Pushkin's Historical ImaginationСветлана Евдокимова, Professor of Slavic Studies and Comparative Literature Chair Department of Slavic Studies Svetlana Evdokimova Yale University Press, 1999 M01 1 - 300 pages This book explores the historical insights of Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), Russia's most celebrated poet and arguably its greatest thinker. Svetlana Evdokimova examines for the first time the full range of Pushkin's fictional and nonfictional writings on the subject of history - writings that have strongly influenced Russians' views of themselves and their past. Through new readings of his drama Boris Godunov; such narrative poems as Poltava, The Bronze Horseman, and Count Nulin; prose fiction, including The Captain's Daughter and The Blackamoor of Peter the Great; lyrical poems; and a variety of nonfictional texts, the author presents Pushkin not only as a progenitor of Russian national mythology but also as an original historical and political thinker. |
Contents
one The Impediments of Russian History | 31 |
Century Pushkins Response to the French Liberal | 37 |
Historians and His Polemic with Polevoi Some Peculiarities | 43 |
two Chance and Historical Necessity | 49 |
Chance | 74 |
Pushkins Polemic | 87 |
Fact Meaning Context Narrative Strategies and Political | 101 |
Goethes and Pushkins Readings of Mémoires sur Napoléon | 113 |
pushkin confronts | 137 |
The Myth of Holy War | 173 |
The Bronze Horseman | 209 |
Afterword | 232 |
| 265 | |
Index | 278 |
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Common terms and phrases
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