1 Parts of this work were presented at the AAASS National Convention (November, 2003) and Harvard's Davis Center (March, 2004); I would like to thank colleagues at both presentations for spirited discussion. I would also like to thank my reviewers at Slavic Review, Caryl Emerson for helpful feedback on a draft of this article, M. L. Gasparov for a thoughtprovoking correspondence about stilizatsiia, and Homi Bhabha for taking time to discuss mimicry and peasant identities. Oxford English Dictionary,2d ed., s.v. “stylize.”

2 Aleksandrov, S. M., Rodina, T. M., and Kantor, A. M., “Stilizatsiia … v literature i iskusstve,” in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia,3rd ed., 30 vols. (Moscow, 1976), 24.1:1523 Google Scholar (emphasis mine). To distinguish the English and Russian nouns and their definitions clearly, I use “stylization” to indicate the English word's meaning and connotations, “stilizatsiia” to indicate the Russian word's meaning and connotations. Since the Russian definition is my primary concern, however, I have anglicized the corresponding forms in other parts of speech to avoid excessive awkwardness (“stylizer” for stilizator, “stylized” for stilizovannyi, “to stylize” for slilizovat’).Translations are my own unless otherwise noted

3 Hodgson, Peter, “Viktor Shklovsky and the Formalist Legacy: Imitation/Stylization in Narrative Fiction,” in Jackson, Robert Louis and Rudy, Stephen, eds., Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance; A Festschrift in Honor of Victor Erlich(New Haven, 1985), 207.Google Scholar Hodgson, based on the fact that the concept is implicit throughout Shklovskii's discussions of a range of other issues, argues that stilizatsiia “holds the key to defining the theoretical basis or ‘core’ concept of Shklovsky's prose theory” (ibid.).

4 Gasperetti, David, The Rise of the Russian Novel: Carnival, Stylization, and Mockery of the West(DeKalb, 1998), 165.Google Scholar Both Gasperetti and Hodgson emphasize the subversive aspects of stilizatsiia, which requires drawing conclusions often left unstated by the formalists and Bakhtin, who tend to focus on the subtle, coincident intentions of stylizer and model.

5 Trésor de la langue francaise: Dictionnaire de la langue du XIX' et du XX' sieck (1789– 1960)(Nancy, 1992), 15:997; Grimm, Jacob and Grimm, Wilhelm, Deutsches Worterbuch (Leipzig, 1960), vol. 10, sect. 2, pt. 2:2935–36.Google Scholar

6 Several sources suggest that this basic sense harks back to the original use of stilizzare in early Italian, although current Italian etymological dictionaries do not make that connection and instead present stilizzareas a neologism formed from slilein the 1890s or 1900s. See Grimm, and Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch,2935;Google Scholar Skwarczyńska, Stefania, “La stylisation et sa place dans la science de la littérature,” in Poetics, Poetyka, Poetika(Warsaw, 1961), 55;Google Scholar De Mauro, Tullio and Mancini, Marco, Garzanti etimologico: 1grandi dizionari(Milan, 2000), 2067;Google Scholar and Coitelazzo, Manlio and Zolli, Paolo, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana(Bologna, 1988), 5:1274–75.Google Scholar

7 In this sense, French styliseris synonymous with schematiser. Tresor de la langue franfaise,996.

8 In the decorative arts, however, stilizatsiia can have the sense of simplifying and conventionalizing; see the definitions given under “stilizatsiia” in vol. 14 of the Academy of Sciences dictionary (Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka,17 vols. [Moscow, 1950–65]); or the separate definitions (“Stilizatsiia… v literature i iskusstve,” “Stilizatsiia v izobrazitel'nykh iskusstvakh“) in the Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia,3rd ed. However, the sense of conscious imitation of another's style, rather than that of simplification, is clearly primary, and it predominates (often with the further implication of an unsuccessful borrowing) even in contexts where the other meaning might be expected, as in the following: “Eto v deistvitel'nosti ne ekspressionizm, i ne kubizm, a staratel'naia, formal'naia i ne ochen’ talantlivaia stilizatsiia pod kubizm. Nastoiashchei ekspressii net.” Dmitrii Khmel'nitskii, “Velikii mistifikator: 300 rabot Sal'vadora Dali v Berline,” Russkaia mysl', 6–12 March 2003, 11.

