Bakhtin, Stalin, and Modern Russian Fiction: Carnival, Dialogism, and History

by M. Keith Booker, Dubravka Juraga

Overview

Bakhtin, Stalin, and Modern Russian Fiction presents an advanced introduction to the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, focusing on the concepts of carnival, dialogism, and historicism. The discussion of Bakhtin pays particular attention to the impact of his historical context in the Soviet Union and to the importance of his own dialogic mode of discourse. Bakhtin's ideas are then placed in dialogic relation to the works of several important writers of modern Russian fiction, including Vassily Aksyonov, Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Andrei Bitov, and Sasha Sokolov.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313295263
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/28/1995
Series:	Contributions to the Study of World Literature , #58
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1580L (what's this?)

About the Author

M. KEITH BOOKER is Associate Professor of English and director of Graduate Studies at the University of Arkansas. He has published numerous articles on literature and literary theory and is the author of several books, including The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature and Dystopian Literature, both published by Greenwood Press in 1994.

DUBRAVKA JURAGA is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Arkansas. A former Fulbright Scholar from Yugoslavia, she has published numerous translations and articles on literature and culture in both the United States and Europe.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Reading Bakhtin Dialogically
Dialogism, Carnival, and Chronotope in the Fiction of Vassily Aksyonov: A Bakhtin Primer
"Look Both Ways": Double-Voiced Satire in the Work of Ilf and Petrov
Language, Genre, and Satire in the Works of Mikhail Zoshchenko
Good and Evil, Truth and Lie: Dualism and Dialogism in the Fiction of Yuz Aleshkovsky
The House that Bitov Built: Postmodernism and Stalinism in Pushkin House
All-Purpose Parody: Sasha Sokolov's Astrophobia
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

An introduction to key concepts and historical context is followed by chapters discussing Aksyonov's response to the legacy of Stalinism, as well as detailed Bakhtinian readings of satirists Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and several post-Stalinist writers who have addressed the Stalinist attempt to manipulate history and disrupt Russian cultural tradition. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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