‘Cartographic Ecstasy’: Mapping, Provinciality and Possible Spaces in Dmitrii Danilov’s City Prose

Abstract

Lappela examines the nonmetropolitan urban Russian space in Dmitrii Danilov’s prose, exploring how Danilov both challenges and reproduces stereotypes associated with Russian provinciality and how he uses cartographic elements in depictions of post-Soviet urban space. The postmodern understanding of spatiality in Danilov’s city texts involves the reader in the construction of different possible city texts and spaces. Lappela examines how the Soviet past is depicted as a part of the urban space and shows how the narrators thematise the question of urban aesthetics in this context. Additionally, she discusses ways of reading the post-Soviet urban space in Danilov’s prose from an ecocritical point of view.