From orientalism to cultural capital: the myth of Russia in British literature of the 1920s

The east wind of Russianness -- John Galsworthy: is it possible to 'de-Anglicise the Englishman'? -- H.G. Wells: interpreting the 'writing on the eastern wall of Europe' -- J.M. Barrie and The truth about the Russian dancers -- D.H. Lawrence: 'Russia will certainly inherit the future' -- 'Lappin and Lapinova': Woolf's beleaguered Russian monarchs -- 'Not a story of detection, of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation': T.S. Eliot's debt to Russia, Dostoevsky and Turgenev

From Orientalism to Cultural Capital presents a fascinating account of the wave of Russophilia that pervaded British literary culture in the early twentieth century. The authors bring a new approach to the study of this period, exploring the literary phenomenon through two theoretical models from the social sciences: Orientalism and the notion of "cultural capital" associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Examining the responses of leading literary practitioners who had a significant impact on the institutional transmission of Russian culture, they reassess the mechanics of cultural dialogism, mediation and exchange, casting new light on British perceptions of modernism as a transcultural artistic movement and the ways in which the literary interaction with the myth of Russia shaped and intensified these cultural views