In quest of Tolstoy / / Hugh McLean.

• Superior document: Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history
• Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program
• Author: McLean, Hugh, 1925-2017.; National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program
• MitwirkendeR: Jahn, Gary R.,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : Academic Studies Press,, 2008.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (viii, 244 pages)
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Lev Tolstoy has held the attention of mankind for well over a century. A supremely talented artist, whose novels and short stories continue to entrance readers all over the world, he was at the same time a fearless moral philosopher who explored and challenged the fundamental bases of human society-political, economic, legal, and cultural. Hugh McLean, Professor Emeritus of Russian literature at the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying and writing about Tolstoy for many years. In these essays he investigates some of the numerous puzzles and paradoxes in the Tolstoyan heritage, engaging both with Tolstoy the artist, author of those incomparable novels, and Tolstoy the thinker, who, from his impregnable outpost at Yasnaya Polyana, questioned the received ideas and beliefs of the whole civilized world. In two concluding essays, "Tolstoy beyond Tolstoy," McLean deals with the impact of Tolstoy on such diverse figures as Ernest Hemingway and Isaiah Berlin.

Table of Contents

Buried as a writer and as a man: the puzzle of family happiness -- The case of the missing mothers, or when does a beginning begin? -- Truth in dying -- Which English Anna? -- Love in resurrection: eros or agape? -- Could the master err? a note on "God sees the truth but waits" -- Was the master well served? further comment on "God sees the truth, but waits" / with Gary R. Jahn -- A woman's place -- The young Tolstoy and the woman question -- Tolstoy and Jesus -- Rousseau's god and Tolstoy's god -- Claws on the behind: Tolstoy and Darwin -- A clash of utopias: Tolstoy and Gorky -- Hemingway and Tolstoy: a pugilistic encounter -- Foxes into hedgehogs: Berlin and Tolstoy.