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Text and Fashion in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture

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Text and Fashion in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture UNIVERSIТY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Narrative Re/Styling: Text and Fashion in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literatures by Sanja Lacan 2018 © Copyright by Sanja Lacan 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Narrative Re/Styling: Text and Fashion in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture by Sanja Lacan Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literatures University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Stephen Frank, Co-Chair Professor Ronald W. Vroon, Co-Chair This dissertation examines the symbolic role the fashion system played in the process of modernization of nineteenth-century Russian society, and in the articulation of that process in literary texts of the period. Because of its infinite potential for the creation of new and ambiguous meanings, as well as its formal similarity with literature, which requires constant innovation in order to sustain marketability, writing about fashion offered a rich context for debates about the nature of aesthetics, society, and modernity. Each chapter focuses on a unique moment in the cultivation of fashion, taste, and consumer habits in the latter half of the nineteenth century, beginning with Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev’s commodification of literature in their journalistic and literary texts of the 1840s, through Ivan Goncharov’s narratives of self-fashioning and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s ii examination of commerce and ideology mid-century, to Leo Tolstoy’s commodification of the female subject in Anna Karenina during the 1870s, and its subsequent echoes in our contemporary cinematic experience of the novel. Rather than focusing on fashion per se, this dissertation instead examines fashion culture, which involves new social roles, new forms of communication, and ultimately new values and attitudes. My project thus considers the implications of fashion not only for the development of the Russian literary sphere in the nineteenth century, but also for our contemporary cultural processes. iii The dissertation of Sanja Lacan is approved. Olga Kagan Stephen Frank, Committee Co-Chair Ronald W. Vroon, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Note on Translation and Transliteration ................................................................................... vi Vita ............................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One Dressing Up the Russian Literary Journal: Fashion, Fiction, and Textual Fluidity in "The Contemporary" ...............................................................................................................................29 Chapter Two Redressing the Provincial Gentleman: Social Progress and Its Discontents in Ivan Goncharov’s Prose ...............................................................................................................................................78 Chapter Three What Is to Be Done?: Ideology and Consumption in the Age of Great Reforms ........................127 Chapter Four Anna Karenina, “Banana Karenina,” and Commodified Subjectivity .........................................160 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................202 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................207 v Note on Translation and Transliteration Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. When available, I cite from published translations of Russian and French works into English, and provide the bibliographic information in the corresponding footnote. All Russian names, titles, and short quotations have been transliterated into the Roman alphabet using the Library of Congress system. Personal names have been rendered according to the Library of Congress transliteration of the Russian spelling, with the exception of popular Anglophone forms, such as “Fyodor Dostoevsky” or “Leo Tolstoy.” All Russian terms and phrases that exceed one line of text have been preserved in the original Cyrillic script, and are accompanied by their English equivalent in the corresponding footnote. All block quotes include the original Cyrillic and the accompanying translation in the body text of the chapter. vi Vita EDUCATION 2006 M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Los Angeles 2001 B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology, emphasis in Neurobiology, University of California, Berkeley B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley PUBLICATIONS Peer-reviewed articles 2015 “Concealing, Revealing, and Coming Out: Lesbian Visibility in Dalibor Matanić’s ‘Fine Dead Girls’ and Dana Budisavljević’s ‘Family Meals’.” Studies in European Cinema, 12.3: 229-245. * Republished 2017 in monograph Queer European Cinema: Queering Cinematic Time and Space. Ed. Leanne Dawson. London: Routledge. * Included in 2016 digital collection Global Approach to LGBTQ. <http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/ah/global-approach-to/global-approach- to...lgbtq/lgbtq-communication-studies> 2004 “Variable effects of chronic subcutaneous administration of rotenone on striatal histology.” Journal of Comparative Neurology, 478.4:418-26 (with Chunni Zhu, Patrick Vourc'h, Pierre-Olivier Fernagut, Sheila M. Fleming, C.D. Dicarlo, Ronald L. Seaman, Marie-Françoise Chesselet). 2003 “Proryv Soprano (Sopranos’ Breakthrough).” Kriticheskaia massa, 2003:3. <http://magazines.russ.ru/km/2003/3/kluch.html> (with Konstantine Klioutchkine). Other publications 2017 Translator. “On the Other Side” (an interview with Croatian film director Zrinko Ogresta). <http://www.independent.com/news/2017/jan/26/on-the-other-side/> 2010 “On Feeling, Filling, and Flying (Mad Men, Season 4.9).” Mad World on Kritik. <http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2010/09/mad-world-on-kritik-mad-men-season- 49_21.html> (with Konstantine Klioutchkine). vii CONFERENCES 2016 “Postsocialist Nostalchic: Yugoslav Pop-Culture in Contemporary Croatian Television.” Upcoming ASEEES National Convention, Washington DC, November 19. 2015 “Men without Moustaches: Transitional Masculinities in the Croatian Romantic Comedy.” ASEEES National Convention, Philadelphia, November 21. 2014 “Dressing Up the Russian Literary Journal: Fashion, Fiction, and Textual Fluidity in ‘The Contemporary’.” ASEEES National Convention, San Antonio, November 20. 2008 “National Identity in Croatian Television Drama.” AAASS National Convention, Philadelphia, November 20. 2007 “Constructions of Male Identity in Croatian Men’s Magazines.” 2007 Summer Research Lab at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, June 29. 2007 “Our People, Their Programming: The Croatian Sitcom in the Context of Media Globalization.” 2007 California Slavic Colloquium, Stanford University, April 15. 2006 “Girls Behaving Badly: Representing the Lesbian in Dalibor Matanić’s Fine Dead Girls.” 2006 California Slavic Colloquium, University of Southern California, April 8. 2006 “Girls Behaving Badly: Representing the Lesbian in Dalibor Matanić’s Fine Dead Girls.” 15th Biennial Balkan and South Slavic Studies Conference, UC Berkeley, March 31. viii Introduction Что ни говорите, а даже и фрак с сюртуком - предметы, кажется, совершенно внешние, не мало действуют на внутреннее благообразие человека. No matter if people say that a jacket and a tailcoat are items that seem to be completely external, these items nonetheless influence the internal beauty of the individual. Vissarion Belinsky1 The affinity between literature and fashion is inevitable, since the notion of “style” and its attendant implications apply simultaneously to literary expression and fashionable clothing.2 Cultural theorists and semioticians have suggested that fashion is a visible language that refers not only to clothing, but clothes in relation to the self and to society. In literature, the sartorial frame enhances characterization and functions as a site of aesthetic and social inscription by simultaneously revealing and concealing cultural conventions. Thus, the deployment of the written clothed body, as well as disembodied attire serves not only as an image or a metaphor, but also as a narrative element that reaches far beyond the literary dimension. This dissertation examines the symbolic role fashion played in the process of modernization of nineteenth-century Russian society, and in the articulation of that process in literary texts of the period. The emergence of the modern fashion industry and the development of mass production, marketing, and retailing in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the ways 1 Vissarion Belinsky, “Peterburg i Moskva,” Fiziologiia Peterburga (Moskva: Nauka, 1991), 22. Translation from Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Petersburg: The Physiology of a City (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 33. Italics are in the original. 2 Dress historian Aileen Ribeiro notes in her study of the Stuart culture of dress, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, “Literature
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