Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape

(Paperback)

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Pushkin's palaces or Dostoevsky's slums Many a modern-day visitor to St. Petersburg has one or, more likely, both of these images in mind when setting foot in this stage set-like setting for some of the world's most treasured literary masterpieces. What they overlook is the vast uncharted territory in between. In Mapping St. Petersburg, Julie Buckler traces the evolution of Russia's onetime capital from a "conceptual hierarchy" to a living cultural system--a topography expressed not only by the city's physical structures but also by the literary texts that have helped create it. By favoring noncanonical works and "underdescribed spaces," Buckler seeks to revise the literary monumentalization of St. Petersburg--with Pushkin and Dostoevsky representing two traditional albeit opposing perspectives--to offer an off-center view of a richer, less familiar urban landscape. She views this grand city, the product of Peter the Great's ambitious vision, not only as a geographical entity but also as a network of genres that carries historical and cultural meaning.We discover the busy, messy "middle ground" of this hybrid city through an intricate web of descriptions in literary works; nonfiction writings such as sketches, feuilletons, memoirs, letters, essays, criticism; and urban legends, lore, songs, and social practices--all of which add character and depth to this refurbished imperial city.

Reviews

Winner of the 2005-06 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures "[Mapping St. Petersburg] challenges the enduring myth of the city's uniqueness by exploring its ordinariness, as depicted in "middlebrow" fiction and non-fictional sources, uncovering a rich body of material that in itself should prove invaluable to researchers in a number of disciplines."--Lindsey Hughes, Times Literary Supplement "[Buckler] conveys very effectively what many writers have felt about the city--its elusively cerebral characters, its insubstantiality verging on evanescence."--Catriona Kelly, Russian Review "[Buckler] offers a useful, thematically organized synthesis of interesting writing on St. Petersburg, many of them otherwise inaccessible to anglophone readers."--Stephen Lovell, American Historical Review "[A] brilliant and intriguing exercise in urban textology... [Buckler] conveys the sense of complexity and mystery that defines, and always has defined, Saint Petersburg."--Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, Bookforum

Author Bio

Julie Buckler is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author of "The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia".