MLR, IOI .3, 2oo6 9I5 There are separate entries for each of Dostoevsky's fictional works and for the most important of his journalistic and other non-fictional writings. Members of his immediate family, close friends, and associates are also well covered, as are his literary contemporaries and those authors, Russian and foreign, whose influence may be discerned in Dostoevsky's own life and work. The context in which Dostoevsky produced his works is amply suggested by entries dealing with those literary and intellectual trends and movements with which he engaged, and with themajor literary journals and newspapers of the time. In all these entries Kenneth Lantz's coverage is impressively comprehensive and his choice of detail apt and to the point. The entries dealing with Dostoevsky's works, major and minor, follow a standard pattern of contextual and publication detail, plot summary, an attempt (which is necessarily limited) at general thematic and structural analysis, acknowledgement of sources used, and recommendations for targeted further reading. The reception of individual works is touched upon only intermittently; yet this is an area that could usefully have been given fuller treatment, in that it is not the sort of information the general reader (especially one with no Russian) can easily find in a single source elsewhere. As well as the entries devoted to individual works, Lantz provides some thirty brief essays dealing with major themes and issues inDostoevsky's life and works. It is here that a reviewer might be most expected to take issue with the author's choice of what should, and should not, be included; but, in the opinion of this reviewer, Lantz has got it broadly right in identifying the key issues likely to interest his readership. Some might regret the lack of a discrete general entry on Dostoevsky's approach to narrative, but the subject is touched upon elsewhere (for example, under 'Realism' and 'Dreams and the Unconscious'). One might wonder about the likely readership of a volume such as this, in that it is arguable that Lantz offers too much for the general reader (who is, for example, unlikely to be interested in Dostoevsky's friends, family, and lesser works) and too little for the student, who might wish for less in the way of factual detail and plot summaries, and more in the way of sustained analysis. But, given the brief of the volume, Lantz has carried it out lucidly, conscientiously, and comprehensively. The high productionvalues go a long way towards justifying aprice that will, one suspects, put the volume beyond most individual purchasers. UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD W. J. LEATHERBARROW Finding theMiddle Ground: Krestovskii, Tur, and the Power of Ambivalence inNine teenth-Century Russian Women's Prose. By JEHANNE M. GHEITH. (Northwest ern University Press Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2004. xx+302 pp. ?65.95. ISBN o-8ioi I7I4-2. Finding the Middle Ground serves at least three purposes, all of which are of interest to literary researchers and cultural historians. Gheith's study casts light on thewritings of Evgeniia Tur (i 8I 5-92) and 'V.Krestovskii' (Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia) (i 8z20? 89), who were two of the most widely read authors and critics of themid-nineteenth century; it also provides a comprehensive account of the quasi-institutional literary context inwhich they functioned not only as authors but aswidely published critics, and, in the case of Tur, as organizer of salons attended by the better-known (male) literary-cultural activists of the day. Finally, the book addresses significant questions of literary conventions and canonicity, and their relationship to gendered cultural norms, with elegance and insight. 9I6 Reviews The six chapters of the work are organized into three overarching divisions: biography, the authors as critics, and textual analysis. Gheith avoids the problems commonly raised by naive biographical criticism by examining extant biographical, autobiographical, and other 'life-texts' (e.g. correspondence) from the point of view of their shared relationship to dominant cultural norms about gender and author ship. In this way, essential biographical information is imparted in the context of a sophisticated discussion of the prevailing tropes for and about women writers in the life-writing genres of the time...
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Dec 1, 2011
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