The Rise of New Realism in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

Abstract: As one of the main trends of contemporary Russian literature, new realism comes into being in the context of Russian cultural liberalization and cultural transformation, containing new realities, new strategies and new ideas. Inheriting the heritage of Russian neo-realism in the Silver Age, it also makes use of postmodernist conceptions. However, unlike traditional realism and postmodernism, Russian new realism has such different features as philosophical orientation of aesthetic concepts, hybridity of artistic techniques, and diversity of narrative strategies. The tenets of Russian new realist poetics can be best summarized as synthesis of social reality, variety of poetic expression, and diversity of characterization, all of which go in accordance with the style and the macroscopic characteristics of contemporary Russian literature. Sharing the same aesthetic features and basic principles with modernism, Contemporary Russian new realism still falls into a broad aesthetic category of modernism. Occupying a liminal space between realism and postmodernism, Russian new realism began to merge into postmodernism in the 1990s when postmodernism was on its high tide in Russia.

Key words: contemporary Russian literature, new realism, realism, modernism, post-modernism

Wang Shufu. The Rise of New Realism in Contemporary Russia[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018, 40(3): 131-142.

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