Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak examines the origin
of the nineteen- century Russian novel and challenges the Lukács-Bakhtin
theory of epic. By removing the Russian novel from its European context,
the authors reveal that it developed as a means of reconnecting the
narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian epic in a way
that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient
spirituality. Through this methodology, Griffiths and Rabinowitz dispute
Bakhtin's classification of epic as a monophonic and dead genre whose
time has passed. Due to its grand themes and cultural centrality, the
epic is the form most suited to newcomers or cultural outsiders seeking
legitimacy through appropriation of the past. Through readings of
Gogol's Dead Souls--a uniquely problematic work, and one which Bakhtin
argued was novelistic rather than epic--Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov,
Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and Tolstoy's War and Peace, this book
redefines "epic" and how we understand the sweep of Russian literature
as a whole.