Irène Némirovsky's Russian Influences: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov (Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature) - Softcover

Marta-Laura Cenedese works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS) and the department of Comparative Literature, University of Turku, Finland. She studied at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy, Sciences-Po Paris, France, and completed her doctoral degree at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research deals with twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, narrative hermeneutics, cultural memory, multimodal storytelling and affective research practices.

This book explores the influence of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov on Russian-born French language writer Irène Némirovsky. It considers the complexity of each of these relationships and the different modes in which they appear; demonstrating how, by skillfully integrating reading and writing, reception and creation, Némirovsky engaged with Russian literature within her own work. Through detailed analysis of the intersections between novels, short stories and archival sources, the book assesses to what degree Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov influenced Némirovsky, how this influence affected her work, and to what effects. To this aim the book articulates the notion of creative influence, a method that, in conversation with theories of influence, intertextuality, and reception aesthetics, seeks to reflect a “meeting of artistic minds” that includes affective, ethical, and creative encounters between writers, readers, and researchers.