Before They Were Titans

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are the titans of Russian literature. As mature artists, they led very different lives and wrote vastly different works, but their early lives and writings display provocative kinships, while also indicating the divergent paths the two authors would take en route to literary greatness. The ten new critical essays here, written by leading specialists in nineteenth-century, Russian literature, give fresh, sophisticated readings to works from the first decade of the literary life of each Russian author—for Dostoevsky, the 1840s; for Tolstoy, the 1850s. Collectively, these essays yield composite portraits of these two artists as young men finding their literary way. At the same time, they show how the early works merit appreciation for themselves, before their authors were Titans.

Elizabeth Cheresh Allen received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1984, where she taught for seven years. Since 1991, Allen has taught at Bryn Mawr College as Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Beyond Realism: Turgenev’s Poetics of Secular Salvation (Stanford UP, 1992) and A Fallen Idol is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transition (Stanford UP, 2007). She is also the editor of The Essential Turgenev (Northwestern UP, 1994) and co-editor of Freedom and Responsibility in Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert Louis Jackson (Northwestern UP, 1995).

Katherine Bowers, University of British Columbia, Slavic and East European Journal vol 60.2 (Summer 2016):
The collective format works well for Before They Were Titans, allowing for the inclusion of disparate critical voices and approaches. The essays' diversity in this regard is a strength of the volume and the resulting collection is a pleasure to read ... Thoughtfully selected, arranged and composed, these fresh readings of texrs showcase the vibrant experimentation and impressive literary scope of the young Dostoevsky and Tolstoy on their own terms. This early period of each writer's oeuvre is often critically neglected, and Before They Were Titans comes as a welcome entry in both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy scholarship.

Lynn Ellen Patyk (Dartmouth College) The Russian Review (January 2016, Vol. 75, No. 1):
“This collection of essays by some of the most accomplished scholars, themselves “titans,” in the field of Slavic literary studies brings to bear their extensive knowledge and profound insight on the nascent genius of the young Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The collection is bookended by Elizabeth Cheresh Allen’s introductory essay and by Caryl Emerson’s Afterword “On the Wondrous Thickness of First Things.” These orient and lend coherence to a collection that is in fact very diverse in form and “thickness”: while some of the pieces are akin to pensees, others are full-fledged scholarly articles with significant research behind them. In short, no standard measure can be applied; each essay is unique in its aims, scope, and approach.”

Donna Tussing Orwin:
“This collection of essays exposes readers to early works, most of them little-known or studied, by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Each work is a radical experiment by these young titans, and each anticipates mature masterpieces while representing a road not taken. The contributors to the volume are all well established scholars of nineteenth-century Russian literature who address the works from new perspectives. It opens and closes with excellent commentary — by its editor Elizabeth Cheresh Allen and Caryl Emerson respectively — that knits the volume together.”