Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic

by Katherine Bowers

Overview

In Russia, gothic fiction is often seen as an aside – a literary curiosity that experienced a brief heyday and then disappeared. In fact, its legacy is much more enduring , persisting within later Russian literary movements . Writing Fear explores Russian literature’s engagement with the gothic by analysing the practices of borrowing and adaptation. Katherine Bowers shows how these practices shaped literary realism from its romantic beginnings through the big novels of the 1860s and 1870s to its transformation during the modernist period.

Bowers traces the development of gothic realism with an emphasis on the affective power of fear. She then investigates the hybrid genre’s function in a series of case studies focused on literary texts that address social and political issues such as urban life, the woman question, revolutionary terrorism, and the decline of the family. By mapping the myriad ways political and cultural anxiety take shape via the gothic mode in the age of realism, Writing Fear challenges the conventional literary history of nineteenth-century Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487526924
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/15/2022
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Katherine Bowers is an associate professor in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation
List of Illustrations

Introduction: Russian Realism and the Gothic

Part One: Gothic Migration

1. The Russian Reader’s Gothic Library
2. Gothic Transmutations in Pushkin and Gogol
3. Russian Landscapes in a Gothic Frame
4. The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Gothic Novel

Part Two: Gothic Realism

5. Physiological Petersburg, Gothic Petersburg
6. Gothic Subjectivity and the Woman Question
7. Political Terror and the School of Horror
8. The Fall of the House on the Russian Estate

Conclusion: Chekhov’s Ghosts

Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Claire Whitehead

"The scholarship presented here is excellent. Writing Fear demonstrates a striking depth and breadth of reading not only of secondary literature but also of the various primary texts it discusses. Katherine Bowers impressively brings together works from the Russian, British, and other European traditions to offer comparative readings of the exploitation of gothic imagery, preoccupations, and plots in order to throw new light on the interpretation of these works. This text will become essential reading for courses on Russian literature and the gothic, and is just as valuable in terms of its studies of individual authors and works."

Valeria Sobol

"Writing Fear is a rich and innovative study that reinterprets the Russian realist tradition by tracing the pervasive presence of gothic thematics and aesthetics throughout the period that we usually perceive as more 'modern' and socially focused and thus unconcerned with the fantastic, gothic, or sublime. This is a major contribution to Russian literary studies, as well as studies of realism and the gothic more generally."

Editorial Reviews

"Bowers’s Writing Fear illuminates… how major Russian realists utilized the tropes of a genre generally considered realism’s perfect antithesis. An innovative, captivating study."

—B.J. Nieubuurt, University of Michigan, CHOICE Connect
"Appealing both for the insightful readings of specific works and for the big picture about Russian Realism’s encounters with the Gothic that ultimately emerges. Writing Fear is likely to be of keen interest to those who study nineteenth-century Russian literature as well as to colleagues who study non-Russian literary traditions and have an interest in the Gothic."—Bella Grigoryan, University of Pittsburgh, The Russian Review

" Writing Fear is an innovative, elegantly written book, underpinned by excellent scholarship. As such, it makes an important contribution not only to Russian studies, but to the literary history of nineteenth-century Gothic as a whole."

—Margarita Vaysman, University of St Andrews, Slavonic and East European Review

" Writing Fear is a rich and innovative study that reinterprets the Russian realist tradition by tracing the pervasive presence of gothic thematics and aesthetics throughout the period that we usually perceive as more ‘modern’ and socially focused and thus unconcerned with the fantastic, gothic, or sublime. This is a major contribution to Russian literary studies, as well as studies of realism and the gothic more generally."

—Valeria Sobol, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"The scholarship presented here is excellent. Writing Fear demonstrates a striking depth and breadth of reading not only of secondary literature but also of the various primary texts it discusses. Katherine Bowers impressively brings together works from the Russian, British, and other European traditions to offer comparative readings of the exploitation of gothic imagery, preoccupations, and plots in order to throw new light on the interpretation of these works. This text will become essential reading for courses on Russian literature and the gothic, and is just as valuable in terms of its studies of individual authors and works."

—Claire Whitehead, Reader in Russian, University of St Andrews

From the Publisher

"Bowers's Writing Fear illuminates... how major Russian realists utilized the tropes of a genre generally considered realism's perfect antithesis. An innovative, captivating study."

CHOICE Connect - B.J. Nieubuurt

"Writing Fear is an innovative, elegantly written book, underpinned by excellent scholarship. As such, it makes an important contribution not only to Russian studies, but to the literary history of nineteenth-century Gothic as a whole."

Slavonic and East European Review - Margarita Vaysman

"Appealing both for the insightful readings of specific works and for the big picture about Russian Realism's encounters with the Gothic that ultimately emerges. Writing Fear is likely to be of keen interest to those who study nineteenth-century Russian literature as well as to colleagues who study non-Russian literary traditions and have an interest in the Gothic."

The Russian Review - Bella Grigoryan