True Songs of Freedom

Synopsis

Harriet Beecher Stowes 1852 antislavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin was the nineteenth centurys best-selling novel worldwide; only the Bible outsold it. It was known not only as a book but through stage productions, films, music, and commercial advertising as well. But how was Stowes novel one of the watershed works of world literature actually received outside of the American context? True Songs of Freedom explores one vital sphere of Stowes influence: Russia and the Soviet Union, from the 1850s to the present day. Due to Russias own tradition of rural slavery, the vexed entwining of authoritarianism and political radicalism throughout its history, and (especially after 1945) its prominence as the superpower rival of the United States, Russia developed a special relationship to Stowes novel during this period of rapid societal change. Uncle Toms Cabin prompted widespread reflections on the relationship of Russian serfdom to American slavery, on the issue of race in the United States and at home, on the kinds of writing appropriate for children and peasants learning to read, on the political function of writing, and on the values of Russian educated elites who promoted, discussed, and fought over the book for more than a century. By the time of the Soviet Unions collapse in 1991, Stowes novel was probably better known by Russians than by readers in any other country. John MacKay examines many translations and rewritings of Stowes novel; plays, illustrations, and films based upon it; and a wide range of reactions to it by figures famous (Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Marina Tsvetaeva) and unknown. In tracking the reception of Uncle Toms Cabin across 150 years, he engages with debates over serf emancipation and peasant education, early Soviet efforts to adapt Stowes deeply religious work of protest to an atheistic revolutionary value system, the novels exploitation during the years of Stalinist despotism, Cold War anti-Americanism and antiracism, and the postsocialist consumerist ethos.

Copyright:

2013

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780299292935

Publisher:

The University of Wisconsin Press

Date of Addition:

07/31/13

Copyrighted By:

The University of Wisconsin Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.