Romantic encounters : writers, readers, and the Library for Reading /

Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Frazier (Russian language and literature, Sarah Lawrence College) explores European Romanticism from an unusual viewpoint: not the powerhouses of France or German, but the periphery of Russia; not well known writer such as Gogol or Pushkin, but one Osip Ivanovich Senkovkii (1800-58); and not mainstream genres such as the historical novel or lyric poetry, but his literary periodical the Library for Reading. In illuminating the nature of Russian Romantic literature, she also provides insights into Russian identity and Russia's relationship to the West. Annotation 漏2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)   Publisher Summary 2 Romantic Encountersdraws on the works of canonical Romantic writers to show how the Romantic text apparently emerges from complicated exchanges among various reading and writing selves. The author shows that the Romantic ideal of intersubjectivity appears in a very particular light when we turn to later and lesser-known Romantic literary periodicals, above all O.I. Senkovskii's Library for Reading. The Library for Readingis famous not for its Romanticism, but for its crass commercialization of literature. In the author's reading, however, Romanticism and the literary marketplace produce the same destablization of reading and writing identities. Romantic Encountersrestores to Russian literary history a writer and a work long marginalized. As the book places Senkovskii in a broader European context, it argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship of Russian to European Romanticism, and for a particular understanding of European Romanticism as a whole. Romanticism is often described as a movement valorizing sincerity, authenticity, and originality. This book argues exactly the opposite, returning subversiveness to a movement long part of the literary establishment.   Publisher Summary 3 Romantic Encountersfocuses on literary periodicals of the 1830s to describe the destabilization of readerly and writerly identities which occurs when Romantic irony meets an apparently rising literary marketplace.