Description
Book SynopsisHaunted Empire shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity.
Valeria Sobol argues that the persistent presence of Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire is a key literary form that enacts deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia''s idiosyncratic imperial experience. Her book brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as she explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia''s own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms the imperial uncanny. Focusing on two spaces of the imperial uncannythe Baltic north/Finland and the Ukrainian southHaunted Empire reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.
Open Access edition funded by
Trade Review
Haunted Empire is an outstanding contribution to nineteenth-century studies that brings the 'Gothic turn' to the fore and illuminates hitherto unexamined aspects of Russia's imperial experience.
* The Russian Review *
Valeria Sobol's closely researched, absorbingly written monograph turns a long-awaited Gothic lens on Russian and Ukrainian literature of the Romantic era.
* Slavonic and East European Review *
Timely, concise, and brilliant. Sobol's lucid and fluid prose ably traverses a host of conceptual frames and disciplinary fields. A necessary reading for Slavists, comparatists, and historians alike. Akin to finding a brittle old map of the Russian imperial consciousness with striking twenty-first century resonance.
* Slavic Review *
Valeria Sobol's book applies a colonial lens to analyze gothic motives in the Russian-language literature of the nineteenth century....While the English gothic has been studied from a postcolonial perspective, Haunted Empire pioneers this approach in the Russian imperial context.
* Ab Imperio *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From the Island of Bornholm to Taman: The Literary Trajectory of the Russian Imperial Uncanny
Part I: The North
1. A Gothic Prelude: Nikolai Karamzin's "The Island of Bornholm"
2. In Search of the Russian Middle Ages: The Livonian Tales of the 1820s
3. "Gloomy Finland" and Russian Gothic Tales of Assimilation
Part II: The South
4. Ukraine: Russia's Uncanny Double
5. On Mimicry and Ukrainians: Empire and the Gothic in Antonii Pogorelsky's The Convent Graduate
6. 'Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish's Gothic Ukraine
