Synopses & Reviews
In Imagined Cities, Robert Alter traces the arc of literary development triggered by the runaway growth of urban centers from the early nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. As new technologies and arrangements of public and private space changed the ways people experienced time and space, the urban panorama became less coherenta metropolis defying traditional representation and definition, a vast jumble of shifting fragments and glimpsesand writers were compelled to create new methods for conveying the experience of the city.In a series of subtle and convincing interpretations of novels by Flaubert, Dickens, Bely, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka, Alter reveals the ways the city entered the literary imagination. He shows how writers of diverse imaginative temperaments developed innovative techniques to represent shifts in modern consciousness. Writers sought more than a journalistic representation of city living, he argues, and to convey meaningfully the reality of the metropolis, the city had to be re-created or reimagined. His book probes the literary response to changing realities of the period and contributes significantly to our understanding of the history of the Western imagination.
Review
“The topic of the city remains one of the most enduring and important ones for literary study. Robert Alters
Imagined Cities makes a fresh and always interesting contribution to this topic.”Philip Fisher, Harvard University
“Those who think Mumford and LeCorbusier are our great urban visionaries have another think coming. As Robert Alters Imagined Cities demonstrates so compellingly, the great 19th century novelistsFlaubert, Dickens, Joycesaw and imagined our cities with a brilliance few others can approach.”Douglas Rae, author of City: Urbanism and its End
-- Douglas Rae
Review
“The topic of the city remains one of the most enduring and important ones for literary study. Robert Alters
Imagined Cities makes
a fresh and always interesting contribution to this topic.”Philip Fisher, Harvard University
-- Philip Fisher
Review
'\"Clark and Dobrenko not only provide a careful and creatively organized selection of documents but also, in their commentary, a concise and incisive analysis of Soviet cultural history.\"Carol Avins, Rutgers University
-- Mara Judith Feliciano - Speculum--A Journal of Medieval Studies'
Review
'\"To have these documents in one place, and accessible for students in English with detailed explanations and commentary, is nothing less than a small miracle. Beg, buy or borrow this wonderful book if you care about Russian culture.\"Jeffrey Brooks, author of
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War -- Carol Avins'
Review
'\"This is a history of Soviet culture under Lenin and Stalin told in documents. The story unfolds in letters, public appeals, bureaucratic decisions, official orders, marginal jottings, police reports and memoranda, comments of censors, petitions, transcripts of meetings, and more. To have these documents in one place, and accessible for students in English with detailed explanations and commentary, is nothing less than a small miracle. Beg, buy or borrow this wonderful book if you care about Russian culture.\"Jeffrey Brooks, author of
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War -- Jeffrey Brooks'
Review
'\'\\\"Joseph Stalin famously described Soviet writers as engineers of human souls. This remarkable collection of documents, laden with comedy and sheer stupidity as well as calculated repression, chronicles the Bolshevik governments effort to control all cultural institutions and creative individuals. This is a story of compelling interest not only for Sovietologists but for anyone who wants to know what happens when a government treats culture as a long-term engineering project.\\\"Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism -- Jeffrey Brooks\''
Review
'\"Throws a bright light on the partys torturous dealings with writers and on the inevitable conflict between art and propaganda. Perhaps the books biggest surprise is its revelation of Stalin as literary critic. Despite his onerous responsibilities as party chief, dictator and head of state, no detail seems to have been too small for Stalins eagle eyea backhanded compliment if ever there was one to the awesome power of the written word.\"Michael Scammell, author of
Solzhenitsyn: A Biography -- Susan Jacoby'
Review
'\'\\\"Soviet Culture and Power is a groundbreaking work that provides access to significant archival materials for a population that might never have been able to read and analyze these documents.\\\"Cynthia A. Ruder, Slavic and East European Journal -- Michael Scammell\''
Review
"Basing his analysis on an impressive array of contemporary primary sources, Mark Steinberg argues that in the wake of the revolution of 1905, St. Petersburgers perceived their present and future as particularly bleak. With its discussions of modernity, urbanization, art, culture, and literature, Petersburg Fin de Siand#232;cle will interest readersand#160;besides Russian specialists."and#8212;Laurieand#160;Bernstein, Rutgersand#160;University,and#160;Camden
Review
"[A] tour de force."—D.B. Johnson, Choice D.B. Johnson
Review
"[A] tour de force."and#8212;D.B. Johnson, Choice
Synopsis
A literary investigation of how the modern metropolis--intoxicating, disturbing, powerful--changed perceptions and irrevocably altered the Western imagination.
Synopsis
One of our most respected literary critics investigates the ways that runaway growth of urban centers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries irrevocably altered the Western imagination. In sensitive interpretations of novels by Flaubert, Dickens, Woolf, Kafka, and others, Robert Alter probes the responses of writers to the new reality of the modern city.
Synopsis
'Leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin chief among them, well understood the power of art, and their response was to attempt to control and direct
it in every way possible. This book examines Soviet cultural politics from the Revolution to Stalins death in 1953. Drawing on a wealth of newly released documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union, the book provides remarkable insight on relations between Gorky, Pasternak, Babel, Meyerhold, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, and many other intellectuals, and the Soviet leadership. Stalins role in directing these relations, and his literary judgments and personal biases, will astonish many.
The documents presented in this volume reflect the progression of Party control in the arts. They include decisions of the Politburo, Stalins correspondence with individual intellectuals, his responses to particular plays, novels, and movie scripts, petitions to leaders from intellectuals, and secret police reports on intellectuals under surveillance. Introductions, explanatory materials, and a biographical index accompany the documents.
'
Synopsis
The final decade of the old order in imperial Russia was a time of both crisis and possibility, an uncertain time that inspired an often desperate search for meaning. This book explores how journalists and other writers in St. Petersburg described and interpreted the troubled years between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
Mark Steinberg, distinguished historian of Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examines the work of writers of all kinds, from anonymous journalists to well-known public intellectuals, from secular liberals to religious conservatives. Though diverse in their perspectives, these urban writers were remarkably consistent in the worries they expressed. They grappled with the impact of technological and material progress on the one hand, and with an ever-deepening anxiety and pessimism on the other. Steinberg reveals a new, darker perspective on the history of St. Petersburg on the eve of revolution and presents a fresh view of Russia's experience of modernity.
Synopsis
This investigation of the writings of diverse urban Russian writers on the eve of revolution sheds new light on their shared anxieties about modern life and the search for meaning in a time of both crisis and possibility.
About the Author
Robert Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published widely on the modern European and American novel, on modern Hebrew literature, and on literary aspects of the Bible. He is the author of
Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture, published by Yale University Press.