An Anthology Of Russian Literature From Earliest Writings To Modern Fiction: Introduction To A Culture

Rzhevsky (European languages, literature, and culture, Stony Brook University) presents an anthology of tales, stories, poems, songs, and excerpts from novels and plays, which offers an introduction to Russian literature from the Igor Tale to twentieth-century works. The readings are divided into six sections: cultural beginnings, the emerging self, search for identity, subversions of secularization, new aesthetic language, and Soviet culture and beyond. Each group of readings is introduced in an illustrated essay evoking the times in which the authors lived, the themes that engaged them, and the representations of those same themes in other media--in Rublev's icons, Mousorgsky's operas, Meyerhold's theater, Prokifiev's symphonies, Fokine's choreography, or Kandinsky's paintings. An interactive, multimedia CD-ROM is included, which contains numerous examples of painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, music, and opera. An index is not provided. Annotation 穢2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)