Life Is Elsewhere

Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800–1917

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

Av Anne Lounsbery

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In Life Is Elsewhere, Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. Using a comparative approach, she brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, Lounsbery argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-11-15
Mått152 x 229 x 30 mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieNIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Antal sidor360
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9781501747915
UtmärkelserRunner-up for Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures 2020 (United States)

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AcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration and Translation1. Geography, History, Trope: Facts on the Ground2. Before the Provinces: Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral in Pushkin's Countryside3. Inventing Provincial Backwardness, or "Everything is Barbarous and Horrid" (Herzen, Sollogub, and Others)4. "This is Paris itself!": Gogol in the Town of N5. "I Do Beg of You, Wait, and Compare!": Goncharov, Belinsky, and Provincial Taste6. Back Home: The Provincial Lives of Turgenev's Cosmopolitans7. Transcendence Deferred: Women Writers in the Provinces8. Melnikov and Leskov, or What is Regionalism in Russia?9. Centering and Decentering in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy10. "Everything Here is Accidental": Chekhov's Geography of Meaninglessness11. In the End: Shchedrin, Sologub, and Terminal Provinciality12. Conclusion: The Provinces in the Twentieth CenturyList of AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex

This is another excellent release in the NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies... a nuanced and enlightening book written in clear, jargon-free prose.(Choice) This highly important book provides a new understanding of what the author calls the provincial trope in Russian literature.The book has significant implications for history as well as literary criticism.(The Russian Review) The book's scope is one of its strongest qualities: Lounsbery goes beyond Gogol' and Chekhov and includes a range of other writers' uses of the provincial trope. The result is a fascinating and exhaustive analysis of the symbolic geography of Russian nineteenth-century literature.(Slavonic and East European Review) This book does a rare thing: it takes a topic that all readers of nineteenth-century Russian literature think they understand, provintsiia, and demonstrates that this apparently selfevident construct, associated with boredom and meaninglessness, is multifaceted, vibrant, and significant. In so doing, Life is Elsewhere genuinely transforms our understanding of nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture.(Canadian Slavonic Papers) Life Is Elsewhere is a striking example of a successful thematic approach to literary analysis. At the same time, it is a bold re-evaluation of overlooked themes and texts in Russian literature, lending itself both to classroom discussion and to the rediscovery of individual writers in new contexts.(Modern Language Review) This is a magisterial book, generous in its wealth of information and citations, theoretically informed, thorough, and beautifully written.Lounsbery has proven that the Russian provinces are in fact deeply interesting, both as a foil and as a broader vehicle for helping us grapple with challenges of Russian identity and Russia's place both in the canon of world literature and geopolitically in the world.(Slavic Review)