Popular Literature, Fiction and Songs in Imperial Russia Online
Popular Literature, Fiction and Songs in Imperial Russia Online
The collection illustrates the chief genres of Russian popular literature and includes chivalric tales, historical fiction and updated fairy tales, as well as stories of adventure, banditry, detectives, success, war and empire, women and gender. The collection follows the evolution of the Russian language in its popular commercial print form, an evolution that the Bolsheviks interrupted, but one that has now resumed.
Number of titles: 208
Languages used: Russian
E-ISBN: 978 90 04 19266 9
More information on Brill.com
The colorful cheap stories and songbooks that flooded Russia in the 19-20th centuries exemplify the richness of the Russian popular imagination. The literature of the
lubok, named for the prints that circulated in the same milieu, was a ubiquitous expression of popular taste.
Cast between fairytale and myth, it represents an important aspect of the Russian cultural tradition; the underside of a great literature in which large themes are reduced to their most rudimentary elements. The collection includes penny dreadfuls, historical fiction, chivalric and bandit tales, detectives, family dramas, songbooks, and more. The collection also includes rags-to-riches tales of social mobility, adventures set in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the stories of the occult world of wizards and sorceresses. In addition, readers can find contemporary popular narratives about riding the new railroads. Taken together, these lively texts illustrate changing stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, and social class. Their authors also invoke historical memory, celebrating notable personages and eras of interest to their readers.
Virtually unknown to readers in the Soviet era, these crude texts are now recognized as the precursors of post-Soviet mass-market fiction. In Imperial Russia as today popular authors played on readers' hopes and dreams, as well as their animosities and fears. Then as now commercial authors created outlandish plots that saw a second life in the medium of film.
The collection of ca. 200 titles illustrates the chief genres of Russian popular literature originating in the early nineteenth century and including chivalric tales, historical fiction and updated fairy tales, as well as stories of adventure, banditry, detectives, success, war and empire, women and gender, and the occult. Among the remarkable titles is the complete text of Russia's first truly popular novel, N. I. Pastukhov's Bandit Churkin (1883-84), which counted Anton Chekhov among its thousands of readers. Here too are original and later versions of the classic early nineteenth-century chivalric tales, such as the adventures of Bova Korolevich, a story noted by Belinsky, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. The collection also includes tales about Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, the Cossack rebels Sten'ka Razin and Pugachev, and heroes of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the War with Japan, and World War I.
The authors of these crude texts celebrated the teeming life of Russian cities. Aficionados of the Russian detective story can delight in the Russian incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter, as did the critic and children's author Kornei Chukovsky. The collection also includes rags-to-riches tales of social mobility, adventures set in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the stories of the occult world of wizards and sorceresses. In addition, readers can find contemporary popular narratives about riding the new railroads such as Misha Evstigneev's The Railroad: New Humorous Descriptions of Scenes on the Train (1877) and also dramas of the battle of the sexes acted out in factories, tenements, and among the servants of rich merchants.
The collection features popular versions of well-known folktales such as The Story of Ivan the Tsar's Son, the Grey Wolf, and the Firebird, made famous by Stravinsky. Songbooks, with titles such as The Stoker (1915), Marusia Loved Her Friend (1910), and Marusia Poisoned Herself (1915) typify the changing oral culture in which printed texts became the standard for popular songs.
From popular songs to fairy tales and war stories, the collection follows the evolution of the Russian language in its popular commercial print form, an evolution that the Bolsheviks interrupted, but one that has now resumed.
Prof. Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University
Cast between fairytale and myth, it represents an important aspect of the Russian cultural tradition; the underside of a great literature in which large themes are reduced to their most rudimentary elements. The collection includes penny dreadfuls, historical fiction, chivalric and bandit tales, detectives, family dramas, songbooks, and more. The collection also includes rags-to-riches tales of social mobility, adventures set in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the stories of the occult world of wizards and sorceresses. In addition, readers can find contemporary popular narratives about riding the new railroads. Taken together, these lively texts illustrate changing stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, and social class. Their authors also invoke historical memory, celebrating notable personages and eras of interest to their readers.
Virtually unknown to readers in the Soviet era, these crude texts are now recognized as the precursors of post-Soviet mass-market fiction. In Imperial Russia as today popular authors played on readers' hopes and dreams, as well as their animosities and fears. Then as now commercial authors created outlandish plots that saw a second life in the medium of film.
The collection of ca. 200 titles illustrates the chief genres of Russian popular literature originating in the early nineteenth century and including chivalric tales, historical fiction and updated fairy tales, as well as stories of adventure, banditry, detectives, success, war and empire, women and gender, and the occult. Among the remarkable titles is the complete text of Russia's first truly popular novel, N. I. Pastukhov's Bandit Churkin (1883-84), which counted Anton Chekhov among its thousands of readers. Here too are original and later versions of the classic early nineteenth-century chivalric tales, such as the adventures of Bova Korolevich, a story noted by Belinsky, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. The collection also includes tales about Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, the Cossack rebels Sten'ka Razin and Pugachev, and heroes of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the War with Japan, and World War I.
The authors of these crude texts celebrated the teeming life of Russian cities. Aficionados of the Russian detective story can delight in the Russian incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter, as did the critic and children's author Kornei Chukovsky. The collection also includes rags-to-riches tales of social mobility, adventures set in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the stories of the occult world of wizards and sorceresses. In addition, readers can find contemporary popular narratives about riding the new railroads such as Misha Evstigneev's The Railroad: New Humorous Descriptions of Scenes on the Train (1877) and also dramas of the battle of the sexes acted out in factories, tenements, and among the servants of rich merchants.
The collection features popular versions of well-known folktales such as The Story of Ivan the Tsar's Son, the Grey Wolf, and the Firebird, made famous by Stravinsky. Songbooks, with titles such as The Stoker (1915), Marusia Loved Her Friend (1910), and Marusia Poisoned Herself (1915) typify the changing oral culture in which printed texts became the standard for popular songs.
From popular songs to fairy tales and war stories, the collection follows the evolution of the Russian language in its popular commercial print form, an evolution that the Bolsheviks interrupted, but one that has now resumed.
Prof. Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University
Location of originals
National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg
National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg
Cite this page
Popular Literature, Fiction and Songs in Imperial Russia Online, advisor: J. Brooks, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009 <http://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/popular-literature-fiction-and-songs-in-russia>