Haunted empire : : Gothic and the Russian imperial uncanny / / Valeria Sobol.

• Superior document: NIU series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies
• VerfasserIn: Sobol, Valeria,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca : : Northern Illinois University Press,, 2021.
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: NIU series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies.; Cornell scholarship online.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xi, 198 pages) :; illustrations, maps
• Notes: Previously issued in print: 2020.

This text shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. The book argues that the persistent Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire enact deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. It brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as the book explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms 'the imperial uncanny.' Focusing on two spaces of 'the imperial uncanny' - the Baltic 'North'/Finland and the Ukrainian 'South' - the book reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration and Translation -- Introduction. From the Island of Bornholm to Taman′: The Literary Trajectory of the Russian Imperial Uncanny -- 1. A Gothic Prelude: Nikolai Karamzin’s “The Island of Bornholm” -- 2. In Search of the Russian Middle Ages: The Livonian Tales of the 1820s -- 3. “Gloomy Finland” and Russian Gothic Tales of Assimilation -- 4 . Ukraine: Russia’s Uncanny Double -- 5. On Mimicry and Ukrainians: Empire and the Gothic in Antonii Pogorel′sky’s The Convent Graduate -- 6. ’Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish’s Gothic Ukraine -- Afterword -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index