From the Pastoral to the Grotesque in Late Russian Realism, 1872-1899

Download or read book From the Pastoral to the Grotesque in Late Russian Realism, 1872-1899 written by Ani Kokobobo and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working with these definitions I argue that Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Tolstoy used devices associated with earlier realism to develop their aesthetic of the grotesque and to depict Russian reality in a grotesque mode. They did not simply revive the earlier Gogolian grotesque, but created a new grotesque that estranged traditional idealizing modes of depicting life on the Russian country estate. In these late realist novels Russian reality is populated by despiritualized, grotesque beings. I set the stage for this project through an analysis of the conceptualist Vladimir Sorokin's Roman (1994), in which he simulates the pastoral idyll of the Russian countryside and then deforms and destroys it through grotesque violence. Like the nineteenth-century novelists, Sorokin reacts against the nostalgic impulse that has prevailed in Russian attitudes toward the past.