Puskin Today

Puskin Today highlights the remarkable variety and compass of a figure who by all accounts is absolutely central to Russian culture, even "Russianness" itself. A multifaceted writer whose experiments at the boundaries of genre have never been equaled, Alexander Puskin is, moreover, an ever-evolving cultural myth; his works have served as a safe haven in troubled times for the Russian intelligentsia for nearly two centuries. In this volume a distinguished group of American Slavists address Puskin's writings from a multiplicity of contemporary literary perspectives. Part One introduces Western readers to the wealth of critical methodologies now being applied to the study of Puskin. Chapters focus on a text or texts and a dominant methodology: literature as a social institution, reader response criticism, structuralism, intertextuality, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and cultural mythology. The essays in Part Two broach some of the most puzzling issues in the poet's life and works, such as Puskin's African heritage in the context of his life and art, the complex design of Eugene Onegin, Puskin's legacy as the "father" of Russian realist prose, and the poet's ambiguous political convictions. A landmark for American Puskin studies, Puskin Today demonstrates that pluralism and willingness to engage in multiple viewpoints offer fruitful new directions for understanding Russia's national poet.


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