Books in the Studies in Russian Literature and Theory series

This is a study of Mikhail Lermontov that attempts to integrate in-depth interpretations of his major texts. It considers his narrative poems, a play, and novel from the perspective of one of the central concerns of Romanticism in general and of Lermontov in particular: heroism and individualism.

Scholars have long been fascinated by the creative struggles with genre manifested throughout Dostoevsky's career. In The Novel in the Age of Disintegration, Kate Holland brings historical context to bear, showing that Dostoevsky wanted to use the form of the novel as a means of depicting disintegration brought on by various crises in Russian society in the 1860s.

Silence and the Rest argues that throughout its entire history, Russian poetry can be read as an argument for "verbal skepticism," positing a long-running dialogue between poets, philosophers, and theorists central to the antiverbal strain of Russian culture.

Members of the Soviet Writers' Union were rewarded with elite status and luxuries. This book argues that Stalin chose union leaders, such as Maxim Gorky and Alexandr Fadeyev, whose psychologies he could exploit, and ensured their loyalty with rewards but also with a philosophical argument to assure that one was not trading ethics for self interest.

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.

Argues that Dostoevsky and Nabokov affect the moral imagination of their readers by linking morally laden plots to the ethical questions raised by narrative fiction at the formal level. By doing so, they ask us to consider and respond to the ethical demands that narrative acts of representation and interpretation place on authors and readers.

Traces Dostoevsky's indefatigable investigations into the ethical implications of his own formal choices. Drawing on his drafts, notebooks, and writings on aesthetics, Greta Matzner-Gore argues that he wove the moral and formal questions that obsessed him into the fabric of his last three novels.

While Dostoevsky's relation to religion is well-trod ground, there exists no comprehensive study of Dostoevsky and Catholicism. Elizabeth Blake's ambitious and learned Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground fills this glaring omission in the scholarship.

In the broadest sense, this volume offers a fresh evaluation of Tolstoy's program to reform the ways we live, work, commune with nature and art, practice spirituality, exchange ideas and knowledge, become educated, and speak and think about history and social change.

Unorthodox Beauty shows how Russian poets of the early twentieth century consciously adapted Russian Orthodox culture in order to create a distinctly religious modernism. Martha M. F. Kelly contends that, beyond mere themes, these writers developed an entire poetics that drew on liturgical tradition.

The first major study in English of Vasily Zhukovsky (1783-1852)--poet, transla-tor of German romantic verse, and mentor of Pushkin--this book brings overdue attention to an important figure in Russian literary and cultural history.

Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological cliches of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. This text examines literary Sots-art on several levels.

Presents an introduction to Sergei Dovlatov (1941-90) that is closely attentive to the details of his life and work, their place in the history of Soviet society and literature, and of emigre culture during this turbulent period.

Around 1705, an African boy from the seraglio of the Turkish sultan, was taken to Russia as a gift to Peter the Great. He was to become the great-grandfather of the poet, Alexander Pushkin. It is the contention of the editors that Pushkin's African ancestry has played the role of a ""wild card"" as a formative element in Russian cultural mythology.

A psychosocial study of the female intelligentsia in Russia which seeks to show how and why women radicals of the 19th century diverged from their male counterparts and to describe the forces that led women to rebel. It also discusses their legacy to future generations.

Pushkin on Literature approaches Pushkin's literary accomplishment from a unique perspective: it focuses on Pushkin the critic and on his passion-are enthusiasm, volatile judgments, joy, frustration and fascination with the literary world that surrounded him. This is the only English-language edition of the complete set of Pushkin's critical writing, both on his own work and on the wide range of European literature - Byron, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Milton - which he read and studied, and which so profoundly influenced his own writing, is organized into sections, each featuring a biographical survey of Pushkin's activities during the period covered. These extracts from Pushkin's letters, articles, and working notes provide a complete chronological record of the artist's literary evolution and provide a fascinating glimpse into the poet's intellectual passions.

A poet, critic and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century, Viacheslav Ivanov was dubbed ""Viacheslav the Magnificent"" by his contemporaries. This volume of essays covers a broad range of Ivanov's interests including the aesthetics of Symbolism, theatre and culturological concerns.