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All posts tagged Gogol

Russian Literature and the Big Society

It comes as something of a relief to learn that the Observer’s story about the government linking research council funding to the study of the Big Society turns out to be exaggerated, but given that our funding is at the mercy of the AHRC’s decisions about research themes, which in turn are dictated by their need […]

Top Ten Animals in Russian Literature

As I have suggested previously, animals have a significant place in Russian literature, and I think this is quite unusual, probably reflecting the greater proximity of Russia literature to its folklore roots than is the case with other literary cultures. Although obviously children’s stories in English (as in other languages), are full of animal characters, […]

Russkii vestnik 1862

Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons was obviously the literary event of 1862, and the furore that surrounded the novel is also reflected here in articles about Turgenev and nihilism. Other critical works include Druzhinin on new talent in contemporary English literature, Nikolai Tikhonravov on Russian literature and on Karamzin, de Roberti on English journalism, and P. […]

Imagining St Petersburg

I’ve finally got round to reading Solomon Volkov’s St Petersburg: A Cultural History (Simon & Schuster, 1995). I’ve felt a bit ashamed that I haven’t managed to read it before, but since I reached the half-way point I’ve changed my mind about how important it is, for me at least. It mainly deals with twentieth-century […]

Teaching Russian literature

One of the big dilemmas in teaching Russian literature at undergraduate level is the translation vs. original question. Clearly, most of us would like to see our students reading texts in the original, because there are always losses in translation, and because reading in the original helps develop language skills, but it presents various problems. […]

My work (2)

I’ve added another piece of my research, this time a paper I delivered earlier this year as part a Gogol’ bicentenary panel at the BASEES annual conference. The paper was a bit of a departure from my current preoccupations, but the idea arose while I was teaching my final-year undergraduate course on Modern Russian Prose […]