Anniversary Essays on Tolstoy

A century after Leo Tolstoy's death, the author of War and Peace is widely admired but too often thought of only with reference to his realism and moral sense. The many sides of Tolstoy revealed in these new essays speak to today's readers with astonishing force, relevance, and complexity. In a lively, challenging style, leading scholars range over his long life, from his first work Childhood to the works of his old age like Hadji Murat, and the many genres in which he worked, from the major novels to aphorisms and short stories. The essays present new approaches to his central themes: love, death, religious faith and doubt, violence, the animal kingdom, and war. They also assess his reception both in his lifetime and subsequently. Setting new agendas for the study of this classic author, this volume provides a snapshot of current scholarship on Tolstoy.

Contents:

Tolstoy and music / Caryl Emerson
Sublime vision and self-derision : the aesthetics of death in Tolstoy / Andreas Schönle
Tolstoy's peaceable kingdom / Robin Feuer Miller
Leo Tolstoy : pacifist, patriot, and molodets / Donna Tussing Orwin
Leo Tolstoy's correspondence with Nikolai Strakhov : the dialogue on faith / Irena Paperno
The worm of doubt : Prince Andrei's death and Russian spiritual awakening of the 1860s / Ilya Vinitsky 
Tolstoy's spirituality / G.M. Hamburg 
Tracking the English novel in Anna Karenina : who wrote the English novel that Anna reads? / Edwina Cruise 
Violence and the role of drama in the late Tolstoy : The realm of darkness / Justin Weir 
What men quote by : Tolstoy, wise sayings, and moral tales / Gary Saul Morson 
The "proletarian lord" : Leo Tolstoy's image during the Russian revolutionary period / Michael A. Denner.