Tragic Encounters: Pushkin and European Romanticism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780299341404)

Literary scholars largely agree that the Romantic period altered the definition of tragedy, but they have confined their analyses to Western European authors. Maksim Hanukai introduces a new, illuminating figure to this narrative, arguing that Russia's national poet, Alexander Pushkin, can be understood as a tragic Romantic poet, although in a different mold than his Western counterparts.

Many of Pushkin's works move seamlessly between the closed world of traditional tragedy and the open world of Romantic tragic drama, and yet they follow neither the cathartic program prescribed by Aristotle nor the redemptive mythologies of the Romantics. Instead, the idiosyncratic and artistically mercurial Pushkin seized upon the newly unstable tragic mode to develop multiple, overlapping tragic visions. Providing new, innovative readings of such masterpieces as The Gypsies, Boris Godunov, The Little Tragedies, and The Bronze Horseman, Hanukai sheds light on an unexplored aspect of Pushkin's work, while also challenging reigning theories about the fate of tragedy in the Romantic period.

Author: Maksim Hanukai
ISBN-10: 0299341402
ISBN-13: 9780299341404
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Language: English
Published: 05/16/2023
Pages: 264
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.06w x 0.79d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2024