Georg Lukács and Leo Tolstoy

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 159 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Agnes Heller ◽  
Deng Fengming
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Theory Of The Novel ◽  
First Time ◽  
Georg Lukács

Tolstoy was a frame of reference in the work of Lukács twice, during 1914–16 and 1935–6 respectively. His first-time encounter with Tolstoy was presented in the chapter of The Theory of the Novel involving both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but the former was given more credit and reckoned as the prophet of a new world. It was not until the 1930s that Lukács’ taste changed, and his top priority went to Tolstoy instead. Yet, with due respect to the vicissitudes of his life throughout the 1910s until the 1930s, Lukács remained faithful to his philosophy of history in terms of aesthetic judgment. His preference for the grand artworks was not new as his admiration for Homer showed, but his belief in the resurrection of grand art as realism was rooted in a new and false illusion. Still, his essays on Tolstoy of the 1930s are rich in aesthetic analysis, such as the different aspects of temporality.

Saints and Miracles: The End of the Affair

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Graham Greene ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Dorothy Sayers ◽  
Theory Of The Novel ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Georg Lukács

Miracles rarely appear in novels, yet Graham Greene includes several of them in The End of the Affair. Sarah Miles heals a boy suffering from appendicitis and a man with a disfigured cheek. Like a saint, she seems to heal or revive through her compassionate touch, as when she raises her lover, who may or may not have died in a bomb blast, by touching his hand. This chapter locates Sarah’s interventions amidst debates about miracles, beginning with David Hume’s sceptical rejection of inexplicable phenomena, through such mid-century books as C. S. Lewis’s Miracles and Dorothy Sayers’ The Mind of the Maker. The inherent godlessness of novels, as Georg Lukacs puts the matter in Theory of the Novel, would seem to ban mystical content altogether from novelistic discourse. Yet this chapter argues for the revaluation of mystical content—the ordeals of the whisky priest in The Power and the Glory, for example—within the generic precincts of the novel.

scholarly journals Hegel and Lukács on the Novel

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (02) ◽  
pp. 23-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Speight
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Theory Of The Novel ◽  
Prose Literature ◽  
Georg Lukács

That Hegel was a significant influence on the young Georg Lukács'Theory of the Novelis a point few would dispute. Lukács himself insisted that the first part of TN represented his own transition from Kantian to Hegelian theory, and most critics have subsequently affirmed the importance of Hegel to Lukács' pre- (or, depending on one's view, proto-) Marxist argument inTN. Yet the two are in some ways strange to take together in the context of novelistic theory. Despite the profusion of novelistic literature in his own time and his own significant appropriation of it for the limning of essential moments of the development of the world-historical spirit, Hegel's officialAestheticshardly presents what one could claim to be an especially worked-outtheoryof the novel. TheAestheticstakes up literature in general primarily under the rubric of providing a theory of the genres ofpoetry— epic, lyric and dramatic — and what relatively few words Hegel actually devotes to the novel and prose literature in the lectures are tucked in corners: at the end of the discussion of the development of the epic, in the discussion of the historical form of the romantic, and in scattered comments elsewhere. As forTN, despite the strong connections some have drawn between Hegel and Lukács — Peter Demetz said that Lukács was ‘in a certain sense … the last Hegelian in the grand style’ (Demetz 1967: 215) — others have questioned whether Lukács' work should be regarded primarily as making a contribution to the philosophy of literature in the tradition from which Hegel writes.

Counterfactual Literary Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-112
Author(s):  
Nasser Mufti
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Counterfactual Theory ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukács

The occasion for this collection of responses to Telling It Like It Wasn't is a conference titled “Novel Theory.” Given this conjuncture, it seems only obvious to pose the question: What does a counterfactual theory of the novel look like? Of course, there is no single theory of the novel, but there is a book and a thinker most closely associated with the phrase, “theory of the novel,” and that is Georg Lukács. And while Theory of the Novel is the obvious text to revisit to counterfactually historicize and/or theorize, it seems more worthwhile for the history of Europe's counterfactual historical imagination to turn to Lukács's other great text, one that features somewhat prominently in Gallagher's book—namely, The Historical Novel.

The Narrative, Its Components and Its ‘Novelisation’

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-188
Author(s):  
Marlé Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Repeated Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Battle Scenes ◽  
Georg Lukács

This chapter represents a narratological breakdown of the tale. Drawing on the theory of Seymour Chatman, Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács, I discuss the tale and its relationship to the ʿUdhrī love tale, the popular epic and the novel in terms of its discourse, setting, characters and events. I argue that the tale has a plot with a ‘homophonic’ texture, whereby a ‘melody’ of singular events (such as the abduction, torture and rescue of Laylā) overlays a ‘drone’ of repeated events (namely battle scenes). I conclude with a comparison of the tale with its twentieth-century novelistic adaptation and a discussion of what the comparison reveals about the pre-history of the Arabic novel.

scholarly journals Novels by Anthony Trollope and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Genetic and Typological Similarities

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-89
Author(s):  
Valeria G. Andreeva ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Development Path ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
Literary Journals ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
First Time ◽  
Careful Comparison

