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This thesis is the first book-length study to explore the function of Russian obscene language (mat) in late Soviet and post-Soviet prose published between the late 1970s and the late 1990s. This period was characterised by radical socio-ideological transformations that also found expression in major shifts of established literary and linguistic norms. The latter were particularly strongly reflected in the fact that obscene language, which was banned from official Soviet discourse, gradually found its way into literary texts, thereby changing the notion of literary language and literature. The thesis breaks new ground by employing obscene language as a prism through which to demonstrate how its emergence in literature reflected and contributed to the shifts of established literary norms and boundaries. A second aim of the thesis is to trace the diachronic development of Russian literary mat. Primary sources include novels by authors pioneering the use of mat in fiction in the late 1970s, as well as texts by writers associated with ‘alternative prose’ and postmodernism. Applying a methodological framework that is based on an approach combining Bakhtinian dialogism with cultural narratology, the study demonstrates what the use of mat means and accomplishes in a given literary context. The methodological framework offers a systematic approach that does justice to the dynamic relationship between text and context, allowing for an analysis of the role of obscene language on all narrative levels while also taking the socio-historical context into account. The thesis offers not only new ways of interpreting the novels selected, it also provides new insight into the role of verbal obscenity in the process of ‘norm negotiation’ that has shaped and transformed Russian literary culture since the late 1970s. By accentuating the dialogic nature of obscene language, this study reveals that mat is a defining element of Russian (literary) culture, with implications for all facets of Russian identity.

A presente dissertação apresenta uma primeira tradução em língua portuguesa (variante brasileira) para o conto \"O forno\" (1969), do escritor soviético Evguéni Kharitónov, seguida de um glossário. A proposta do trabalho é realizar uma análise literária desse texto, centrada na figura do narrador-protagonista e suas peculiaridades. O desenvolvimento dessa análise dar-se-á em três partes: considerações a respeito do narrador em primeira pessoa e a caracterização de seu discurso como sendo um \"discurso amoroso\"; a construção das demais personagens do conto e suas relações com o narrador-protagonista; as relações que esse narrador-protagonista estabelece com o tempo e o espaço de sua narrativa; e, por fim, a conclusão. Além da tradução e da análise, esta dissertação apresenta, em apêndice, uma cronologia da vida e obra do escritor, bem como quatro outros textos ficcionais de sua autoria. Há também anexos com imagens referentes ao conto \"O forno\", com o intuito de ilustrar um pouco o contexto em que a história se passa, e algumas fotos do próprio Kharitónov. / The present dissertation presents the first translation in Portuguese (Brazilian variant) of the short story \"The Oven\" (1969), by the soviet writer Yevgeny Kharitonov, followed by a glossary. The works proposition is to carry a literary analysis of the text out, centered on the first person narrator and its peculiarities. The analysis development will happen in three parts: considerations about fisrt-person narrator and the characterization of its discourse as a \"lover\'s discourse\"; the characters construction and their relations with the narrator; the relations the first-person narrator establishes with time and space in the narrative; and lastly, the conclusion. Besides the translation and the analysis, there are, in appendix, a life and work chronology, as well as four additional fiction texts of the author. There are also, in addendum, images related to the short story \"The Oven\", in order to illustrate the contex of the story, in addition to some photos of Kharitonov himself.

Esta dissertação busca analisar os aspectos da tradição e da modernidade literária presentes na prosa infantil do escritor soviético Daniil Kharms (1905 1942), tendo em vista o diálogo que estabelecem com os contos maravilhosos e a observância dos processos de atualização do gênero, decorrente das políticas educacionais, na URSS. Os trabalhos do escritor dedicados à criança foram os únicos publicados em vida, num contexto de forte censura. Desse modo, tal obra ganha importância tanto para a compreensão dos pressupostos estéticos de Kharms, quanto para a percepção das transformações ocorridas na literatura infantil soviética a partir da imposição do realismo como método de representação. Para tanto, selecionamos um corpus de trinta e um contos, traduzidos diretamente do russo. / This dissertation aims to analyze aspects of tradition and modern literature presented in the childrens prose of the Soviet writer Daniil Kharms (1905 1942), in view of the dialogue that it establishes with fairy tales and the observance of gender upgrade, resulting from education policies in USSR. The writers work dedicated to children were the ones he could publishes in life, due to a background of strong censorship. Thus, this work becomes important both for understanding Khamss aesthetic assumptions and for the perception of the transformations occurred in Soviet childrens literature, after the imposition of realism as the only possible representation method. To compose our corpus, we selected thirty-one stories directly translated from Russian.

