Acts of Logos in Pushkin and Gogol Petersburg Texts and Subtexts [Hardcover]

Acts of Logosexamines the 19th-century foundations of St. Petersburgs famous literary heritage, with a focus on the unifying principle of material animation. Ever since Pushkins 1833 poemThe Bronze Horseman, the city has provided a literary space in which inanimate things (noses, playing cards, overcoats) spring to life. Scollinss book addresses this issue of animacy by analyzing the powerful function of language in the citys literature, from its mythic originsin which the tsar Peter appears as a God-like creator, calling his city forth from nothingto the earliest texts of its literary tradition, when poets took up the pen to commit their own acts of verbal creation. Her interpretations shed new light on the canonical works of Pushkin and Gogol, exposing the performative and subversive possibilities of the poetic word in the Petersburg tradition, and revealing an emerging literary culture capable of challenging the official narratives of the state.Acts of Logosexamines the 19th-century foundations of St. Petersburgs famous literary tradition, with a focus on the unifying principle of material animation. Innovative interpretations of canonical texts by Pushkin and Gogol shed new light on the powerful, creative function of language in the Petersburg tradition.

Inthis extensive, interesting new study of the collective literary output we knowas the Petersburg text, Kathleen Scollins seeks to redirect an extensivecritical debate to the linguistic register. & Through extensive discussion ofbiblical and historical contexts, as well as through consideration of thetension between orality and writing in the tradition of texts about St.Petersburg, Scollins has written a compelling and persuasive reevaluation of familiartexts. The book should prove useful to a broad audience of undergraduate andgraduate students with an interest in literary representations of St.Petersburg and the evolution of the Russian canon. Ani Kokobobo, Universityof Kansasl³1