Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1995. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 319-336).

Diss.--Munich. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis analyses the function of the provincial town in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and George Eliot (1819-1880). It demonstrates that the small town, far from being a neutral backdrop to their narratives, functions as a sociological space in which to appropriate or challenge the discourses of modernity with which Dostoevsky and Eliot were explicitly preoccupied. The first chapter examines how their provincial communities negotiate biblical narrative in a world in which, thanks to nineteenth-century attempts to historicise the Bible, an acceptance of the Bible's authoritative status is no longer a given. The instability of language itself is then interrogated in my second chapter, which shows that the transition from denotative, referential meaning to connotative, abstract forms causes ethical and narrative tension within the world of the novel, and which explores the aesthetics and ethics of gossip in the provincial town and novel. The third chapter details what becomes of the nineteenth-century discourse of heroism when characters seek to enact it in a provincial setting, showing that the environment of the provincial town proves hostile to heroic ambition, whilst the fourth argues that the provincial application of professional discourse (particularly that of medicine and the law) is critiqued and perfected by these authors. Through the analysis of this discourse, it is shown that Eliot and Dostoevsky's treatment of provincialism is ambivalent. As urban intellectuals who did not consent to inhabit the provincial milieu they depict, they in many respects censure the world they describe. However, this censure is not absolute, and through their chosen setting, as well as their chosen genre of the novel, they provide ethical instruction for their readers, then and now. Ethics, for them, are best tested in community, and explored in narrative.

A dissertação é composta por duas partes que dialogam entre si. Na primeira, propõe-se uma tradução poética comentada do poema Pro Eto /Πpo Эmo (Sobre Isto) (1923), de Vladímir Maiakóvski, diretamente do russo para o português brasileiro, inédita no Brasil. A segunda parte dedica-se à apresentação e análise dos elementos fundamentais do poema, seja no tocante às imagens e tema, seja nos aspectos formais de sua composição. O poema, escrito entre dezembro de 1922 e fevereiro de 1923, possui 1.813 versos e foi publicado pela primeira vez na edição de estreia da revista LEF, criada e dirigida por Maiakóvski. A despeito da animosidade da crítica, muitos o consideraram a obra mais bem trabalhada do poeta, inclusive ele mesmo. O poema defende um novo amor condizente com a revolução e a nova sociedade, critica o individualismo da família tradicional e o filistinismo pequeno burguês. A revolução reflete-se nas imagens e formas empregadas na composição que tornam Sobre Isto a súmula da poética de Maiakóvski. À luz das teorias formalistas de Ossip Brik, Nikolai Khardjiev, Vladímir Trenin, Roman Jakobson, Kristina Pomorska, e da própria concepção poética de Maiakóvski, o estudo pretende mostrar como som e sentido fundem-se para revolucionar a abordagem do amor na literatura e como a oficina poética de Maiakóvski se encontra plenamente realizada nesta obra. / The monograph is composed by two interconnected parts. The first one proposes a poetic annotated translation of the poem About This (1923), by Vladimir Mayakovsky, from Russian into Brazilian Portuguese, unpublished in Brazil yet. The aim of the second part is to present and analyze the fundamental elements of the poem, be it in terms of imagery and subject, be it concerning the formal compositional aspects. The poem was writen between December 1922 and February 1923. It has 1,813 verses and was published for the first time in the premiere edition of the journal LEF, created and directed by Mayakovsky. Despite of the animosity of the critics, many considered it to be the most well developed work of the poet, including himself. The poem defends a new love befitting the revolution and the new society, it criticizes the individualism of the traditional family and the petty bourgeois philistinism. The revolution is reflected in the imagery and compositional formal aspects employed, which makes About This a summary of Mayakovsky\'s poetics. In the light of the formalist theories of Ossip Brik, Nikolai Khardjiev, Vladimir Trenin, Roman Jakobson, Kristina Pomorska, and Mayakovsky\'s own poetic conception, the present study aims at demonstrating how sound and sense merge to revolutionize the approach of love in literature and how Mayakovsky\'s poetical workshop is completely accomplished in this oeuvre.

The thesis systematically explicates Dostoevsky's portrayal of the origin of human evil on earth through the novel The Brothers Karamazov. Drawing from the novel and from Augustine, Pelagius, and Luther, the explication compares and contrasts Dostoevsky's doctrine of original conflict against the three theologians' views of original sin. Following a brief summary of the three earlier theories of original sin, the thesis describes Dostoevsky's peculiar doctrine of Karamazovism and his unique account of how human evil originated. Finally, the thesis shows how suffering, love, and guilt grow out of the original conflict and how the image of Christ serves as an icon of the special kind of social unity projected by Zosima the Elder in The Brothers Karamazov.

