This is the fifth report from Sovremennik on the Great Exhibition, and this time we get two sections. The first discussing aspects of London life, entertainment and commerce surrounding the Great Exhibition and commenting on the quality of reporting in European journals – criticizing them for their preoccupation with London life and entertainment and lack […]
Russian perspectives on the Great Exhibition (5)
Posted by Sarah Young on July 22, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/07/22/russian-perspectives-on-the-great-exhibition/
Chaucer, Chernyshevsky and the Crystal Palace
Or, Russian perspectives on the Great Exhibition (4). The late arrival of much of the Russian exhibit probably explains why we have to wait until the August issue of Sovremennik to read any details about what one assumes would have been of some significance to many Russian readers. The majority of the report is taken, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 15, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/07/15/chaucer-chernyshevsky-crystal-palace/
Russian perspectives on the Great Exhibition (3)
Actually, this is the second, not the third report, from Sovremennik, taken from the June Miscellany of volume 27 (May-June 1851). I failed to spot it first time round. For those of you who aren’t familiar with 19th century Russian journals, they can be pretty confusing – they’re generally 800-900 pages long, and in several […]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 1, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/07/01/russian-perspectives-on-the-great-exhibition-3/
Top ten food in Russian literature: part 2
I shall keep you in suspense no longer. 5. Shalamov, ‘Condensed Milk’. As in the case of Solzhenitsyn, hunger is ubiquitous in Shalamov’s stories, so food also plays a significant role. ‘Condensed Milk’ is unusual in depicting a moment of triumph and satiation: the narrator, offered a place on an escape, asks the ringleader Shestaskov […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 19, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/19/top-ten-food-in-russian-literature-part-2/
Top ten food in Russian literature
Food is a tricky subject, as there are a lot of viable candidates for inclusion – so many that I toyed with the idea of doing a top twenty, but that’s a cop out, so I’ve had to whittle it down, and some exceptional works have missed the cut. I’ll say a bit more about […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 16, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/16/top-ten-food-in-russian-literature/
Russian perspectives on the Great Exhibition (2)
The second article on the Great Exhibition in Sovremennik [The Contemporary] appeared in the foreign news round-up of the July-August issue. While the first report was somewhat unclear in its origins, this one was evidently cobbled together from reports in the European press. A further development is apparent regarding the naming of the building; the […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 9, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/09/russian-perspectives-on-the-great-exhibition-2/
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
My article, ‘Recalling the Dead: Repetition, Identity, and the Witness in Varlam Shalamov’s Kolymskie rasskazy,’ has been published in the latest issue of Slavic Review (vol. 70. 2, 2011, pp. 353-72). In this article, I examine different types of repetition in Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, from the repeated narration of the same incident in different tales, to […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 4, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/04/repetition-repetition-repetition/
Mapping St Petersburg: Literature as data?
Cross-posted with Mapping St Petersburg. We’ve added a map of Dostoevsky’s addresses to Mapping St Petersburg, and this seems like a good opportunity to discuss the question of data. In comparison with our work on the Crime and Punishment maps, mapping addresses was easy: information on where Dostoevsky lived is well established and available from […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 1, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/01/mapping-st-petersburg-literature-as-data/
The opening of the Great Exhibition: a view from Russia
The level of interest from around the world in the Great Exhibition was really quite remarkable, and Russia was no different. I’ve been digging out articles from Russian journals and present here what must be one of the very first, from the May-June issue of Sovremennik for 1851, which deals with the build-up to the […]
Posted by Sarah Young on May 29, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/05/29/the-opening-of-the-great-exhibition-a-view-from-russia/