Russian Modernism: The Transfiguration of the Everyday (Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature)

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316 pp. This book interprets the baffling complex of meanings attached by Russian culture to the concept of everyday life, or byt, and assesses its impact on Russian modernist narr ative. Drawing on modern literary theory and theology, Stephen C. Hutchings argues that byt emerged from a dialogue between two aesthetic systems, one predominant in Western Catholic and Protestant cultures, the other reflected in Orthodox iconic traditions. He offers provocative, yet careful, readings of key narrative texts from the period. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; Note on Transliteration, Citation, and Translation; Introduction; PART ONE: Narrative and the everyday: myth, image, sign, icon, life; The development of byt in nineteenth-century Russian literature; PART TWO: Enacting the present: Chekhov, art, and the everyday; Fedor Sologub's aesthetics of narrative excess; PART THREE: The struggle with byt in Belyi's Kotik Letaev and The Christened Chinaman; Breaking the circle of the self: Vasili Rozanov's discourse of pure intimacy; At the 'I' of the storm: the iconic self in Remizov's Whirlwind Russia; Notes; Bibliography; Index. Show more