The Cambridge companion to the classic Russian novel

Abstract

Malcolm V. Jones and Robin Feuer Miller, eds. Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xxvi, 312 pp. Chronology. to Further Reading. Index. $59.95, cloth. $19.95, paper. one considers the impact of Russian literature on world literature, one thinks first of all of the (Gary Saul Morson, p. 151 his contribution Philosophy the nineteenth century novel). When one thinks of a single work that could serve as a comprehensive guide to the Russian novel this book must surely stand at or near the top of any list. Written by an international team of the most prominent specialists Russian prose studies, these erudite and often brilliant essays illuminate with economy and insight salient aspects of this most important genre of Russian literature. fourteen contributions are divided into an Introduction and three parts, each devoted to a specific aspect of the subject, all of which is framed by a Chronology listing historical and literary events from 1703 to 1991 and a Guide to further reading-books on aspects of Russian literature (mainly English) published within the last twenty years. Part I, The Setting, contains synthetic historical surveys of The City (Robert A. Maguire) and The (Hugh McLean). Maguire's essay traces the evolution of the image of St. Petersburg from Pushkin (Eugene Onegin, The Bronze Horseman) and his predecessors (Trediakovskii and Karamzin) through Bely (St. Petersburg) to Bitov (Pushkin House). In somewhat less detail, Maguire treats the image of Moscow Tolstoi (Anna Karenina), and mentions passing the urban theme Pilniak, Fedin and Solzhenitsyn. Meanwhile, Mclean surveys the image of the countryside from Pushkin (Eugene Onegin) through the derevenshchiki (Farewell to Matera). He pays particular attention to its use both as idealized or sanitized Aksakov, Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Goncharov, and also its more sordid expression (Grigorovich, Bunin). Part 2, The Culture, contains five extremely rich and informative contributions dealing with various extra-literary aspects of the Russian novel. W. Gareth Jones provides a lucid and informative survey of Politics the Russian novel from Onegin to One Day the Life of Ivan Denisovich with major attention paid to the critics and authors of the mid-nineteenth century (Belinskii, Chernyshevskii, Dobroliubov, Dostoevskii, Turgenev, Tolstoi) and to the fate of the Russian novel the Stalinist period. Lesley Milne's contribution discusses satirical elements selected prose from Gogol through Erofeev. author points out elements of the picaresque Dead Souls as well as Bakhtinian laughter that does not laugh Saltykov-Shchedrin's History of a Town and Golovlev Family. Discussing post-1917 satire, Milne notes the difficulties faced by satire the highly politicized atmosphere of the Soviet State. Milne notes the grudging toleration of the works of Ilf and Petrov, and the negative attitude or outright condemnation of works by Bulgakov, Zamiatin, Iskander, and Voinovich. Closing the essay with a discussion of the pessimism of Zinoviev and Erofeev, Milne speculates On the relevance of satire the post-Soviet state. While literary scholarship generally has paid lip service to the fact and influence of Orthodoxy Russian life and culture, Jostein Bortnes his previous writings and the essay Religion (Chapter 6) speaks authoritatively and revealingly about this important formant Russian culture and aesthetics. He posits-after Lotman-the oppositional pair Man is good by nature and Man is evil by nature (both nonOrthodox their provenance) as a point of discussion Russian literature of the nineteenth century as well as an opposition between those ideas and traditional Orthodox anthropology which proclaims man's creation in the image and likeness of and man's ability to create in themselves the likeness of God imitation of Christ's archetype, and then traces these ideas novels from Gogol through Pasternak. …