Ph.D. Harvard University (Slavic Languages and Literatures).
Research interests: Mainly prose fiction of the 19th century (Gogol, Tolstoy, Kushchevskij, Leskov, Chekhov), with occasional forays in the 20th century (Zoshchenko), and poetry (Majakovskij).
Selected publications:
Books
- Nikolai Leskov: The Man and His Art. Harvard University Press, 1977.
- In the Shade of the Giant: Essays on Tolstoy. [A volume of essays on Tolstoy edited by Hugh McLean, with contributions from his students and colleagues. McLean’s contribution is entitled, “Truth in Dying.”] California Slavic Studies 13. University of California Press, 1989.
Articles
- “Gogol’s Retreat From Love: Toward an Interpretation of Mirgorod.” American Contributions to the Fourth International Congress of Slavists, Moscow, 1958. Mouton and Co., 1958. Rpt. Russian Literature and Psychoanalysis, ed. Daniel Rancour-Laferrier (Amsterdam, 1989).
- “Walls and Wire: Notes on the Prison Theme in Russian Literature.” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 25-26 (1983).
- “A Linguist Among the Poets.” In International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 27 (1983). [Supplement entitled Roman Jakobson: What He Taught Us. Edited by Morris Halle.]
- “Majakovskij’s ‘How to Make Verses’ and Jakobson’s Theory of Verse.” Language, Poetry, and Poetics: The Generation of the 1890s: Jakobson, Trubetzkoy, Majakovskij. Edited by Krystyna Pomorska et. al., 1987.
- “Negation of the Negation: Or, Remote Control in Nikolaj Negorev.” In Language, Literature, Linguistics. Editors Michael S. Flier and Simon Karlinsky. Berkeley, 1987.
- “Tolstoy and Jesus,” Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, II, ed. Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno (U.C. Press, 1995).
- “The Case of the Missing Mothers, or, When Does a Beginning Begin,” For SK. In Celebration of the Life and Career of Simon Karlinsky, ed. Robert P. Hughes and Michael Flier), 1996.
- “Rousseau’s God and Tolstoy’s,” Tolstoi Studies Journal, 1998.
- “The Countryside in the Russian Novel,” In Cambridge Companion to the Russian Novel, ed. Malcolm Jones and Robin Feuer Miller, 1998.
- “Hemingway and Tolstoy: A Pugilistic Encounter,” Tolstoy Studies Journal, 1999.
- “Jakobson’s Metaphor/Metonymy Polarity: A Retrospective Glance.” In Roman Jakobson: Teksty, dokumenty, issledovanija (Moscow, 1999).
- “Roman Jakobson Repatriated,” Slavonica, 1996-97
- “Which English Anna?” Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2001.
- “Resurrection,” in Donna Tussing Orwin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (Cambridge, 2002)
- “A Clash of Utopias: Tolstoy and Gorky,” Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2002
- “Afterword,” in Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. Signet Classics, 2003
- “Pamfil Chekhov: Whose Son?” Bulletin of the North American Chekhov Society, 2003.
- “Foxes into Hedgehogs: Berlin and Tolstoy,” in The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789-1991, ed. Catherine Evtuhov and Stephen Kotkin, 2003.
- “Introduction,” in Leo Tolstoy, Master and Man and Other Stories. Penguin Classics, 2004.
- “Could the Master Err? A Note on ‘God Sees the Truth but Waits’,” Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2004.
- “Nikolai Leskov,” in Histoire de la litterature russe. Le XIXe siecle, le temps du roman, 2005.
- “A Woman’s Place…The Young Tolstoy and the Woman Question,” in Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson, ed. Lazar Fleishman et al, 2005.
- Ed., with Lazar Fleishman, A Century’s Perspective: Essays on Russian Literature in Honor of Olga Raevsky Hughes and Robert P. Hughes, 2005.
- “Buried as a Writer and as a Man: The Puzzle of Family Happiness,” in A Century’s Perspective, 2005.
- “Anthony Briggs’s Translation of War and Peace” (review article), Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2006.
- “Claws on the Behind: Tolstoy and Darwin,” Tolstoy Studies Journal, 2007 (forthcoming).