The article discusses the ideological and thematic similarities of the novels by Anthony Trollope and Leo Tolstoy and evaluates the possible images and motives that Tolstoy could creatively master after reading Trollope’s novels and use to create the novel Anna Karenina. The author of the article states that more than two dozen Trollope’s novels, which were especially popular among his contemporaries, were translated into Russian and published in Russia. Moreover, some of them were released more than once, appearing first on the pages of literary journals, and then in the form of separate books. Trollope’s novels were included into a kind of an artistic polylogue of Russian novelists who talked about the future of the country, about a new hero, about current problems of the present and the development path of Russia. A careful comparison of Trollope’s novels and the Anna Karenina novel allows the author of the article to conclude that the English writer, his artistic images and ideas had a significant influence on Tolstoy. Anna Karenina gives an important “hint”: the protagonist reads a book whose plot elements resemble the collective image of Trollope’s works very much. The author of the article, for the first time, thoroughly studies the possible effects of Trollope’s novels on Tolstoy, notes the lines of the writers’ ideological convergence and divergence. She analyzes individual plot schemes and elements of Trollope’s novels that Tolstoy could creatively master and the most important images and motifs of Trollope’s works that influenced Tolstoy’s artistic search. The author shows that the Russian classic admired Trollope’s skill in portraying characters, his thought-out system of heroes’ changing, passing certain stages of development as artistic time progresses. She notes specific exchanges at the character level in Trollope’s novels Orley Farm and Can You Forgive Her? and Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. While comparing the novels, the author pays special attention to the topics of human destiny, family, to the images of statesmen and strong, resolute heroines; notes the special veracity and artistic accuracy of Trollope and Tolstoy; analyzes the images of narrators in the writers’ novels. The author states that, following Trollope, Tolstoy illustrates many diseases of society and strange, pathological deviations towards artificial life. However, all the artistically mastered elements of Trollope acquire a different scale in Tolstoy not only due to the truthful and accurate transfer of facts and events by the Russian writer, but also due to the religious consciousness present in Tolstoy’s works. Externally evaluating Trollope’s novels as novels of life’s reflections, Tolstoy used many of the positive features of Trollope’s heroes, shuffling them in his own way and endowing them with his characters

The art of cunning: Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin and Soviet Socialist realism

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Yanping Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Georg Lukács

This article examines Georg Lukács’ The Historical Novel (1937–8) and four works on the novel written by Mikhail Bakhtin between 1936 and 1941 in relation to the Great Terror and Soviet socialist realism. It argues that, to a large extent, Lukács’ and Bakhtin’s theories of the novel of the 1930s stemmed from a moral urgency felt and shared by the authors to salvage the novel – a category that has significant implications for history for both theorists – from the damages wrought by socialist realism. Focusing on the ways in which Bakhtin and Lukács encode their dissent into legitimate narratives, the article draws attention to the art of cunning – dissimulation, equivocation, doublespeak and coding – as a means of disrupting tyrannical discourse, registering difference and surviving. Both Lukács and Bakhtin held ambiguous views on socialist realism and both of them capitalized on the ambivalence inherent in official Soviet discourse.

Assimilation als Untergang Ludwig Gumplowicz ' Judentum und die Frage des Antisemitismus

2012 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-116 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Georg Lukács

AbstractIn his book The Destruction of Reason, Georg Lukács declared the Jewish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909) to be a forerunner of National-Socialist race theory. Although Gumplowicz's philosophy of history undoubtedly features social-Darwinism and a certain category of “race,” for obvious reasons he could not approve of the central element of contemporary and subsequent German race-theories: AntiSemitism. But rather than resolutely opposing Jew-hatred, Gumplowicz rationalized the everlasting persecution of the Jews and favoured a strong affirmation of Jewish assimilation as an effective antidote. As little space as the theory of anti-Semitism takes up in Gumplowicz's works, as much it seems to be the key to discover the motives of this resigned Enlightener and former civic-nationalist revolutionary.

Buried Narratives: Exhuming the Mother's Story in Oliver Twist

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-266
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Maternal Inheritance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
First Time ◽  
Critical Consideration

Initially, Oliver Twist (1839) might seem representative of the archetypal male social plot, following an orphan and finding him a place by discovering the father and settling the boy within his inheritance. But Agnes Fleming haunts this narrative, undoing its neat, linear transmission. This reconsideration of maternal inheritance and plot in the novel occurs against the backdrop of legal and social change. I extend the critical consideration of the novel's relationship to the New Poor Law by thinking about its reflection on the bastardy clauses. And here, of course, is where the mother enters. Under the bastardy clauses, the responsibility for economic maintenance of bastard children was, for the first time, legally assigned to the mother, relieving the father of any and all obligation. Oliver Twist manages to critique the bastardy clauses for their release of the father, while simultaneously embracing the placement of the mother at the head of the family line. Both Oliver and the novel thus suggest that it is the mother's story that matters, her name through which we find our own. And by containing both plots – that of the father and the mother – Oliver Twist reveals the violence implicit in traditional modes of inheritance in the novel and under the law.

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