The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian literary imagination
Subtitle: iconic vision in works by Dostevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and others
By: Leonard J. Stanton.
Series: Middlebury studies in Russian language and literature ;; v. 3
Publisher: P. Lang; Lang AG International Academic Publishers, Peter
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
Subjects: Kozelʹskai͡a︡ Vvedenskai͡a︡ Optina (Monastery) -- History.; Russkai͡a︡ pravoslavnai͡a︡ t͡s︡erkovʹ -- In literature.; Orthodox Eastern Church -- In literature.; Russian literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Russian literature -- Christian influences.
Description: "Between 1821 and 1891, the Optina Pustyn Monastery of Kozel'sk, in Russia's Kaluga Government, was the site of an unprecedented - and as yet unequaled - period of religious and literary flowering. Optina Pustyn was a mecca for many of Russia's most prominent writers and thinkers. Distinguished visitors included Ivan Kireevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Lev Tolstoy. This study explains why Optina and its renowned "elders" held a special attraction to Russia's literary giants. It reveals how the elders' use of language was rooted in the "iconic vision" of Optina's fifteen-hundred-year-old tradition of contemplative monasticism. It is the first study to examine Optina's social gravity against the broad background of nineteenth-century institutions of Church and Intelligentsia."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: "An annotated bibliography of Optina publications" (p. [265]-276).
Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-299) and index.