Russian Experimental Fiction: Resisting Ideology After Utopia (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Clowes, Edith W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069103222X ISBN 13: 9780691032221

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

In the three decades following Stalin's death, major underground Russian writers have subverted Soviet ideology by using parody to draw attention to its basis in utopian thought. Referring to utopian writing as diverse as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Orwell's Animal Farm, they have tested notions of truth, reality, and representation. They have gone beyond their precursors by experimenting with the tensions between ludic and didactic art. Edith Clowes explores these "meta-utopian" narratives, which address a wide range of attitudes toward utopia, to expose the challenge that literary play poses to dogmatism and to elucidate the sense of renewal it can bring to social imagination. Using both structural analysis and reception theory, she introduces readers outside Russia to a fascinating body of literature that includes Aleksandr Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights, Abram Terts's Liubimov, Vladimir Voinovich's Moscow 2042, and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The New Robinsons."
Not advocating its own utopian alternative to present social realities, meta-utopian fiction investigates the function of a deep human impulse to imagine, project, and realize alternative social orders. Clowes examines the technical innovations meta-utopian writers have made in style, image, and narrative structure that inform fresh modes of social imagination. Her analysis leads to an inquiry into the intended and real audiences of this fiction, and into the ways its authors try to move them toward more sophisticated social discourse.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edith W. Clowes is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Purdue University.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"A valuable book that offers to American readers new and sometimes exciting cultural and literary material, which remains largely unknown outside Russia."--Boris Gasparov, University of California, Berkeley

Aus dem Klappentext

"A valuable book that offers to American readers new and sometimes exciting cultural and literary material, which remains largely unknown outside Russia."--Boris Gasparov, University of California, Berkeley

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069103222X
• ISBN 13: 9780691032221
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 260
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar