This study examines the ambivalence of the Balkans by analysing representations of collective identities in plays written since 1980 by major dramatists from the region. It builds upon recent studies which deconstruct Balkanism i.e. western discourse of the Balkans as Europe's 'incomplete self'.

The thesis Debates on Form in Russian Studies of Langua!!e and Ali (1915-1929): Theoretical and Institutional Dynamic seeks to unearth and interpret the complex nexus between social and cognitive trends in Russian humanities in the period between 1915 and 1930. Its principal objective is to reassess the cliched scholalry perception of the period, which fosters the mirage that intellectual production in Soviet Russia was chiefly or exclusively located in the so-called 'unofficial, sphere': the official circles are in this equation mled out as ideologically opportunistic and intellectually fmitless. In contrast to such intellectual remnants of the Cold War era, my research, relying in this significantly on the archives that have recently been made accessible, aims to demonstrate that the Russian intellectual milieu of the period was characterized by a high degree of social, and especially intellectual mobility. In an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of this multi-directional dynamic, I closely examine the intellectual exchange between three main theory groups (socially organized intellectual orientations): Academic FOlTIlalism (the group around Gustav Shpet, principally affiliated with the State Academy for Research in Art/GAKhN), Russian FOlTIlalism (OPOIaZ, State Institute of the Arts History), and the Bakhtin Circle. (without principal institutional aegis). The social factor played a significant role in providing a verification for these theoretical orientations, which led to the marginalization of the practice of the Bakhtin Circle. However, and this is my final point about the socio-intellectual dynamic of the Russian 1920s, the Bakhtin Circle employed a series of both extrinsic. and intrinsic strategies for overcoming the role of a dominated agent. This intersection of social and cognitive dynamics between three theory groups provides the principal framework for reevaluated map of the Russian humanities of the 1920s.

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Maksim Gorky's relations with Leonid Andreyev may be divided chronologically into three periods. The first, 1898-1904, saw close personal contact and literary collaboration. During the second, 1905- 1911, differences over the nature and purpose of literature resulted in conflict and a break in relations The final years to 1919 witnessed an unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation followed by a period of open hostility. Traditionally, Gorky and Andreyev have been viewed by Soviet critics as opposites, the foremost representatives of 'revolutionary’ and 'anti-revolutionary' literature, respectively. The present study is the first in any language to examine this critical convention by detailed reference to the life and works of both writers. The structure of the thesis is chronological The first chapter covers the period to 1904, discussing the nature and extent of Gorky’s influence on Andreyev and educating the common themes in their fiction. Chapters two to five cover the crucial years 1904-1911, dealing in turn with the response of each writer to the 1905 Revolution and the period of reaction which followed The comparative element is contained in the chapters on Andieyev (chapters three and five). Chapter six provides an important postscript on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks in 1909-1910 and chapter seven discusses relations between the writers in the years to 1917In the conclusion it is demonstrated that the traditional view of the Gorky-Andreyev relationship derives directly from Gorky's polemical reminiscences of Andreyev and hence stands in need of fundamental revision. By discussing in turn the political, aesthetic and philosophical views of both writers, it can be seen that both shared a similar ideal of Utopian socialism but differed over the way this ideal should be incorporated into works of literature and over the question of the perfectibility of human nature

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This thesis offers a reading of the late Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš by looking at how a particular tradition of European aesthetics and ethical philosophy (namely Levinas and Blanchot) can be compared to Danilo Kiš’s poetics. Beyond critically evaluating Kiš, I am to make connections between ethics, literature and philosophy. The major objective of my thesis is to argue that ethical is embedded as aesthetical in Kiš’s poetics as both Blanchotian and Levinasian understanding of ethics, i.e. as a non-dialectical and non-intentional movement from ‘I’ to the ‘other’ in the midst of passivity of dying (which is for both Blanchot and Levinas ‘other’ death). The thesis demonstrates that there are a number of strands in Levinas’s and Blanchot’s thought that, while differently expressed, can also be traced at work in Kiš’s writing, and which can, as such, help to elucidate certain crucial aspects of the latter. Taking into consideration Kiš’s obsessive writing on the violence of the last century – both left and right – I argue that what permeates his prose is death as both possibility and a radical impossibility consequent upon the il y a, a crucial philosophical concept in Levinas’s ethical philosophy and Blanchot’s literary ‘theory’. For this reason, the thesis aims to assert that what permeates Kiš’s prose is what Critchley terms ‘atheist transcendence’: the burden of responsibility for the death of the other human radically excludes theodicy. My research is significant in so far as conceptualisations of death to be found in continental European philosophy have hardly been directly juxtaposed with those found in Kiš’s prose. Since according to Blanchot, literature’s demand is always ambiguous and as such it exposes us to the question of being, in my thesis I analyse how this refusal of language to cease the tension of pluralism operates in Kiš’s prose as the ethical.

In this thesis, I intend to show that it is possible to offer a partial explanation for the fact that pre-war Polish-Jewish fiction has been recognised only to a very limited extent in Britain. In doing this, I embrace the limitations and unaddressed areas of polysystem theory, an approach that leads to several contributions to this theory so that it is more suited to look at marginal translations. In this study, the source context and the largely hypothetical target context (given the predominant lack of English translations) of pre-war Polish-Jewish fiction are conceptualised as systems informed by a variety of factors. I begin by introducing polysystem theory in Chapter 1, where I also explain the rationale for its use in this study. I also briefly define pre-war Polish-Jewish fiction and elaborate on the nature of its visibility in Britain. I then go on to consider, in Chapter 2, the origins and the characteristics of the literature in question in search of factors that inform the current status of this literature in Britain. In Chapter 3, I focus on specific aspects of British culture and history to identify factors embedded in the target context that inform the current limited recognition of pre-war Polish-Jewish fiction in Britain. In Chapters 4 and 5, I turn to the texts of the few English translations of Polish-Jewish works of fiction; and consider the dynamics of their publishing processes respectively. Finally, the conclusions I draw in final Chapter 6 are that polysystem theory can be applied to account for the limited attention paid to pre-war Polish-Jewish fiction as a whole in Britain; and, possibly, to account for other largely unacknowledged literary works in other contexts. Moreover, drawing on the results of this study, I suggest ways in which the current status of the literature I am concerned with can be changed in future. My main contribution is that of the new concept of a systemic gap, which in this study represents largely untranslated writing in British literature, and which has enabled me to address the question of the limited reception of Polish-Jewish fiction in Britain. In the light of these findings, I argue that it is useful to look at untranslated texts and largely unrecognised translations because such research can offer new insights into the practice and the theory of translation.

The career of Valentin Kataev (1897 - ) spans the entire Soviet period, during which he has continued to write and publish topical works despite the many changes of political and literary climate. The aim of this thesis is to trace the evolution of Kataev's career from the beginning until 1969. The diversity of Kataev's work is most striking, but from an early date it contains two elements which are almost always present and which frequently pull in opposite directions. These are aestheticism and support for the Communist regime. In Trava zabven'ya (1967) Kataev implicitly links these elements with the two great influences on his work - the aesthete, Bunin, and the ideologically committed Tiayakovskii. Kataev's uneasy position in Trava zabven'ya midway between Bunin and Tiayakovskii reflects the most notable feature of his entire work. His earliest work was lyric poetry written under Bunin's influence and characterised by clarity, concreteness and sensuousness. These qualities carried over into his prose, and Kataev's gifts are largely those of the poet rather than the novelist. In the 1920s he was a typical Fellow Traveller, writing both lyrical and satirical works. At the beginning of the 1930s he heeded warnings to change his style, and for thirty years, wrote works which were politically acceptable but which reveal his 'Bunin' side intermittently. In the 1960s, he surprised critics by writing modernistic works apparently quite unlike his earlier books. But Svyatoi kolodets, Trava zabven'ya and Kubik are not entirely new; they recall features of the works of the 1920s. Whereas in the previous era the 'Mayakovskii' side had dominated, now, in the more relaxed atmosphere of the 1960s, the 'Bunin' side came once more to the fore, eclipsing but not extinguishing Kataev's protestations of support for the Soviet regime.

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