ABOUT THIS BOOK

Vladimir E. Alexandrov advocates a broad revision of the academic study of literature, proposing an adaptive, text-specific approach designed to minimize the circularity of interpretation inherent in the act of reading. He illustrates this method with the example of Tolstoy's classic novel via a detailed "map" of the different possible readings that the novel can support. The novel Anna Karenina emerges as deeply conflicted, polyvalent, and quite unlike what one finds in other critical studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Vladimir E. Alexandrov is the B. E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, editor of The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, and author of Nabokov's Otherworld and The Black Russian.

REVIEWS

"A major contribution to Tolstoy studies. ... Essential." —Choice

"I find this book particularly attractive because it is rooted in formalist and structuralist theory, skeptical about both the premises and the results of much (especially American) later criticism, and respectful of the text of Anna Karenina." —Slavic Review

"Alexandrov does not insist on the resolution of the novel's basic contradictions but leaves it to his reader what to make of Anna Karenina: a work whose tumult of meanings ultimately undoes it or makes it mysterious and rich, like life." —Modern Philology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration

Introduction
            My Aims
            The Problem of Mediation in Interpretation
            Conceptual Mediation in Cultural and Literary Study

Part One. The Plurality and Limits of Interpretation
1. An Ethical Argument for Recognizing Textual Alterity
2. A Psychological Argument for Recognizing Textual Alterity
3. Alterity and Semiotics
4. Jakobson’s “Metalingual Function” and Alterity
5. Hermeneutic Indices, or Guides to Textual Alterity
            5.1. Examples of Hermeneutic Indices
            5.2. Hermeneutic Indices, Predication, Simile, Metaphor
            5.3. Hermeneutic Indices as Guides to the Plurality and Limits of Interpretation
            5.4. Caveats about Hermeneutic Indices
            5.5. Are Hermeneutic Indices Inherent in Literary Works?

Part Two. Anna Karenina: A Map of Readings
6. From Theory to Practice
7. Early Signals
8. Reading Readings, and Art about Art
            8.1. Varieties of Texts
            8.2. Reading and Anna’s Death
            8.3. Mikhailov’s Paintings
            8.4. Mikhailov and Artistic Creation
            8.5. Music and the Nature of Artistic Form
            8.6. Form in Art and in Life
9. Art and Metaphysics
            9.1. The Plotinian Implications of Mikhailov’s “Creation”
            9.2. The Spiritual in Art and in Life
10. The Formal Implications of the Novel’s Conception of Art
            10.1. The Two Poles of Language and the Embodiment of Aesthetic Ambivalence
            10.2. Examples of Structures of Meaning
            10.3. Tolstoy on the Structure of Anna Karenina
11. The Problem of Language
12. Absolutism: Claims about Universal Truth and Morality
            12.1. The General Problem of Fictional Authority
            12.2. The Narrator
            12.3. The Narrator, Karenin’s Self–Deception, and the Nature of True Faith
            12.4. Karenin and Echoes of Saint Paul
            12.5. Karenin and the “Crude Force”
            12.6. The Incompatibility of Saint Paul’s Teachings with Human Nature
            12.7. Saint Paul on Marriage, Sex, and God’s Work
13. Relativity: Characters as Arbiters of Meaning and Value
            13.1. Introduction
            13.2. Multiple Viewpoints in Narrative
            13.3. Characters and Relative Time
            13.4. Levin
            13.4.1. Levin and Kitty
            13.4.2. Levin and His Brothers
            13.4.3. Levin and Others
            13.4.4. Levin’s Faith
            13.5. Anna
            13.5.1. Anna in Moscow
            13.5.2. Anna’s Return to St. Petersburg
            13.5.3. Anna and Vronsky
            13.5.4. Anna’s Death
            13.5.5. Anna and Others
            13.5.6. Anna’s Arranged Marriage to Karenin
            13.5.7. Anna’s Moral Sense
            13.5.8. Anna’s “Doubling”
            13.6. Stiva
                        13.6.1. To Judge or Not to Judge Stiva?
                        13.6.2. The Example of Turgenev’s Hunter’s Sketches
            13.7. Dolly
            13.8. Vronsky
            13.9. Kitty
            13.10. Karenin
            13.11. Minor Characters
14. Self and Others
            14.1. Understanding and Uniting with Others
            14.2. The Individual and the Collective
            14.3. Collective Coercion and the Reification of Evil
15. The Inner Voice and Conscience
            15.1. Stiva
            15.2. Levin
            15.3. Anna
            15.4. Kitty
            15.5. Vronsky
            15.6. Conscience, Ethics, and Relativization
16. Essentialism
            16.1. Nature and Humankind
            16.2. Women
                        16.2.1. The “Woman Question”
                        16.2.2. Women’s Wisdom, Narrative Structure, and Male Insight
            16.3. Men
            16.4. Peasants
            16.5. Essentialism and the Problem of Freedom
                        16.5.1. Levin
                        16.5.2. Other Characters
17. Fate
            17.1. Anna
            17.2. Levin
            17.3. Fatidic Connections between Anna’s and Levin’s Plots
18. Literary Form, Fate, Freedom, Chance

Conclusion

Notes
Works Cited
Index

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