The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature by Neil Cornwell (review)

Abstract

MLR, 97.4, 2002 1047 and references to other authors' texts that Bagritskii is known to have read, Shrayer argues convincingly fora more nuanced interpretation of' Fevral" not as an expression of conventional Jewish Messianism, but as a conflation of the idea of the Jews as a people chosen to fulfila historical mission and of the Soviet ideal of the Jews living harmoniously with other peoples. The book also contains a chronology of Bagritskii's life and works, as well as archival photographs of the poet, his family,and friends. Shrayer offers an enticing glimpse into several aspects of Russian literary history which have received little attention. Bagritskii emerges as a talented and influential poet whose work deserves to be explored further. University of Exeter Katharine Hodgson The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature Ed. by Neil Cornwell. London: Routledge. 2001. x + 271 pp. ?45 (pbk ?12.99). The somewhat ambitious task which this volume sets itself is to provide some insight into Russian literature over a mere thousand years?all in under 300 pages. Students are clearly the target market (most would hardly buy the weighty Reference Guide to Russian Literature which Cornwell edited in 1998, and in which thirteen of the twenty essays in this present edition appeared in sketchier form), and they will find this an intellectually substantive and very useful overview volume. The contributors have impeccable credentials, and among familiar British scholars one also finds three American, one Australian, and two Russian contributors. Given the weight of expe? rience of the authors, it is unsurprising that the volume breezes along with confident ease and accessibility, taking the reader from Kiev, Old Russian literature, religion, and folklore, to the more familiar ground of the nineteenth century. A fine article on Pushkin by David Bethea stands alongside familiar subjects such as the classic novel, the superfluous man, and the golden and silver ages, while Catriona Kelly's article on women writers bridges the centuries from the 1750s to the present day. The edition is fairlyup to date, the final piece (Alla Latynina, Martin Dewhirst) dealing with the 1999 Booker Prize and contemporary cult figures such as Pelevin. Kelly's comments in her chapter on women's prose appear rather prophetic, with her final reference to Ulitskaia, the 2001 winner of the Booker. In genre terms, the edition has a good range, from discussions of theatre (A. D. P. Briggs, Birgit Beumers), literarytheory (Michael O'Toole), poetry (Donald Rayfield, Michael Basker, Gerald Smith), to prose (Katerina Clark, David Gillespie, for ex? ample), with each essay offering general statements on the development of Russian thought and culture. Each contribution is relatively short (about 4,000 words) and?a feature that students will probably enjoy, even if subconsciously?has no footnotes, although each concludes with a brief list of furtherreading. Such broad-ranging volumes always lay themselves open to criticism, and perhaps the mixture of literary criticism with cultural statements, without any particular stress on methodology, gives a rather too eclectic feel. However, for the target market the gently factual, fairly neutral tone and lack of recondite terminology are rather a plus, and Cornwell exercises his usual editorial control to ensure that the overall impression is of a focused and well-tailored exposition of a baggy subject. The book is well presented, with no obvious typographical howlers; definitely a volume that you could recommend to students with confidence that they would find something in it to like, and that all of it would be accessible. University of Sussex Sally Dalton-Brown ...