S P E C I F I C AT I O N S December 2018 -i2l9lii87l7SiclhZZu8-n-7vZbmU4Zu8-n-7vZA64Zg8,n99ZZ3o3as -i2l9lii87l7Si,l-ZZu,89n996ZbmU4Zu,89n996ZA64Zg,99n99ZZ150r$ hZBZ-ZZh9233ZZ a:00£ZoDot5oT5a S P E C I F I C AT I O N S September 2018 -i2l9lii87l7SS2l,ZZu8Sn-7vZbmU4Zu8Sn-7vZA64Zgchn--ZZ3o3as -i2l9lii87l7SSilSZZu,,9n996ZbmU4Zu,,9n996ZA64Zg2Sn99ZZ150r$ hZBZ-ZZc9233ZZSZ3$0r0. a:00£ZoDot5oT5a Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) was a successful Soviet author and journalist, but he is more often recognized in the West as Russian literature’s leading dissident. How do we account for this paradox? In the first collection of essays to explore the Russian author’s life and works in English, leading experts present recent multidisciplinary research on Grossman’s experiences, his place in the history of Russian literature, key themes in his writing, and the wider implications of his life and work in the realms of philosophy and politics. Born into a Jewish family in Berdychiv, Grossman was initially a supporter of the ideals of the Russian Revolution and the new Soviet state. During the Second World War, he worked as a cor- respondent for the Red Army newspaper and was the first journalist to write about the Nazi extermination camps. As a witness to the daily violence of the Soviet regime, Grossman became more and more aware of the nature and forms of totalitarian coercion, which gradually alienated him from the Soviet regime and earned him a reputation for dissidence. A survey of the remarkable accomplishments and legacy left by this controversial and contradictory figure, Vasily Grossman reveals a writer’s power to express freedom even under totalitarianism. Anna Bonola is professor of Slavic studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. Giovanni Maddalena is professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Molise and author of The Philosophy of Gesture. Since before the Declaration of Independence, poets have shaped a collective imagination of nationhood at critical points in American history. In The Patriot Poets Stephen Adams considers major odes and “progress poems” that address America’s destiny in the face of slavery, the Civil War, imperialist expansion, immigration, repeated financial boom and bust, gross social inequality, racial and gendered oppression, and the rise of the present-day corporate oligarchy. Adams elucidates how poets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ad- dressed political crises from a position of patriotic idealism and how military interventions overseas in Cuba and in the Philippines increasingly caused poets to question the actions of those in power. He traces competing loyalties through major works of writers at both extremes of the political spectrum, from the radical Republican versus Confederate voices of the Civil War, through New Deal liberalism versus the lost-cause propaganda of the defeated South and the conservative isolationism of the 1930s, and after the Second World War, the renewed hope of Black leaders and the existential alienation of Allen Ginsberg’s counter-culture. Adams draws connections between familiar touchstones of American poetry and significant yet neglected writing by Philip Freneau, Sidney Lanier, Archibald MacLeish, William Vaughn Moody, Muriel Rukeyser, Genevieve Taggard, Allen Tate, Henry Timrod, Melvin B. Tolson, and others. An illuminating and pioneering work, The Patriot Poets provides a rich understanding of the ambivalent relationship American poets and poems have had with nation, genre, and the public. Stephen J. Adams is professor of American and modernist literature at the University of Western Ontario and co-editor of The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia. 3 6 M Q U P F A L L 2 0 1 8 S L A V I C S T U D I E S • L I T E R A R Y S T U D I E S L I T E R A R Y S T U D I E S Vasily Grossman A Writer’s Freedom edited by anna bonola and giovanni maddalena An indispensable study of one of the greatest and most paradoxical writers of twentieth-century Russia. The Patriot Poets American Odes, Progress Poems, and the State of the Union stephen j. adams Tracing the political wisdom in American poetry, from colonial times to present day.