Choreography in conversation : the imperial ballet and Russian literature, 1851-1905
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In "Choreography in Conversation: The Imperial Ballet and Russian Literature, 1851-1905, " I argue that the simultaneous incorporation of cosmopolitan influences and promotion of national themes in Russian literature and ballet in the second half of the nineteenth century participated in the construction of identity through performance. The emergence of a professional cadre of writers alongside an imperial system of ballet patronage led to a perceived division between the "progressive" realm of realist prose and the "retrograde" world of ballet. Yet I show how, contrary to contemporary criticism and subsequent scholarly interpretations, these two cultural spheres developed along similar artistic lines and in lively conversation, with attention to folkloric sources and concerns about authenticity and in anticipation of modernist experiments with form. Drawing on the historical production of Jules Perrot's 1851 ballet "The Naiad and the Fisherman, " I first consider the fetishization of ballet in the case of Lev Tolstoy and his lifelong polemic with dance: in his early story "The Tale of How Another Girl Named Varenka Quickly Grew Up, " his novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina, " and his aesthetic manifesto "What is Art?." I then examine Arthur Saint-Léon's adaptation of fairytales by Peter Ershov and Alexander Pushkin into "national ballets, " which were popularly lauded as "authentically" Russian yet parodied by the prominent radical writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin as ballet travesties. I next propose that Nikolai Nekrasov's long poem "Ballet" mirrors Marius Petipa's "Florida" in a poetic pastiche of peasants, pirates, and patrons. Finally, I posit a shared provenance in the fin-de-siècle fugues of Peter Tchaikovsky, Lev Ivanov, and Petipa's "Swan Lake" and Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull." In my dissertation, I offer a new understanding of the relationship between text and spectacle, in which ballet evolved from a space for discourse on Russian identity to an integral part of the Russian national narrative and one of its most celebrated cultural commodities.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Rouland, Natalie Joan |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures |
| Primary advisor | Safran, Gabriella, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Safran, Gabriella, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Freidin, Gregory |
| Thesis advisor | Greenleaf, Monika, 1952- |
| Thesis advisor | Scholl, Tim, 1962- |
| Advisor | Freidin, Gregory |
| Advisor | Greenleaf, Monika, 1952- |
| Advisor | Scholl, Tim, 1962- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Natalie Joan Rouland. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2010. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Natalie Joan Rouland
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