Tolstoy Studies Journal

Tolstoy Studies Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description

Tolstoy Studies Journal

Tolstoy Studies Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book Here

Book Description


Simply Tolstoy

Simply Tolstoy PDF Author: Donna Tussing Orwin
Publisher: Simply Charly
ISBN: 1943657319
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
“This is a little gem, the best introduction to Tolstoy I have ever encountered, and it is more than that. The most accomplished scholar will find important new insights, the sort that one immediately recognizes as both true and profound. Orwin brings Tolstoy to life as a person and as a writer, and she also shows beautifully how the two are linked. The discussions of Tolstoy's views on psychology and the nature of art are especially illuminating.” —Gary Saul Morson, Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana, his ancestral estate located about 120 miles from Moscow. While he would live and travel in other places over the years, he always considered this family residence in the Russian heartland as his home. His lifelong quest for truth and meaning began while he was a university student. Subsequent experiences as an artillery officer in the Caucasian and Crimean Wars, and time spent in St. Petersburg and Europe, broadened his perspective and profoundly influenced him. In Simply Tolstoy, Professor Donna Tussing Orwin traces the author’s profound journey of discovery and explains how he mined his tumultuous inner life to create his great works, including War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilych. She shows how these books, both fiction and nonfiction, are not autobiographical in the conventional sense, but function as snapshots of Tolstoy’s state of mind at specific points in his life. The story she tells is, inevitably, intertwined with the story of Russia, a country also in constant search of its identity. Mixing biography, literary analysis, and history, Simply Tolstoy is a satisfying read for those already familiar with the author’s work, as well as an accessible and thoroughly engaging introduction to a literary giant who was also a tireless and uncompromising seeker of truth.

Tolstoi: Art and Influence

Tolstoi: Art and Influence PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004533435
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Editors Robert Reid and Joe Andrew present eleven contributions by international scholars which highlight Tolstoi’s influence on his contemporaries and posterity through his fiction and thought. A figure of Tolstoi’s intellectual stature has naturally inspired an impressive range of responses. These encompass stage versions of his novels (War and Peace and Resurrection), communes founded in his name, and translations which have sought to capture the essence of his works for successive generations. Tolstoi is also compared in this volume with his contemporaries in chapters on Dostoevskii, Veselitsakaia, Rozanov and Elizabeth Gaskell. The reader of this work will gain new and unique insights into an unparalleled genius of world literature, especially into his immense cultural reach which continues to this day. Contributors: Carol Apollonio, Katherine Jane Briggs, Elena Govor, Nel Grillaert, Susan Layton, Cynthia Marsh, Henrietta Mondry, Richard Peace, Alexandra Smith, Olga Sobolev, Willem Weststeijn, Kevin Windle.

Tolstoy's War and Peace

Tolstoy's War and Peace PDF Author: Predrag Cicovacki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197625886
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"Literature deals with the intrusion of the extraordinary into the ordinary. This intrusion may begin in a work's very first sentence, as in Kafka's The Trial: "Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." Alternatively, it may be hinted at in the first sentences and more internally oriented, as in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground: "I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man. No, I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver. However, I don't know a damn thing about my liver; neither do I know whether there is anything really wrong with me." Tolstoy avoids such dramatic openings and introduces the extraordinary into the ordinary by means of storytelling. Literature, he believes, tells us stories about experiences that take us, temporarily or permanently, out of our comfort zone, off well-trodden paths. The story can be simple or complex, funny or tragic, about a small incident or the shattering of one's world. Using an example from Tolstoy's own What is Art?, the story could be about a boy who encounters a wolf in the forest yet manages to run back to the safety of his home to tell the story to his parents, or to anyone who is willing to listen. In War and Peace, the story is about a series of brutal wars that Russia fought against France between 1805 and 1812, in which the Russian troops were pushed to the brink of defeat but eventually managed to overpower Napoleon's invading army and reestablish peace"--

