cities, three novels, and the Devil166
The fin de sie`cle: Solovyov, Nietzsche,
Einstein, Pavlov’s dogs, political terrorism168
Modernist time-spaces and their modes of
disruption171
City myths: Petersburg, Moscow, OneState179
8The Stalin years: socialist realism,
anti-fascist fairy tales, wilderness191
What was socialist realism?198
Gladkov)203
Shvarts)207
Andrei Platonov and suspension211
The “righttothe lyric”inanAgeofIron217
9 Coming to terms and seeking new terms: from the first Thaw (1956) to the end of
the millennium220
The intelligentsia and the camps
(Solzhenitsyn)224
The Underground Woman (Petrushevskaya)230
Three ways for writers to treat matter
(Sorokin, Pelevin, Akunin)238
(photobyMichael Julius)
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