Despite the volume of research into fairytales, gender and ideology in media studies, the specific subject of animated adaptations of national fairytales and their role in constructing gender identities remains a blind spot at least in relation to non-Western and non-Hollywood animation. This study addresses the gap by analysing animated adaptations of Russian national fairytales in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema and television. It does so as a tool through which to approach the gender politics of the dominant ideologies in national cinema and also, though to a lesser extent, in television. One of the key perspectives this research adopts concerns the reorganization of the myths of femininity, as stored in ‘national memory’ and transferred through the material of national fairytales produced during a century-long period. By providing a detailed critical treatment of animated adaptations of Russian magic fairytales, this research examines the interaction between the cinematic versions of the national fairytales and the representation of female characters on screen. It draws on a range of feminist theoretical approaches on media representation. By performing a systematic study of the under-researched field, through a combination of qualitative and empirical analysis, the work demonstrates how totalitarian regimes and new democratic societies implicitly control gender constructions in similar ways, and specifically through the animated versions of national fairytale adaptations. The research identifies how the constructions of femininity are manipulated through the reshaping of the national past coded in the ancient folkloric narratives. The findings of the study reveal the principles on which the implicit patriarchal gender politics is based. These principles include the conservative choice of fairytale material adapted to the screen, the reactionary increase of production of animated fairytales targeted against liberalisation, the exclusion and reconstruction of strong matriarchal fairytale female characters, stereotypical representation of selected female characters, and normalisation of domestic violence. In so doing the study identifies a weakness in the existing scholarly discourse on ideology, which traditionally has claimed that Soviet animation was non-violent. Further, the study establishes the constructions of national memory and female identity as a part of the dominant cinematic discourses.

This thesis is concerned with the thoughts of the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) on the development of the arts in his native country and the specific problems facing the Russian artist. It starts by considering the state of the creative arts in Russia in the early nineteenth century and suggests why even towards the end of his life Turgenev still had some misgivings as to whether painting and music had become a real necessity for Russian society in the same way that literature clearly had. A re-appraisal of "On the Eve" (1860) then follows, indicating how the young sculptor Shubin in this novel acts as the author's alter ego in a number of respects, in particular by reflecting Turgenev's views on heroism and tragedy. The change in Shubin's attitude towards Insarov, whom the sculptor at first tries to belittle before eventually comparing him to the noble Brutus in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", can be said to anticipate Turgenev's own feelings about Bazarov in "Fathers and Children" (1862) and the way that this 'nihilist' attained the stature of a true tragic hero. In this chapter, too, the clichéd notion of Turgenev's alleged affinity with Schopenhauer is firmly challenged - an issue that is taken up again later on in the discussion of "Phantoms" (1864) and "Enough!" (1865). Other aspects of Turgenev's portrayal of Shubin are used to introduce the remaining chapters, where the problems of dilettantism, originality, nationalism and Slavophilism - among the most acute problems which Russian artists had to contend with in Turgenev's eyes - are explored through various works of his, especially the novel "Smoke" (1867), as well as by reference to his observations of such contemporaries as Glinka, the painter Ivanov, Tolstoi, and the composers of the 'Mighty Handful'. The springboard for the final chapter on the tragic fate befalling so many Russian artists is once again Shubin, whose voluntary exile in Rome at the end of the novel allows for certain parallels to be drawn with Gogol'. Despite Turgenev's own 'absenteeism' from Russia, for which he was much reproached, it is emphasized in the conclusion that healways remained devoted to the cause of Russia's civic and cultural development, especially in the realm of the arts, whose national, and at the same time universal, value he upheld so compellingly in his Pushkin speech of 1880.

This dissertation examines key texts from the intermediate and mature periods of Vasily Grossman’s career in order to determine the relationship between his evolving philosophy and the poetics that characterize his writing. While significant critique has been applied to the nature of Grossman’s philosophy, comparatively less has looked at the aesthetic and technical aspects of his writing itself; still less to the connection between Grossman’s abstract concepts and his accomplished texts. My effort has been to bridge the gap between these two areas of inquiry and to ascertain the quality of their tightly intertwined and complex relationship. I analyze four of Grossman’s key texts in depth, with reference to several other writings. Of the primary texts considered in my study, two are essays from the writer’s intermediate period: “The Hell of Treblinka” («Треблинский ад») and “The Sistine Madonna” («Сикстинская мадонна»);” of the two longer works, one is Grossman’s multi-volume masterpiece novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба) and the other is his novella (повесть) and final fictional work Everything Flows (Все течет). These texts were chosen for their aptness at demonstrating key features of Grossman’s prosody and philosophical thinking, both those that remained constant and those that evolved over time. The following study establishes that Grossman’s writing itself, by means of the formal structures he employs throughout his works, constitutes the embodiment and realization of his ethics. Specifically, the following work considers modes of movement and generation in Grossman’s writing that speak to the value he places on the individual human experience.

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