Queer Tolstoy

Queer Tolstoy PDF Author: Javier Sethness Castro
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000833941
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Queer Tolstoy is a multidimensional work combining psychoanalysis, political history, LGBTQ+ studies, sexology, ethics, and theology to explore the life and art of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Using a psychobiographical framework, Sethness Castro uncovers profoundly queer dimensions in Tolstoy’s life experiences and art. Deftly contributing to the progressive and radical analysis of gender and sexuality, this book examines how Tolstoy’s erotic dissidence informed his anarchist politics, anti-militarist ideals, and voluminous literary production. Sethness Castro analyzes the influence of Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Cervantes, Rousseau, Kant, Herzen, Proudhon, Chernyshevsky, and his mother Marya Volkonskaya on the artist's writings. Furthermore, he details Tolstoy's emblematic linking of LGBTQ+ desire with moral and erotic self-determination and resistance to Tsarist despotism—especially in War and Peace. This book is vital reading for those interested in the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis, queer studies, and Russian history. Chapter 2 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

A Calendar of Wisdom

A Calendar of Wisdom PDF Author: Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439130957
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This collection of daily thoughts to nourish the soul from the world’s sacred texts by Leo Tolstoy feature gems of inspiration and wisdom—author Thomas Keneally calls this book “transcendent, and that we are grateful he lived long enough to endow us with his grand inheritance.” This is the first-ever English-language edition of the book Leo Tolstoy considered to be his most important contribution to humanity, the work of his life's last years. Widely read in pre-revolutionary Russia, banned and forgotten under Communism; and recently rediscovered to great excitement, A Calendar of Wisdom is a day-by-day guide that illuminates the path of a life worth living with a brightness undimmed by time. Unjustly censored for nearly a century, it deserves to be placed with the few books in our history that will never cease teaching us the essence of what is important in this world.

Tolstoy's Political Thought

Tolstoy's Political Thought PDF Author: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000650987
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), besides writing famous novels such as War and Peace, also wrote on political issues, especially later in his life, putting forward a political philosophy which might be termed 'Christian anarchism'. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Tolstoy’s political thought. It outlines in a systematic way Tolstoy’s thought, which was originally articulated unsystematically in diverse, often informal writing, such as pamphlets, letters, and speeches, as well as books, and in his novels, where Tolstoy’s thinking is put forward implicitly through the novels’ characters. The book sets out the basic themes of Tolstoy’s political thought: his acceptance of the teachings of Jesus, his criticism of the way in which Jesus’ teachings have been relayed by the church through traditional creeds and dogma, his passionate rejection of political violence by both the state and those working for reform, his plea for a nonviolent response to violence and injustice, and his call for society to forego its institutional shackles and enact a community of peace, love, and justice. The book also includes background information on the Russia of Tolstoy’s time, including the religious context, and a discussion of how Tolstoy’s political thought has been received by his admirers, who included Gandhi, and his critics.

Tolstoy's Quest for God

Tolstoy's Quest for God PDF Author: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351471759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The religious dimension of Tolstoy's life is usually associated with his later years following his renunciation of art. In this volume, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere demonstrates instead that Tolstoy was preoccupied with a quest for God throughout all of his adult life. Although renowned as the author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and other literary works, and for his activism on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden of Russia, Tolstoy himself was concerned primarily with achieving personal union with God.Tolstoy suffered from periodic bouts of depression which brought his creative life to a standstill, and which intensified his need to find comfort in the embrace of a personal God. At times he was in such psychic pain he wanted to die. Yet Tolstoy felt that he deserved to suffer, and he learned to welcome suffering in masochistic fashion. Rancour-Laferriere locates the psychological underpinnings of Tolstoy's suffering in a bipolar illness that led him actively to seek suffering and self-humiliation in the Russian tradition of holy foolishness. With voluntary suffering, and Jesus Christ as his model, Tolstoy advocated nonresistance to evil, and in his daily life he strove never to return evil actions or words with physical or verbal resistance. On the other hand, being bipolar, Tolstoy in some situations would drift in a manic direction, indulging in delusions of grandeur. Indeed, the aging Tolstoy occasionally went so far as to equate himself with God, as can be seen from his diaries and personal correspondence.The pantheistic world view which Tolstoy achieved at the end of his life meant that God was within himself and within all people and all things in the entire universe. By this time Tolstoy was also utilizing images of a mother to represent his God. With this essentially maternal God so conveniently available, there was nowhere Tolstoy could be without Her. For, in the end, Tolstoy's quest for God was a

