An updated edition of this comprehensive narrative history, first published in 1989, incorporating a new chapter on the latest developments in Russian literature and additional bibliographical information. The individual chapters are by well-known specialists, and provide chronological coverage from the medieval period on, giving particular attention to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and including extensive discussion of works written outside the Soviet Union. The book is accessible to students and non-specialists, as well as to scholars of literature, and provides a wealth of information.

Russian literature arrived late on the European scene. Within several generations, its great novelists had shocked - and then conquered - the world. In this introduction to the rich and vibrant Russian tradition, Caryl Emerson weaves a narrative of recurring themes and fascinations across several centuries. Beginning with traditional Russian narratives (saints' lives, folk tales, epic and rogue narratives), the book moves through literary history chronologically and thematically, juxtaposing literary texts from each major period. Detailed attention is given to canonical writers including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn, as well as to some current bestsellers from the post-Communist period. Fully accessible to students and readers with no knowledge of Russian, the volume includes a glossary and pronunciation guide of key Russian terms as well as a list of useful secondary works. The book will be of great interest to students of Russian as well as of comparative literature.

In Russian history, the twentieth century was an era of unprecedented, radical transformations - changes in social systems, political regimes, and economic structures. A number of distinctive literary schools emerged, each with their own voice, specific artistic character, and ideological background. As a single-volume compendium, the Companion provides a new perspective on Russian literary and cultural development, as it unifies both émigré literature and literature written in Russia. This volume concentrates on broad, complex, and diverse sources - from symbolism and revolutionary avant-garde writings to Stalinist, post-Stalinist, and post-Soviet prose, poetry, drama, and émigré literature, with forays into film, theatre, and literary policies, institutions and theories. The contributors present recent scholarship on historical and cultural contexts of twentieth-century literary development, and situate the most influential individual authors within these contexts, including Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov and Anna Akhmatova.

Surveys Russian literature from the eleventh century to the present, set within the context of political, social, religious, and philisophical developments

"The essential, authoritative new guide to Russian literature, this innovative volume considers literature's multiple parallel histories ranging from the medieval period to the internet age. With contributions from thirty-four world-leading scholars, it offers a fresh approach to literary history, not as one integral narrative but as multiple parallel histories. Each of its four strands tells a story of Russian literature according to a defined criterion: Movements, Mechanisms, Forms and Heroes. At the same time, six clusters of shorter themed essays suggest additional perspectives and criteria for further study and research. In dialogue, these histories invite a multiplicity of readings, both within and across the narrative strands. The open but easily navigable structure enables engagement with both traditional literary concerns and radical reconceptualisations of Russian culture"--

This is a definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the successor states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Volume I encompasses developments before the reign of Peter I; volume II covers the 'imperial era', from Peter's time to the fall of the monarchy in March 1917; and volume III continues the story through to the end of the twentieth century. At the core of all three volumes are the Russians, the lands which they have inhabited and the polities that ruled them, while other peoples and territories have also been given generous coverage for the periods when they came under Riurikid, Romanov and Soviet rule. The distinct voices of individual contributors provide a multitude of perspectives on Russia's diverse and controversial millennial history. This first volume of the Cambridge History of Russia covers the period from early ('Kievan') Rus' to the start of Peter the Great's reign in 1689. It surveys the development of Russia through the Mongol invasions to the expansion of the Muscovite state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and deals with political, social, economic and cultural issues under the Riurikid and early Romanov rulers. The volume is organised on a primarily chronological basis, but a number of general themes are also addressed, including the bases of political legitimacy; law and society; the interactions of Russians and non-Russians; and the relationship of the state with the Orthodox Church. The international team of authors incorporates the latest Russian and Western scholarship and offers an authoritative new account of the formative 'pre-Petrine' period of Russian history, before the process of Europeanisation had made a significant impact on society and culture. Book jacket.

An authoritative history of Russia from early Rus' to the reign of Peter the Great.