This book explores the unique way in which Russian culture constructs the notion of everyday life, or byt, and offers the first unified reading of Silver-age narrative which it repositions at the centre of Russian modernism. Drawing on semiotics and theology, Stephen C. Hutchings argues that byt emerged from a dialogue between two traditions, one reflected in western representational aesthetics for which daily existence figures as neutral and normative, the other encapsulated in the Orthodox emphasis on iconic embodiment. Hutchings identifies early 'Decadent' formulations of byt as a milestone after which writers from Chekhov to Rozanov sought to affirm the iconic potential hidden in Russian realism's critique of representationalism. Provocative, yet careful, textual analyses reveal a consistent urge to redefine art's function as one not of representing life, but of transfiguring the everyday.

"This first study devoted to the subject is welcome for its rich, informed theoretical discussion....A book for graduate students and researchers." Choice

"Russian Modernism will be useful to anyone with an interest in either Silver Age prose fiction or the interaction between Russian religious thought and Russian culture." Steven Cassedy, Slavic Review

"Stephen Hutching's densely written book rewards the diligent reader with a sophisticated, well-illustrated, and convincing analysis of the function of byt (routine life) in twentieth-century Russian literature. Hutching's work...provides fresh, insightful close readings of salient Silver Age texts...Even more important, however, Hutchings convincingly traces how the struggle in Russian literature between are and "real life" achieves its ultimate transposition through Silver Age literature....it merits careful attention by any serious scholar of twentieth-century Russian literature and cultural studies." The Russian Review, vol.59