Russian Thinkers

Russian Thinkers PDF Author: Isaiah Berlin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0141393173
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, 'the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.'

Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Catriona Kelly
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191577502
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
This book is intended to capture the interest of anyone who has been attracted to Russian culture through the greats of Russian literature, either through the texts themselves, or encountering them in the cinema, or opera. Rather than a conventional chronology of Russian literature, the book will explore the place and importance of literature of all sorts in Russian culture. How and when did a Russian national literature come into being? What shaped its creation? How have the Russians regarded their literary language? The book will uses the figure of Pushkin, 'the Russian Shakespeare' as a recurring example as his work influenced every Russian writer who came after hime, whether poets or novelists. It will look at such questions as why Russian writers are venerated, how they've been interpreted inside Russia and beyond, and the influences of such things as the folk tale tradition, orthodox religion, and the West ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Why We Need Russian Literature

Why We Need Russian Literature PDF Author: Angela Brintlinger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350242179
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Book Description
For nearly two centuries readers all over the world have turned to the great canon of Russian literature. Love and death, war and peace, yes, even crime and punishment; readers across the globe have found in Russian writing a substantial measure of intellectual provocation, aesthetic pleasure, emotional resonance, and personal solace. Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature explores the familiar names of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov to connect readers with these experiences. With a lively, jargon-free style and insightful analyses of thought-provoking texts, this concise volume helps you to understand more fully the pleasure to be found in reading, and re-reading. By identifying what readers seek and find in Russian books-from aesthetically pleasing descriptions to apt psychological renderings-Angela Brintlinger aims to enhance the gratification of reading, giving armchair travelers an excuse to embark on a series of fascinating journeys. Drawing on Brintlinger's experiences as a scholar, teacher, and reader of literature, the book is informed by a deep cultural understanding of Russia and Russians. It reveals this through engaging literary meditations that connect Russian literature to the losses, ironies, and ambiguities that define the human condition. Exploring authors' imagined readers as well as authors themselves, Brintlinger argues that it is these readers, from all over the world, who get to decide what literary works are worth reading. As a bonus, she offers an appendix with more names and titles, familiar and perhaps utterly new-books that show the ways in which Russian literature remains vital today.

Novels, Tales, Journeys

Novels, Tales, Journeys PDF Author: Alexander Pushkin
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307959635
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
From the award-winning translators: the complete prose narratives of the most acclaimed Russian writer of the Romantic era and one of the world's greatest storytellers. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of love, obsession, and betrayal to dark fables and sparkling comic masterpieces, from satirical epistolary tales and romantic adventures in the manner of Sir Walter Scott to imaginative historical fiction and the haunting dreamworld of "The Queen of Spades." The five short stories of The Late Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin are lightly humorous and yet reveal astonishing human depths, and his short novel, The Captain's Daughter, has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.

Secret Journal 1836-1837

Secret Journal 1836-1837 PDF Author: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780916201074
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description


The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature PDF Author: Caryl Emerson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139471686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
Russian literature arrived late on the European scene. Within several generations, its great novelists had shocked - and then conquered - the world. In this introduction to the rich and vibrant Russian tradition, Caryl Emerson weaves a narrative of recurring themes and fascinations across several centuries. Beginning with traditional Russian narratives (saints' lives, folk tales, epic and rogue narratives), the book moves through literary history chronologically and thematically, juxtaposing literary texts from each major period. Detailed attention is given to canonical writers including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn, as well as to some current bestsellers from the post-Communist period. Fully accessible to students and readers with no knowledge of Russian, the volume includes a glossary and pronunciation guide of key Russian terms as well as a list of useful secondary works. The book will be of great interest to students of Russian as well as of comparative literature.

The Overcoat and the Nose

The Overcoat and the Nose PDF Author: Nikolai Gogol
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
ISBN: 9780146001147
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
It is not necessary to say much about this tailor; but, as it is the custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly defined, there is no help for it, so here is Petrovitch the tailor. At first he was called only Grigoriy, and was some gentleman's serf; he commenced calling himself Petrovitch from the time when he received his free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at first on the great ones, and then on all church festivities without discrimination, wherever a cross stood in the calendar.

7 Best Short Stories by Alexander Pushkin

7 Best Short Stories by Alexander Pushkin PDF Author: Alexander Pushkin
Publisher: Tacet Books
ISBN: 8577770419
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
Alexander Pushkin was a Russian poet and writer who is considered the father of the modern Russian novel. The so-called Golden Age of Russian Literature was inspired by the themes and aesthetics of Pushkin - we are talking about names like Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol. This selection of short stories brings you the best of Pushkin selected by August Nemo: The Queen of Spades The Shot The Snowstorm The Postmaster The Coffin-maker Kirdjali Peter, The Great's Negro

A History of Russian Literature

A History of Russian Literature PDF Author: Victor Terras
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300049718
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 654

Book Description
Surveys Russian literature from the eleventh century to the present, set within the context of political, social, religious, and philisophical developments

Monumental Propaganda

Monumental Propaganda PDF Author: Vladimir Voinovich
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307426939
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
From Vladimir Voinovich, one of the great satirists of contemporary Russian literature, comes a new comic novel about the absurdity of politics and the place of the individual in the sweep of human events. Monumental Propaganda, Voinovich’s first novel in twelve years, centers on Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina, a true believer in Stalin, who finds herself bewildered and beleaguered in the relative openness of the Khrushchev era. She believes her greatest achievement was to have browbeaten her community into building an iron statue of the supreme leader, which she moves into her apartment after his death. And despite the ebb and flow of political ideology in her provincial town, she stubbornly, and at all costs, centers her life on her private icon. Voinovich’s humanely comic vision has never been sharper than it is in this hilarious but deeply moving tale–equally all-seeing about Stalinism, the era of Khrushchev, and glasnost in the final years of Soviet rule. The New York Times Book Review called his classic work, The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, “a masterpiece of a new form–socialist surrealism . . . the Soviet Catch-22 written by a latter-day Gogol." In Monumental Propaganda we have the welcome return of a truly singular voice in world literature.