A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism

The Soviet Age and Beyond

Evgeny Dobrenko, Galin Tihanov, Evgeny Dobrenko, Galin Tihanov

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780822977445
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This edited volume assembles the work of leading international scholars in a comprehensive history of Russian literary theory and criticism from 1917 to the post-Soviet age. By examining the dynamics of literary criticism and theory in three arenas—political, intellectual, and institutional—the authors capture the progression and structure of Russian literary criticism and its changing function and discourse.

The chapters follow early movements such as formalism, the Bakhtin Circle, Proletklut, futurism, the fellow-travelers, and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. By the cultural revolution of 1928, literary criticism became a mechanism of Soviet policies, synchronous with official ideology. The chapters follow theory and criticism into the 1930s with examinations of the Union of Soviet Writers, semantic paleontology, and socialist realism under Stalin. A more "humanized" literary criticism appeared during the ravaging years of World War II, only to be supplanted by a return to the party line, Soviet heroism, and anti-Semitism in the late Stalinist period. During Khrushchev's Thaw, there was a remarkable rise in liberal literature and criticism, that was later refuted in the nationalist movement of the "long" 1970s. The same decade saw, on the other hand, the rise to prominence of semiotics and structuralism. Postmodernism and a strong revival of academic literary studies have shared the stage since the start of the post-Soviet era.

For the first time anywhere, this collection analyzes all of the important theorists and major critical movements during a tumultuous ideological period in Russian history, including developments in emigre literary theory and criticism.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction: Toward a History of Soviet and Post-Soviet Literary Theory and Criticism - Evgeny Dobrenko and Galin Tihanov
• 1. Literary Criticism during the Revolution and the Civil War, 1917–1921 - Stefano Garzonio and Maria Zalambani
• 2. Literary Criticism and Cultural Policy during the New Economic Policy, 1921–1927 - Natalia Kornienko
• 3. Literary Criticism and the Transformations of the Literary Field during the Cultural Revolution, 1928–1932 - Evgeny Dobrenko
• 4. Literary Theory in the 1920s: Four Options and a Practicum - Caryl Emerson
• 5. Soviet Literary Criticism and the Formulation of the Aesthetics of Socialist Realism, 1932–1940 - Hans Günther
• 6. Soviet Literary Theory in the 1930s: Battles over Genre and the Boundaries of Modernity - Katerina Clark and Galin Tihanov
• 7. Russian Émigré Literary Criticism and Theory between the World Wars - Galin Tihanov
• 8. Literary Criticism and the Institution of Literature in the Era of War and Late Stalinism, 1941–1953 - Evgeny Dobrenko
• 9. Literary Criticism during the Thaw - Evgeny Dobrenko and Ilya Kalinin
• 10. Literary Criticism of the Long 1970s and the Fate of Soviet Liberalism - Mark Lipovetsky and Mikhail Berg
• 11. Discoveries and Advances in Literary Theory, 1960s–1980s: Neoformalism, the Linguistic Model, and Beyond - William Mills Todd III
• 12. Literary Criticism and the End of the Soviet System, 1985–1991 - Birgit Menzel and Boris Dubin
• 13. The Alter Ego: Émigré Literary Criticism from World War II to the End of the Soviet Union - Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy
• 14. Post-Soviet Literary Criticism - Ilya Kukulin and Mark Lipovetsky
• 15. Post-Soviet Literary Studies: The Rebirth of Academism - Nancy Condee and Eugeniia Kupsan
• Appendix: Translated Titles of Russian Periodicals
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index