English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance

by Rachel Polonsky

This is the first study of the Russian reception of English literature from Romanticism to Aestheticism. It focuses particularly on the reception by Russian poets of Shelley, Ruskin, Pater, Frazer and Wilde, which gave new impetus to the Russian imagination at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. Framing this account is a pioneering exploration of the intellectual background to these influences, and a discussion of Russian conceptions of national identity, literary influence and the origins of comparative literary history.

266 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Rachel Polonsky is the author of English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance.

Polonsky's scholarly interests include nineteenth and twentieth century poetry, fiction, and memoir, often with a comparative emphasis, and the place of Russian literature in the overlapping contexts of cultural, intellectual, and political history.