Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Missing Centres, Hints and Evasions - Epistemological Uncertainty in the Early Period
Epistemology and Ontology in the Debate between Acmeism and Symbolism
Epistemology and the Conventions of Lyric Poetry
Truncated Plot in Akhmatova's Early Lyrics, The Nineteenth-Century Novel
Cinema and Cubism
Avant-Garde Techniques in the Early Poetry
Montage Composition in Lyric Cycles
Towards a Nouvea Roman
The Chameleon Persona
From Epistemology to Ontology
2. Requiem - The Upturned World and Disintegrating Self
The Modern Poetic Sequence
The Paratexts of Requiem
The Inconsistent Speaker and Fragmenting Text
The Transformation of the Speaker
3. Ends and Beginnings, Different Selves and Possible Worlds - Ontological Instability in the 'Northern Elegies'
The Alien World of the Past
The World Next Door
Possible Worlds of the Future
Forking Paths and Other Dramas
Paper Worlds
The World of Fiction, Ironic Beginnings, 4. Non-Meetings and the World Through the Looking Glass - Akhmatova's Late Cycles
The Poetics of Negation and Paradox
Non-Meetings and Non-Being
The Burnt Notebook
Living, Dying and Resurrection
'Midnight Verses'
5. Worlds Within Worlds - Poem Without a Hero
The Text-within-a-Text
Viewing 1913 from 1940 - the Postmodernist Return to Modernism
Akhmatova's Critique of the 1910s
The Surpassing of Modernism
Postmodernist Pla(y)giarism
Converstaion betwewen an Author and an Editor
The Multiple Author
Multiple Endings and Paratextual Paraphernalia
Rough Drafts
Conclusion
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
