Russian Literature Commons^™

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Program, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Poster, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Serebrianaia Rybka Nabokova [Nabokov’S Silverfish], Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

"Living For The Soul": Dolly's Heroism In Anna Karenina, Mara Minion

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Most literary critics have either viewed Dolly Oblonsky in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) as a somewhat pitiable character who, unlike Anna, submits to the oppressive patriarchal system, or they have neglected her as an insignificant minor character. I feel that such views are reductive and ignore Dolly’s personal strength compared with Anna’s weak character. Dolly’s heroism goes beyond her social, marital, and maternal status. Dolly “lives for the soul,” demonstrating personal and spiritual virtue (Tolstoy [1877] 794).

Gary Saul Morson is the most important critical voice on the subject of Dolly in Anna Karenina and in many ways the most …

A Clash Of Fictions: Geopolitics In Recent Russian And Ukrainian Literature, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

When the vast, multinational Soviet empire collapsed in 1991, the geopolitical structure it had struggled to maintain for most of the 20111 century - often by means of brutal repression and forced remobilization of entire populations - proved itself in the eyes of many to be fatally out of sync with the epochal norm of the nation-state. By the end of the 18th century, people in many parts of the world had begun to "imagine themselves" as nations and to organize politically into states whose primary function would be to protect, nurture, and (in a kind of Romantic feedback loop) …

A Theory Of Genre Formation In The Twentieth Century, Michael Rodgers

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Theory of Genre Formation in the Twentieth Century" Michael Rodgers explores the relationship between Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading and magical realism in order to theorize about genre formation in the twentieth century. Rodgers argues not only that specific twentieth-century narrative forms are bound intrinsically with literary realism and socio-political conditions, but also that these factors can produce formal commonalities.

The Crisis Of Self-Understanding In Dostoevsky, Joshua Miller

The Kabod

This paper seeks to explain the characterization of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. It makes the argument that Raskolnikov exemplifies the inexhaustible depth of the human consciousness, the quest for self-understanding, and the radical schism of the psyche which Dostoevsky wrote about in other works such as Notes From Underground. Contrasting Crime and Punishment with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, this paper concludes that Conrad's main character Marlow loses himself in the schism and that Raskolnikov finds peace through confession and repentance.

One Big Thing: Suffering As The Path To New Life In Crime And Punishment, Kelly M. Kramer

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

After spending a whole semester reading and thinking about Dostoevsky, the main thing that has struck me about him is his treatment of the theme of suffering. Despite, and even through, his extremely complicated characters and events, he nevertheless focuses his novels, particularly Crime and Punishment, on presenting a nuanced yet unified picture of suffering. After a brief analysis of several of the relevant characters and plot points, his thoughts on what suffering does to and for the individual will be presented. In contrast to our culture’s almost idolization of suffering as an experience which gives one instant respect, …

Resilient Russian Women In The 1920s & 1930s, Marcelline Hutton

Zea E-Books Collection

The stories of Russian educated women, peasants, prisoners, workers, wives, and mothers of the 1920s and 1930s show how work, marriage, family, religion, and even patriotism helped sustain them during harsh times.

The Russian Revolution launched an economic and social upheaval that released peasant women from the control of traditional extended families. It promised urban women equality and created opportunities for employment and higher education. Yet, the revolution did little to eliminate Russian patriarchal culture, which continued to undermine women’s social, sexual, economic, and political conditions. Divorce and abortion became more widespread, but birth control remained limited, and sexual liberation …

The Literary Unconscious: Ideology And Utopia In The Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel In England And Russia, Isra Ahmed Daraiseh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this volume, I have examined a number of works of nineteenth-century realist fiction from England and Russia, using the double interpretive method recommended by Fredric Jameson in The Political Unconscious. In particular, I have employed the dialectical double hermeneutic suggested by Jameson, who argues that the most productive approach to literary texts is to consider them from the double perspective of ideology and utopia. That is, critics should approach literary texts by seeking out the ideological roots that lie beneath the textual surface and from which the texts grow, while at the same time keeping a careful eye out …

Themes Of Self-Laceration Towards A Modicum Of Control In Nineteenth Century Russia As Expressed By Dostoevsky In The Brothers Karamazov, Jonathan Ball

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The majority of the academic discourse surrounding Dostoevsky and his epic, The Brothers Karamazov, has been directed toward the philosophic and religious implications of his characters. Largely overlooked, however, is the theme of laceration. In the greater scope of laceration stands the topic of self-laceration. Self-laceration refers to the practice of causing harm to the self in a premeditated and specifically emotionally destructive fashion. The cause of this experience is varied and expressed in as many ways as there are individuals. The struggle in the Russian psyche between viewing the world as fatalistic or as more of an existential …

Histology. - Atlantis. - The Source. - A Breath. - A Form Of Life. - Behind The Stage. - At The Stations, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

[Introduction To] Red Star Tales: A Century Of Russian And Soviet Science Of Fiction, Yvonne H. Howell

Bookshelf

For over a century, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection aims to change that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.

