The Last Soviet Avant-Garde: OBERIU - Fact, Fiction, Metafiction

by Graham Roberts

Overview

This is the first comprehensive study of the group of avant-garde Soviet writers who styled themselves OBERIU, "The Association for Real Art". Graham Roberts reexamines commonly-held assumptions about OBERIU, its identity as a group, its aesthetics, its relationship to the formalists and the Bakhtin circle, and its place within Russian and European literary traditions. Roberts concludes by showing how the self-conscious literature of OBERIU—its metafiction—occupies an important transitional space between modernism and postmodernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521028349
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Notes on transliteration and convention; Introduction: OBERIU - the last Soviet avant-garde; 1. Authors and authority; 2. Rereading reading; 3. Language and representation; Conclusion: OBERIU - between modernism and postmodernism?; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"In this context, Robert's book... is a triumph of postmodern attitudes with regard to the Stalinist past." The Times Literary Supplement

"This book is built upon a firm foundation of research..." Sarah Pratt, Slavic Review

"...well-researched and thoughtful..." Victor Terras, World Literature Today

"Roberts' book is noteworthy for its thorough examination and reexamination of the aesthetic theories and practices of OBERIU against the background of Russian literary theories in the first few decades of this century. It is especially valuable for the comparatist interested in how those theories anticipate postmodern ones in the West. Roberts writes beautiful informed prose. Roberts' concise, detailed prose...relate to OBERIU ensure an enlightening read." Canadian Slavonic Papers

From the Publisher