Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

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This book brings together ten contributions from French and foreign specialists whose research and work focus on contemporary Spanish-language literature. They analyse the ways in which certain historical events, violence, memory, and political activism find their way into the narrative device in order to make it politically singular. They explore these relationships in a variety of ways, from an interdisciplinary perspective, at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, cinema and contemporary history. Ce volume qui inaugure la collection Saxifrages interroge et met en relation aussi bien les champs de la poétique, du politique et de l’éthique que le travail de la fiction. Car la fiction, à l’instar de la métaphore vive, désocculte les structures profondes de la réalité auxquelles nous sommes reliés en tant que mortels (Ricœur) et élabore un système d’évidences sensibles qui donne à voir l’existence (Rancière). Le constat d’un retour au réel – voire à une certaine forme de réalisme – dans la littérature contemporaine des dernières décennies réactualise ces réflexions et approches du travail de la fiction et des images en tant qu’objets esthétiques capables de faire sens et de réinventer notre imaginaire politique (Didi­ Huberman). Comment la littérature procède-­t-­elle lorsqu’elle n’est plus censée refléter comme le miroir stendhalien la réalité ? Comment traiter le politique faufilé dans la fiction lorsqu’il ne s’agit plus de le représenter « simplement » ? Car lire le politique, en traquer les traces qui se glissent entre les failles et fissures d’un champ social ou artistique pour œuvrer de l’intérieur en craquelant – comme le font les forces faibles des saxifrages – les systèmes clos et « parfaits », c’est appréhender cette faculté de faire sens, de fictionner. On trouvera réunies ici dix contributions de spécialistes français et étrangers dont la recherche et les travaux portent sur la littérature hispanophone contemporaine. Ils analysent les manières dont certains événements historiques, la violence, la mémoire, l’engagement se faufilent dans le dispositif narratif pour le singulariser politiquement. Ils explorent ces rapports sous des aspects les plus divers, dans une perspective interdisciplinaire, à la croisée de la littérature, la philosophie, le cinéma, l’histoire contemporaine.

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"In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between powerand poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch’s power. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine’s reign (and some major literary works) that give a broadframework to discuss the evolution of important recurring motifs and images."

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"In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between powerand poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch’s power. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine’s reign (and some major literary works) that give a broadframework to discuss the evolution of important recurring motifs and images."

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A noncommissioned officer of the Nicaraguan National Guard travels to New York to meet the famous bodybuilder, Charles Atlas. When he approaches his hero, he finds a body pierced with syringes and tubes, a cyborg of fragile artificial life. In the garden of a Central American dictator’s mansion, a prisoner is locked in a cage next to a lion’s. Nature and animal instinct will take their course. In post-Sandinista Nicaragua, an amputee policeman must face—alone and wounded—a drug gang commanded by his former guerrilla leader. Despite the gravity and violence present in many of Sergio Ramírez Mercado’s short stories and novels, his writing is governed by irony and parody. Fábula del Poder proposes a novel critical assessment of the narrative work of Ramírez, who won the Cervantes Prize in 2017, emphasizing the mechanisms of representation and criticism of power in contemporary Latin American literature. In an entertaining and dynamic way, the book applies an interdisciplinary, theoretical approach, borrowing concepts from political theory, literary criticism, video games, visual culture, and sports, and reviews the contemporary historiography of Nicaragua and Latin America. Un suboficial de la Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua viaja a Nueva York para conocer al célebre fisicoculturista Charles Atlas. Cuando logra acercarse al héroe, encuentra un cuerpo traspasado de jeringas y mangueras, un cíborg de frágil vida artificial. En el jardín de la mansión de un dictador centroamericano, un prisionero es encerrado en la jaula contigua a la de un león. La naturaleza y el instinto animal seguirán su curso. En la Nicaragua post-sandinista, un policía amputado de una pierna debe enfrentar—solo y herido—a una banda de narcotraficantes comandada por su antiguo jefe guerrillero. A pesar de la gravedad y violencia de las historias contadas en muchos de los cuentos y las novelas de Sergio Ramírez Mercado, su obra está regida por la ironía y la parodia. Fábula del Poder propone una novedosa valoración crítica de la obra narrativa de Ramírez, quien recibió el Premio Cervantes en 2017, haciendo énfasis en los mecanismos de representación y crítica del poder en la literatura contemporánea de América Latina. De manera amena y dinámica el libro utiliza un marco teórico interdisciplinario y aplica conceptos de teoría política, crítica literaria, videojuegos, cultura visual y deportiva, y repasa la historiografía contemporánea de Nicaragua y América Latina.

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