An essay collection that explores Russian literature and culture in relation to the late nineteenth-century fin de siècle.

Many are familiar with European modernists' interest in Chinese art and poetry, however less well known is that Russian literature and art at the turn of 20th century also flourished in a sustained dialogue with China. In Fin-de-siècle Russia and Chinese Aesthetics, Jinyi Chu reconsiders the place of Russia in the genealogy of global modernism by exploring the enduring impact of China on pre-revolutionary Russian culture. This book argues that fin-de-siècle Russian ideas about increasing global cultural and socioeconomic interconnectedness emerged from their unsettling encounters with China. Drawing on literary texts, paintings, advertisements, official documents, and archival work in Russia, China, France, and the United States, Chu reconstructs surprising stories about cultural interactions. From Innokenty Annensky's encounter with a Tibetan monk in Paris, Aleksei Remizov's adaptations of Chinese ghost stories, and Lev Tolstoy's translations of the Daoist canon, to Ilya Mashkov's fauvist painting of a Chinese fairy, this book presents a new cultural history of fin-de-siècle Russia in relation to the East. Fin-de-siècle Russia and Chinese Aesthetics casts new light on the intricate relationships between geopolitics and transnational aesthetics. It moves beyond the idea that Russian literary and artistic representations of China were simply manifestations of Russia's imperial ideology and Eurasian cultural identity. Instead, Chu shows that literature and art actively renegotiate and destabilize the preconceived world order at a time of intensifying geopolitical and cultural transformation when China shifted from Russia's rival in Inner Asia to a target in the competition of global imperialist powers.

This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history, the Fin de Siècle. Featuring contributions from over forty international scholars, this book takes a thematic approach to a period of huge upheaval across all walks of life, and is truly innovative in examining the Fin de Siècle from a global perspective. The volume includes pathbreaking essays on how the period was experienced not only in Europe and North America, but also in China, Japan, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, India, and elsewhere across the globe. Thematic topics covered include new concepts of time and space, globalization, the city, and new political movements including nationalism, the "New Liberalism", and socialism and communism. The volume also looks at the development of mass media over this period and emerging trends in culture, such as advertising and consumption, film and publishing, as well as the technological and scientific changes that shaped the world at the turn of the nineteenth century, such as the invention of the telephone, new transport systems, eugenics and physics. The Fin-de-Siècle World also considers issues such as selfhood through chapters looking at gender, sexuality, adolescence, race and class, and considers the importance of different religions, both old and new, at the turn of the century. Finally the volume examines significant and emerging trends in art, music and literature alongside movements such as realism and aestheticism. This volume conveys a vivid picture of how politics, religion, popular and artistic culture, social practices and scientific endeavours fitted together in an exciting world of change. It will be invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the Fin-de-Siècle period.

The essays collected in Fin de Siècle and Other Essays on America and Europe cover the political and cultural spectrum of our time, specifically the rise, fall, and reemergence of radical movements of what was once called the extreme left and right. If the essays have a common denominator, it is that they do not join in the chorus of rejoicing after the end of the cold war. When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the cold war came to an end, there was a general celebration similar to the joy expressed after World Wars I and II. Walter Laqueur, in contrast to many of his peers, realized that Russia's and Eastern Europe's road to freedom would be, at best, protracted and arduous with many setbacks. And, as he shows, ten years after the reforms in the communist world, power, such as it is, is again in the hands of the communists, or of nationalists closely cooperating with communists. While they may not be old Stalinists, their style remains authoritarian, and no one can say for certain whether the conversion to democracy is lasting.Throughout Europe the extreme right has reemerged in force in France, Italy, Russia, and Austria these parties are among the strongest. While only a few years have passed since the demise of communism, there is already nostalgia among many in Russia with regard to the good old days, when vodka was cheap and order prevailed in the streets. In the West, the positive aspects of Nazism and fascism are being rediscovered. One might argue that it should have been obvious that the end of the cold war would in many ways create new and greater uncertainties rather than a new world order in international affairs. In certain nations, including the United States, there has been an unmistakable trend toward isolationism.How to explain such attitudes? In a brilliant assemblage of published and hitherto unpublished essays, Laqueur brings his concerns about these issues in a post-cold war environment. Essays include: The Long Way to Europe, Russian Nationalism, In Praise of Menshevism, The End of the Cold War, Feuchtwanger and Gide, and The Empire Strikes Out. Laqueur includes a profile of Andrei Sakharov, who played such a crucial role in the movement of democratic dissent in the Soviet Union. Fin de Siècle and Other Essays on America and Europe will be of significant interest to historians of European and American culture, sociologists, economists, and political scientists.

