The History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. Five chronological parts by design unfold in diachronic histories; they can be read individually but are presented as inseparable across the span of a national literature. Throughout its course, this History follows literary processes as they worked in respective periods and places, whether in monasteries, at court, in publishing houses, in the literary marketplace, or the Writers’ Union. Evolving institutional practices used to organize literature are themselves a part of the story of literature told in poetry, drama, and prose including diaries and essays. Equally prominent is the idea of writers’ agency in responding to tradition and reacting to larger forces such as church and state that shape the literary field. Coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic discussion, addressing trans-historical questions through case studies detailing the importance of texts, figures, and notions. The book does not follow the decline model often used in accounts of the nineteenth century as a change-over between ages of prose and poetry. We trace in the evolution of literature two interrelated processes: changes in subjectivities and the construction of national narratives. It is through categories of nationhood, literary politics, and literary life, forms of selfhood, and forms of expression that the intense influence of literature on a culture as a whole occurs.
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Iurii Lotman authored nearly forty books and articles about Aleksandr Pushkin's works, life, and personality; there is little doubt, therefore, that the poet was central to Lotman's scholarly interests. Nonetheless, Lotman turned to Pushkin's legacy relatively late in his scholarly career: while his first article was published in 1949, his first article on Pushkin appeared only in 1960. Both Lotman's kandidatskaia and doktorskaia dissertations were devoted to far more marginal figures and issues of Russian literary development: the former to Aleksandr Radishchev and Nikolai Karamzin, and the latter to early nineteenth-century literature.
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