Tales from the Netherworld explores the theme of katabasis, the descent to the underworld, in Russian literature from its earliest secular texts-folktales-until the end of the New Economic Policy (1921-1928), when official dictates affected the subjects that writers might safely explore. Barbara Henry argues that descent is a means of tracing and claiming ancestry and inheritance, and the proliferation of netherworld themes tends to coincide with significant generic and formal shifts in Russian literature and momentous events in history.
In ancient and pagan as well as Russian literature, the land of the dead is a place not just of punishment, but of transformation and rebirth. This book focuses on works that typify the Russian underworld descent story in its tragic and comic range.
As Tales from the Netherworld shows, Russian stories about the land of the dead range from the very funny to the utterly devastating, demonstrating the flexibility of the theme and its continued relevance today. Even in its grimmest exemplars, the katabasis asserts that death is not the end-not of life, or consciousness, or love, or art.
