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Author Presto, Jenifer

Title Beyond the flesh : Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist sublimation of sex / Jenifer Presto
Published Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, ©2008

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Description 1 online resource (xviii, 334 pages) : illustrations
Contents Poetry against progeny: Blok and the problem of poetic reproduction. Unbearable burdens: Blok and the modernist resistance to progeny ; Recurring nightmares: Blok, Freud, and the specter of Die Ahnfrau ; Reproductive fantasies: Blok and the creation of The Italian verses ; A time of troubles: Blok and the disruption of poetic succession -- Writing against the body: Gippius and the problem of lyric embodiment. Style "femme": Gippius and the resistance to feminine writing ; The dandy's gaze: Gippius and disdainful desire for the feminine ; Eternal feminine problems: Gippius, Blok, and the incarnation of the ideal ; Body trouble: Gippius and the staging of an anatomy of criticism -- Afterword: the return of the repressed: illegitimate babies and an unwieldy body
Summary Though the Russian Symbolist movement was dominated by a concern with transcending sex, many of the writers associated with the movement exhibited an intense preoccupation with matters of the flesh. Drawing on poetry, plays, short stories, essays, memoirs, and letters, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Beyond the Flesh documents the often unexpected form that this obsession with gender and the body took in the life and art of two of the most important Russian Symbolists. Jenifer Presto argues that the difficulties encountered in reading Alexander Blok and Zinaida Gippius within either a feminist or a traditional, binary gendered framework derive not only from the peculiarities of their creative personalities but also from the specific Russian cultural context. Although these two poets engaged in gendered practices that, at times, appeared to be highly idiosyncratic and even incited gossip among their contemporaries, they were not operating in a vacuum. Instead, they were responding to philosophical concepts that were central to Russian Symbolism and that would continue to shape modernism in Russia
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-315) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 1880-1921 -- Criticism and interpretation
Gippius, Z. N. (Zinaida Nikolaevna), 1869-1945 -- Criticism and interpretation
Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 1880-1921
Gippius, Z. N. (Zinaida Nikolaevna), 1869-1945
Symbolism (Literary movement) -- Russia
Sublimation (Psychology) in literature.
Sex in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Russian & Former Soviet Union.
Sex in literature
Sublimation (Psychology) in literature
Symbolism (Literary movement)
Russia
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2008011968
ISBN 9780299229535
029922953X
0299229505
9780299229504
1282697501
9781282697508
9786612697500
6612697504