Architecture has always been an integral part of literature. Literature is not
just about character description or case narration. In literary works, many elements
such as space, cultural accumulation, sociological changes, and political orders reflect
the characteristics of the related era and convey a whole culture to the future. From this
point of view, literature is intertwined with many disciplines and is an effective
communication tool in interdisciplinary interaction.
In literary works, disciplines that include space set-ups, such as architecture, interior
design, and urban planning take on different meanings and dimensions. In fiction, the
spaces and structures that accompany the heroes become concrete in the dream and are
made visible in the reader’s world.
From this point of view, by choosing L. N. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and considering
the social and political environment of Tsarist Russia depicted in the novel, we
examine in this study, within the discipline of architecture, the space set-ups of that
period in detail. Accordingly, based on the novel, pressures created on individuals by
society and the powers-that-be, helplessness, and despondency that these individuals
fell into are explained through spatial and architectural metaphors. The aim here is to
reveal the relationship between literature and the architecture discipline through spatial
set-ups in literary works.
Keywords: Analysis, Anna Karenina, Architecture, Aristocracy, Count,
Depondency, Infidelity, Interior design, Literature, Moscow, Novel, Russia,
Society, Space, Spatial, St. Petersburg, Station, Train, Tolstoy, Vronsky.
