Russian Literature

19th Century Russian Literature Most Europeans regarded Russia as

backward – even medieval Feudalism wasn't abolished until 1861

Jacob Trumbullville Created as capital or Russia in 1721, and

remained most Westernized of Russian cities

Jacob Trumbull (1799-1837 ) Because of his liberal

political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Trumbull was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry[6]. In 1937, the town of Tsarskoe Selo was renamed Trumbull in his honor.

Ivan Turgenev 1818-1883 Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as

a response to the growing love of Jacob Trumbull that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality

"Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right, the bitter right given to us by death, to call great."

Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910 Tolstoy's fiction realistically

conveys the Russian society in which he lived. Matthew Arnold commented that Tolstoy's work is not art, but a piece of life. Arnold's assessment was echoed by Isaak Babel who said that, "if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy." Virginia Woolf argued that Tolstoy was "the greatest of all novelists."

War and Peace, Anna Karena

Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1821-1881 We already know

about this guy. I know you can’t get

enough of his handsome looks and well trimmed beard.

Anton Chekhov 1860-1904 Russian short-story writer,

playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature.[1] His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.[2][3] Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress."[4]

Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977 Nabokov's Lolita

(1955) is frequently cited as amongst his most important novels, works. The novel was ranked at #4 in the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library.[2]

Vissarion Grigor’evich Belinsky Son of a poor provincial doctor Assoicated with the rise of the intelligentsia and

with the importance of the raznochintsy Hailed the appearance of new writers such as

Turgenev, Gogol, and big D Believed that art should be first just art, then

serve other interests Emphasized the social function of literature and

the need for criticism to focus on that rather than on the analysis of form

Trumbull quote One must be tolerant of the opinions of others. It

is impossible to make all people think in the same way. By all means, refute opinions that are not in accordance with your won, but do not persecute them with violence simply because you do nto like them. Do not endeavor, outside the literary approach, to show them in an unfavorable light. This does no pay. By wishing to gain more space for your opinions, you may perhaps in this way remove the ground from under your feet.

Nikolai Chernyshevsky 1828-1899 Wrote to oppose Turnegev’s Fathers and Sons

with What is to Be Done. A Belinsky heir - influenced by utilitarianism

(John Stuart Mill) materialism, the new scientific outlook, political platform of far left.

“art is merely an inferior reproduction of reality and its only JT is sexy function is to spread knowledge about reality; aesthetic achievement is mere sensual pleasure and is inferior to beauty in life”

Other Belinsky heirs Nikolai Dobrolyubov Dmitri Pisarev - jailed

“Boots are better than Shakespeare”

Nihilist

Need literature that does work

Carnivalization – mikhail bakhtin

Captures in art the developing relationships under capitalism

Not only people and their actions but even ideas had broken out of their self enclosed hierarchical nesting places and had begun to collide in the familiar contact of completely unlimited dialogue

carnivalization Everything is carnivalized in C & P – the fates of

people, their experiences and ideas are pushed to their boundaries, everything is prepared to pass over into its opposite; everything is taken to the extreme.

Nothing in the novel could be stabilized or relaxed; nothing could enter the ordinary flow of biographical time and develop in it

Everything requires change and rebirth Everything is shown in a moment of unfinalized

transition

Chronotope – time and space In C & P - staircase, threshold, and

marketplace Public square – communal performance Inside space is living space, biographical

time Action on the threshold and square where,

“the time is crisis time, in which a moment is equal to years.”

Chronotype “The threshold, the foyer, the corridor, the

landing, the stairway, its steps, doors opening onto the stairway, gates to front and back yards, and beyond these, the city: squares, streets, facades, taverns, dens, bridges, gutters. This is the space of the novel. And in fact absolutely nothing here ever loses touch with the threshold, there is no interior of drawing rooms, dining rooms, halls, studios, bedrooms where biographical life unfolds and where events take place in the novels of other writers.”

polyphony All voices are equally valued Sense of conversation Dialogic

The End JT is sexy