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Dostoevsky is one of Russia's greatest novelists and a major influence in modern debates about religion, both in Russia and the West. This collection brings together Western and Russian perspectives on the issues raised by the religious element in his work. The aim of this collection is not to abstract Dostoevsky's religious 'teaching' from his literary works, but to explore the interaction between his Christian faith and his writing. The essays cover such topics as temptation, grace and law, Dostoevsky's use of the gospels and hagiography, Trinitarianism, and the Russian tradition of the veneration of icons, as well as reading aloud, and dialogism. In addition to an exploration of the impact of the Christian tradition on Dostoevsky's major novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, there are also discussions of lesser-known works such as The Landlady and A Little Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree.
During Stalin’s lifetime the crimes of his regime were literally unspeakable. More than fifty years after his death, Russia is still coming to terms with Stalinism and the people’s own role in the abuses of the era. During the decades of official silence that preceded the advent of glasnost, Russian writers raised troubling questions about guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of absolution. Through the subtle vehicle of satire, they explored the roots and legacy of Stalinism in forms ranging from humorous mockery to vitriolic diatribe. Examining works from the 1917 Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Karen L. Ryan reveals how satirical treatments of Stalin often emp...
A study of the 'demonic markers' that run throughout Dostoevsky's fiction, this also explores the narrative and generic implications of the way Dostoevsky inscribed the demonic in his fictional works - implications that point to a new understanding of familiar concepts in the work of this Russian master.
Addressing one of the most controversial and emotive issues of American history, this book presents a thorough reexamination of the background, dynamics, and decline of American lynching. It argues that collective homicide in the US can only be partly understood through a discussion of the unsettled southern political situation after 1865, but must also be seen in the context of a global conversation about changing cultural meanings of 'race'. A deeper comprehension of the course of mob murder and the dynamics that drove it emerges through comparing the situation in the US with violence that was and still is happening around the world. Drawing on a variety of approaches - historical, anthrop...
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors—whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border—have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. In Russia on the Edge Edith W. Clowes argues that refurbished geographical metaphors and imagined geographies provide a useful perspective for examining post-Soviet debates about what it means to be Russian today. Clowes lays out several sides ...
A comprehensive survey of developments in Russian literature over the last fifteen years of the Soviet regime.
Analyzes the use of metapoesis in the works of prominent Russian authors from the nineteenth century.
An examination of literary works spanning more than seven centuries, this volume studies the ascetic hero and asceticism, exploring the elusive interplay between religion, politics, and belles lettres in Russia. The first part places works including the thirteenth-century Kievan Crypt Patericon and Life of Avraamii Smolenskii, Epifanii's Life of Sergii Radonezhskii, and other lives written in the north of Russia, in the context of crucial religious doctrines such as apocalypticism and deification. The author shows how Old Russian literature plays a major cultural role in the continuing development of these doctrines on Russian soil. The second part traces a revival of the Russian fascination...
Between 1985 and 2008, female suicide bombers committed more than 230 attacks—about a quarter of all such acts. Women have become the ideal stealth weapon for terrorist groups. They are less likely to be suspected or searched and as a result have been used to strike at the heart of coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. This alarming tactic has been highly effective, garnering extra media attention and helping to recruit more numbers to the terrorists' cause. Yet, as Mia Bloom explains in Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, female involvement in terrorism is not confined to suicide bombing and not limited to the Middle East. From Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka, women have been engaged in all...
Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture is an innovative study of the Virgin Mary and the "saintly harlots"--Mary of Egypt and Mary Magdalene--as a cultural paradigm encoded in Chekhov's prose. De Sherbinin establishes the authority of the Marian paradigm in nineteenth-century Russian culture with a comprehensive overview of salient religious and literary texts, then offers critical readings of more than fifteen Chekhov stories, including key works such as "Peasants," "Peasant Women," and "My Life." De Sherbinin argues that Chekhov inverts and displaces the Christian meanings of Marian texts in order to reveal a vasy array of problematized relationships to the canonized figures. This illuminating semiotic reading of Chekhov explores questions of female identity as it probes the mindset of Russian Orthodox popular culture.