The fifteen essays in this volume explore the extraordinary range and
diversity of the autobiographical mode in twentieth-century Russian
literature from various critical perspectives. They will whet the
appetite of readers interested in penetrating beyond the canonical texts
of Russian literature. The introduction focuses on the central issues
and key problems of current autobiographical theory and practice in both
the West and in the Soviet Union, while each essay treats an aspect of
auto-biographical praxis in the context of an individual author's work
and often in dialogue with another of the included writers. Examined
here are first the experimental writings of the early years of the
twentieth century--Rozanov, Remizov, and Bely; second, the unique
autobiographical statements of the mid-1920s through the early
1940s--Mandelstam, Pasternak, Olesha, and Zoshchenko; and finally, the
diverse and vital contemporary writings of the 1960s through the 1980s
as exemplified not only by creative writers but also by scholars, by
Soviet citizens as well as by emigrs--Trifonov, Nadezhda Mandelstam,
Lydia Ginzburg, Nabokov, Jakobson, Sinyavsky, and Limonov.
Originally published in 1990.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
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preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
