Intertextuality in exile: the fusion of French and Russian language and literature in the works of Gaito Gazdanov

Thesis

This thesis considers the works of Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) and analyses his engagement with a transnational range of predecessors and contemporaries. In foregrounding Gazdanov’s intertextual practice as a crucial element of his creative process, it demonstrates his deliberate cultivation of a (primarily, but not exclusively) Franco-Russian canon as a means of fashioning an identity as an exilic writer. The method draws flexibly on different theories of intertextuality (Kristeva, Barthes, Culler, Taranovskii) and aligns them with Russian Formalist theories of the literary process as unfolding through imitation, struggle and parody. Gazdanov’s influences are situated according to four distinct axes: a Russian nineteenth-century tradition, European (principally French) modernism, early Soviet writing, and the works of émigré contemporaries of the younger generation. Each of the four cases articulates a different iteration of intertextuality: typological transpositions of Russian classical novels, the impact of Proust as a cultural institution in interwar Paris, an interest in Babel’ as a Russian author mediating the non-Russian influence of Maupassant, and a mutual dialogue with Nabokov as a fellow émigré playing with canonical Russian influences. Intertextuality serves as a means of understanding how Gazdanov and other émigré writers aligned themselves with established literary canons, and simultaneously struggled against them in search of their own voice. What emerges from this enquiry is literature representing a multilingual, heterotopic form of identity that resists rigidly national canons.

Authors: Purkiss, M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-no0jmpvaq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: émigré writing; Gazdanov; literary influence; modernism; intertextuality; exile
• Subjects: Language; French; Formalism (Literary analysis); Intertextuality; Russian; Literature