Why Anna Karenina in the twenty-first century? Why turn to Tolstoy's novel about the customs and passions of nineteenth-century Russia now, in modern-day America? This question can be asked about any artistic product that is reexamined by any culture. Indeed, in the grammar of the query, we encounter two lines of investigation: On the one hand, how does the work speak beyond its own time?; and, on the other, how does the contemporary cultural environment ask for a confrontation with that work, or make that encounter difficult?

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