Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak

The authors read some of the classics in the Russian novelistic tradition against a critique of the Lukacs-Bakhtin view of epic, all the while demonstrating the modernity of epic as a literary mode and arguing how some key Russian novels challenge or outgrow their generic form to re-imagine or re-invent a new, monumental one. The chapters on Gogol's "Dead Souls", Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov", Tolstoy's "War and Peace", and Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" have major implications for understanding the sweep of Russian literature as a whole, while the final chapter on Stalinist epic, which includes fresh insights on Anna Akhmatova and Nadezhda Mandelstam, considers other literary genres - the memoir and the narrative poem - against the background of the epic tradition. Teachers, graduate students, undergraduates as well as serious non-academic critics will profit from the original arguments which provide suggestions for re-reading Russian prose generally.

“Griffiths and Rabinowitz reveal the genre's liveliness, fluidity, and seemingly limitless ability to assert itself in modern letters. Newarly every sentence rewards, and will provoke serious readers to pause and think. The impressive erudition and critical imagination which Griffiths/Rabinowitz combine make one hope that this ancient/modern pair of critical bogatyri will sally forth again.”, "Felicitous phrasing throughout (the Odyssey as “the grandfather of all Baedekers,” 155) renders this erudite volume a pleasure to read and ponder. Griffiths and Rabinowitz have created an exemplary and inspirational work of interdisciplinary scholarship. Any scholar of Slavic studies, classics, Russian intellectual history, or the classical heritage should gladly welcome this book."

Stanley J. Rabinowitz (Ph.D. Harvard University) teaches Russian language and literature at Amherst College. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley and has been the Max Hayward Fellow in Russian Literature at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His research interests include modern Russian prose and Russian classical dance during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Frederick Griffiths (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Class of 1880 Professor of Greek and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College. His primary focus has focused on relationship of literature and politics in Hellenistic Alexandria (Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius), 19th and 20th century Russian (with S. J. Rabinowitz: Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak), and 20th century America (Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Charles Johnson). He is the author of Theocritus at Court: articles on Apollonius Rhodius, Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison.