Haunted Empire

Haunted Empire shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity.

Valeria Sobol argues that the persistent presence of Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire is a key literary form that enacts deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. Her book brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as she explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms "the imperial uncanny." Focusing on two spaces of the imperial uncanny—the Baltic north/Finland and the Ukrainian south—Haunted Empire reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Valeria Sobol is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Febris Erotica and a coeditor of Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Valeria Sobol's book applies a colonial lens to analyze gothic motives in the Russian-language literature of the nineteenth century....While the English gothic has been studied from a postcolonial perspective, Haunted Empire pioneers this approach in the Russian imperial context.

Timely, concise, and brilliant. Sobol's lucid and fluid prose ably traverses a host of conceptual frames and disciplinary fields. A necessary reading for Slavists, comparatists, and historians alike. Akin to finding a brittle old map of the Russian imperial consciousness with striking twenty-first century resonance.

Valeria Sobol's closely researched, absorbingly written monograph turns a long-awaited Gothic lens on Russian and Ukrainian literature of the Romantic era.

Haunted Empire is an outstanding contribution to nineteenth-century studies that brings the 'Gothic turn' to the fore and illuminates hitherto unexamined aspects of Russia's imperial experience.

Olga Maiorova, University of Michigan, author of From the Shadow of Empire:

This substantial and original book is the first—and quite persuasive—attempt to connect Russian empire studies and the examination of the Gothic form in a systematic manner.

Edyta Bojanowska, Yale University, author of A World of Empires:

This fascinating book is the first to combine studies of the Gothic and Russia's imperial imagination, offering insightful contributions to each and bringing scholarly attention to marginalized and understudied texts. Sobol's utterly original alignment of the Baltic North and Ukrainian South highlights the portability of Russia's imperial tropes.