A "Labyrinth of Linkages" in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

by Gary L. Browning

Overview

The renowned Russian writer Leo Tolstoy created a realistic masterpiece in Anna Karenina (1878). In the same work, moreover, he utilized allegory and symbol to an extent and at a level of sophistication unknown in his other works. In Browning’s study, the author identifies and analyzes previously unnoticed or only briefly mentioned “linkages and keystones” found in two highly developed clusters of symbols, arising from Anna’s momentous train ride and peasant nightmares, and of allegories, rooted in Vronsky’s disastrous steeplechase. Within this labyrinth of symbol, allegory and structural patterning lies embedded much of the novel’s most significant meaning. This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Russian literature, Tolstoy, symbol, allegory, structuralism, and moral criticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936235476
Publisher:	Academic Studies Press
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Series:	Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Gary L. Browning (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1974) is Professor Emeritus at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Boris Pilniak: Scythian at a Typewriter (Penguin Group, 1985) and Leveraging Your Russian with Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes (Slavica, 2001).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. Author's Note. Introduction. Chapter 1: Symbolism: The Train Ride. Chapter 2: Symbolism: The Muzhik (Peasant). Chapter 3: Allegory: The Steeplechase Participants. Chapter 4: Allegory: The Steeplechase's Recurring Motifs. Chapter 5: Comparison of Early and Final Drafts Containing the Steeplechase Allegory and the Muzhik Symbol. Conclusion. Select Bibliography. Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Recent scholarship has by and large taken Tolstoy’s reference to the "labyrinth of linkages" in Anna Karenina to indicate the dense and complicated network of interrelated an mutually illuminating images that create pathways to explicating the novel's many possible meanings. However, a labyrinth in the classical sense in unicursal: one sinuous route leads from the outside into the center. The hermeneutic of Gary L. Browning's book wore closely aligns with this second conception."

The Russian Review - Julie W. de Sherbinin

"Recent scholarship has by and large taken Tolstoy’s reference to the "labyrinth of linkages" in Anna Karenina to indicate the dense and complicated network of interrelated an mutually illuminating images that create pathways to explicating the novel's many possible meanings. However, a labyrinth in the classical sense in unicursal: one sinuous route leads from the outside into the center. The hermeneutic of Gary L. Browning's book wore closely aligns with this second conception."
—Julie W. de Sherbinin, Colby College, review published in The Russian Review

From the Publisher