History in a grotesque key
Subtitle: Russian literature and the idea of revolution
By: Kevin M.F. Platt.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 293
Subjects: Russian literature -- History and criticism; Social change in literature; Grotesque in literature; History in literature
Description: What special possibilities for literary creation arise in periods of rapid transition from one set of social institutions to another? This book examines four such periods in Russian history: the era of Peter the Great and his successors, the epoch of the Great Reforms of the 1860's, the decades following the Russian Revolution, and the period of social and political upheaval in the late 1980's and the 1990's.

The literary works studied in this book, some well known but most obscure, all engage the mythology of revolutionary social change as it was deployed in their times. Yet instead of describing their epochs as moments of triumphant transition from the outworn past to the glorious future, these works describe their social worlds as bizarre, comical, and confused hybrids of the past and future.

The author sees these works as a variation of the grotesque, as a "revolutionary grotesque" that is intimately connected to the historical mythology of radical social transformation in Russia.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-249) and index.
Appendixes contain poems and notes in Russian and English.