From Orientalism to Cultural Capital The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s

• Main Author: Soboleva, Olga (auth)
• Other Authors: Wrenn, Angus (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Peter Lang International Academic Publishing Group 2017
• Subjects: Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Literature; Anglo-Russian connections; British literature; Modernism; Russophilia; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Ivan Turgenev; John Galsworthy; Leo Tolstoy; London; Virginia Woolf
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

From Orientalism to Cultural Capital presents a fascinating account of the wave of Russophilia that pervaded British literary culture in the early twentieth century. The authors bring a new approach to the study of this period, exploring the literary phenomenon through two theoretical models from the social sciences: Orientalism and the notion of «cultural capital» associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Examining the responses of leading literary practitioners who had a significant impact on the institutional transmission of Russian culture, they reassess the mechanics of cultural dialogism, mediation and exchange, casting new light on British perceptions of modernism as a transcultural artistic movement and the ways in which the literary interaction with the myth of Russia shaped and intensified these cultural views.