Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1996. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 287-302).

Thesis--Yale University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [357]-361).

This thesis presents an analysis of texts written for a child audience in Russia between 1990 and 2010 and characterized by humorous inversions of common sense, a tendency for jokes, puns and a cheerful narrative tone. These narrative features are associated with the concepts of playfulness and play. This thesis argues that, by addressing the implied child reader of the post-perestroika period in a playful mode, children’s authors tried to cope with profound social and cultural transformations which challenged their identities as adults and intellectuals. The new individual responsibilities concerning the upbringing and the education of children, on the one hand, and the crisis of written culture and of the intellectual as sources of moral guidance, on the other, occurred at the same time as the general structures of trust were collapsing in Russian society. The thesis argues that playfulness allowed children’s authors to explore their own identity, and even to express their own fears and doubts as providers of upbringing and education. At the same time, playfulness was a way to involve the child of the post-perestroika period in an attempt to re-construct culture, an attempt which required a strong pedagogical agency. Divided between the wish to guide younger generations and the need to re-define their own selves, children’s authors found in playfulness a field where these contradictory drives could be negotiated and their authorial personae could be re-worked. In the so-called post-post-Soviet period, which followed the election of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia, playful children’s literature is still engaged in this exploration of the adult self and of the possibility of providing guidance through literature. This exploration is further challenged by a generational gap separating adults with a Soviet background from children. The first chapter establishes the theoretical grounds and methods which inform the thesis, while chapter two provides a historical overview of the way in which play and playfulness, both as cultural phenomena and as concepts, intertwined with specific conceptualizations of childhood in Russian and Soviet children’s literature until perestroika. The last two chapters are devoted to the analysis of texts, and mostly focus on works by children’s authors Grigorii Oster, Artur Givargizov and Natal’ia Nusinova which appeared in the years 1990–2010.

This thesis examines three different collections from the early works of the Russian writer Aleksei Remizov (1887-1957): Posolon' (1907), Leimonarion (1907), and Besnovatye: Savva Grudtsyn and Solomoniia (1951). Each of them highlights a different approach taken by Remizov in preserving Russianness. In this analysis the concept of Russianness does not constitute a specific national or historical scheme. The reference is rather to a spiritual legacy, a condition of soul. Posolon' calls for the regaining of a lost cyclicity and looks back in time at the common folk's way of life. Leimonarion is one of the most expressive examples of the constant duality of Remizov's position on the dominant artistic and ideological ideas of the time; this collection looks at the old world through the new eyes of a modern era. "Savva Grudtsyn" and "Solomoniia" present a perpetual moral struggle, which pits the profanity of a secular world against the sacred values to which people ought to aspire. / The results of the study show that Remizov, using different themes and different literary genres, pursues one broad concern: Russianness. This theme permeates not only his literary language, but also the content of the works discussed here. In Leimonarion Russia is kept together by her people and their belief in salvation; in Posolon' Russia is all about folklore, joyful games, tales and rituals; in Besnovatye Russia is saved by the simplicity and purity of the iurodivye , the 'Holy fools.'

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown State College, 1972. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2853. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [54]-56).

Diss.--Munich. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Adam Zachary Newton. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-121).

No description available.

The subject of this thesis is the short story "Карл-Янкель" ("Karl-Yankel") by Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel (1894‒1940), published in 1931. The story depicts a trial following the cir-cumcision of a boy against his parents’ will, and thus directly addresses issues of high relevance at the time, namely the transformations of religious life in the early years of the Soviet Union. Firstly, I have analyzed the references to Jewish culture that appear in the story. Further on, drawing on research by other scholars, I have examined the shift of the traditional Jew into a Soviet Jew—a highly secular subject deeply involved in the socialist society and far removed from the traditions of the Pale of Settlement. Lastly, I have studied the narrator’s perspective, which, being far from objective, plays a major role in portraying the trial and is of key im-portance for understanding the transformation of Jewish life that occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. At the end of the story, the narrator deprives the reader of the verdict and gives in-stead his attention to the circumcised boy. I argue that he thus focused on the future rather than on the conflict between tradition and secularism.