The Caucasus as Region, Literature as Method

Gould, Rebecca Ruth

Abstract

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the aestheticization of violence in the vernacular literatures of the Caucasus from the nineteenth century to the Soviet period through the framework of transgressive sanctity. It then lays the groundwork for the tours through literature, culture, and history that follow by surveying the precolonial vernacular and cosmopolitan literatures that informed anticolonial poetics during the tsarist and Soviet periods. Given its pivotal role in shaping Chechen literature, it begins with Daghestan. It considers how this region has functioned as a nodal point within the precolonial Caucasus, not least through its early and extensive contacts with the wider Islamic world. After viewing Daghestan as a crossroads of multiple civilizations, it examines how Chechen and Georgian literatures enrich the framework within which Daghestani literature circulated. It concludes by looking at how the literary anthropology of transgressive sanctity enriches the study of both literature and anthropology through its politics of literary form.

Citation

Gould, R. R. (2016). The Caucasus as Region, Literature as Method. In R. R. Gould (Ed.), Writers and Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus (1-32). Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300200645.003.0001

• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Pages: 1-32
• Series Title: Eurasia past and present
• Book Title: Writers and Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus
• ISBN: 9780300200645
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300200645.003.0001
• Keywords: aesthetics, violence, transgressive sanctity, vernacular literature, anticolonial literature, Chechnya, Daghestan, Georgia, Caucasus literature