Wonder Confronts Certainty Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter

Name: Wonder Confronts Certainty
Author: Gary Saul Morson

Auteur: Gary Saul Morson

Taal: Engels

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Auteur: Gary Saul Morson

Engels
Hardcover
9780674971806
16 mei 2023
512 pagina's

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Samenvatting

Gary Saul Morson brings to life the intense intellectual debates shaping two centuries of Russian writing. Dialogues of great writers with philosophical wanderers and blood-soaked radicals reveal a contest between unyielding dogmatism and open-minded wonder, rendering the Russian literary canon at once distinctive and universally human.

A noted literary scholar traverses the Russian canon, exploring how realists, idealists, and revolutionaries debated good and evil, moral responsibility, and freedom.

Since the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with a clarity and intensity found nowhere else. In this wide-ranging meditation, Gary Saul Morson delineates intellectual debates that have coursed through two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then the Soviet Union enchanted readers with their idealism, philosophical insight, and revolutionary fervor.

Morson describes the Russian literary tradition as an argument between a radical intelligentsia that uncompromisingly followed ideology down the paths of revolution and violence, and writers who probed ever more deeply into the human condition. The debate concerned what Russians called “the accursed questions”: If there is no God, are good and evil merely human constructs? Should we look for life’s essence in ordinary or extreme conditions? Are individual minds best understood in terms of an overarching theory or, as Tolstoy thought, by tracing the “tiny alternations of consciousness”? Exploring apologia for bloodshed, Morson adapts Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the non-alibi—the idea that one cannot escape or displace responsibility for one’s actions. And, throughout, Morson isolates a characteristic theme of Russian culture: how the aspiration to relieve profound suffering can lead to either heartfelt empathy or bloodthirsty tyranny.

What emerges is a contest between unyielding dogmatism and open-minded dialogue, between heady certainty and a humble sense of wonder at the world’s elusive complexity—a thought-provoking journey into inescapable questions.

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Taal: en
Bindwijze: Hardcover
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum: 16 mei 2023
Aantal pagina's: 512

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Hoofdauteur: Gary Saul Morson
Hoofduitgeverij: Harvard University Press

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Product breedte: 156 mm
Product lengte: 235 mm
Studieboek: Ja
Verpakking breedte: 162 mm
Verpakking hoogte: 51 mm
Verpakking lengte: 243 mm
Verpakkingsgewicht: 1671 g

EAN

EAN: 9780674971806

Je vindt dit artikel in

Categorieën: Mens & Maatschappij

Geschiedenis

Poëzie, Bloemlezingen & Letterkunde

Politiek

Literatuurwetenschap

Politieke ideologieen

1800 tot 1900

1900 tot 2000

Boeken
Taal: Engels
Boek, ebook of luisterboek?: Boek
Beschikbaarheid: Leverbaar
Studieboek of algemeen: Studieboeken

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