Poverty of the Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature About the Poor (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) - Hardcover

Herman, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810116928 ISBN 13: 9780810116924

Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr

Synopsis

The primal scene of all nineteenth-century Western thought might well be the moment an observer gazed at someone poor, most commonly on the streets of a great metropolis, and wondered what the spectacle meant in human, moral, political, and metaphysical terms. In Russia, where so much of the population was impoverished, the moment held special significance. David Herman examines how Russian writers portrayed this poverty and what their portrayal reveals and articulates about core values of Russian culture.Focussing on specific texts but addressing the literary tradition as a whole, Herman begins with Karamzin's immensely popular story "Poor Liza", the first in a sequence of poverty narratives that self-consciously address one another. He then considers Pushkin's "Egyptian Nights"; Gogol's "Overcoat", Petersburg tales, and Selected Passages; and Dostoevsky's Idiot and 1880 "Pushkin speech".

With a series of innovative readings, Poverty of the Imagination teases out a Russian discourse on lack which owes its peculiar richness to an insistence on solving simultaneously problems of social justice, national identity, and the ethics of the human imagination. As prominently as poverty figures in Russian literature, this is the first sustained analysis of its literary, conceptual, and cultural implications. As such, it deepens our understanding and appreciation of some of the most widely read literature of all time.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The primal scene of all nineteenth-century western thought might involve an observer gazing at someone poor, most commonly on the streets of a great metropolis, and wondering what the spectacle meant in human, moral, political, and metaphysical terms. For Russia, most of whose people hovered near the poverty line throughout history, the scene is one of special significance, presenting a plethora of questions and possibilities for writers who wished to depict the spiritual and material reality of Russian life. How these writers responded, and what their portrayal of poverty reveals and articulates about core values of Russian culture, is the subject of this book, which offers a compelling look into the peculiar convergence in nineteenth-century Russian literature of ideas about the poor and about the processes of art. David Herman begins with Karamzin's "Poor Liza," the immensely popular inaugurator of the tradition of Russian fictional works about the poor and the best known example of Russian sentimentalism. He then considers Pushkin's "Egyptian Nights"; Gogol's "Overcoat," Petersburg tales, and Selected Passages; and Dostoevsky's The Idiot and the 1880 "Pushkin speech." Among these texts, which provide an almost bewilderingly wide range of views on the identity of the poor, Herman sorts out the various values at play, not only in depictions of the poor as characters, but in the character of the narratives themselves. As prominently as poverty figures in Russian literature, this is the first sustained analysis of its literary, conceptual, and cultural implications. As such, it deepens our understanding and appreciation of some of the most widely read literature of all time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810116928
• ISBN 13: 9780810116924
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 282