A "Labyrinth of Linkages" in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

The renowned Russian writer Leo Tolstoy created a realistic masterpiece in Anna Karenina (1878). In the same work, moreover, he utilized allegory and symbol to an extent and at a level of sophistication unknown in his other works. In Browning’s study, the author identifies and analyzes previously unnoticed or only briefly mentioned “linkages and keystones” found in two highly developed clusters of symbols, arising from Anna’s momentous train ride and peasant nightmares, and of allegories, rooted in Vronsky’s disastrous steeplechase. Within this labyrinth of symbol and allegory lies embedded much of the novel’s most significant meaning. This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Russian literature,Tolstoy, symbol, allegory, structuralism, and moral criticism.

Gary Browning (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1974) is Professor Emeritus at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Boris Pilniak: Scythian at a Typewriter (Penguin Group, 1985) and Leveraging Your Russian with Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes (Slavica, 2001).