This volume, edited by scholars from diverse backgrounds, stems from the original convergence of various geo-cultural viewpoints on the reception of East Slavic cultures and literatures (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Soviet): European viewpoints are juxtaposed with those of the Japanese, Chinese, Israeli areas. The volume offers a broad look at the history of the perception of these literatures in Europe, Italy, and East Asia (with special attention to their reception in Japan and China). Contacts, influences, meditations, and difficulties in the perception of literary and cultural phenomena are the subject of original comparative analyses. The vitality with which Slavic-Eastern literatures have found echoes in very distant environments, but also the evolution of the self-perception of Ukrainian literature over time, are among the topics.

This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.

Literary theory flourished in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the twentieth century, but its relation to Western literary scholarship is complex. This book sheds light on the entangled histories of exchange and influence both within the region known as Central and Eastern Europe, and between the region and the West. The exchange of ideas between scholars in the East and West was facilitated by both personal and institutional relations, both official and informal encounters. For the longest time, however, intellectual exchange was thwarted by political tensions that led to large parts of Central and Eastern Europe being isolated from the West. A few literary theories nevertheless made it into Western scholarly discourses via exiled scholars. Some of these scholars, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, become widely known in the West and their thought was transposed onto new, Western cultural contexts; others, such as Ol’ga Freidenberg, were barely noticed outside of Russian and Poland. This volume draws attention to the schools, circles, and concepts that shaped the development of theory in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the histoire croisée – the history of translations, transformations, and migrations – that conditioned its relationship with the West.

This first volume of a two-volume Handbook treats a challenging, largely neglected subject at the crossroads of several academic fields: biblical studies, reception history of the Bible, and folklore studies or folkloristics. The Handbook examines the reception of the Bible in verbal folklores of different cultures around the globe. This first volume, complete with a general Introduction, focuses on biblically-derived characters, tales, motifs, and other elements in Jewish (Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ashkenazi), Romance (French, Romanian), German, Nordic/Scandinavian, British, Irish, Slavic (East, West, South), and Islamic folkloric traditions. The volume contributes to the understanding of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the New Testament, and various pseudepigraphic and apocryphal scriptures, and to their interpretation and elaboration by folk commentators of different faiths. The book also illuminates the development, artistry, and “migration” of folktales; opens new areas for investigation in the reception history of the Bible; and offers insights into the popular dimensions of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities around the globe, especially regarding how the holy scriptures have informed those communities’ popular imaginations.

Founded in 1632, the library of the Kiev Mohyla Academy went up in flames in 1780. Encompassing predominantly humanist, scholastic and homiletic titles in Latin yet placed in a heartland of Eastern Orthodox territories, the library was something of an anomaly for its time, offering East Slavic intellectuals a comprehensive introduction to Western printed matter. Those books brought along with them not only a new pattern of knowledge, but also an awareness of the diversity and multiplicity of views which the educated could hold.

A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe is the first comprehensive English ]language study of the reception of classical antiquity in Eastern and Central Europe. This groundbreaking work offers detailed case studies of thirteen countries that are fully contextualized historically, locally, and regionally. The first English-language collection of research and scholarship on Greco-Roman heritage in Eastern and Central Europe Written and edited by an international group of seasoned and up-and-coming scholars with vast subject-matter experience and expertise Essays from leading scholars in the field provide broad insight into the reception of the classical world within specific cultural and geographical areas Discusses the reception of many aspects of Greco-Roman heritage, such as prose/philosophy, poetry, material culture Offers broad and significant insights into the complicated engagement many countries of Eastern and Central Europe have had and continue to have with Greco-Roman antiquity