Synopses & Reviews
Since its founding three hundred years ago, the city of Saint Petersburg has captured the imaginations of the most celebrated Russian writers, whose characters map the city by navigating its streets from the aristocratic center to the gritty outskirts. While Tsar Peter the Great planned the streetscapes of Russia’s northern capital as a contrast to the muddy and crooked streets of Moscow, Andrei Bely’s novel Petersburg (1916), a cornerstone of Russian modernism and the culmination of the “Petersburg myth” in Russian culture, takes issue with the city’s premeditated and supposedly rational character in the early twentieth century.
“Petersburg”/Petersburg studies the book and the city against and through each other. It begins with new readings of the novel—as a detective story inspired by bomb-throwing terrorists, as a representation of the aversive emotion of disgust, and as a painterly avant-garde text—stressing the novel’s phantasmagoric and apocalyptic vision of the city. Taking a cue from Petersburg’s narrator, the rest of this volume (and the companion Web site, stpetersburg.berkeley.edu/) explores the city from vantage points that have not been considered before—from its streetcars and iconic art-nouveau office buildings to the slaughterhouse on the city fringes. From poetry and terrorist memoirs, photographs and artwork, maps and guidebooks of that period, the city emerges as a living organism, a dreamworld in flux, and a junction of modernity and modernism.
Review
“Richly illustrated and thought provoking, this book resembles no other.”—Choice
Review
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“Offers stimulating literary and cultural studies work in a fresh format with powerful implications for new pedagogies and multimedia scholarship.”—Julie A. Buckler, author of Mapping St. Petersburg '
Review
andquot;Colleen McQuillen establishes a rich context in which to consider Russian modernism and the cultural practices and artistic tenets of its adherents.andquot;andmdash;Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton University
Review
andldquo;Colleen McQuillen captures a unique moment in late Imperial Russian culture and politics, when costuming, masquerading, and dressing up was the rage among writers, artists, performers, and even terrorists. She considers everything from high society and popular culture to literature and the antics of the Futurists. The book is a pleasure to read and intellectually stimulating as well. What a delight.andrdquo;andmdash;Jeffrey Brooks, author of When Russia Learned to Read
Synopsis
The first generation of Russian modernists experienced a profound sense of anxiety resulting from the belief that they were living in an age of decline. What made them unique was their utopian prescription for overcoming the inevitability of decline and death both by metaphysical and physical means. They intertwined their mystical erotic discourse with European degeneration theory and its obsession with the destabilization of gender. In Erotic Utopia, Olga Matich suggests that same-sex desire underlay their most radical utopian proposal of abolishing the traditional procreative family in favor of erotically induced abstinence.
2006 Winner, CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Titles, Current Reviews for Academic Libraries Honorable Mention, Aldo and Jean Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Modern Language Association
“Offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of new information on early Russian modernism. . . . It is required reading for anyone interested in fin-de-siècle Russia and in the history of sexuality in general.”—Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Slavic and East European Journal
“Thoroughly entertaining.”—Avril Pyman, Slavic Review
Synopsis
Masked and costume balls thrived in Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries during a period of rich literary and theatrical experimentation. The first study of its kind, The Modernist Masquerade examines the cultural history of masquerades in Russia and their representations in influential literary works.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The masquerade's widespread appearance as a literary motif in works by such writers as Anna Akhmatova, Leonid Andreev, Andrei Bely, Aleksandr Blok, and Fyodor Sologub mirrored its popularity as a leisure-time activity and illuminated its integral role in the Russian modernist creative consciousness. Colleen McQuillen charts how the political, cultural, and personal significance of lavish costumes and other forms of self-stylizing evolved in Russia over time. She shows how their representations in literature engaged in dialog with the diverse aesthetic trends of Decadence, Symbolism, and Futurism and with the era's artistic philosophies.
About the Author
"No historian of literature has looked at turn-of-the-century Russia in the perspective found in Olga Matichs groundbreaking study."Yuri Tsivian, professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Art History, and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago
"In examining the biographies, images, programs, and writings of these decadent utopians, the author illuminates, with an enlightened specificity and openness long overdue in Russian studies, the productive intersection between psychopathology and modernism. Erotic Utopia makes a theoretically exciting and richly informative contribution to our understanding of fin-de-siècle tsarist culture and its dreams and discontents."Beth Holmgren, chair and professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“Richly illustrated and thought provoking, this book resembles no other.”—Choice
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and#160; and#160; and#160; and#160; and#160; and#160; and#160; and#160;Acknowledgmentsand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;A Note on Transliteration and Abbreviationsand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Introduction: Masquerades in Russia: Historical Experience and Literary Representationand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Part I: Imitation and Stylization1 The Travestied Masquerade: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Demonismand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;2 The Political Masquerade: Impersonation, National Identity, and Sovereign Powerand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;3 The Gender Masquerade: Constructions of Feminine Identityand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Part II: Costume Design and Theatricality4 Figurative Costumes: Metaphors in Text and Textileand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;5 Character Costumes: Cultural Memory and the Philological Masqueradeand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;6 Avant-Garde Costumes: Estranging Practices of Masqueradeand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;7 Revealing Costumes: Bared Bodies on Stageand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Conclusion: The Early Soviet Masqueradeand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Notesand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Bibliographyand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;Index