Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian FictionAn examination of literary works spanning more than seven centuries, this volume studies the ascetic hero and asceticism, exploring the elusive interplay between religion, politics, and belles lettres in Russia. The first part places works including the thirteenth-century Kievan Crypt Patericon and Life of Avraamii Smolenskii, Epifanii's Life of Sergii Radonezhskii, and other lives written in the north of Russia, in the context of crucial religious doctrines such as apocalypticism and deification. The author shows how Old Russian literature plays a major cultural role in the continuing development of these doctrines on Russian soil. The second part traces a revival of the Russian fascination with themes of apocalypse and perfectibility to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morris also documents the development of a divergence in ideological approach between Russian writers who continued to view apocalypticism and deification as religious phenomena and those who used them as tools of social and political struggle. Works by Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky, and Gorky, as well as classic novels of the socialist realist tradition are analyzed as evidence of the underlying unity of the literary manifestations of this ostensibly bifurcated intellectual tradition. |
Contents
The Nonreturning Hero | 1 |
Origins | 15 |
Kievan Ascetics Resistance to the Type | 33 |
Visions of the End The Life of Avraamii Smolenskii | 65 |
Ascetics of the North Stabilization and Decline | 77 |
The Unidimensional Hero in a Multidimensional World Gogol Tolstoy Dostoevsky | 107 |
Visions of the Perfect Society | 127 |
Racing against Time Ascetics of the Thirties | 163 |
Conclusion | 183 |
Other editions - View all
Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian Fiction Marcia A. Morris Limited preview - 1993 |
Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian Fiction Marcia A. Morris Limited preview - 1993 |
Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian Literature Marcia A. Morris No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
achieve anchoritic apocalyptic apocalypticism ascetic hero asceticism Avraamii Smolenskii becomes behavior belief Bogomils cenobitic century cetic characters Chernyshevsky Chertkov Christian Church complex creation culture Dasha depiction discussion divine doctrines Dostoevsky drevnei Rusi Efrem Epifanii everyday example extraliterary fact Father Sergius Feodosii Pecherskii Ferapont genre Gladkov Gleb Gogol Gorky Gorky's hagiography hegumen hero's heroic Hesychasm Ibid ideal initiation Isakii Kataev Kievan Crypt Monastery Kirill Korchagin Likhachev literary lives Margulies medieval millenarian millennial Moisei monastic monasticism monks Moscow Mother motivations Nikita Nilovna nineteenth-century non-naturalistic art nonreturn Old Russian literature Ostrovsky Patericon pattern Pavel Pavel Korchagin perfection period poetics Polikarp's ascetic portrait profane quest Rakhmetov reader realistic rejects religious revolutionary saints Sergii Radonezhskii Simon slova social Socialist Realism society Soviet Novel space spiritual Steel Was Tempered story structure suggests tale temporal tempter tion TODRL Tolstoy tradition trans Ulianiia unidimensional University Press Valentin Kataev vision