The Revolution In Popular Literature

This book takes a new look at the evolution of popular literature in Britain in the Romantic and Victorian periods. Making use of a wide range of archival and primary sources, he argues that radical politics played a decisive role in the transformation of popular literature. By charting the key moments in the history of 'cheap' literature, the book casts new light on the many neglected popular genres and texts: the 'pig's meat' anthology, the female-authored didactic tale, and Chartist fiction.

Between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, poverty reached new extremes in Germany, as in other European countries, and gave rise to a class of disaffected poor, leading to the widespread expectation of a social revolution. Whether welcomed or feared, it dominated private and public debate to a larger extent than is generally assumed as is shown in this study on the reflections in literature of what was called the "Social Question." Examining works by Heine, Eichendorff, Nestroy, Büchner, Grillparzer, and Theodor Storm, the author reveals an acute awareness of political issues in an era in literature which is often seen as tending to quiescence and withdrawal from public preoccupations.

Literary study of the popular radical press in England, 1800-1830.

Published in China in 2010, Revolution and Its Narratives is a historical, literary, and critical account of the cultural production of the narratives of China's socialist revolution. Through theoretical, empirical, and textual analysis of major and minor novels, dramas, short stories, and cinema, Cai Xiang offers a complex study that exceeds the narrow confines of existing views of socialist aesthetics. By engaging with the relationship among culture, history, and politics in the context of the revolutionary transformation of Chinese society and arts, Cai illuminates the utopian promise as well as the ultimate impossibility of socialist cultural production. Translated, annotated, and edited by Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong, this translation presents Cai's influential work to English-language readers for the first time.

This volume offers a selection of critical essays on texts that can be broadly categorized as popular literature. The essays are inclined to question the idea of 'the Canon' and re-consider the divide between the canonical and the popular. As such, besides engaging in a serious critical reading of typical popular literary texts like The Jungle Book and The Hound of the Baskervilles, the book also considers populist tendencies in literary classics like Jane Eyre and Frankenstein. It will be of interest to young scholars and readers of popular literature, science fiction, detective fiction, genre studies, and culture studies. The volume's contributors are: Anisha Ghosh, Arnab Dasgupta, Goutam Karmakar, Jaya Sarkar, Jaydip Sarkar, Madhuparna Mitra Guha, Mandika Sinha, Mitarik Barma, Pinaki Roy, Puja Chakraborty, Rajadipta Roy, Rupayan Mukherjee, Shirsendu Mondal, Shubham Dey.

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.

“Fascinating . . . full of insight and a perceptive portrait of Lenin’s single-mindedness and his relentless, all-consuming drive towards revolution in Russia.” —The Guardian Combining Young Lenin and On Lenin in one volume, this is a fascinating political biography by Lenin’s fellow revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky on Lenin brings together two long-out-of-print works in a single volume for the first time, providing an intimate and illuminating portrait of the Bolshevik leader by another of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries. Written shortly after its subject’s death, On Lenin covers the period of revolutionary struggle leading up to 1917 as well as the early years of Bolshevik power. We see a man totally committed to the revolutionary cause, whose legacy was later corrupted under the Soviet Union’s Stalinist degeneration. Young Lenin, meanwhile, describes his early years and conversion to Marxism, dispelling many of the myths later created by Soviet hagiography in the process. This is the essential guide for anyone wanting to understand Lenin as a thinker, active revolutionary, and personality.

Introduction: Literature and the Political Problem 1. Since 1917: A Brief History Soviet Literature Persistence of the Past Fellow Travelers Proletarians The Stalinists Socialist Realism The Thaw The Sixties and Seventies 2. Mayakovsky and the Left Front of Art The Suicide Note Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Tragedy The Cloud "The Backbone Flute" The Commune and the Left Front The Bedbug and The Bath Mayakovsky as a Monument Poets of Different Camps 3. Prophets of a Brave New World The Machine and England Olesha's Critique of the Reason Envy and Rage 4. The Intellectuals, I Serapions Boris Pilnyak: Biology and History 5. The Intellectuals, II Isaac Babel: Horror in a Minor Key Konstantin Fedin: The Confrontation with Europe Leonov and Katayev Conclusion 6. The Proletarians, I The Proletcult The Blacksmith Poets Yury Libedinsky: Communists as Human Beings Tarasov-Rodionov: ,"Our Own Wives, Our Own Children" Dmitry Furmanov: An Earnest Commissar A. S. Serafimovich: A Popular Saga 7. The Proletarians, II Fyodor Gladkov: A Literary Autodidact Alexander Fadeyev: The Search for a New Leo Tolstoy Mikhail Sholokhov: The Don Cossacks A Scatter of Minor Deities Conclusion 8. The Critic Voronsky and the Pereval Group Criticism and the Study of Literature Voronsky Pereval 9. The Levers of Control under Stalin Resistance The Purge The Literary State 10. Zoshchenko and the Art of Satire 11. After Stalin: The First Two Thaws Pomerantsev, Panova, and The Guests Ilya Ehrenburg and Alexey Tolstoy The Second Thaw The Way of Pasternak 12. Into the Underground The Literary Parties The Trouble with Gosizdat End of a Thaw Buried Treasure: Platonov and Bulgakov The Exodus into Samizdat and Tamizdat Sinyavsky 13. Solzhenitsyn and the Epic of the Camps One Day The First Circle and The Cancer Ward The Gulag The Calf and the Oak: Dichtung and Wahrheit Other Contributions to the Epic 14. The Surface Channel, I: The Village 15. The Surface Channel, II: Variety of Theme and Style The City: Intelligentsia, Women, Workers The Backwoods: Ethical Problems Other New Voices of the Sixties and Seventies World War II Published Poets A Final Word on Socialist Realism 16. Exiles, Early and Late The Exile Experience "Young Prose" and What Became of It Religious Quest: Maximov and Ternovsky Truth through Obscenity: Yuz Aleshkovsky Transcendence and Tragedy: Erofeev's Trip Poetry of the Daft: Sasha Sokolov Perversion of Logic as Ideology: Alexander Zinoviev A Gathering of Writers Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index