A scientist keeps a severed head alive, and the head lives to tell the tale… An explorer experiences life on the moon, in a story written six decades before the first moon landing... Electrical appliances respond to human anxieties and threaten to crash the electrical grid… Archaeologists discover strange powers emanating from a Central Asian excavation site… A teleporting …

Science And Medicine In Liudmila Ulitskaia’S Kazus Kukotskogo, William D. Wise

Honors Papers

Science and medicine play a fundamental role in Liudmila Ulitskaia's 2001 novel Kazus Kukotskogo. This paper argues that Ulitskaia employs science and medicine as a concrete means of considering such diverse questions as social life, morality, and religion in the work.

A Reader's Beheading: Nabokov's Invitation And Authorial Utopia, Aaron Botwick

Publications and Research

“A Reader’s Beheading: Nabokov’s Invitation and Authorial Utopia” argues that Invitation to a Beheading polemically outlines Nabokov’s position on the relationship between reader and writer: in other words, that writing and reading are difficult, elite pursuits whose meanings should necessarily be available only to those willing to face and surmount the magician’s challenges. Narratively, it operates as a kind of roman à clef in which Cincinnatus C. follows a trajectory towards artistic freedom (or authorial utopia) where he is liberated from the constraints of poor readers—among them literalists and Freudians—while Nabokov, ever the unaccommodating creator, frustrates that progression with the …

Nabokov's Silverfish, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

I discuss silverfish, of Lepisma—a strange insect that crawls through many of Nabokov’s pages.

Reading L2 Russian: The Challenges Of The Russian-English Dictionary, William J. Comer

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This descriptive study examines when and how students use Russian-English dictionaries while reading informational texts in Russian and what success they have with word lookup. The study uses introspective verbal protocols (i.e., think-alouds) to follow how readers construct meaning from two texts while reading them for a limited time first without a dictionary and then with access to a paper bilingual dictionary. Quantitative and qualitative data about readers’ language and dictionary skills are presented based on the readers’ think-aloud protocols for the dictionary portion of the reading sessions. The data reveal patterns of dictionary usage and problems in finding words …

My Poems Will Find Their Home…, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Our Theater. – A Calendar. – One Of Them. – Leaving Behind. – A Night Song. – On This Side, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Play In Daniil Kharms’ ‘Blue Notebook №10.’, José Vergara

Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Translating Chris Ware's Lint Into Russian, Matthew Davis

Honors Papers

Comics translation is rarely practiced with any appreciation of the comics medium – rather, comics usually are translated as prose, ignoring the words relationship to pictures. I chose Chris Ware's work, known for pushing the boundaries of comics language, because translating it mandates formal engagement with the comics medium. My project also involved dealing with the problems of translating into a non-native tongue, cultural translation, and placing Ware's comics in the Russian existentialist tradition.

Baring The Brain As Well As The Soul: Milan Kundera's The Joke, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

In what follows, I will argue that two current theories about how our minds ascribe intentional psychological states to other people (so-called Theory of Mind) as well as to non-personal events that happen to us (a proposed Existential Theory of Mind) provide a rich interpretive framework for understanding the social and historical context of Kundera’s innovative aesthetics.

Dostoevsky And Tolstoy's Oblique Responses To The Epidemic Of Chernyshevskian Philosophy, Zachary D. Rewinski

Honors Papers

This paper focuses on Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy's subtle responses to the work and philosophy of the radical intelligent, literary critic and philosopher Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had deep qualms about Chernyshevsky's ideas and their consequences, both for the individual and Russian society at large. The goal of this paper is to describe these ideas and consequences as they appear in two of the most famous and important works of 19th century Russian and world literature, Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina."

Discussion begins with exegesis of the radical utilitarian and utopian philosophy advocated by …

Review: Electric Salome, Loie Fuller's Performance Of Modernism, Tim Scholl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beheading First: On Nabokov's Translation Of Lewis Carroll, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Anya v Strane chudes, young Nabokov’s 1923 Russian translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, contains an intentionally shifted statement “beheading first, sentence later” compared to Lewis Carroll’s “sentence first, verdict later”. The shift is fitting for the 1920s children émigré audience.

Русская Поэзия Как Hortus Clausus: Случай Леонида Аронзона = Russkaia Poeziia Kak Hortus Clausus: Sluchai Leonida Aronzona, Laura Little, Elena Shvarts

Slavic Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Verses And Versions, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

A review of the book: Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin. Harcourt, 2008, 441 pp.

Резюме:

рецензия на книгу набоковских стихотворных переводов, Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin. Harcourt, 2008, 441 pp.

Berg’S Diary. – The Plant Anatomy, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Life Within A Man, Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Fiziki-Liriki (Scientist-Poets), Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Fiziki-liriki refers to a 1959 poem by Boris Slitskii that crystallized in memorable shorthand the intellectual divide between what he called 'physicists' and lyricists'.