FEMINIST CRITICISM AND ANNA KAENINA. A REVIEW ARTICLE

In his treatise, What is Art?, Tolstoy would state quite explicitly that the moral, theme, and topic of a work of art do not determine its value, even from the moral point of view. People are needed for the criticism of art who can show the pointlessness of looking for ideas in a work of art and can steadfastly guide readers through that endless labyrinth of connections (labirint sceplenij) which is the essence of art, and towards those laws that serve as the basis of these connections.4 In this passage, Tolstoy rejects a criticism which would consider its task to be the elucidation and evaluation of a work of art's thematic content or "message" and calls instead essentially for the practise of close readings: explications in which the critic would investigate the semiotics of a work of art, its signifying elements and structures and the laws or principles by which they are selected and combined. Furthermore, Tolstoy's invitation or challenge to a close reading is not meant to result either in a new or definitive interpretation, or in the retrieval of authorial intention, but rather is intended to reveal the "essence of art" and its "laws"; that is, he calls for an aesthetic, not an evaluative, telos for literary criticism. [...]Tolstoy's unconscious love for Anna allows her to gain the power and meaning of a mythological hero. [...]although the novel operates on one level to vindicate the patriarchal order, Armstrong suggests that on other levels it actively subverts the same systems it upholds: "The subterranean forces at work in Tolstoy's novel affect every level of its operation, subverting the norms of rhetoric and discourse as well as those of morality, sexuality, and Identity."