Esta dissertação busca analisar os aspectos da tradição e da modernidade literária presentes na prosa infantil do escritor soviético Daniil Kharms (1905 1942), tendo em vista o diálogo que estabelecem com os contos maravilhosos e a observância dos processos de atualização do gênero, decorrente das políticas educacionais, na URSS. Os trabalhos do escritor dedicados à criança foram os únicos publicados em vida, num contexto de forte censura. Desse modo, tal obra ganha importância tanto para a compreensão dos pressupostos estéticos de Kharms, quanto para a percepção das transformações ocorridas na literatura infantil soviética a partir da imposição do realismo como método de representação. Para tanto, selecionamos um corpus de trinta e um contos, traduzidos diretamente do russo. / This dissertation aims to analyze aspects of tradition and modern literature presented in the childrens prose of the Soviet writer Daniil Kharms (1905 1942), in view of the dialogue that it establishes with fairy tales and the observance of gender upgrade, resulting from education policies in USSR. The writers work dedicated to children were the ones he could publishes in life, due to a background of strong censorship. Thus, this work becomes important both for understanding Khamss aesthetic assumptions and for the perception of the transformations occurred in Soviet childrens literature, after the imposition of realism as the only possible representation method. To compose our corpus, we selected thirty-one stories directly translated from Russian.

Marietta Shaginian’s Soviet production novel, Hydrocentral (Gidrotsentral’), represents a case of canonical limbo. Without exception, the novel is listed as a Soviet literary classic in reference works and compendia of Russian literature since the time of its publication in 1931 up to the present day, and yet its fame as an exemplary work of socialist realism (the officially mandated artistic and literary method established by the Soviet government in 1934) was extremely short-lived. This dissertation attempts to explain the reasons for the novel’s “in-between” status as a Soviet “classic” work of literature, but not an exemplar of socialist realism. Although Hydrocentral was published three years prior to the adoption of socialist realism, this dissertation argues that there is little doubt that Hydrocentral was one of a handful of Soviet literary works contributing to the formulation of its central tenets. Per the official definition, socialist realism “demands from the artist the truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideologically remolding and educating [the working people] in the spirit of socialism.” Shaginian’s novel did, in fact, fulfill all the official requirements of socialist realism: it is a concrete, historically-grounded portrayal of life in rural Armenia at the inception of the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) in which objective reality (bytie) is characterized as unceasing dialectical movement. As a paean to inspired, creative socialist labor, Hydrocentral was also written with the express purpose of inculcating a socialist work ethic in Soviet citizens. Part I of this dissertation offers a structural explanation of the novel’s limbo status by demonstrating how the principle of multiplicity undergirds the novel’s structure at every level. Shaginian uses two types of multiplicity, conventional, as in artistic, not true-to-life (uslovnaia) and real, everyday (bytovaia) multiplicity, combining them in a way that achieves Shaginian’s to achieve unique vision of objective reality (bytie) as unceasing dialectical development. Part II of the dissertation demonstrates how the nature of this objective reality (bytie) has its philosophical underpinnings in German Idealism as espoused by Hegel and Goethe, as well as in the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx. At the phenomenological level, Hydrocentral is, a Marxist, materialist philosophical overlay that conceals deeper Idealist – and even Modernist – epistemological undercurrents.

