Description
Book SynopsisThis book is about the interpenetration of culture and personality, specifically Alexander I's Russian Empire, a latecomer in post-Napoleonic European history, and Aleksandr Pushkin, virtuoso improvisor yet prisoner of the Golden Age discourses that now bear his name.
Trade Review"Greenleaf's notes demonstrate her impressive research in an unusually broad range of sources. . . . If all interpretations are contingently valid, few are more powerfully and sensitively argued than Greenleaf's." --
Choice"This is one of those rare books that both present new material (the result of extensive research) and new understanding (the result of intensive and luminous thought). . . . It is a major contribution." -- William Mills Todd III * Harvard University *
Table of ContentsA note to the reader; Pushkin and the fragment: an introduction; 1. The romantic fragment: a genealogy; 2. From epitaph to elegy: Russia's entry into European culture; 3. The foreign fountain: self as other in the oriental poem; 4. 'What's in a name?' the rhetoric of imposture in Boris Godunov; 5. The sense of not ending: romantic irony in Eugene Onegin; 6. How to read an epitaph: the 'Kleopatra' tales; Autoportraiture: an afterword; Notes; Index.
