Vladimir Sorokin's Languages

Vladimir Sorokin’s Languages

Slavica Bergensia, volume 11 (2013)

Edited by Tine Roesen and Dirk Uffelmann

with the assistance of Katharina Kühn

Since coming to the attention of a broader Russian public after the pro-Putin youth movement Walking Together stirred up a storm over Blue Lard in 2002, Vladimir Sorokin has indisputably become one of the most prominent and prolific writers in contemporary Russia, and remains surrounded by an aura of political dissent.

The first book in English dedicated to Sorokin’s œuvre, this volume discusses language as the
main focal point of his writing. The contributions focus on the multifaceted dimensions of language(s) and metalanguage(s) in Sorokin’s works, including archaisms and neologisms, foreign terms or intercultural stereotypes, colloquial and vulgar language, metadiscursive distance and the materialization of metaphors. The volume also includes a roundtable discussion on translation, in which Sorokin himself takes part.

Contents

Vladimir Sorokin’s Languages: An Introduction

Tine Roesen & Dirk Uffelmann

I Discourse and Narration

Fleshing/Flashing Discourse: Sorokin’s Master Trope

Mark Lipovetsky Word/Discourse in Roman

Nariman Skakov

Narrative Discourse in Sorokin’s Prose

Peter Deutschmann

II Ideal Languages

The Romantic Conflict between the Ideal and Reality in Vladimir Sorokin’s Oeuvre

Maxim Marusenkov

Speak, Heart...: Vladimir Sorokin’s Mystical Language

Nadezhda Grigoryeva

The Blue Lard of Language: Vladimir Sorokin’s Meta-Lingual Utopia

Ilya Kalinin

III Bad Words, Bad Writing?

Empty Words? The Function of Obscene Language(s) in Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard

Manuela Kovalev

The Chinese Future of Russian Literature: “Bad Writing” in Sorokin’s Oeuvre
Dirk Uffelmann

The Latin Alphabet in Sorokin’s Works

Martin Paulsen

The Writer’s Speech: Stuttering, Glossolalia and the Body in Sorokin’s A Month in Dachau
José Alaniz

IV Bodies in and beyond the Text

Vladimir Sorokin’s Abject Bodies: Clones and the Crisis of Subjecthood
Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya

Choosing a Different Example Would Mean Telling a Different Story: On Judgement in Day of the Oprichnik

Brigitte Obermayr

Drive of the Oprichnik: On Collectivity and Individuality in Day of the Oprichnik
Tine Roesen

V The Languages of the Retrofuture

The Old New Russian: The Dual Nature of Style and Language in Day of the Oprichnik and Sugar Kremlin

Marina Aptekman

Simultaneity of the Non-Simultaneous: On the Diachronic Dimensions of Language in Sorokin

Ingunn Lunde

From History as Language to the Language of History: Notes on The Target
Ilya Kukulin

VI Translation

Translating Sorokin/Translated Sorokin

Roundtable

Contributors

Index of Names