The Soviet Novel, Third Edition: History as Ritual / Edition 3

by Katerina Clark

Overview

"In its sure grasp of a huge subject and in its speculative boldness, Professor Clark's study represents a major breakthrough. It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions. . . . And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." —Times Literary Supplement

"The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." —Slavic Review

"Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." —American Historical Review

A dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253213679
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2000
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	909,158
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Katerina Clark is Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. She is author of Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution and coauthor (with Michael Holquist of Mikhail Bakhtin.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the Distinctive role of Socialist Realism in Soviet Culture

I. Socialist Realism before 1932
1. What Socialist Realism Isand What Led to Its Adoption as the Official Method of Soviet Literature
2. The Positive Hero in Prevolutionary Fiction
3. Socialist Realist Classics of the Twenties
II. High Stalinist Culture
4. The Machine and the Garden: Literature and the Metaphors for the New Society
5. The Stalinist Myth of the "Great Family"
6. The Sense of Reality in the Heroic Age
III. An Analysis of the Conventional Soviet Novel
7. The Prototypical Plot
8. Three Auxiliary Patterns of Ritual Sacrifice
IV. Soviet Fiction since World War II
9. The Postwar Stalin Period (1944-53)
10. The Khrushchev Years
11. Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained?

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Master Plot as Exemplified in the Production Novel and Other Basic Types of Novel of the Stalin Period

Appendix B: The Official Short List of Model Novels as Inferred from Speeches to Writers' Union Congresses

Afterword
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index