Russian Literature and the Classics

Russian Literature and the Classics attempts to fill a gap. To date there has been no book-length, systematic study of the impact of antiquity on Russian literature and culture. While by no means claiming to offer a comprehensive approach, the authors focus on various aspects of the influence which the Classics have had on Russian literature at particularly significant junctures - the beginning of the nineteenth century; the age of the great Russian realist novel; the "Silver Age"; Stalin's terror; the "Thaw" after 1956; and the period just before the collapse of Soviet society. In their introductory essay the editors offer an overview of the Classical Tradition. In it, they provide an insight into the contrasting ways in which that tradition manifested itself in the literatures of Western Europe and of Russia.

Introduction to the series. Introduction. 1. Thunder Imagery and the Turn Against Horace in Derzhavin's ''Evgeniyu, Zhizn' Zvanskaya'' (1807) by Charles Byrd 2. Mediating the Distance: Prophecy and Alterity in Greek Tragedy and Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' by Naomi Rood 3. The Source of Andrei Bely's Literary Mifotvorchestvo: 'The Case of the Ableukhovs' by Mary Jo White 4. Hellenism, Culture and Christianity: The Case of Vyacheslav Ivanov and his ''Palinode'' of 1927 by Pamela Davidson 5. Soviet Russia Through the Lens of Classical Antiquity: An Analysis of Greco-Roman Allusions and Thought in the Oeuvre of Vasilii Grossman by Frank Ellis 6. Classical Motifs in the Poetry of Alexksandr Kushner by David N. Wells 7. The Wandering Greek: Images of Antiquity in Joseph Brodsky by Dan Ungurianu.

Peter I. Barta is a lecturer in Russian Studies at the University of Surrey in England. David H. J. Larmour is an associate professor and chair of Classics at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Paul Allen Miller is an assistant professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Texas Tech.