Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon - cover image

Copyright

Katharine Hodgson, Joanne Shelton; Alexandra Smith;

Published On

2017-04-21

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-087-1
Hardback978-1-78374-088-8
PDF978-1-78374-089-5
HTML978-1-80064-500-4
XML978-1-78374-585-2
EPUB978-1-78374-090-1
MOBI978-1-78374-091-8

Language

  • English

Print Length

512 pages (x + 502)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 26 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.03" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 29 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.13" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1574g (55.52oz)
Hardback1970g (69.49oz)

Media

Illustrations5
Tables3

OCLC Number

987449679

LCCN

2019452604

BIC

  • DSC

BISAC

  • LIT014000
  • LIT004240

LCC

  • PG3056

Keywords

  • Russia
  • poetry
  • Twentieth-century
  • literary canon
  • Soviet Union
  • Brodskii
  • Akhmatova
  • Mandel′shtam
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Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry

Reinventing the Canon

The canon of Russian poetry has been reshaped since the fall of the Soviet Union. A multi-authored study of changing cultural memory and identity, this revisionary work charts Russia’s shifting relationship to its own literature in the face of social upheaval.
Literary canon and national identity are inextricably tied together, the composition of a canon being the attempt to single out those literary works that best express a nation’s culture. This process is, of course, fluid and subject to significant shifts, particularly at times of epochal change. This volume explores changes in the canon of twentieth-century Russian poetry from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union to the end of Putin’s second term as Russian President in 2008. In the wake of major institutional changes, such as the abolition of state censorship and the introduction of a market economy, the way was open for wholesale reinterpretation of twentieth-century poets such as Iosif Brodskii, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandel′shtam, their works and their lives. In the last twenty years many critics have discussed the possibility of various coexisting canons rooted in official and non-official literature and suggested replacing the term "Soviet literature" with a new definition – "Russian literature of the Soviet period".
Contributions to this volume explore the multiple factors involved in reshaping the canon, understood as a body of literary texts given exemplary or representative status as "classics". Among factors which may influence the composition of the canon are educational institutions, competing views of scholars and critics, including figures outside Russia, and the self-canonising activity of poets themselves. Canon revision further reflects contemporary concerns with the destabilising effects of emigration and the internet, and the desire to reconnect with pre-revolutionary cultural traditions through a narrative of the past which foregrounds continuity. Despite persistent nostalgic yearnings in some quarters for a single canon, the current situation is defiantly diverse, balancing both the Soviet literary tradition and the parallel contemporaneous literary worlds of the emigration and the underground.
Required reading for students, teachers and lovers of Russian literature, Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry brings our understanding of post-Soviet Russia up to date.

Reviews

The excellent new volume, Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, analyzes the transformation of the poetic canon, its idea and content, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It presents a comprehensive and intricate overview of the canon formation and deformation from a variety of perspectives: sociological, political, historical, and literary. The volume succeeds in this project and greatly enhances our understanding of the history of Russian poetry from the end of the twentieth century until today...No scholar of Russian poetry and culture should bypass it.

Marat Grinberg

"Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon. Ed. Katharine Hodgson, Joanne Shelton, and Alexandra Smith". Slavic Review (0037-6779), vol. 77, no. 4, 2018. doi:10.1017/slr.2018.352

Full Review

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

1. Introduction: Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry and the Post-Soviet Reader: Reinventing the Canon

By Katharine Hodgson and Alexandra Smith

2. From the Margins to the Mainstream: Iosif Brodskii and the Twentieth-Century Poetic Canon in the Post-Soviet Period

By Aaron Hodgson

3. ‘Golden-Mouthed Anna of All The Russias’: Canon, Canonisation, and Cult

By Alexandra Harrington

4. Vladimir Maiakovskii and the National School Curriculum

By Natalia Karakulina

5. The Symbol of the Symbolists: Aleksandr Blok in the Changing Russian Literary Canon

By Olga Sobolev

6. Canonical Mandel′shtam

By Andrew Kahn

7. Revising the Twentieth-Century Poetic Canon: Ivan Bunin in Post-Soviet Russia

By Joanne Shelton

8. From Underground to Mainstream: The Case of Elena Shvarts

By Josephine von Zitzewitz

9. Boris Slutskii: A Poet, his Time, and the Canon

By Katharine Hodgson

10. The Diasporic Canon of Russian Poetry: The Case of the Paris Note

By Maria Rubins

11. The Thaw Generation Poets in the Post-Soviet Period

By Emily Lygo

12. The Post-Soviet Homecoming of First-Wave Russian Émigré Poets and its Impact on the Reinvention of the Past

By Alexandra Smith

13. Creating the Canon of the Present

By Stephanie Sandler

Bibliography

Index


Contributors

Joanne Shelton

(editor)

Alexandra Smith

(editor)
Reader in Russian Studies at University of Edinburgh