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Twisted mirrors and merged polarities in Russia's decadent imagination.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Twisted mirrors and merged polarities in Russia's decadent imagination./
Author:	Menefee, Jesse.
Description:	1 online resource (194 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 73-01, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International73-01A.
Subject:	Comparative literature. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9781124735412

Twisted mirrors and merged polarities in Russia's decadent imagination.
Menefee, Jesse.

Twisted mirrors and merged polarities in Russia's decadent imagination. - 1 online resource (194 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 73-01, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references

This study explores a recurring pattern in Russian decadent narrative that I call the "merged polarity." Each of these texts generates a sharp binary between two elements that are clearly marked as negative and positive. However, the binary driving the story is simultaneously undermined by a network of parallels suggesting that the positive element is a latent repetition of its negative counterpart. This intertwining of opposites encourages a relentless questioning of binaries on the part of the reader and thus constitutes a special ethic on its own terms. Its message is one of caution-namely, that constant vigilance be invested in one's scrutiny of the seemingly most straightforward oppositions that organize the world. This study devotes four chapters to the examination of this narrative pattern. Chapter One describes how Sologub's first novel, Bad Dreams (1895), offers us the Sologubian merged polarity in its embryonic form. Chapter Two demonstrates how Petty Demon (1907) builds upon the aesthetic developed by Bad Dreams and expands the merged polarity, allowing this pattern to penetrate multiple layers of the text's artistic code. Chapter Three focuses on Mikhail Artsybashev's At the Brink (1911-12), a novel that generates a strikingly similar proliferation of merged polarities. Chapter Four discusses another contemporary of Sologub's, Leonid Andreev, whose short stories testify to his enduring obsession with a structural paradigm that closely resembles the merged polarities in Sologub's and Artsybashev's novels. This study concludes by pointing out how this recurring pattern in decadent prose embodies a form of skepticism that testifies to deeply moral concerns-even though decadent literature is typically associated with an amoral outlook. In connection with this idea, I suggest some reasons for comparing the works of Sologub and Zamyatin, whose dystopian novel We (1921) reactivates this structural paradigm.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9781124735412Subjects--Topical Terms:

835159
Comparative literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Andreev, LeonidIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Twisted mirrors and merged polarities in Russia's decadent imagination.
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502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 2011.
504 $a Includes bibliographical references
520 $a This study explores a recurring pattern in Russian decadent narrative that I call the "merged polarity." Each of these texts generates a sharp binary between two elements that are clearly marked as negative and positive. However, the binary driving the story is simultaneously undermined by a network of parallels suggesting that the positive element is a latent repetition of its negative counterpart. This intertwining of opposites encourages a relentless questioning of binaries on the part of the reader and thus constitutes a special ethic on its own terms. Its message is one of caution-namely, that constant vigilance be invested in one's scrutiny of the seemingly most straightforward oppositions that organize the world. This study devotes four chapters to the examination of this narrative pattern. Chapter One describes how Sologub's first novel, Bad Dreams (1895), offers us the Sologubian merged polarity in its embryonic form. Chapter Two demonstrates how Petty Demon (1907) builds upon the aesthetic developed by Bad Dreams and expands the merged polarity, allowing this pattern to penetrate multiple layers of the text's artistic code. Chapter Three focuses on Mikhail Artsybashev's At the Brink (1911-12), a novel that generates a strikingly similar proliferation of merged polarities. Chapter Four discusses another contemporary of Sologub's, Leonid Andreev, whose short stories testify to his enduring obsession with a structural paradigm that closely resembles the merged polarities in Sologub's and Artsybashev's novels. This study concludes by pointing out how this recurring pattern in decadent prose embodies a form of skepticism that testifies to deeply moral concerns-even though decadent literature is typically associated with an amoral outlook. In connection with this idea, I suggest some reasons for comparing the works of Sologub and Zamyatin, whose dystopian novel We (1921) reactivates this structural paradigm.
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538 $a Mode of access: World Wide Web
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650 4 $a Modern literature. $3 1148444
650 4 $a Slavic literature. $3 1179263
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653 $a Andreev, Leonid
653 $a Artsybashev, M.
653 $a Decadence
653 $a Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
653 $a Russia
653 $a Silver Age
653 $a Sologub, Fyodor
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