Darya Protopopova | University of Oxford (original) (raw)

Darya Protopopova

Darya Protopopova: A Short Autobiography
I am a writer, researcher, and literary critic.
I was born in Moscow in a family with a long-standing passion for languages, literature, and education. My paternal great-great-grandmother, Olga Fedorovna Protopopova, owned a famous school for girls (Gymnase de jeunes filles O.F. Protopopoff) at 29 Malaya Ordynka Street in central Moscow. Olga Fedorovna’s husband Aleksandr Sergeevich Protopopov was the head of the school’s governing committee. The school was at the height of its success in the 1910s, but unfortunately was closed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Olga and Aleksandr Protopopov had a son Boris, my great-grandfather, who graduated from the Moscow University just before the First World War and worked as an engineer.
Later Boris Protopopov married Evgeniya Mikhailovna Chekhova, daughter of Mikhail Mikhailovich Chekhov, cousin of the famous writer Anton Chekhov. At the time when Anton Chekhov was a student trying to establish himself in Moscow literary circles, his older cousin Mikhail was a successful agent at the trading firm of I.E. Gavrilov near the Red Square, and he did his best to support Anton financially. Although this link to Anton Chekhov is a distant one, hearing about his and my great-great-grandfather’s adventures in Moscow has always made me feel personally related to the world of book writing and book selling.
More closely related to me, my grandmother Yanina Vasilevna Protopopova (née Uspenskaya) has worked her whole life as a teacher of German in secondary schools in different corners of the former USSR, including Moscow, Severomorsk (in Murmansk region), and Sevastopol. Her example has shown me that teaching is one of the most complex and inspiring careers that can bring positive changes to the world. My grandmother has also taught me an important lesson about languages – that learning new languages is a way of promoting inter-cultural tolerance and amity between different nationalities. Once I asked her why she had chosen to teach German in the USSR, the country that had just been through the horrors of the Second World War. She told me she did it for that precise reason, to fight prejudices against German-speaking people and to re-instil love for beautiful German literature and music in Russian children.
With my father working as a translator, I started learning English at the age of 4 and by the time I finished secondary school I had become comfortably bilingual. In 1999-2005 I completed a 5-year degree in English and Russian literature at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow; during that time, I took a gap year to study English literature as a visiting student at the University of Oxford. Between 2005 and 2010 I had completed first a Master’s and then a DPhil in English Literature at New College, Oxford, specialising in works of Virginia Woolf and her essays on Russian writers. In 2014-2015 I obtained a Qualified Teacher Status from the Institute of Education, London, and have been working as a teacher of English and Russian since then. I specialise in bilingual education and have done extensive research in the effects that multilingualism has on people’s communication and thinking skills.
For a full version of my autobiography with images please view my uploaded papers.
Supervisors: Professor Hermione Lee and Professor Catriona Kelly

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Papers by Darya Protopopova

The Bodleian Library Record, Apr 1, 2009

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Virginia Woolf’s main source of knowledge about Russia was Russian literature. She was interested... more Virginia Woolf’s main source of knowledge about Russia was Russian literature. She was interested in the discoveries made by Russian nineteenth-century novelists in the sphere of transferring the depths of human mind into literary narrative. Early in her life she started reading Tolstoy; she became one of the first English admirers of Dostoevsky when Constance Garnett made the first major English translation of Dostoevsky’s novels between 1912 and 1920.1 In one of her letters she confesses that it is from Tolstoy that the modernists ‘had to break away’.2 Her reviews of translations from Russian were never solely about Russian literature: she felt it necessary while writing on the literature of Russian people, to comment on the Russian national character. In her 1917 article on Sergei Aksakov, the Russian nineteen-century writer, she denotes ‘the shouts of joy and the love of watching ’ as ‘the peculiar property of the Russian people’.3 Woolf never visited Russia, but her learning ab...

This article examines the reception of Russian art and literature in Britain in the context of mo... more This article examines the reception of Russian art and literature in Britain in the context of modernists’ revolt against Victorianism and their search for new expressiveness. In particular, it deals with Roger Fry’s attraction to Oriental motifs of the Russian Ballet and icon painting and his praise of primitive elements in works of the Russian artists who contributed to the ’Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition’ in 1912. Fry’s interest in Russian visual art provides a revealing parallel to the modernists’ search for new methods of artistic expression in Russian literature, particularly in the works of Dostoevsky and Chekhov. First published in New Collection (Graduate Journal of New College, University of Oxford), Vol. 3 (2008), ed. A.McLennan.

Virginia Woolf's main source of knowledge about Russia was Russian literature. She was interested... more Virginia Woolf's main source of knowledge about Russia was Russian literature. She was interested in the discoveries made by Russian nineteenth-century novelists in the sphere of transferring the depths of human mind into literary narrative. Early in her life she started reading Tolstoy; she became one of the first English admirers of Dostoevsky when Constance Garnett made the first major English translation of Dostoevsky's novels between 1912 and 1920. [1] In one of her letters she confesses that it is from Tolstoy that the modernists 'had to break away'. [2] Her reviews of translations from Russian were never solely about Russian literature: she felt it necessary while writing on the literature of Russian people, to comment on the Russian national character. In her 1917 article on Sergei Aksakov, the Russian nineteen-century writer, she denotes 'the shouts of joy and the love of watching' as 'the peculiar property of the Russian people'. [3] Woolf never visited Russia, but her learning about Russian nation from its texts is one of the many examples of her exploring the world through fiction. Her involvement in reviewing and publishing Russian literature (between 1917 and 1946 The Hogarth Press published fifteen translations from Russian) [4] required keeping herself up to date with the political and social events in contemporaryRussia. The cultural rapprochement between Britain and Russia in the early twentieth century provided a favourable atmosphere for Woolf's promotion of Russian literature. The British press regularly reported on Russian social affairs; a great number of novels were published in early-twentieth centuryEngland featuring either a Russian character or Russian setting. [5] In this essay, I shall examine how various kinds of literary and media sources shaped Woolf's visions of Russia. The first part deals with Woolf's reading of Richard Hakluyt's collection of Elizabethan travel notes on Russia and the way it formed

Postgraduate English a Journal and Forum For Postgraduates in English, Mar 1, 2006

Virginia Woolf's main source of knowledge about Russia was Russian literature.

Virginia Woolf in Context, 2012

The New Collection (Graduate Journal of New College, University of Oxford), May 2010

The Review of English Studies, 2014