Road, River and Book: Russia’s Literary Underworld
Join Barbara Henry of the University of Washington Seattle with the talk on ”Road, River and Book: Russia’s Literary Underworld”. Tuesday, January 26th 2021. The talk is at 2pm PST/5pm EST.
The Russian literary descent or katabasis takes three distinct forms: the folkloric distant journey, the classical voyage over water, and the Romantic “found manuscript.” Unlike the vertically-organized underworld of western European literature, the lateral orientation of the Russian katabasis reflects both native geography and a psychic ideal that levels social and economic hierarchies. This talk looks at how Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the House of the Dead” (1862) unifies this tri-partite model.
REGISTER HERE VIA ZOOM
