Search results for "Mass literature"
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L’intreccio, il dettaglio e le cose: un apologo sulla fortuna sovietica di un termine dei formalisti
2022
The term siuzhetnaia proza, or ‘plot-based prose’, is recurrent in Soviet literary debate. Its roots lie in the basic Formalist opposition: if plot is the main device of prose, everything which is not plot must be regarded as motivation. This opposition involves psychology, but also details, i.e. objects (bourgeoisie idols). The term survived in Soviet debate as a euphemism for mass literature, called ‘plot-based literature’ by critics from a range of backgrounds. But is it possible to measure the space that plot occupies in a given work? And what about science fiction, a mass genre where the invention and the depiction of a world is fundamental?
The Soviet Spy Thriller. Writers, Power, and the Masses, 1938-2002
2022
It is commonly held among scholars that in the Stalin years no specific mass literature existed in the Soviet Union; what do we do, then, with Lev Ovalov’s Major Pronin or with Lev Sheinin’s stories, which began to appear since the mid-Thirties? What about Nikolai Shpanov’s post-war million-sellers? The Soviet authorities did not like to admit that they published low-quality literature aimed at the uncultured masses; they valued, however, its propa- ganda potential, hence this contradictory situation. Spy narratives, moreover, connected as they are with conspiracy theories, were of course welcomed in the atmosphere of the great purges. These works are no continuation of the “Red Pinkerton” …