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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780875807386 |
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Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
Publication date: | 09/10/2016 |
Series: | NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies |
Edition description: | 1 |
Pages: | 264 |
Sales rank: | 953,037 |
Product dimensions: | 4.10(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.50(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Note On Transliteration and Translation xvii
Introduction 1
1 The Natural School's Picture Windows 26
2 Roads to Realism in the Age of Reform 63
3 Tolstoy's Novelistic Illusion 100
4 Repin and the Painting of Reality 127
5 Dostoevski's Realist Image 162
Conclusion 197
Notes 209
Bibliography 237
Index 253
What People are Saying About This
Molly Brunson's Russian Realisms is an extraordinary achievement-brilliant, original, multifaceted, as illuminating in its attention to detail as in its shifting contextualizations, and a consistent joy to read. The scholarship is both deep and broad, and Brunson deploys it in a way that breathes new life into concepts that turn out to have been far less familiar than many will have thought.
While Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have long been part of the Western literary canon, this book is the first that not only integrates the history of Russian painting into the work of these two giants, but also incorporates art and literature spanning five decades into a broad trajectory of Russian realism. As such, it stands as a major contribution to the field of Russian cultural studies.
This is a wonderful book, one of the best and most nuanced studies of realism in painting and literature that I know. It introduced me to many remarkable and rarely discussed 19th century Russian paintings. At the same time, it revisits classic novelists-Tolstoy and Dostoevsky-to offer a very new understanding of their visual imagination. Throughout, Russian Realisms is thoroughly rewarding.
Nineteenth century Russian novels have become a global standard for defining realism in the novel, while realist Russian painting from the same period is either little known abroad, or attacked by later critics as kitsch. Molly Brunson begs to differ, and makes a passionate plea for the aesthetic, social, and formal achievement of artists such as Ilya Repin. Organized as a coherent, clearly written argument from beginning to end, this book perceives the relation between the great novels and paintings of nineteenth century Russia as a spirited dialog, using such imaginative evidence as sketches made by Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky in their manuscripts, the historical research of Repin, and even the famous panorama at Borodino.
In Russian Realisms, Molly Brunson tackles a very complicated subject and elaborates a serious philosophical context. An analysis and appreciation of this kind are long overdue.
This book is a richly rewarding and innovative study. It rescues Russian nineteenth-century art from the widespread indifference or contempt it enjoys in the West as being excessively literal and narrative. Brunson offers instead a new analytical paradigm-an 'inter-art' relationship between the verbal and the visual in the works of Tolstoy and of Dostoevsky, of Fedotov and Repin: one that moved beyond objectivity and was based on a creative and interactive enrichment, not on bland, facile imitation. Highly recommended to all interested in Russian art, literature, and culture.