A History of Russian Literature

This exhaustive volume represents a very significant contribution to the bibliography of Russian literary history from the medieval to the modern period. In its scope, conception, and engagement with scholarship, this is the kind of account which comes along only once every generation, a work informed by the lifelong study of four preeminent scholars of Russian literature from both sides of the Atlantic. ...The authors have been extraordinarily thorough throughout in their generous engagement with the scholarship and secondary literature in both Russian and English. ...It will inevitably feature in the comprehensive exam lists of all graduate students of Russian literature. * Kate Holland, Slavic Review *
The Oxford History paves the way * Caryl Emerson, Princeton University, Slavonic and East European Review *
All academic fields are under pressure to be constantly open to shifting global perspectives and previously unheard voices. Can even the most meticulous hard-copy linear narrative hope to keep up with these challenges? In my view, the new Oxford A History of Russian Literature, a staggering accomplishment, manages to do so. * Carly Emerson, Princeton University, Slavonic and East European Review *
This new history of Russian literature written by four Slavists is an interesting and useful book. It is a very timely book... It is informative, the material, nonetheless, fits compactly in one volume. It covers the familiar and also offers an abundance of unusual solutions/positions. It is addressed to the Anglophone readers but holds just as much interest for the Russian. The sociological approach that the authors maintain is realized in the special attention to institutions and conditions in which literature functions (from Ancient Russia to post-perestroika Russia); to the evolution of subjectivity, manifested in literary forms that also give evidence of the self-awareness of man in different periods; to the narratives that, on the one hand, can be extracted from texts and, on the other, form national identity. Literature both mirrors societal life and defines it. * Translated from New Literary Observer (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) *
Of particular importance to nonspecialists will be inclusion throughout of detailed definitions of key literary and historical terms. A section of color plates, along with black-and-white illustrations, afford welcome visual perspective. The bibliography and endnotes are exhaustive and have already served this reviewer's further investigations. This comprehensive, articulate history should prove invaluable to a broad readership. ... Summing up: "Essential". * CHOICE *
what Kahn, Lipovetsky, Reyfman and Sandler have managed to encompass and contextualize ... is nothing short of staggering. * Boris Dralyuk, Times Literary Supplement *