Manifestations of Russian literary Orientalism.

Abstract

Using the work of Edward Said as a theoretical starting point, this dissertation explores the ways in which Russian literature and culture engaged the Islamic Near East and the Caucasus. Its primary focus is on the first half of the nineteenth century, a time of increased academic and cultural awareness of the Orient, accelerated territorial expansion, growing economic interest, and a rethinking of the nature of Russian identity, all of which bear heavily on Russian portrayals of the East. Rather than attempt an encyclopedic survey of Russian writing on Eastern themes, this dissertation treats at length three figures indicative of the possibilities contained in Russian Orientalism: Osip Senkovskii, Alexander Griboedov, and Iakov Polonskii. Each writer produced an important body of literary works confronting the East, and at the same time each had important extra-literary commitments to the area. The three chapters examining these writers combine a close reading of individual works with an exploration of broader cultural trends and concerns. In this dissertation I seek to demonstrate that, due to the borrowed nature of Russia's Orientalist discourse and the specificities of Russia's literary and cultural history, Russian writing on the East was a great deal more self-conscious, and therefore flexible, than would be allowed by the theories of Said and his followers. Discourse is not destiny, and Russian writers were able to use Orientalist vocabulary and images to play, ironize, explore, and ultimately reinvent themselves and their relationship to the East.