Although little studied in the West, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov (1831-95) is accorded a place among major nineteenth-century writers in his native Russia. Irmhild Christina Sperrle's The Organic Worldview of Nikolai Leskov draws on previously unavailable archival and primary sources to offer English-speaking readers the opportunity to appreciate the work of this neglected author. Leskov remarked to his contemporary Anatolii Faresov, "People talk about my 'language, ' about its colorfulness and its national traits; about the richness of my plots, about my condensed way of writing, about 'similarity' and so on, but they do not notice the most important thing." It is this "most important thing," Leskov's consistent thematic adherence to an "organic" philosophical model, that Sperrle traces and elaborates here. Focusing on movement and transformation in "an organic manner"--a manner in which death and rebirth alternate and condition each other--Sperrle develops Leskov's notion of organicity and explores his relationship to the organic tradition in philosophy and literature. Her reading of key texts among his more than five hundred works entails a close look at Leskov's ideas about the Divine as freedom of belief, about truth as a continual renewal of previously held theories, and about death in both a physical and a spiritual sense. She examines Leskov's vexed relation to Tolstoyan ideas and shows how the notion of heresy--as a questioning rather than rejection of authority-is a crucial element in his worldview and his work.

In Life Is Elsewhere, Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. Using a comparative approach, she brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, Lounsbery argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.

Russia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. The volume proceeds chronologically in five parts, extending from Kievan Rus' in the 11th century to the present day.The coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic focus. Parts are organized thematically in chapters, which a number of keywords that are important literary concepts that can serve as connecting motifs and 'case studies', in-depth discussions of writers, institutions, and texts that take the reader up close and. Visual material also underscores the interrelation of the word and image at a number of points, particularly significant in the medieval period and twentieth century. The History addresses major continuities and discontinuities in the history of Russian literature across all periods, and in particular bring out trans-historical features that contribute to the notion of a national literature. The volume's time-range has the merit of identifying from the early modern period a vital set of national stereotypes and popular folklore about boundaries, space, Holy Russia, and the charismatic king that offers culturally relevant material to later writers. This volume delivers a fresh view on a series of key questions about Russia's literary history, by providing new mappings of literary history and a narrative that pursues key concepts (rather more than individual authorial careers). This holistic narrative underscores the ways in which context and text are densely woven in Russian literature, and demonstrates that the most exciting way to understand the canon and the development of tradition is through a discussion of the interrelation of major and minor figures, historical events and literary politics, literary theory and literary innovation.

The Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature contains a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 100 cross-referenced entries on significant people, themes, critical issues, and the most significant genres...

Nikolai Leskov's writing exploded the conventions of nineteenth-century Russian fiction. Here is the other Russia, mythical and untamed: an uneasy synthesis of Orthodoxy and Old Believers, a land populated by soldiers and monks, serfs and princes, Tartars and gypsies—a vast country brimming with the promise of magic. These seventeen tales, some rooted in the oral tradition, others cast as sophisticated anecdotes, are all told in the voices of storytellers addressing their audience—allowing us, as readers, to join a group of listeners. Innovative in form and rich in wordplay, the narratives unfurl in startlingly modern ways. The great gift of this new translation allows us to hear all the nuances of Leskov’s brilliant language.

The culture of nineteenth-century Russia is often seen as dominated by realism in the arts, as exemplified by the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, the paintings of 'the Wanderers,' and the historical operas of Modest Mussorgsky. Paradoxically, nineteenth-century Russia was also consumed with a passion for spiritualist activities such as table-rappings, seances of spirit communication, and materialization of the 'spirits.' Ghostly Paradoxes examines the surprising relationship between spiritualist beliefs and practices and the positivist mindset of the Russian Age of Realism (1850-80) to demonstrate the ways in which the two disparate movements influenced each other. Foregrounding the important role that nineteenth-century spiritualism played in the period's aesthetic, ideological, and epistemological debates, Ilya Vinitsky challenges literary scholars who have considered spiritualism to be archaic and peripheral to other cultural issues of the time. Ghostly Paradoxes is an innovative work of literary scholarship that traces the reactions of Russia's major realist authors to spiritualist events and doctrines and demonstrates that both movements can be understood only when examined together.

The Tradition of the Gospel Christians explores the post-Soviet tradition of evangelical Christians originating from the ministry of the Victorian revivalist preacher Lord Radstock in St. Petersburg in the 1870s. In an effort to resolve the current evangelical crises of theology and identity, this study provides an analysis of the tradition's history reflecting on its restorationist tradition, the contours and vectors of its theology, and its practice of biblical interpretation. The historical analysis reveals that the major causes of the crises of identity and theology pertain to the socio-political upheavals, which, in turn, led the tradition to develop strategies to maintain relevance in its changed contexts. The socio-political shifts were also responsible for the lack of emphasis on research and scholarship, which contributed to a difficulty in finding the necessary resources and intellectual virtues to deal with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Building on the discoveries of the historical analysis, Andrey P. Puzynin offers a new historical and theological paradigm by reconstructing the self-identifying narrative and theological framework in critical dialogue with recent developments in Anglo-American evangelicalism and postliberalism. Following the trajectory of the evangelical tradition in the post-Soviet context, a trajectory which relies on Western thought, the book adopts the narrative theological method of reading the world though the lens of Scripture. The self-identifying narrative of the community is reconstructed through a theological reading of the previous identity-constructions, in the light of recent discussions on Christ and the powers. The result of this study helpfully explains the dynamics of Eastern evangelicalism in a traditionally Russian Orthodox setting.