9 A comprehensive definition is provided by Semenov, V. B., “Stilizatsiia,” in Nikoliukin, A. N., compiler, Literaturnaia entsiklopediia terminov iponiatii(Moscow, 2001), 1029– 30,Google Scholar which begins as follows:

“1. A stylistic literary device involving the intentional imitation of the characteristic features of another's manner of speech for a specific artistic purpose; 2. The generic common feature of ‘biplanar’ (the term is Iurii Tynianov's) artistic works, in which, while the ‘content plane’ has complete independence and intrinsic value, the ‘plane of expression’ consists of a system of successive allusions to the style of another's text or group of texts; 3. A literary genre of noncomic ‘biplanar’ works using linguistic markers that characterize the way of speech of a whole series of stylistically uniform works (of a particular genre, the work of a particular author or the representatives of a specific literary school, or a specific historical or literary period).

“As a device, stilizatsiia reproduces the basic features of a literary style or allows a writer, in order to create a speech portrait of a character, to reflect the particular speech features that are characteristic for persons of a specific social group or nationality. Its essence lies in the copying of those syntactic constructions, in the adoption of those grammatical forms, and in the selection of those lexical elements that for the exemplar's style appear to be its neutral elements, but which when reproduced in the new text lose their stylistic neutrality and stand out against the markers of the new style (the latter style being either the individual way of speech of the stylizer or the general style of his contemporary literature).

“ Other particularly useful reference definitions include Zhirmunskii's, Viktor in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo institula Granat,7th ed., 58 vols. (Moscow, [1933–1940]), 41.4:577–79;Google Scholar Loks's, K. G. in Literaturnaia entsiklopediia: Slovar’ literaturnykh terminov v dvukh tomakh(Moscow and Leningrad, 1925), 871–72;Google Scholar and Dolinin's, K. A. in Kozhevnikov, V M. and Nikolaev, P. A., eds., Literaturnyi enlsiklopedicheskii slovar’(Moscow, 1987), 419.Google Scholar Of special interest are the more detailed articles by Stefania Skwarczynska and V. Iu. Troitskii. Skwarczynska argues for a wider application of the concept of stylization in literary studies: she identifies not only linguistic stylization (a copying of style), but also compositional and thematic stylization; the structuralist typology she presents is based on the fact that all of these can exist either singly or in various combinations with the other forms of stylization. Generalizing from the use of the term in Polish stylistics, her treatment largely disregards the differing implications of stylisation/stylization/stilizatsiia, seeing the term's use not as distinct in different languages but rather as defined differently in different branches of the arts and different periods, leading her to lament the disappearance of a definition of literary stylization in English that, I would argue, never existed. Troitskii distinguishes stilizatsiia from fakes and slavish imitation (epigonstvo), on the one hand, and from simple “speech characterizations” on the other, and he surveys its uses and functions based on examples from nineteenth and twentieth–century Russian literature. Troitskii quotes briefly from Bakhtin (whose revised Dostoevskii book appeared a year before Troitskii's article), but his discussions of stilizatsiia, parody, and skazignore Bakh tin's more sophisticated characterization of the relationships between them. Skwarczynska, “La stylisation,“ 53–70. Troitskii, V Iu., “Stilizatsiia,” in Kozhevnikova, V. V., ed., Slovo i obraz: Sbornik statei(Moscow, 1964), 164–94.Google Scholar

10 “Stylisation. B. 1. In artistic and literary contexts.The action or deed of expressing something in one's own style, of (intentionally) imprinting it with one's personal stamp.“ Trésor de la langue française,996.

11 Examples are selected from the results of Google searches for the phrases “stylization of” and “stilizatsiia pod” (in Cyrillic).

12 The double levels inherent in stilizatsiia and other related phenomena such as parody, forgery, and even translation are emphasized by the frequent use of “meta–“ coinages to discuss such phenomena: metalinguistics (Bakhtin), metaliterature (Tzvetan Todorov, picked up by Peter Hodgson), metalanguage (Roman Jakobson). To my knowledge metastylizationhas not been used before, but the term captures the double articulation in stilizatsiia by making use of the sense that both Russian and English definitions share—that of imposing a particular style.

13 In a Russian context, such mimicry evokes Vladimir Nabokov, with his fictional mirror worlds and his fascination with mimicry in nature, particularly the patterns and behavior of butterflies. See also the discussion of colonial mimicry below.

