Author: Gary Rosenshield Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1666925233 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
Napoleon today is still a figure who fascinates both his admirers and detractors because of his seminal role in European history at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, straddling the French Revolution and the enormous empire that he fashioned through military conquest. Napoleon in the Russian Imaginary focuses on the response of Russia's greatest writers—poets, novelists, critics, and historians—to the idea of "Great Man" as an agent of transformational change as it manifests itself in the person and career of Napoleon. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and his subsequent exile to St. Helena, in much of Europe a re-evaluation of Napoleon's person, stature, and historical significance occurred, as thinkers and writers witnessed the gradual reestablishment of repressive regimes throughout Europe. This re-evaluation in Russia would have to wait until Napoleon's death in 1821, but when it came to pass, it continued to occupy the imagination of Russia's greatest writers for over 130 years. Although Napoleon's invasion of Russia and subsequent defeat had a profound effect on Russian culture and Russian history, for Russian writers what was most important was the universal significance of Napoleon’s desire for world conquest and the idea of unbridled ambition which he embodied. Russian writers saw this, for good or ill, as potentially determining the spiritual and moral fate of future generations. What is particularly fascinating is their attempt to confront each other about this idea in a creative dialogue, with each succeeding writer addressing himself and responding to his predecessor and predecessors.
Author: Dominic Lieven Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141947446 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 952
Book Description
'A compulsive page-turner ... a triumph of brilliant storytelling ... an instant classic that is an awesome, remarkable and exuberant achievement' Simon Sebag Montefiore Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and Russia had triumphed. This is the first history to explore in depth Russia's crucial role in the Napoleonic Wars, re-creating the epic battle between two empires as never before. Dominic Lieven writes with great panache and insight to describe from the Russians' viewpoint how they went from retreat, defeat and the burning of Moscow to becoming the new liberators of Europe; the consequences of which could not have been more important. Ultimately this book shows, memorably and brilliantly, Russia embarking on its strange, central role in Europe's existence, as both threat and protector - a role that continues, in all its complexity, into our own lifetimes.
Author: Linda Lafferty Publisher: Lake Union Publishing ISBN: 9781503937260 Category : Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In a sweeping story straight out of Russian history, Tsar Alexander I and a courageous girl named Nadezhda Durova join forces against Napoleon. It's 1803, and an adolescent Nadya is determined not to follow in her overbearing Ukrainian mother's footsteps. She's a horsewoman, not a housewife. When Tsar Paul is assassinated in St. Petersburg and a reluctant and naive Alexander is crowned emperor, Nadya runs away from home and joins the Russian cavalry in the war against Napoleon. Disguised as a boy and riding her spirited stallion, Alcides, Nadya rises in the ranks, even as her father begs the tsar to find his daughter and send her home. Both Nadya and Alexander defy expectations--she as a heroic fighter and he as a spiritual seeker--while the battles of Austerlitz, Friedland, Borodino, and Smolensk rage on. In a captivating tale that brings Durova's memoirs to life, from bloody battlefields to glittering palaces, two rebels dare to break free of their expected roles and discover themselves in the process.
Author: Alexander Mikaberidze Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199394067 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 977
Book Description
Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.
Author: Margaret Rodenberg Publisher: She Writes Press ISBN: 9781647420161 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
“Rodenberg inventively uses Bonaparte’s own unfinished novel to tell the story of the despot’s rise to power, which she juxtaposes against the story of his last love affair. Told creatively and with excellent research!” —Stephanie Dray, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of America's First Daughter and The Women of Chateau Lafayette “Beautiful and poignant.” —Allison Pataki, New York Times best-selling author of The Queen’s Fortune With its delightful adaptation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s real attempt to write romantic fiction, Finding Napoleon: A Novel offers a fresh take on Europe’s most powerful man after he’s lost everything—except his last love. A forgotten woman of history—the audacious Countess Albine—helps narrate their tale of intrigue, desire, and betrayal. After the defeated Emperor Napoleon goes into exile on tiny St. Helena Island in the remote South Atlantic, he and his lover, Albine de Montholon, plot to escape and rescue his young son. Banding together enslaved Africans, British sympathizers, a Jewish merchant, a Corsican rogue, and French followers, they confront British opposition—as well as treachery within their own ranks—with sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, but always desperate action. Amid his passions and intrigues, Napoleon finishes his real novel Clisson that he started writing as a young man. Now it's a father's message to the young son whom his enemies took from him, but how can they get it to the boy? When Napoleon and Albine break faith with one another, ambition and Albine’s husband threaten their reconciliation. To succeed, Napoleon must learn whom to trust. To survive, Albine must decide whom to betray. This elegant, richly researched novel reveals the Napoleon history conceals and the Countess Albine history has forgotten.
