Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak

Stanley J. Rabinowitz (Ph.D. Harvard University) teaches Russian language and literature at Amherst College. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley and has been the Max Hayward Fellow in Russian Literature at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His research interests include modern Russian prose and Russian classical dance during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Frederick Griffiths (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Class of 1880 Professor of Greek and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College. His primary focus has focused on relationship of literature and politics in Hellenistic Alexandria (Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius), 19th and 20th century Russian (with S. J. Rabinowitz: Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak), and 20th century America (Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Charles Johnson). He is the author of Theocritus at Court: articles on Apollonius Rhodius, Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison.

“Griffiths and Rabinowitz reveal the genre's liveliness, fluidity, and seemingly limitless ability to assert itself in modern letters. Newarly every sentence rewards, and will provoke serious readers to pause and think. The impressive erudition and critical imagination which Griffiths/Rabinowitz combine make one hope that this ancient/modern pair of critical bogatyri will sally forth again.”