This thesis analyses the persistence of Gothic-fantastic themes and motifs in the literature of Soviet Russia between 1920 and 1940. Nineteenth-century Russian literature was characterized by the almost universal assimilation of Gothic-fantastic themes and motifs, adapted from the fiction of Western writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ann Radcliffe and Edgar Allen Poe. Writers from Pushkin to Dostoevskii, including the major Symbolists, wrote fiction combining the real with the macabre and supernatural. However, following the inauguration of the Soviet regime and the imposition of Socialist Realism as the official literary style in 1934, most critics assumed that the Gothic-fantastic had been expunged from Russian literature. In Konstantin Fedin's words, the Russian fantastic novel had "умер и закопан в могилу". This thesis argues that Fedin's dismissal was premature, and presents evidence that Gothic-fantastic themes and motifs continued to play a significant role in several genres of Soviet fiction, including science fiction, satire, comedy, adventure novels (prikliuchenskie romany), and seminal Socialist Realist classics. My dissertation identifies five categories of Gothic-fantastic themes, derived jointly from analysis of canonical Gothic novels from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and from innovative approaches to the genre made by contemporary critics such as Fred Botting, Kelly Hurley, Diane Hoeveler, Elaine Showalter and Eric Naiman (whose book Sex in Public coined the phrase 'NEP Gothic'). Each chapter analyses one of these five Gothic themes or tropes in the context of selected Soviet Russian literary texts. The chronotope of Gothic space, epitomized in the genre as the haunted castle or house, is readdressed by Mikhail Bulgakov as the 'nekhoroshaia kvartira' of Master i Margarita and by Evgenii Zamiatin as the 'drevnyi dom' of his dystopian fantasy My. Gothic gender issues, including the subgenre of Female Gothic, arise in Nikolai Ognev's novels and Aleksandra Kollontai's stories. The Gothic obsession with dying, corpses and the afterlife re-emerges in fictions such as Daniil Kharms' 'Starukha' (whose hero is threatened by an animated corpse) and Nikolai Erdman's banned play Samoubiitsa (the story of a failed suicide). Gothic bodies (deformed or regressive human bodies) are contrasted with Stalinist cultural aspirations to somatic perfection within a utopian society. Typically Gothic monsters - vampires, ghosts, and demon lovers - are evaluated in a separate chapter. Each Gothic trope is integrated with my analysis of the relevant Soviet discourse, including early Communist attitudes to gender and the body and the philosopher Nikolai Federov's utopian belief in the possibility of universal resurrection. As my focus is thematic rather than author-centred, my field of research ranges from well-known writers (Fedor Gladkov, Bulgakov, Zamiatin) to virtual unknowns (Grigorii Grebnev and Vsevolod Valiusinskii, both early 1930s novelists), and recently rediscovered writers (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii, Vladimir Zazubrin). Three Soviet authors who explicitly emulated the nineteenth-century Gothic-fantastic tradition in their fiction were Mikhail Bulgakov, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii and A.V. Chaianov. Many mainstream Soviet writers also exploited Gothic-fantastic motifs in their work. Fedor Gladkov's Socialist Realist production novel, Tsement, uses the trope of the Gothic castle to dramatise the reclamation of a derelict cement factory by the workers. Nikolai Ognev's Dnevnik Kosti Riabtseva, the diary of an imaginary Communist schoolboy, relies on ghost stories to sustain suspense. Aleksandr Beliaev, the popular science fiction writer, inserted subversive clich's from the Gothic narrative tradition in his deceptively optimistic novels. Gothic-fantastic tropes and motifs were used polemically by dissident writers to subvert the monologic message of Socialist Realism; other writers, such as Gladkov and Marietta Shaginian, exploited the same material to support Communism and attack Russia's enemies. The visceral resonance of Gothic fear lends its metaphors unique political impact. This dissertation aims at an overall survey of Gothic-fantastic narrative elements in early Soviet literature rather than a conclusive analysis of their political significance. However, in conclusion, I speculate that the survival of the Gothic-fantastic genre in the hostile soil of the Stalinist literary apparatus proves that early Soviet literature was more varied, contradictory and self-interrogative than previously assumed.

