Susan Layton

Russian Literature and Empire

Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy
Herausgeber: Cross, Anthony; Kelly, Catriona

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This is the first book to provide a synthesizing study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership to receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as such, Susan Layton introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. While showing how literature often underwrote imperialism, the book carefully explores the tensions between the Russian state's ideology of a European mission to civilize the Muslim mountain peoples, and romantic perceptions of those tribes as noble primitives whose extermination was no cause for celebration. By dealing with imperialism in Georgia as well, the study shows how the varied treatment of the Caucasus in literature helped Russians construct a satisfying identity for themselves as a semi-European, semi-Asian people.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 372
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. Juni 2005
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9780521020015
• ISBN-10: 0521020018
• Artikelnr.: 21607563

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Map
1. Introduction
2. The poet and terra incognita
3. Imaginative geography
4. Sentimental pilgrims
5. The national stake in Asia
6. The Pushkinian mountaineer
7. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's interchange with the tribesman
8. Early Lermontov and oriental machismo
9. Little orientalizers
10. Feminizing the Caucasus
11. Georgia as an oriental woman
12. The anguished poet in uniform
13. Tolstoy's revolt against romanticism
14. Post-war appropriation of romanticism
15. Tolstoy's confessional indictment
16. Concluding observations
Notes
Bibliography
Index.