Title of the article:

“LITERATURNY BYT” OF RUSSIAN FORMALISTS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN GIFT BOOKS: CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

Author(s):

Alexandra P. Urakova

Information about the author/authors

Alexandra P. Urakova — PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: alexandraurakova@ yandex.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2017

Volume

Vol. 47

Pages

Pp. 184-192

Received

August 18, 2017

Date of publication

March 15, 2018

Index UDK

821.161.1 + 821.111(73)

Index BBK

83(2Рос=Рус)52 + 83(7Сое)52

Abstract

The essay explores methodological potential of the term “literaturny byt” (literary everyday life) coined by Russian Formalists, Boris A. EiKhenbaum and Yuri N. Tyanyanov, applying it to the study of Anglophone culture. On the one hand, this term has almost no currency in the Western literary theory being familiar mainly to Slavists who study the history of Russian Formalism; there is no adequate translation of the word “byt” into English. On the other this concept is remarkably congenial with the tools of a number of contemporary theoretical schools that proclaimed themselves and are known as anti-formalist. The author argues that “literaturny byt” may be employed an important critical tool for the study of dynamic boundaries between the literary and extra-literary, texts and para-texts and therefore offers a “compromise” between formal textual analysis and material culture history. Given that Russian Formalist applied “literaturny byt” to the study of annuals in the so called Pushkin period of Russian literary history, it seems reasonable to expand the geographical scope and use it in the study of American antebellum gift books. Modelling themselves on British keepsakes, gift books were even more closely engaged with material culture of their time than Russian annuals.

Keywords

Russian Formalists, literaturny byt (literary everyday life), Boris M. Eikhenbaum, Yuri N. Tyanyanov, contemporary literary theory, nineteenth-century American gift books, Christmas gifts, material culture, Poe, Hawthorne.

References

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