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War is no laughing matter. During a war, however, laughter can play a vital role in sustaining morale, both in the armies at the Front and in their homelands. Among wars, the 1914–18 conflict has left a haunting legacy, and remains a central topic in modern European history. This book offers a comparative study of the impact of the war in four countries, and breaks new ground by exploring this through the medium of what their respective populations laughed at. By searching the pages of four humorous-satirical magazines, Punch in the UK, Le Rire (France), Simplicissimus (Germany), and Novy Satirikon (Russia), all of which supported the national war efforts, it examines the ways in which hum...
This volume considers the Russian writer Bulgakov's work, The master and Margarita. It opens with the editor's general introduction, discussing the work in the context of the writer's oeuvre as well as its place within the Russian literary tradition. The introductory section also includes considerations of existing translations and of textual problems in the original Russian. The following sections contain several wide-ranging articles by other scholars, primary sources and background material such as letters, memoirs, early reviews and maps.
Many Russian novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have made a huge impact, not only inside the boundaries of their own country but across the western world. The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel offers a thematic account of these novels, in fourteen newly-commissioned essays by prominent European and North American scholars. There are chapters on the city, the countryside, politics, satire, religion, psychology, philosophy; the romantic, realist and modernist traditions; and technique, gender and theory. In this context the work of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, among others, is described and discussed. There is a chronology and guide to further reading; all quotations are in English. This volume will be invaluable not only for students and scholars but for anyone interested in the Russian novel.
A foremost Russian writer of the Soviet period, Bulgakov (1891-1940) has attracted much critical attention, yet Haber is the first to explore in depth his formative years. Blending biography and literary analysis of motifs, story, and characterization, Haber tracks one writer's answer to the dislocations of revolution, civil war, and Bolshevism.
Conveys the energy and joy of the Russian theatre between about 1900 and 1930.
This study offers a literary analysis and theological evaluation of the Christian themes in the five great novels of Dostoevsky - 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Idiot', 'The Adolescent', 'The Devils' and 'The Brothers Karamazov'. Dostoevsky's ambiguous treatment of religious issues in his literary works strongly differs from the slavophile Orthodoxy of his journalistic writings. In the novels Dostoevsky deals with Christian basic values, which are presented via a unique tension between the fictionality of the Christian characters and the readers' experience of the existential reality of their religious problems.
Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment presents for the first time an examination of this great novel as a work aimed at winning back “target readers”, young contemporary radicals, from Utilitarianism, nihilism, and Utopian Socialism. Dostoevsky framed the battle in the context of the Orthodox Church and oral tradition versus the West. He relied on knowledge of the Gospels as text received orally, forcing readers to react emotionally, not rationally, and thus undermining the very basis of his opponents’ arguments. Dostoevsky saves Raskol’nikov, underscoring the inadequacy of rational thought and reminding his readers of a heritage discarded at their peril. This volume should be of special interest to secondary and university students, as well as to readers interested in literature, particularly, in Russian literature, and Dostoevsky.
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Addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Though current events have brought Russia into the spotlight of late, many Americans still have only the haziest notion of Russian culture. This wide-ranging reference introduces the peoples, languages, and religions of Russia and also delves into such facets of Russian culture as sports, the media, holidays, traditional foods, and education. Chapters devoted to architecture, the visual arts, literature, and the performing arts highlight the best of Russia's cultural heritage, including the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the films of Sergey Eisenstein, the music of Tchaikovsky and Sergey Prokofiev, and the churches of Pskov. Readers will find this volume to be a fascinating introduction to a rich, complex culture.