Download or read book The Positive Hero in Russian Literature written by Rufus W. Mathewson and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The positive hero was defined by the Soviets as one who set an example for the reader's behavior. As early as 1860, the merits of this ideal model were a central issue in the war between literary imagination and ideological criticism that raged in Russia for a hundred years." "In The Positive Hero in Russian Literature, Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., brings a period of Russian literature to life and demonstrates how the battles over the positive hero reappeared with dramatic clarity in the dissident literary movement that developed after Stalin's death. Mathewson argues that the true continuity between nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian prose was to be found in this persistent conflict between contrary views of the real nature and proper uses of literature. This new edition of a widely acclaimed work, first published in 1958 and covering literary developments through 1946, includes chapters on Belinsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and Sinyavsky." --Book Jacket.