Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer
Mikhail Zoshchenko was a household name in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until the crackdown on the arts after World War II. This is a full-length study in English of his career, and of his critical and political reception in a society where the purpose of art was service to the state. It places his longer works and the events leading up to his literary assassination in 1946 in the context of the short, riotous works that won him mass readership and a devoted following among contemporary writers who agreed with each other on little else. Dr Scatton identifies stylistic and thematic unities in his prose, and argues that Zoshchenko's later works were natural outgrowths of his earlier experiments and not, as is often stated, aberrations or expressions of subservience to the regime. Both as a master of Russian prose and a victim of Stalinist literary politics, Zoshchenko has been the object of critical rediscovery and reassessment over the last 15 years. This book describes that process.
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Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer
Mikhail Zoshchenko was a household name in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until the crackdown on the arts after World War II. This is a full-length study in English of his career, and of his critical and political reception in a society where the purpose of art was service to the state. It places his longer works and the events leading up to his literary assassination in 1946 in the context of the short, riotous works that won him mass readership and a devoted following among contemporary writers who agreed with each other on little else. Dr Scatton identifies stylistic and thematic unities in his prose, and argues that Zoshchenko's later works were natural outgrowths of his earlier experiments and not, as is often stated, aberrations or expressions of subservience to the regime. Both as a master of Russian prose and a victim of Stalinist literary politics, Zoshchenko has been the object of critical rediscovery and reassessment over the last 15 years. This book describes that process.
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Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer

Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer

by Linda Hart Scatton
Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer

Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer

by Linda Hart Scatton

Overview

Mikhail Zoshchenko was a household name in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until the crackdown on the arts after World War II. This is a full-length study in English of his career, and of his critical and political reception in a society where the purpose of art was service to the state. It places his longer works and the events leading up to his literary assassination in 1946 in the context of the short, riotous works that won him mass readership and a devoted following among contemporary writers who agreed with each other on little else. Dr Scatton identifies stylistic and thematic unities in his prose, and argues that Zoshchenko's later works were natural outgrowths of his earlier experiments and not, as is often stated, aberrations or expressions of subservience to the regime. Both as a master of Russian prose and a victim of Stalinist literary politics, Zoshchenko has been the object of critical rediscovery and reassessment over the last 15 years. This book describes that process.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521114974
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 06/25/2009
Series: Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature
Pages: 316
Product dimensions: 5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.71(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Note on translation and transliteration; Part I. Everyone's Favorite Funny Man: 1. The artistic evolution nobody (but the artist) wanted; 2. From fame to infamy: 1921–1958; 3. 'Straight out of Zoshchenko!': the writer as household word; Part II. Deviations from Well-Trod Literary Paths: 4. The Novellas; 5. Biography and 'autobiography'; 6. Children's literature; 7. Youth Restored; 8. A Skyblue Book; 9. Before sunrise; Conclusion: writing literature to heal, shape, reform; Appendix: posthumous recognition and criticism in the USSR and abroad; Notes; Selected bibliography; Index.
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Related Subjects

Literature
Literary Criticism
Russian Literature
20th Century Russian Literature - Literary Criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
Russian Literature
20th Century Russian Literature - Literary Criticism

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