Overview
Engendering Slavic Literatures breaks new ground in its investigation of gender and feminist issues in Croatian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian literary texts by both female and male writers. Drawing on psychoanalytic approaches, film theory, and lesbian and gender theory, the authors interrogate the received notions of Western gender studies to see which can be usefully applied to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Slavic literary works. Motherhood and the relationships of mothers and daughters; the myths of selfhood that shape the autobiographies of Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Lidiia Ginzburg, and Lev Tolstoy; Polish Catholicism and sexuality; portrayals of landscape in verbal and visual art; and women writers' transgressive ventures into male bastions such as the love lyric and prose fiction are among the themes of this important and innovative volume.Synopsis
"The volume seeks both to reclaim works of women who were (or are) significant in their traditions and their own times and to employ gynocritical approaches to recognized women writers.... Readers interested in how the female self is shaped and struggles to find voice and an identity of her own will find all of these essays rewarding." — Canadian Slavonic Papers
"... I would recommend all these individual essays to my students and colleagues." — The Russian Review
"... this is a rich accumulation of close readings, historical surveys, studies of single authors, cultural reception, genres, and criticism." — Slavic and East European Journal
"Addressing a variety of political and historical climates, these well-annotated essays will prompt deeper consideration of Slavic literature." — Choice
This book breaks new ground in its investigation of gender and feminist issues in Croatian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian literary texts by both female and male writers. These eleven essays apply Western literary and feminist theory to 19th- and 20th-century Slavic literary works. Themes include mothers and daughters, Catholicism, sexuality, verbal and visual art, and love lyric.