Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914

Book excerpt: Ranging in topic from general discussions of literary theory to close readings of well known literary works, these nine papers address nearly every literary movement in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russia, and a number of major writers, including Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. Four kinds of issues are addressed: theoretical problems in the relationship of literature and society, the reading public, the rhetoric and ideologies of writers and critics, and the relationship between fictional and social worlds. In confronting some of the ways in which the social and literary aspects of Russian culture have imposed themselves upon each other, this volume seeks an approach to Russian literature that neglects neither the dynamics of social interaction nor the forms and traditions of literature. The contributors are Robert L. Belknap, Jeffrey Brooks, Edward J. Brown, Donald Fanger, Jean Franco, Robert Louis Jackson, Hugh McLean, Victor Ripp, and William Mills Todd III.