Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature

Jane Gary Harris, Jane Harris

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780691609362, 9780691068183
• eBook ISBN: 9781400860753
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Russian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The fifteen essays in this volume explore the extraordinary range and diversity of the autobiographical mode in twentieth-century Russian literature from various critical perspectives. They will whet the appetite of readers interested in penetrating beyond the canonical texts of Russian literature. The introduction focuses on the central issues and key problems of current autobiographical theory and practice in both the West and in the Soviet Union, while each essay treats an aspect of auto-biographical praxis in the context of an individual author's work and often in dialogue with another of the included writers. Examined here are first the experimental writings of the early years of the twentieth century--Rozanov, Remizov, and Bely; second, the unique autobiographical statements of the mid-1920s through the early 1940s--Mandelstam, Pasternak, Olesha, and Zoshchenko; and finally, the diverse and vital contemporary writings of the 1960s through the 1980s as exemplified not only by creative writers but also by scholars, by Soviet citizens as well as by emigrs--Trifonov, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Lydia Ginzburg, Nabokov, Jakobson, Sinyavsky, and Limonov.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Diversity of Discourse: Autobiographical Statements in Theory and Praxis - Jane Gary Harris
• 1. Rozanov and Autobiography: The Case of Vasily Vasilievich - Anna Lisa Crone
• 2. Alexey Remizov's Later Autobiographical Prose - Olga Raevsky-Hughes
• 3. Andrey Bely's Memories of Fiction - Charlene Castellano
• 4. Autobiography and History: Osip Mandelstam's Noise of Time - Jane Gary Harris
• 5. Boris Pasternak's Safe Conduct - Krystyna Pomorska
• 6. The Imagination of Failure: Fiction and Autobiography in the Work of Yury Olesha - Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour
• 7. Autobiography and Conversion: Zoshchenko's Before Sunrise - Krista Hanson
• 8. A Tremulous Prism: Nabokov's Speak, Memory - John Pilling
• 9. Yury Trifonov's The House on the Embankment: Fiction or Autobiography? - Fiona Björling
• 10. The Rhetoric of Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope - Charles Isenberg
• 11. Lydia Ginzburg and the Fluidity of Genre - Sarah Pratt
• 12. Roman Jakobson: The Autobiography of a Scholar - Krystyna Pomorska
• 13. In Search of the Right Milieu: Eduard Limonov's Kharkov Cycle - Patricia Carden
• 14. Literary Selves: The Tertz-Sinyavsky Dialogue - Andrew J. Nussbaum
• Select Bibliography
• Index