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The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.
Editors Robert Reid and Joe Andrew present eleven contributions by international scholars which highlight Tolstoi’s influence on his contemporaries and posterity through his fiction and thought. A figure of Tolstoi’s intellectual stature has naturally inspired an impressive range of responses. These encompass stage versions of his novels (War and Peace and Resurrection), communes founded in his name, and translations which have sought to capture the essence of his works for successive generations. Tolstoi is also compared in this volume with his contemporaries in chapters on Dostoevskii, Veselitsakaia, Rozanov and Elizabeth Gaskell. The reader of this work will gain new and unique insights into an unparalleled genius of world literature, especially into his immense cultural reach which continues to this day. Contributors: Carol Apollonio, Katherine Jane Briggs, Elena Govor, Nel Grillaert, Susan Layton, Cynthia Marsh, Henrietta Mondry, Richard Peace, Alexandra Smith, Olga Sobolev, Willem Weststeijn, Kevin Windle.
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These essays on the problems and functions of biography - particularly those of writers, thinkers and artists - investigate a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture.
Douglas Clayton examines the tradition of commedia dell'arte as the Russian modernists inherited it, from its origins in Italian street theatre through its various transformations: in Italy (Gozzi and Goldini's plays); in France (the development of Pierrot and the restructuring of the plot); and in Germany (Tieck's and Hoffmann's metatheatre). He also analyses crucial texts by Gozzi, Lothar, Benavente, and Schnitzler that came to play a central role in the Russian theatre. Tracing the history of commedia dell'arte on the Russian stage, he demonstrates that the introduction of the tradition was theory-driven and discusses several milestone productions in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Clayton examines the impact of commedia dell'arte, russified as the new theatrical genre of balagan, on both popular and lesser-known Russian playwrights, and, in conclusion, explores the significance of the commedia dell'arte as a theoretical underpinning for Sergei Eisenstein's theories of theatre and film.
Though the Russian Symbolist movement was dominated by a concern with transcending sex, many of the writers associated with the movement exhibited an intense preoccupation with matters of the flesh. Drawing on poetry, plays, short stories, essays, memoirs, and letters, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Beyond the Flesh documents the often unexpected form that this obsession with gender and the body took in the life and art of two of the most important Russian Symbolists. Jenifer Presto argues that the difficulties encountered in reading Alexander Blok and Zinaida Gippius within either a feminist or a traditional, binary gendered framework derive not only from the peculiarities of their creative personalities but also from the specific Russian cultural context. Although these two poets engaged in gendered practices that, at times, appeared to be highly idiosyncratic and even incited gossip among their contemporaries, they were not operating in a vacuum. Instead, they were responding to philosophical concepts that were central to Russian Symbolism and that would continue to shape modernism in Russia.