First Love Is Exactly Like Revolution
Intimacy as Political Allegory in Ivan Turgenev's Novella Spring Torrents
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5016530 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexey Vdovin (0000-0003-0800-0577, National Research University Higher School of Economics), Pavel Uspenskij (0000-0003-2356-3036, National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 80 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 504-522 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Slavic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/slr.2021.148 |
| OpenAlex | W4206443034 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
This article tackles the allegorical mode of Russian realism using Ivan Turgenev's novella Spring Torrents (1872) and its political implications as a case study. We argue that this deeply intimate story of love and moral fall can be read in the context of the "social imaginary" which, in Turgenev's manner, is wrapped in motives and symbols correlating to "revolutionary" and "reactionary" discourses. The article shows how this projection emerges in the narration without direct political discourse by means of allegory. It is this mode that ties together the intimate and the natural and gives Turgenev's novellas a political dimension, which is obvious in his novels but latent in the novellas, thus opening them up to various sociological interpretations. Employing various theoretical readings of allegory, we explain how allegory is built upon and around the subjectivity of Turgenev's characters, implying concepts such as sexuality and the unconscious that had not yet been coined as such but directly influenced future European fiction
Allegory · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Novella · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reactionary · Realism · Subjectivity · The Imaginary · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Highly cited | No |
|---|