14 A survey of a dozen standard English–language dictionaries of literary terms found a form of “Stylization” listed only in Shipley, Joseph T., ed., Dictionary of World Literary Terms: Forms, Technique, Criticism,3rd ed. (Boston, 1970), 316.Google Scholar Its definition for “Stylize“ reads as follows: “To (endeavor to) give to a work that quality known as style or the manner of a particular period or writer or school. Style may be spoken of as conscious or unconscious. If unconscious, it shows traits of the writer that he is not concerned to bring to attention. Conscious style (stylization) is the result of a deliberate seeking after logical or aesthetic effects by choice of diction, form, devices. In thus referring to style as natural or artificial, however, it is wise not to assume that simplicity implies unconscious style. There is artifice only when detected; Quintilian pointed out that the art consists in concealing the art.” The term is occasionally used in English literary criticism in contexts that are grounded in the primary visual meaning (simplification, conventionalization), for example, Honnighausen, Lothar, William Faulkner: The Art ofStylization in His Early Graphic and Literary Work(Cambridge, Eng., 1987).Google Scholar

15 lu. Podol'skii, “Stil'” in Literaturnaia entsiklopediia: Slovar’ literaturnykh terminov, 868.

16 Hodgson comments that “Formalism was preoccupied with … strategies instead of style,” noting Viktor Vinogradov as the exception. Hodgson, “Viktor Shklovsky and the Formalist Legacy,” 198, 209nll.

17 Iurii Lotman, for example, directly connects stilizatsiia and literary forgery: both involve “the perception of the art of one period through the eyes of another.” Iu. M. Lotman, “'Slovo o polku Igoreve’ i literaturnaia traditsiia XVIII–nachala XIX v.,” in Likhachev, D. S., ed., Slovo o polku Igoreve: Pamiatnik XIIveka(Moscow, 1962), 395.Google Scholar I discuss differences between stilizatsiia and forgery below.

18 In a Silver Age environment that believed in zhiznetvorchestvoand blurred boundaries between artistic work and life, theself–fashioning counterpart to literary stilizatsiia was full–fledged impersonation, as in the Cherubina de Gabriak “mystification” perpetrated by Elizaveta Dmitrieva and Maksimilian Voloshin.

19 Elam, Helen Regueiro, “Imitation,” in Preminger, Alex and Brogan, T. V F., eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics(Princeton, 1993), 577. 20.Google Scholar Terras, Victor, Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics (Madison, 1974), 175–76.Google Scholar

21 Gorodetskii, Sergei, “Moi put',” in Zhizn’ neukrotimaia: Stat'i, ocherki, vospominaniia (Moscow, 1984), 8–9.Google Scholar

22 Stolitsa, L., “O pevtse–brate,” Novoe vino 1 (1912): 13 Google Scholar, quoted in Bazanov, V G., S rodnogo berega: 0 poezii Nikolaia Kliueva(Leningrad, 1990), 126.Google Scholar

23 Briusov, Valerii, “Introduction,” in Kliuev, Nikolai, Sosen perezvon(Moscow, 1912 Google Scholar [the original edition, though published in 1911, bore this date]), 9–11.

24 This view was perpetuated even in later treatments. Thus Boris Filippov, annotating Kliuev's “Pesni iz Zaonezh'ia” for the edition of his collected works published in 1969 in Munich, adamantly denied that Kliuev was engaging in stilizatsiia: “The significance of Kliuev's songs lies precisely in the fact that they are not stilizatsii, not reworkings, but are genuine folk songs. It was not for nothing that many of them spread among the People and were widely sung even beforethey were written down…. ‘Kliuev did not imitate Russian folk song,’ notes Boris Nartsissov, ‘he simply was one of those who created such songs.'“ Kliuev, Nikolai, Sochineniia,2 vols. (Munich, 1969), 1:536.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Troitskii, , “Stilizatsiia,” in Kozhevnikova, , Slovo i obraz,167 Google Scholar.

26 Briusov, V. la., “Nenuzhnaia pravda (Po povodu Moskovskogo Khudozhestvennogo teatra),” in Sobranie sochinenii,7 vols. (Moscow, 1973–75), 6: 71–72.Google Scholar First published in Mir iskusstva,1902, no. 4.

27 Meierkhol'd, Vs., “Teatr (K istorii i tekhnike),” in “Teatr“: Kniga o novom teatre: Sbornik statei(St. Petersburg, 1908), 130.Google Scholar

28 Briusov, Valerii, “Realizm i uslovnost’ na stsene,” in “Teatr,” 243–60.Google Scholar Meierkhol'd himself, while upholding stilizatsiia in his article, had already moved away from it in his stage practice, as Konstantin Rudnitskii notes. See Rudnitsky, Konstantin, Meyerhold the Director,trans. Petrov, George, ed. Schultze, Sydney, introduction, Ellendea Proffer (Ann Arbor, 1981), 129.Google Scholar

29 Anichkov, E., “Traditsiia i stilizatsiia,” in “Teatr,” 41–66.Google Scholar See in particular 60–66.

30 Bogomolov, N. A., ed., Kritika russkogo simvolizma,2 vols. (Moscow, 2002), 2:417.Google Scholar The article was originally published in Apollon,no. 4 (January 1910): 5–10.

31 Bogomolov, , Kritika russkogo simvolizma,2:418.Google Scholar

32 Barnstead, John A., “Mikhail Kuzmin's ‘On Beautiful Clarity’ and Viacheslav Ivanov: A Reconsideration,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 24, no. 1 (March 1982): 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Ivanov, Viacheslav, “Zavety simvolizma,” Apollon,no. 8 (May–June 1910): 5–20;Google Scholar and “Manera, litso i stil',” Trudy i dni,1912, no. 4–5:1–12.

34 Ivanov, Viacheslav, Selected Essays,trans. Bird, Robert, ed. and introduction, Michael Wachtel (Evanston, 2001), 61;Google Scholar for the original, see Ivanov, , Sobranie sochinenii,4 vols. (Brussels, 1971–87), 2:618.Google Scholar

35 Tynyanov, Yury, “Dostoevsky and Gogol: Towards a Theory of Parody, Part One: Stylization and Parody,” in Meyer, Priscilla and Rudy, Stephen, eds., Dostoevsky and Gogol: Texts and Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1979), 103;Google Scholar for the original, see Tynianov, Iurii, Arkhaisty i novatory(Ann Arbor, 1985 [1929]), 415–16.Google Scholar

36 Tynyanov, , “Dostoevsky and Gogol,” 104;Google Scholar Tynianov, , Arkhaisty i novatory,416.Google Scholar

37 Tynianov, , Arkhaisty i novatory,455.Google Scholar

38 Tynyanov, , “Dostoevsky and Gogol,” 113, 104;Google Scholar Tynianov, , Arkhaisty i novatory,428–29, 416.Google Scholar

39 Eikhenbaum, Boris, Literatura: Teoriia, kritika, polemika(Leningrad, 1927), 223, 225.Google Scholar The quotations come from Eikhenbaum's “Leskov i sovremennaia proza” (1925). See also his “llliuziia skaza” (1924) and “Kak sdelana ‘Shinel” Gogolia” (1919).

40 Eikhenbaum, too, suggests this connection, discussing, for example, the idea of stilizatsiia “pod ustnuiu rech'.” Eikhenbaum, Literatura,211.

41 Gofman, V., “Dai’s Folkloric Skaz,” trans. Kiegel, Joseph and Parrott, Ray, in Eikhenbaum, B. and Tynyanov, Yu., eds., Russian Prose,trans, and ed. Parrott, Ray (Ann Arbor, 1985) 197, 185.Google Scholar

42 Eikhenbaum, , Literatura,215–16.Google Scholar

43 Fanger, Donald, “The Peasant in Literature,” in Vucinich, Wayne S., ed., The Peasant in Nineteenth–Century Russia(Stanford, 1968), 232.Google Scholar

44 Bakhtin's fullest treatment of stilizatsiia conies in the chapter “Tipy prozaicheskogo slova. Slovo u Dostoevskogo.” This treatment of discourse types formed a proportionally larger part of the 1929 book than it did of Bakhtin's better–known revision, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo(1963), and die treatment of stilizatsiia and its place in Bakhtin's typology of discourses remained almost unchanged in the later edition. For a detailed discussion of the differences, see Bakhtin, M. M., Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh,ed. Bocharov, S. G. and Gogotishvili, L. A. (Moscow, 1996–), 2:532–33 and 6:483–98.Google Scholar In the text I have used translations from the definitive English edition of the Dostoevskii book, M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dosloevsky's Poetics,ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, introduction, Wayne C. Booth (Minneapolis, 1984), which translates the 1963 revision, but I also reference these passages in the 1929 Russian text. Except where noted, all material directly quoted is identical in the two editions except for slight differences in punctuation.

45 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, 189; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:86.Google Scholar

46 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,190; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:86.Google Scholar

47 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 193; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:89,Google Scholar in which the last word is “intentions” rather than the “aspirations” of the 1963 edition (6:216).