Author: Erika Haber Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 9780739105313 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
Erika Haber's analysis of the interplay between literature and culture in the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s breaks new ground not only in our understanding of this relationship, but also in our appreciation of the literary genre popularized at that time by the Colombian writer Gabriel Garc a M rquez--magical realism. The Soviets perceived Garc a M rquez as a Socialist, and they sanctioned his magical realism--when other writing styles were outlawed--as a natural extension of socialist realism. Haber discusses the use of magical realism in Soviet literature, focusing especially on two non-Slavic writers: Fasil Iskander, of Abkhazia, and Chingiz Aitmatov, of Kyrgyzstan. She explores how these writers used literary tools of subversion and successfully employed magical realism in rebellion against the prescription of national conformity in art. In critical readings of Iskander and Aitmatov, Haber demonstrates how these writers juxtaposed their native myth with Soviet myth, thus undermining the primary message of socialist realism by suggesting a plurality of worlds and truths.
Author: Rick McPeak Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801465893 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
In 1812, Napoleon launched his fateful invasion of Russia. Five decades later, Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace, a fictional representation of the era that is one of the most celebrated novels in world literature. The novel contains a coherent (though much disputed) philosophy of history and portrays the history and military strategy of its time in a manner that offers lessons for the soldiers of today. To mark the two hundredth anniversary of the French invasion of Russia and acknowledge the importance of Tolstoy's novel for our historical memory of its central events, Rick McPeak and Donna Tussing Orwin have assembled a distinguished group of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds-literary criticism, history, social science, and philosophy-to provide fresh readings of the novel. The essays in Tolstoy On War focus primarily on the novel's depictions of war and history, and the range of responses suggests that these remain inexhaustible topics of debate. The result is a volume that opens fruitful new avenues of understanding War and Peace while providing a range of perspectives and interpretations without parallel in the vast literature on the novel.
Author: Richard Howard Publisher: Canelo ISBN: 178863201X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
As they march into Poland, an exhausted Grand Armeé must battle both enemies and the elements in this epic adventure of the Napoleonic Wars. Poland, 1807: Sergeant Alain Lausard and his loyal dragoons have never known a campaign like it. Already spent from their victory over Prussia, they must now march into Poland and battle General Bennigsen’s Russian troops. And the Tsar is not the only enemy that must be overcome: country and climate conspire to make conditions impossible. The Grande Armeé may be renowned for its ability to move with speed and purpose, but as torrential rain turns Polish roads to quagmires, they face a battle-hardened foe just as their strength reaches its lowest ebb. Perhaps not even Bonaparte’s tactical brilliance will be enough to save Lausard and his men from a deadly debacle . . .
Author: Jeff Birkenstein Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1793629897 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
In Connections and Influence in the Russian and American Short Story, editors Robert C. Hauhart and Jeff Birkenstein have assembled a collection of eighteen original essays written by literary critics from around the globe. Collectively, these critics argue that the reciprocal influence between Russian and American writers is integral to the development of the short story in each country as well as vital to the global status the contemporary short story has attained. This collection provides original analyses of both well-known Russian and American stories as well as some that might be more unfamiliar. Each essay is purposely crafted to display an appreciation of the techniques, subject matter, themes, and approaches that both Russian and American short story writers explored across borders and time. Stories by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, and Krzhizhanovsky as well as short stories by Washington Irving, Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ursula Le Guin, Raymond Carver, and Joyce Carol Oates populate this essential, multivalent collection. Perhaps more important now than at any time since the end of the Cold War, these essays will remind readers how much Russian and American culture share, as well as the extent to which their respective literatures are deeply intertwined.
Author: Carol Ueland Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1793618305 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 351
Book Description
The legendary Russian biography series, The Lives of Remarkable People, has played a significant role in Russian culture from its inception in 1890 until today. The longest running biography series in world literature, it spans three centuries and widely divergent political and cultural epochs: Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia. The authors argue that the treatment of biographical figures in the series is a case study for continuities and changes in Russian national identity over time. Biography in Russia and elsewhere remains a most influential literary genre and the distinctive approach and branding of the series has made it the economic engine of its publisher, Molodaia gvardiia. The centrality of biographies of major literary figures in the series reflects their heightened importance in Russian culture. The contributors examine the ways that biographies of Russia's foremost writers shaped the literary canon while mirroring the political and social realities of both the subjects’ and their biographers' times. Starting with Alexander Pushkin and ending with Joseph Brodsky, the authors analyze the interplay of research and imagination in biographical narrative, the changing perceptions of what constitutes literary greatness, and the subversive possibilities of biography during eras of political censorship.
Author: Gary Rosenshield
Author: Dominic Lieven
Author: Linda Lafferty
Author: Alexander Mikaberidze
Author: Margaret Rodenberg
Author: Erika Haber
Author: Rick McPeak
Author: Richard Howard
Author: Jeff Birkenstein
Author: Carol Ueland