Both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyday
life and the domestic sphere served as an ideological battleground,
simultaneously threatening Stalinist control and challenging
traditional Russian gender norms that had been shaken by the Second
World War. "The Prose of Life" examines how six female authors
employed images of daily life to depict women's experience in
Russian culture from the 1960s to the present. "Byt," a term
connoting both the everyday and its many petty problems, is an
enduring yet neglected theme in Russian literature: its very
ordinariness causes many critics to ignore it. Benjamin Sutcliffe's
study is the first sustained examination of how and why everyday
life as a literary and philosophical category catalyzed the
development of post-Stalinist Russian women's prose, particularly
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A focus on the representation of everyday life in women's prose
reveals that a first generation of female writers (Natal'ia
Baranskaia, Irina Grekova) both legitimated and limited their
successors (Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Tat'iana Tolstaia, Liudmila
Ulitskaia, and Svetlana Vasilenko) in their choice of literary
topics. "The Prose of Life" traces the development, and intriguing
ruptures, of recent Russian women's prose, becoming a must-read for
readers interested in Russian literature and gender studies.
2009 Outstanding Academic Title, "Choice Magazine"
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!