Turgenev
A Reading of his Fiction

This comprehensive examination of Turgenev's fiction challenges traditional assumptions of both Eastern and Western critics.

Frank Friedeberg Seeley (Author)

9780521114998, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 June 2009

396 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

Unlike his contemporaries, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) has until recently received less than his fair share of attention from Western scholars. This comprehensive examination of Turgenev's fiction begins by outlining the writer's life and sketching his personality. It provides a brief survey of his poetry and plays as the prelude to the fiction and reviews some aspects of his literary criticism in their bearing upon it. The main body of the book is devoted to readings of the individual works - A Sportsman's Sketches, the novels and all the stories. Professor Seeley focuses principally on the complexity and subtlety of Turgenev's portrayal of the psychology of his characters - a hitherto neglected aspect of his art. His approach challenges traditional views still current in the critical literature of both the East and the West. The book has been designed to be accessible not only to Slavists, but also to scholars and students of other literatures.

Preface
Introduction: Turgenev and his antinomies
1. Life and reputation
2. Poetry, plays, criticism
3. First stories
4. Serfs and serf-owners: A Sportsman's Sketches
5. Transition: the end of serfdom: the 'superfluous man'
6. Love and the superfluous man
7. 'Hamlet and Don Quixote' - Rudin
8. The 'Turgenev heroine': A Nest of Gentry
9. The New Man and the New Woman: On the Eve
10. The first nihilist: Fathers and Children
11. The legacy of nihilism: 'Enough', Smoke
12. 'There are more things in heaven and earth'
13. The years that are no more
14. Down memory lane
15. Seeds of revolution: Virgin Soil
16. The last writings
17. Epilogue
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]