Anna Karenina and Others Tolstoy&146s Labyrinth of Plots [Hardcover]

With its complex structure,Anna Kareninaplaces special demands on readers who must follow multiple plotlines and discern their hidden linkages. In her well-conceived and jargon-free analysis, Liza Knapp offers a fresh approach to understanding how the novel is constructed, how it creates patterns of meaning, and why it is much more than Tolstoy’s version of an adultery story.
            Knapp provides a series of readings ofAnna Kareninathat draw on other works that were critical to Tolstoy’s understanding of the interconnectedness of human lives. Among the texts she considers areThe Scarlet Letter, a novel of adultery with a divided plot;Middlemarch, a multiplot novel with neighborly love as its ideal; and Blaise Pascal’sPensées, which fascinated Tolstoy during his own religious crisis. She concludes with a tour-de-force reading ofMrs. Dallowaythat shows Virginia Woolf constructing this novel in response to Tolstoy’s treatment of Anna Karenina and others.

Knapp readsAnna Kareninawith other texts, including ones that strongly influenced Tolstoy, to illuminate his understanding of the interconnectedness of human lives.

“Makes an invaluable contribution to Tolstoy studies and the theory of the novel. Knapp’s comparative readings highlight biographical, philosophical, religious, and literary roots of the ‘hidden labyrinth of linkages’ that connect the two plots ofAnna Karenina.”—Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, Bryn Mawr College

“Knapp’s keen eye for prodding out books that play off one another illuminates not only the multiplot novel in its various guises, but the adultery novel as Tolstoy reinvented it, where sexual transgression is forced to serve the quest for God and faith. A mind-expanding book.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University