In the three decades following Stalin's death, major underground
Russian writers have subverted Soviet ideology by using parody to
draw attention to its basis in utopian thought. Referring to
utopian writing as diverse as Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe,"
Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground," and Orwell's "Animal Farm,"
they have tested notions of truth, reality, and representation.
They have gone beyond their precursors by experimenting with the
tensions between ludic and didactic art. Edith Clowes explores
these "meta-utopian" narratives, which address a wide range of
attitudes toward utopia, to expose the challenge that literary play
poses to dogmatism and to elucidate the sense of renewal it can
bring to social imagination. Using both structural analysis and
reception theory, she introduces readers outside Russia to a
fascinating body of literature that includes Aleksandr Zinoviev's
"The Yawning Heights," Abram Terts's "Liubimov," Vladimir
Voinovich's "Moscow 2042," and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The New
Robinsons.."
Not advocating its own utopian alternative to current social
realities, meta-utopian fiction investigates the function of a deep
human impulse to imagine, project, and enforce alternative social
orders. Clowes examines the technical innovations meta-utopian
writers have made in style, image, and narrative structure that
inform fresh modes of social imagination. Her analysis leads to an
inquiry into the intended and real audiences of this fiction, and
into the ways its authors try to move them toward more
sophisticated social discourse.
Originally published in 1993.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
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