Editors Robert Reid and Joe Andrew present eleven contributions by international scholars which highlight Tolstoi’s influence on his contemporaries and posterity through his fiction and thought. A figure of Tolstoi’s intellectual stature has naturally inspired an impressive range of responses. These encompass stage versions of his novels (War and Peace and Resurrection), communes founded in his name, and translations which have sought to capture the essence of his works for successive generations. Tolstoi is also compared in this volume with his contemporaries in chapters on Dostoevskii, Veselitsakaia, Rozanov and Elizabeth Gaskell. The reader of this work will gain new and unique insights into an unparalleled genius of world literature, especially into his immense cultural reach which continues to this day.
Contributors: Carol Apollonio, Katherine Jane Briggs, Elena Govor, Nel Grillaert, Susan Layton, Cynthia Marsh, Henrietta Mondry, Richard Peace, Alexandra Smith, Olga Sobolev, Willem Weststeijn, Kevin Windle.
Robert Reid is an Honorary Fellow of Keele University and formerly Reader in Russian. He has published widely on Russian literature. His most recent publication is Tolstoi and the Evolution of His Artistic World, edited with Joe Andrew (Brill, 2021).
Educated at Oxford, Joe Andrew is Professor Emeritus of Keele University where he taught Film and Russian literature. He has published over 25 books, most recently Tolstoi and the Evolution of His Artistic World, edited with Robert Reid (Brill, 2021).
Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors
Tolstoi’s Continuum of Influences Robert Reid
1 Does the Translation Matter? Carol Apollonio
2 Feeling and Contradiction in Tolstoi’s What Is Art? Richard Peace
3 Tolstoi in the Work of Tolstoi Willem G. Weststeijn
4 Dostoevskii’s Zosima and Tolstoi’s Father Sergius: Literary Representations of Starchestvo Nel Grillaert
5 Tolstoi and Lidiia Veselitskaia’s Mimi at the Spa: The Fin de Siècle Tourist Adulteress Susan Layton
6 Legitimate and Illegitimate Children: Rozanov’s ‘Indecent Proposal’ to Tolstoi Henrietta Mondry
7 Tolstoi’s Resurrection on the Russian Stage Olga Sobolev
8 The Dreamer and the Destroyer: Two Unconventional Tolstoians and Their Impact in Australia Elena Govor and Kevin Windle
9 Reconfiguring the Empire through Performance: Petr Fomenko’s 2001 Production of Tolstoi’s War and Peace Alexandra Smith
10 Bridging Cultures? John McGahern’s The Power of Darkness Cynthia Marsh
11 Elizabeth Gaskell, Tolstoi and Dostoevskii Katherine Jane Briggs
Index
All interested in Tolstoi, nineteenth-century Russian literature and comparative literature; of interest and accessible to undergraduates, post-graduates, teachers and researchers. Academic libraries, and individuals will wish to obtain this book.