Connor Doak - Böcker

The powerful, impassioned, and often frenetic prose of Fedor Dostoevsky continues to fascinate readers in the twenty-first century, even though we are far removed from Dostoevsky’s Russia. A Dostoevsky Companion: Texts and Contexts aims to help students and readers navigate the writer’s fiction and his world, to better understand the cultural and sociopolitical milieu in which Dostoevsky lived and wrote. Rather than offer a single definitive view of the author, the book contains a collection of documents from Dostoevsky’s own time (excerpts from his letters, his journalism, and what his contemporaries wrote about him), as well as extracts from the major critical studies of Dostoevsky from the contemporary academy. The volume equips readers with a deeper understanding of Dostoevsky’s world and his writing, offering new paths and directions for interpreting his writing.

The powerful, impassioned, and often frenetic prose of Fedor Dostoevsky continues to fascinate readers in the twenty-first century, even though we are far removed from Dostoevsky’s Russia. A Dostoevsky Companion: Texts and Contexts aims to help students and readers navigate the writer’s fiction and his world, to better understand the cultural and sociopolitical milieu in which Dostoevsky lived and wrote. Rather than offer a single definitive view of the author, the book contains a collection of documents from Dostoevsky’s own time (excerpts from his letters, his journalism, and what his contemporaries wrote about him), as well as extracts from the major critical studies of Dostoevsky from the contemporary academy. The volume equips readers with a deeper understanding of Dostoevsky’s world and his writing, offering new paths and directions for interpreting his writing.

Transnational Russian Studies offers an approach to understanding Russia based on the idea that language, society and culture do not neatly coincide, but should be seen as flows of meaning across ever-shifting boundaries. Our book moves beyond static conceptions of Russia as a discrete nation with a singular language, culture, and history. Instead, we understand it as a multinational society that has perpetually redefined Russianness in reaction to the wider world. We treat Russian culture as an expanding field, whose sphere of influence transcends the geopolitical boundaries of the Russian Federation, reaching as far as London, Cape Town, and Tehran.Our transnational approach to Russian Studies generates new perspectives on the history of Russian culture and its engagements with, and transformation by, other cultures. The volume thereby simultaneously illuminates broader conceptions of the transnational from the perspective of Russian Studies. Over twenty chapters, we provide case studies based on original research, treating topics that include Russia’s imperial and postcolonial entanglements; the paradoxical role that language plays in both defining culture in national terms, and facilitating transnational communication; the life of things ‘Russian’ in the global arena; and Russia’s positioning in the contemporary globalized world. Our volume is aimed primarily at students and researchers in Russian Studies, but it will also be relevant to all Modern Linguists, and to those who employ transnational paradigms within the broader humanities.Contributors: Amelia M. Glaser, Cathy McAteer, Connor Doak, Dušan Radunović, Ellen Rutten, Galin Tihanov, Jeanne-Marie Jackson, Julie Curtis, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Marijeta Bozovic, Michael Gorham, Olga Maiorova, Philip Ross Bullock, Sergey Tyulenev, Stephen Hutchings, Stephen M. Norris, Tatiana Filimonova, Vera Tolz, Vitaly Nuriev and Vlad Strukov.