Description
Book SynopsisTraces the evolution of Russia's onetime capital from a 'conceptual hierarchy' to a living cultural system. This book seeks to revise the literary monumentalization of St Petersburg - with Pushkin and Dostoevsky representing two traditional albeit opposing perspectives - to offer a view of an urban landscape.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2005-06 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures "[Mapping St. Petersburg] challenges the enduring myth of the city's uniqueness by exploring its ordinariness, as depicted in "middlebrow" fiction and non-fictional sources, uncovering a rich body of material that in itself should prove invaluable to researchers in a number of disciplines."--Lindsey Hughes, Times Literary Supplement "[Buckler] conveys very effectively what many writers have felt about the city--its elusively cerebral characters, its insubstantiality verging on evanescence."--Catriona Kelly, Russian Review "[Buckler] offers a useful, thematically organized synthesis of interesting writing on St. Petersburg, many of them otherwise inaccessible to anglophone readers."--Stephen Lovell, American Historical Review "[A] brilliant and intriguing exercise in urban textology... [Buckler] conveys the sense of complexity and mystery that defines, and always has defined, Saint Petersburg."--Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, Bookforum
Table of ContentsILLUSTRATIONS ix ACKNOWGEDMENTS xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Petersburg Eclecticism, Part I: City as Text 27 CHAPTER TWO: Petersburg Eclecticism, Part II: Literary Form and Cityshape 61 CHAPTER THREE: Armchair Traveling: Russian Literary Guides to St. Petersburg 89 CHAPTER FOUR: Stories in Common: Urban Legends in St. Petersburg 116 CHAPTER FIVE: Literary Centers and Margins: Palaces, Dachas, Slums, and Industrial Outskirts 158 CHAPTER SIX: Meeting in the Middle: Provincial Visitors to St. Petersburg 195 CHAPTER SEVEN: The City's Memory: Public Graveyards and Textual Repositories 218 CHAPTER EIGHT: Timely Remembering and the Tricentennial Celebration 247 NOTES 253 BIBLPGRAPHY 321 INDEX 355
