num_pages: 184
description: Novel Epics reassesses the origins of the nineteenth-century Russian novel, challenging the Lukács-Bakhtin theory of epic. Frederick T. Griffiths and Stanley J. Rabinowitz take the Russian novel out of a specifically European context and show that it developed as a means of reconnecting that narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian epic in a way that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient spirituality. Through readings of Gogol's Dead Souls and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, this book redefines "epic" and points to a new understanding of the sweep of Russian literature as a whole.
language: English
title: Novel Epics: Gogol, Dostoevsky, and National Narrative
titlecomplete: Novel Epics: Gogol, Dostoevsky, and National Narrative (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory)
publisher: Northwestern University Press