Catriona Kelly

My main mistake when beginning to read this introduction to Russian Lit was to fight the author tooth and nail on her conception of how an introduction should be written.

In her preface, Catriona Kelly delineates three main types of literary introductions and then explains why she was not going to write her book in any of those styles. The first style, an exploration of the lives and books of the main figures in the Russian canon, was the kind of book I was hoping to read. Upon discovering show more her decision to focus the book on Alexander Pushkin and focus every chapter on branching out from him, I threw a tantrum. Don't do what I did, or you won't learn anything.

This is still an imperfect introduction, but Kelly herself makes the point that it would be impossible to do complete justice to such a wide body of work filled with so many thousand-page monstrosities. The structure is a bit jarring at first, but you get the hang of it, and Kelly does a good job of making Russian/Soviet society an interesting topic of study. I'd call the book an introduction to Russian literary culture rather than literature itself, but if you're looking for a reason to care about the best books ever written, this introduction should at the very least pique your curiosity. show less

I picked up this book to gain insight into an anglophone's view of Russian literature. Catriona is clearly well-educated about the subject, and has provided me with a better understanding of the relationship between the Russian language and the literature. Her original approach to the subject felt like a novel of its own kind, whereupon I wanted to keep reading this analytical text to find out where she'd take it next. Overall, I would have preferred more discussion of authors other than show more Pushkin, but then again I never spend enough time thinking about Pushkin, so thanks Catriona for talking to me about him. show less

Taking as her starting-point Pushkin's poem, "The Monument", the author looks at themes of Russian attitudes to literature amongst lay people and writers and how literature deals with themes of women, ethnic minorities, and religion.

She says in the introduction that she has deliberately eschewed a survey approach as plenty of surveys of Russian literature already exist. But she seems to forget that this is an INTRODUCTION. The audience must therefore be assumed to know nothing about Russian show more literature apart from a few big names and so a survey is what is needed. show less

Got it as my study material for MA Russian have still not arrived from IGNOU, expecting a straightforward "short introduction". However, into two chapters so far, this reads more like a polemical tract than a simple survey. The author seems more interested in sounding 'savvier than usual', lending it a sort of 'smart-alecky' flavor, if that is a word! The first chapter, for instance, far from giving the background of geography, history, or society, politics, or religion, launches into a show more fairly 'arcane' (obscure) debate on 'monumentality' with reference, apparently, to the iconic status accorded by both pre- and post-revolution commentators to Pushkin and statues of him in various poses. The author seems to be using this book to press some of her 'pet peeves', as it were; mainly, that Pushkin wasn't really as great as the Russians have made him out to be.

Finished the book now, and haven't gained much from it. It's not really an "introduction" to the subject, and may at best be thought of as a somewhat clever-seeming polemic to debunk commonly held stereotype beliefs about Russian lit. Mercifully, it is short and doesn't cost much. To me it appears that this scholar is not much in sympathy with the Russian 'spirit', their emotional relationship with their civilization and land as 'sacred', something which is important equally in my own culture. show less