This wide-ranging study presents an examination of the extraordinary diversity and range of satirical writing in contemporary Russian literature and will be of interest not only to Slavists but also to those interested in genre theory. The author focuses on a variety of these genres and modes and offers practical criticism on each text.

Acknowledgements; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: new perspectives on women and gender in Russian literature Rosalind Marsh; Part I. Historical and Biographical Perspectives: 2. Women in seventeenth-century Russian literature Rosalind McKenzie; 3. Conflicts over gender and status in early nineteenth-century Russian literature: the case of Anna Bunina and her Padenie faetona Wendy Rosslyn; 4. Reading the future: women and fortune-telling in Russia (1770-1840) Faith Wigzell; 5. Russian women writers of the nineteenth century Ol'ga Demidova; 6. The 'woman question' of the 1860s, and the ambiguity of the 'learned woman' Arja Rosenholm; 7. Carving out a career: women prose writers, 1885-1920, the biographical background Charlotte Rosenthall; 8. The fate of women writers in literature at the beginning of the twentieth century: 'A. Mire', Anna Mar, Lidiia Zinov'eva-Annibal Mariia Mikhailova; 9. Lidiia Zinov'eva-Annibal's 'The singing ass': a woman's view of men and Eros Pamela Davidson; 10. Anastasiia Verbitskaia reconsidered Rosalind Marsh; 11. Soviet woman of the 1980s: self-portrait in poetry Elena Trofimova; Part II. The Perspective Of Literary Criticism: 12. The silence of rebellion: women in the work of Leonid Andreev Eva Buchwald; 13. Poor Liza: the sexual politics of Elizaveta Bam Daniil Kharms Graham Roberts; 14. The crafting of a self: Lidiia Ginzburg's early journal Jane Gary Harris; 15. Voyeurism and ventriloquism: Anatolii Velichanskii's Podzemnaia nimfa Gerald S. Smith; 16 Thinking (self) in the poetry of Ol'ga Sedakova Stephanie Sandler; 17. Women's space and women's place in contemporary Russian fiction Helena Goscilo; Index.