A Plot of Her Own: Female Protagonist in Russian Literature (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810112981 ISBN 13: 9780810112988

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Neither a discussion of literary works written by women nor a survey of female images in male-authored texts, this work can be said to be revisionist in several senses. It takes issue with the old, ""unconscious"" assumption of critics, male and female alike, that women characters in fiction - even if idealized - are marginal, mere appendages to male protagonists, not worthy of investigation in their own right. This collection demonstrates that when we transform these old habits of thought and old ways of seeing and enter texts from a new and fresh perspective, which foregrounds women and the female protagonist in particular, the results are fruitful. Authors discussed include Chekov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy, and the novels considered range from ""Fathers and Children"" to Zamyatin's anti-Utopian ""We"". Throughout, the contributors' revisions expand our understanding of the major works they address and reveal new significance in them.

About this title

Review:

"Sona Stephan Hoisington has collected nine essays of high quality that address a hot topic, the issue of women in Russia." --The Slavic and East European Journal

From the Back Cover:

A Plot of Her Own presents compelling new readings of major texts in the Russian literary canon, all of which are readily available in translation. The female protagonists in the works examined are inextricably linked with the fundamental issues raised by the novels they inform; the interpretations offered strive not to be reductive or doctrinaire, not to be imposed from the outside but to arise from the texts themselves and the historical circumstances in which they were written. Throughout the volume, the contributors' re-visions expand our understanding of the major works addressed and reveal new significance in them.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0810112981
• ISBN 13: 9780810112988
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196
• Editor: Hoisington Sona Stephan