No More Horsing Around

Sex, Love, and Motherhood in Tolstoi'sKholstomer

Bibliographic Data

ID4754128
AuthorsRonald D Leblanc (corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume70
Issue3
Pages545-568
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5612/slavicreview.70.3.0545
OpenAlexW2444193475
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited23

By giving us a horse's perspective on human life, Lev Tolstoi's Kholstomer (1886) has usually been recognized in the west as a stellar example of the author's use of "defamiliarization." Most of the critical attention the story has received in Russia, by contrast, consists of Soviet-era studies diat examine the creative history of the text and/or remark on its satiric elements. In this article, Ronald D. LeBlanc examines instead the treatment of the themes of sex, love, and motherhood in Tolstoi's story about a castrated horse. In particular, he explores the significance that castration- with its accompanying cessation of sexual desire-appears to have in this story about a selfless gelding, a tale that may be read as the expression of a desire on the author's part to be unburdened of the affliction of sexual lust and thus to be freed to pursue a more spiritual, less carnal existence on earth

Aesthetics · Art · Expression (computer science · Human sexuality · Literature · Lust · Perspective (graphical · Psychoanalysis · Sexology · Sexual desire · Sociology · Visual arts · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · History · Psychology · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Themes in Literature Analysis

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub