"Labyrinth of Linkages" in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Gary L. Browning (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1974) is Professor Emeritus at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Boris Pilniak: Scythian at a Typewriter (Penguin Group, 1985) and Leveraging Your Russian with Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes (Slavica, 2001).

• Acknowledgements. Author's Note. Introduction. Chapter 1: Symbolism: The Train Ride. Chapter 2: Symbolism: The Muzhik (Peasant). Chapter 3: Allegory: The Steeplechase Participants. Chapter 4: Allegory: The Steeplechase's Recurring Motifs. Chapter 5: Comparison of Early and Final Drafts Containing the Steeplechase Allegory and the Muzhik Symbol. Conclusion. Select Bibliography. Index.

"Recent scholarship has by and large taken Tolstoy’s reference to the "labyrinth of linkages" in Anna Karenina to indicate the dense and complicated network of interrelated an mutually illuminating images that create pathways to explicating the novel's many possible meanings. However, a labyrinth in the classical sense in unicursal: one sinuous route leads from the outside into the center. The hermeneutic of Gary L. Browning's book wore closely aligns with this second conception."