From Orientalism to Cultural Capital
The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s
Olga Soboleva and Angus Wrenn
From Orientalism to Cultural Capital presents a fascinating account of the wave of Russophilia that pervaded British literary culture in the early twentieth century. The authors bring a new approach to the study of this period, exploring the literary phenomenon through two theoretical models from the social sciences: Orientalism and the notion of «cultural capital» associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Examining the responses of leading literary practitioners who had a significant impact on the institutional transmission of Russian culture, they reassess the mechanics of cultural dialogism, mediation and exchange, casting new light on British perceptions of modernism as a transcultural artistic movement and the ways in which the literary interaction with the myth of Russia shaped and intensified these cultural views.
List of Figures
| Figure 1 | ‘Novelists Who May Be Read in A. D. 2029’, Manchester Guardian, 3 April 1929. |
| Figure 2 | The number of texts (fiction) related to Russian subject-matter based on the bibliography in Anthony Cross, The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to 1980: An introductory survey and bibliography (1985). |
| Figure 3 | The number of texts (fiction and first-hand travel accounts) related to Russian subject-matter based on the following sources: Fiction – Anthony Cross, The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to 1980 (1985). Travel literature – based on a combination of data from Anthony Cross, In the Land of the Romanovs: An Annotated Bibliography of First-hand English-language Accounts of the Russian Empire (1613–1917) (2014); Andrei N. Zashikhin, Britanskaia rossika vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX veka (1995); H. W. Nerhood, To Russia and Return: An Annotated Bibliography of Travelers’ English-Language Accounts of Russia from the Ninth Century to the Present (1968). |
| Figure 4 | H. G. Wells’ drawing of Lenin, letter to Upton Sinclair, early 1919. |
| Figure 5 | Tamara Karsavina as Karissima and Basil Forster as Lord Vere in The Truth about the Russian Dancers (1920). Press Association collection. ← vii | viii → |
| Figure 6 | Original design: The Truth about the Russian Dancers by Paul Nash. Victoria and Albert Museum. |
| Figure 7 | Costume design by Paul Nash (for Tamara Karsavina). Victoria and Albert Museum. |
| Figure 8 | Photo of Angelica Bell, daughter of Vanessa Bell and niece of Virginia Woolf, in costume as the Russian Princess from Woolf’s novel Orlando. Tate Archive. |