Self-Conscious Realism
Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel
Margarita Vaysman
Click cover to enlarge Buy hardback at: Buy paperback at: Booksellers & libraries: | Legenda 26 July 2021 • 174pp ISBN: 978-1-781883-83-9 (hardback) • RRP £80, $110, €95 ISBN: 978-1-781883-86-0 (paperback, 21 December 2023 ) ISBN: 978-1-781883-89-1 (JSTOR ebook) Access online: Books@JSTOR ModernRussianFictionstudent-priced In addition to its original library hardback edition, this title is now on sale in the new student-priced Legenda paperback range. Does metafiction — the literary technique that forces readers to acknowledge that they are reading a work of fiction — have a hidden past? Margarita Vaysman’s insightful study challenges the view of metafiction as a postmodern phenomenon and reveals that it thrived in mid-nineteenth century in Russia. Practised by writers of disparate ideological persuasions, metafiction was the creative answer to the period’s twin preoccupations with politics and aesthetics. Moreover, it wove these contemporary debates into the very fabric of Russian literature’s most recognised genre -- the classic realist novel. In Self-Conscious Realism, Vaysman examines metafiction’s complex correlation with the Russian realist tradition in three novels from the 1860s: What Is to Be Done? (1863) by Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Troubled Seas (1863) by Aleksei Pisemskii, and A Woman’s Lot (1862) by Avdot’ia Panaeva. These case studies are richly contextualised by the writers’ diaries, letters, memoirs, and legal and financial documents. Margarita Vaysman is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of St Andrews. Reviews:
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Bibliography entry: Vaysman, Margarita, Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (Legenda, 2021) First footnote reference: 35 Margarita Vaysman, Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (Legenda, 2021), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Vaysman, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Vaysman, Margarita. 2021. Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (Legenda) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Vaysman 2021: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Vaysman 2021: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) This title is distributed on behalf of MHRA by Ingram’s. Booksellers and libraries can order direct from Ingram by setting up an ipage Account: click here for more. Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Self-Conscious-Realism |