The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature

An overview of the main literary schools, authors and works in modern Russia and the Soviet Union.

Evgeny Dobrenko (Edited by), Marina Balina (Edited by)

9780521875356, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 February 2011

326 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.64 kg

'This Cambridge Companion features a stellar line-up of senior scholars surveying subfields that they not only have led, but sometimes also invented … All fifteen chapters are well-written, informative and authoritative.' Robert Bird, Slavonic and East European Review

In Russian history, the twentieth century was an era of unprecedented, radical transformations - changes in social systems, political regimes, and economic structures. A number of distinctive literary schools emerged, each with their own voice, specific artistic character, and ideological background. As a single-volume compendium, the Companion provides a new perspective on Russian literary and cultural development, as it unifies both émigré literature and literature written in Russia. This volume concentrates on broad, complex, and diverse sources - from symbolism and revolutionary avant-garde writings to Stalinist, post-Stalinist, and post-Soviet prose, poetry, drama, and émigré literature, with forays into film, theatre, and literary policies, institutions and theories. The contributors present recent scholarship on historical and cultural contexts of twentieth-century literary development, and situate the most influential individual authors within these contexts, including Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov and Anna Akhmatova.

Preface Evgeny Dobrenko and Marina Balina
1. Poetry of the Silver Age Boris Gasparov
2. Prose between Symbolism and Realism Nikolai Bogomolov
3. Poetry of the Revolution Andrew Kahn
4. Prose of the Revolution Boris Wolfson
5. Utopia and the novel after the Revolution Philip Ross Bullock
6. Socialist Realism Evgeny Dobrenko
7. Poetry after 1930 Stephanie Sandler
8. Russian epic novels of the Soviet period Katerina Clark
9. Soviet prose after Stalin Marina Balina
10. Post-Soviet literature between Realism and Postmodernism Mark Lipovetsky
11. Exile and Russian literature David Bethea and Siggy Frank
12. Drama and theatre Birgit Beumers
13. Literature and film Julian Graffy
14. Literary policies and institutions Maria Zalambani
15. Russian critical theory Caryl Emerson.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC], Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literature: history & criticism [DS]