A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature

Ingrid Anne Kleespies

Published by Cornell University Press 2012

A Nation Astray

Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature

Ingrid Anne Kleespies

In the series NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501756689

Overview
Contents

About this book

The metaphor of the nomad may at first seem surprising for Russia given its history of serfdom, travel restrictions, and strict social hierarchy. But as the imperial center struggled to tame a vast territory with ever-expanding borders, ideas of mobility, motion, travel, wandering, and homelessness came to constitute important elements in the discourse about national identity. For Russians of the nineteenth century national identity was anything but stable.

This rootlessness is at the core of A Nation Astray. Here, Ingrid Anne Kleespies traces the image of the nomad and its relationship to Russian national identity through the debates and discussion of literary works by seminal writers like Karamzin, Pushkin, Chaadaev, Goncharov, and Dostoevsky. Appealing to students of Russian Romanticism, nationhood, and identity, as well as general readers interested in exile and displacement as elements of the human condition, this interdisciplinary work illuminates the historical and philosophical underpinnings of a basic aspect of Russian self-determination: the nomadic constitution of the Russian nation.

Author / Editor information

Ingrid Anne Kleespies is assistant professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Florida.

Reviews

A Nation Astray shows that normative ideas of civilization, originating in Western Europe, put Russia in a difficult situation, from which the road and the nomad offered one, sometimes elusive, escape.

This monograph makes an important contribution to scholarship on classical Russian literature and thought.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
CHAPTER ONE: Tracing the Topos of the Eternal Russian Traveler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
CHAPTER TWO: Chaadaev's Wayward Russia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
CHAPTER THREE: A Poet Astray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
CHAPTER FOUR: ''A Journey around the World by I. Oblomov'' Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
CHAPTER FIVE: A Radical at Large Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 265
Keywords: Russian serfdom; strict social hierarchy; Russian Romanticism; nationhood and identity; Russian self-determination

eBook

Published: November 15, 2012
ISBN: 9781501756689