Russian Experimental Fiction: Resisting Ideology after Utopia

Edith W. Clowes

Published by Princeton University Press 1993

Russian Experimental Fiction

Resisting Ideology after Utopia

Edith W. Clowes

Volume 273 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400863532

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the three decades following Stalin's death, major underground Russian writers have subverted Soviet ideology by using parody to draw attention to its basis in utopian thought. Referring to utopian writing as diverse as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Orwell's Animal Farm, they have tested notions of truth, reality, and representation. They have gone beyond their precursors by experimenting with the tensions between ludic and didactic art. Edith Clowes explores these "meta-utopian" narratives, which address a wide range of attitudes toward utopia, to expose the challenge that literary play poses to dogmatism and to elucidate the sense of renewal it can bring to social imagination. Using both structural analysis and reception theory, she introduces readers outside Russia to a fascinating body of literature that includes Aleksandr Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights, Abram Terts's Liubimov, Vladimir Voinovich's Moscow 2042, and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The New Robinsons.".

Not advocating its own utopian alternative to current social realities, meta-utopian fiction investigates the function of a deep human impulse to imagine, project, and enforce alternative social orders. Clowes examines the technical innovations meta-utopian writers have made in style, image, and narrative structure that inform fresh modes of social imagination. Her analysis leads to an inquiry into the intended and real audiences of this fiction, and into the ways its authors try to move them toward more sophisticated social discourse.

Originally published in 1993.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reviews

Clowes advances the provacative hypothosis that the certain recent Russian novels constitute a special category of 'meta-utopian' works by virtue of their playful skepticism toward political and social 'realities' of the past, present, and future. . . Clowes' highly theorectical study has much to offer.

"A valuable book that offers to American readers new and sometimes exciting cultural and literary material, which remains largely unknown outside Russia."—Boris Gasparov, University of California, Berkeley

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface and Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Note on Transliteration and Translation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
List of Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
PART ONE: EXPERIMENTAL FICTION AGAINST IDEOLOGICAL FIXATION
CHAPTER ONE. Meta-utopian Writing: The Problem of Utopia as Ideology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
CHAPTER TWO. Publishing the Dystopian Heritage: The Glasnost Debate about Literary Experiment and Utopian Ideology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
PART TWO: THE META-UTOPIAN EXPERIMENT IN FICTION: ELEMENTS OF LITERARYAND IDEOLOGICAL REANIMATION
CHAPTER THREE. Charting Meta-utopia: Chronotopes of Disorientation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
CHAPTER FOUR. Science, Ideology, and the Structure of Meta-utopian Narrative Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
CHAPTER FIVE. The Meta-utopian Language Problem, or Utopia as a Bump on a -log- Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
CHAPTER SIX. Meta-utopian Consciousness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
PART THREE: THE READER IN THE TEXT: POPULARIZING THE META-UTOPIAN MENTALITY
CHAPTER SEVEN. Making Meta-utopia Accessible: Zinoviev's The Radiant Future Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
CHAPTER EIGHT. Utopia, Imagination, and Memory: The Strugatsky Brothers' The Ugly Swans, Tendriakov's A Potshot at Mirages, and Aksenov's The Island of Crimea Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
CHAPTER NINE. Parody of Popular Forms in Iskander's Rabbits and Boa Constrictors and Voinovich's Moscow 2042 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
CHAPTER TEN. Play with Closure in Petrushevskaia's "The New Robinsons" and Kabakov's "The Deserter" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
CONCLUSION. The Utopian Impulse after 1968: Russian Meta-utopian Fiction in a European Context Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233

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