The Communist Party's control of Soviet literature gradually evolved from the 1920s and reached its height in the 1940s. The amount of control exerted over Soviet literature reflected the strengthening power of the Communist Party. Sources used in this thesis include speeches, articles, and resolutions of leaders in the Communist Party, novels produced by Soviet authors from the 1920s through the 1940s, and analyses of leading critics of Soviet literature and Soviet history. The thesis is structured around the political and literary developments during the periods of 1917-1924, 1924-1932, 1932-1941, and 1946-1949. The conclusion is that the Communist Party seized control of Soviet literature to disseminate Party policy, minimize dissent, and produce propaganda, not to provide an outlet for creative talent.

Fazil Iskander (1929- ) é um dos mais representativos escritores soviéticos remanescentes da geração do degelo. Devido ao desconhecimento deste autor no Brasil, este trabalho consiste na tradução da novela que lhe deu notoriedade, precedida por uma apresentação e comentário: Sozvezdie Kozlotura, em português, A constelação do capriuro, de 1966. Apesar de pertencer à tradição satírica russa, junto a nomes como Nikolai Gógol e Mikhail Bulgákov, a prosa de Iskander carrega as singularidades da sua origem não-russa. A sua terra natal, a Abkházia, com a sua história e costumes, além de reverberarem na obra do autor, entrecruzam-se com a cultura russo-soviética numa relação complexa que dá às suas narrativas um caráter único. Neste trabalho, foram analisados os elementos que tornam a sátira de Iskander tão inovadora. / Fazil Iskander (1929- ) is one of the most representative remaining writers of the Thaw Generation. Due to the lack of recognition of this author in Brazil, the present dissertation consists in the translation of the short-novel that has made him internationally renowned, preceded by a presentation and commentary: Sozvezdie Kozlotura from 1966, or A constelação do Capriuro in Portuguese. Though the prose of Iskander belongs to the Russian satire tradition, along with names like Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov, it carries the singularities of his non-Russian origin. His motherland, Abkhazia, with its proper history and customs, besides reverberating on his works, entwines itself with the Russian-soviet culture in a complex and tense relationship that gives these narratives their unique nature. In this research, it is analyzed the characteristics that make the satire of Iskander so innovative.

Fazil Iskander (1929- ) é um dos mais representativos escritores soviéticos remanescentes da geração do degelo. Devido ao desconhecimento deste autor no Brasil, este trabalho consiste na tradução da novela que lhe deu notoriedade, precedida por uma apresentação e comentário: Sozvezdie Kozlotura, em português, A constelação do capriuro, de 1966. Apesar de pertencer à tradição satírica russa, junto a nomes como Nikolai Gógol e Mikhail Bulgákov, a prosa de Iskander carrega as singularidades da sua origem não-russa. A sua terra natal, a Abkházia, com a sua história e costumes, além de reverberarem na obra do autor, entrecruzam-se com a cultura russo-soviética numa relação complexa que dá às suas narrativas um caráter único. Neste trabalho, foram analisados os elementos que tornam a sátira de Iskander tão inovadora. / Fazil Iskander (1929- ) is one of the most representative remaining writers of the Thaw Generation. Due to the lack of recognition of this author in Brazil, the present dissertation consists in the translation of the short-novel that has made him internationally renowned, preceded by a presentation and commentary: Sozvezdie Kozlotura from 1966, or A constelação do Capriuro in Portuguese. Though the prose of Iskander belongs to the Russian satire tradition, along with names like Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov, it carries the singularities of his non-Russian origin. His motherland, Abkhazia, with its proper history and customs, besides reverberating on his works, entwines itself with the Russian-soviet culture in a complex and tense relationship that gives these narratives their unique nature. In this research, it is analyzed the characteristics that make the satire of Iskander so innovative.