48 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,189; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:86.Google Scholar

49 Bakhtin's understanding of the conditionality of the stylized voice is complicated in English translations by two intertwined problems of definition. First of all, English readers are likely to come to the text with an English sense of stylization (i.e. conventionalization) in the back of their minds, and any confusion may be further exacerbated by Bakhtin's emphasis on uslovnost’ and uslovnoe slovo.Uslovnost’ may be either “conditionality“ or “conventionality,” but it seems to me that in Bakhtin's discussion of uslovnost'and stilizatsiia, the latter term (unlike English “stylization,” and unlike the earlier discussion of these terms in a theatrical context as seen above) is never treated as conventionalized, but only as conditional. The three existing English translations of this section of the Dostoev skii book (one of the 1929 edition, two of the 1963 edition) differ on this issue, using exclusively “conventionality,” exclusively “conditionality,” or both terms.

50 See Morson, Gary Saul and Emerson, Caryl, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, 1990), 149–52.Google Scholar

51 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky'sPoetics,192; Bakhtin, , Sobraniesochinenii, 2:88.Google Scholar

52 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,190–94; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2: 86–91.Google Scholar

53 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,192; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:88.Google Scholar

54 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,184, 185; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,6: 206, 207.Google Scholar

55 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,193; Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii,2:89.Google Scholar

56 Troitskii, V., “Stilizatsiia,” in Timofeev, L. I. and Turaev, S. V., eds., Slovar’ literaturovedcheskikh terminov (Moscow, 1974), 373;Google Scholar see also Troitskii, “Stilizatsiia,” in Kozhevnikova, Slovo i obraz,171–72.

57 Azadovskii, Konstantin, Zhizn' Nikolaia Kliueva: Dokumental'noe povestvovanie (St. Petersburg, 2002).Google Scholar

58 Morson, Gary Saul, “Parody, History, and Metaparody,” in Morson, Gary Saul and Emerson, Caryl, eds., Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges(Evanston, 1989), 65.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 65–66. See also Iurii Lotman's discussion of forgery as “the product of a particular epoch” and belonging to “its time as an active expression of the literary tastes of [that] epoch.” Lotman continues: “[A forgery] comes into being as the interaction of two systems of artistic thinking—that of the epoch reproduced and that of the epoch of creation—and depends on the scientific arsenal of the falsifier, i.e. in the final analysis on the level of science of his time.” Lotman, “‘Slovo o polku Igoreve,’” 396.

60 While drawing on Naipaul's novel, Bhabha presents a much more ambivalent concept of mimicry and elaborates the subversion it represents. See Susan Layton's discussion of these issues in a Russian context in her “Colonial Mimicry and Disenchantment in Druzhinin's, Alexander ‘A Russian Circassian’ and Other Stories,” Russian Review 60, no. 1 (January 2001): 56–71.Google Scholar

61 Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture(London, 1994), 85.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 86.

63 Oxford English Dictionary,s.v. “mimicry.“

64 Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevsky'sPoetics,193; Bakhtin, Sobraniesochinenii,2:90.

65 Bhabha, location of Culture,88. Bhabha cites Bakhtin elsewhere in the book; here, however, the similarities between “colonial mimicry” and Bhabha's double–voiced words result simply from parallel concerns, since Bhabha had not yet read Bakhtin when he wrote “Of Mimicry and Man.” Homi K. Bhabha, interview, Cambridge, Mass., 9 March 2004.

66 Bhabha, location of Culture,91.

67 Ibid., 88.

68 Tolstoi prefigured the impossibility of any such escape from the self when he created Dmitrii Olenin in The Cossacks,who in leaving behind his Russianness takes on a mixed and unworkable identity and becomes a mimic with no original. I am grateful to Caryl Emerson for this formulation.

69 Shils, Edward, “Society and Societies,” in The Constitution of Society(Chicago, 1982).Google Scholar

70 Torgovnick, Marianna, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives(Chicago, 1990), 9.Google Scholar Gwen Walker discusses a similar phenomenon in Andrei Belyi's reception of Africa in her “Adumbrations of the End in Andrei Belyi's Treatment of Africa,” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (July 2001): 381–403.

71 Dostoevskii, F. M., “O liubvi k narodu. Neobkhodimyi kontrakt s narodom,“ Dnevnik pisatelia, ,February 1876, in Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati lomakh(Leningrad, 1972–84) 22:44.Google Scholar