"The late nineteenth-century fin de siècle has proved an enduringly fascinating moment in literary and cultural history. It is associated with the emergence of intriguing figures -- such as the 'new woman' and 'uranian'; with contradictory impulses -- of decadence and decay on the one hand, and of experiment and renewal, on the other; as well as with unprecedented intercultural exchange, especially between Britain and France. The 22 newly-commissioned essays collected here re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the fin de siècle, while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena into the frame, such as the importance of humanitarianism. The impact of recent research in material culture is explored, particularly how the history of the book and the history of performance culture is changing our understanding of this period. A wide range of cultural activities is discussed -- from participation in avant-garde theatre to interior decoration and from the writing of poetry to political and religious activism. Together, the essays provide new scholarly insights into British fin de siècle and enrich our understanding of this complex period, while paying particular attention to the importance of regionalism."--

This book explores the main currents of European thought between 1350 and 1992, which it approaches in two principal ways: culture as produced by place and the progressive unmooring of thought from previously set religious and philosophical boundaries. The book reads the period against spatial thought’s history (spatial sciences such as geography or Euclidean geometry) to argue that Europe cannot be understood as a continent in intellectual terms or its history organized with respect to traditional spatial-geographic categories. Instead we need to understand European intellectual history in terms of a culture that defined its own place, as opposed to a place that produced a given culture. It then builds on this idea to argue that Europe’s overweening drive to know more about humanity and the cosmos continually breached the boundaries set by venerable religious and philosophical traditions. In this respect, spatial thought foregrounded the human at the unchanging’s expense, with European thought slowly becoming unmoored, as it doggedly produced knowledge at wisdom’s expense. Michael J. Sauter illustrates this by pursuing historical themes across different chapters, including European thought’s exit from the medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the Industrial Revolution, and war and culture, offering a thorough overview of European thought during this period. The book concludes by explaining how contemporary culture has forgotten what early modern thinkers such as Michel de Montaigne still knew, namely, that too little skepticism toward one’s own certainties makes one a danger to others. Offering a comprehensive introduction to European thought that stretches from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth century, this is the perfect one-volume study for students of European intellectual history.

Russia’s Capitalist Realism examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. This book recovers the rich and lively public discourse of this volatile historical period, which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov transformed into some of the world’s greatest works of literature. Russia’s Capitalist Realism will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth‐century Russian literature and history, the relationship between capitalism and literary form, and theories of the novel.

This volume examines various manifestations of anguish in art, literature, and philosophy. It demonstrates that the experience of anguish manifested itself in a spectacular way in the arts in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. It makes obvious the extraordinary tension between anguish and art. The works discussed here reflect the magnitude of anguish generated by historical events, scientific advancements (especially in psychology), and metaphysical inquiries of the time. Through the invention of new artistic languages, those works also illustrate the fecundity of anguish for artists.

Twelve groundbreaking essays show the varied and complex ways in which ideas about sexuality, gender, and the body have shaped and been influenced by Russian literature, history, art, and philosophy from the medieval period to the present day.

"This release is an important contribution to the literary discourse about women's lives, sexuality, politics and popular culture in early 20th-century Russia." -- Publishers Weekly One of the most sensationally popular and influential of all pre-Revolutionary novels, Keys to Happiness is set against a panorama of Russian society on the eve of World War I. It tells the stormy tale of Manya Yeltsova, a Russian "new woman" who pursues her dreams and passions as a dancer and free spirit who captivates, among others, a Jewish socialist tycoon and a reactionary Russian nobleman. At the time of its publication, the novel crossed the boundaries of both gender and class to define a new type of literature in Russian society. The editors' informative introduction places the novel within its cultural, political, and social context and makes clear for today's readers its literary and historical importance.