Beyond Metafiction Self-Consciousness in Soviet Literature [Hardcover]

Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin, it examines, within a broadly Bakhtinian theoretical framework, the relationship between their self-consciousness and their cultural and political context. The texts are shown to challenge notions about the nature and function of literature fundamental to both Soviet and Anglo-American criticism. In particular, although metafictional strategies may seem designed to confirm assumptions about the aesthetic autonomy of the literary text, their effect is to reveal the shortcomings of such assumptions. The texts discussed take us beyond conventional understandings of metafiction by highlighting the need for a theoretically informed account of the history and reception of Soviet literature in which the inescapability of politics and ideology is no longer acknowledged grudgingly, but celebrated.

Neatly transgresses the pitfalls of a professional academic jargon and in simple terms discusses four Russian writers...as the Soviet counterpart of the Westernnouveaux romanciers....Introduces to Western criticism a group of writers and their works hitherto hardly ever mentioned by critics and scholars in non-Russian studies. --World Literature Today

Shepherd's book should be attractive not only to literary scholars but also to anyone interested in the interaction of culture with sociopolitical life in the Soviet period. As such, this superb study deserves consideration along with other major recent works that are challenging stereotyped views of Soviet culture. --Russian Review