Tolstoy's Pacifism

Tolstoy's Pacifism PDF Author: Colm McKeogh
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1604976349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the most influential, challenging, and provocative pacifist of his generation. The most famous person alive at the dawn of the twentieth century, his international stature came not only from his great novels but from his rejection of violence and the state. Tolstoy was a strict pacifist in the last three decades of his life, and wrote at length on a central issue of politics, namely, the use of violence to maintain order, to promote justice, and to ensure the survival of society, civilization, and the human species. He unreservedly rejected the use of physical force to these or any ends. Tolstoy was a religious pacifist rather than an ethical or political one. His pacifism was rooted not in a moral doctrine or political theory but in his straightforward reading of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Despite his fame, Tolstoy's pacifism remains insufficiently studied. A hundred years after his death, Tolstoy is a figure unfamiliar in political science, encountered, if at all, as the author of hortatory quotations on the wrongness of political violence or of allegiance to the state. This work of political science offers an account of Leo Tolstoy as a Christian thinker on political violence. It presents Tolstoy's pacifism as a striking case of the impact of religious idealism on political attitudes. The Russian novelist offers an instructive case study in Christian pacifism and in the attractions and failings of strict, literalist, and simplistic religious approaches to the many and complex issues of politics. Today, the political implications of religious fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and Christian faith are very much live issues and the contemporary discussion of them should not omit pacifism. In this first study of Tolstoy's pacifism by a political scientist, Colm McKeogh unravels the complexities of Tolstoy's writings on Christianity and political violence. This work serves scholars of political science by bringing together relevant extracts from Tolstoy's writings and providing a succinct treatment of the core political issues. It establishes that Tolstoy's stance is primarily one of non-violence rather than non-resistance. McKeogh's work then assesses the internal consistency of Tolstoy's pacifism, its grounding in the Gospels and Christian tradition, its political and anti-political implications, and the meaning in life that it offers. It finds that Tolstoy does great service to the pacifist cause (with his defense of peace as close to the centre of Christ's message) and yet harm to it too (by divorcing peace from the love that is even more central to Christ's message). Tolstoy's political and religious legacy is not that of a prophet, a social activist, a moral reformer, a political idealist or pacifist theorist but that of a dissident. Tolstoy stands as one of the great dissidents of twentieth-century Russia, a man who condemned the system utterly and who refused to perform any act that could be construed as compromising with it. He left behind a powerful statement of the urgent human need to connect our daily living to a deep and fulfilling conception of the meaning of life. Tolstoy's Pacifism is important for political science, Christian ethics, literature, and Russian collections.

Creating Anna Karenina

Creating Anna Karenina PDF Author: Bob Blaisdell
Publisher: Pegasus Books
ISBN: 9781643134628
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The story behind the origins of Anna Karenina and the turbulent life and times of Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Remarkably, there has not yet been an examination of Leo Tolstoy specifically through the lens of this novel. Critic and professor Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina. In the process, we see where Tolstoy’s life and his art intersect in obvious and unobvious ways. Readers often assume that Tolstoy, a nobleman-turned-mystic would write himself into the principled Levin. But in truth, it is within Anna that the consciousness and energy flows with the same depth and complexities as Tolstoy. Her fateful suicide is the road that Tolstoy nearly traveled himself. At once a nuanced biography and portrait of the last decades of the Russian empire and artful literary examination, Creating Anna Karenina will enthrall the thousands of readers whose lives have become deeper and clearer after experiencing this hallmark of world literature.