Steiner, L: For Humanity's Sake The Bildungsroman in Russian Culture

"Steiner’s extended grasp of ‘dialogism’ on the cultural and psychological level is quite welcome... The overview of the emergence of modern Russian literature and intellectual debate is excellent in its clarity and coherence."

"In this original and wide-ranging intellectual history, Lina Steiner situates Herder’s view of culture at the core of a tradition of personal and national character formation in Russia."

"Steiner demonstrates a genuine understanding of art, as well as thorough professional knowledge of cultural theory and the history of nineteenth-century Russian literature. Especially significant is Steiner’s decision, not only to consider the analyzed novels in terms of their individual literary context, but to immerse each one into the ‘turbulent sea’ of the Golden Age of Russian culture as well."

"[For Humanity’s Sake]’s ideas struck me as important as well as new, and I came away with a sense of a tradition of Russian thought I had not identified as such. As a result, the three novels analyzed, and implicitly many others, acquired a new freshness. It also does not hurt that Steiner writes crisp, lucid prose, free of jargon or clotted syntax. [...] We never doubt why a set of facts or interpretations is offered."

"Studies that place Russian intellectual history in both a Russian and non-Russian philosophical context are few and far between. This volume does that and so is an especially welcome and necessary addition to the body of criticism on the Russian nineteenth-century novel."