Description
Book SynopsisStudies how women who write poems were invented in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russia by women poets themselves, readers who derived poets of their own design from women's poems, and male poets who fabricated women and wrote poems on their behalf.
Trade Review“This stimulating, valuable new book asks us to rethink the Russian tradition in light of its remarkable women poets and the stories of how they were invented. The case studies are well chosen and varied. Concepts like reader-imposed censorship and the masquerades of gender suggest new vantage points on many other poets as well. The rereading of Tsvetaeva’s gendered poetics and the analysis of Briusov’s
Nelli are especially strong, as is the splendid work on the dynamics of competition and connection between women poets.” —Stephanie Sandler, coauthor of
History of Russian Literature“Hasty eloquently describes the impediments that nineteenth- and twentieth-century women poets encountered in their attempts to gain admission to the Russian poetic tradition on equal terms with men. Her case studies, revealing the strategies that women poets developed to resist the gender norms, expectations, and male fantasies of the tradition’s gatekeepers, add an important, previously overlooked aspect to the history of Russian poetry.” —Diana Greene, author of
Reinventing Romantic Poetry: Russian Women Poets of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
