Description
Book SynopsisThe iconic masks of the Italian commedia dell’arte—Harlequin, Pierrot, Colombina, Pulcinella, and others—have been vagabonding the roads of Russian cultural history for more than three centuries. This book explores how these masks, and the artistic principles of the commedia dell’arte that they embody, have profoundly affected the Russian artistic imagination, providing a source of inspiration for leading Russian artists as diverse as nineteenth-century writer Nikolai Gogol, modernist theater director Evgenii Vakhtangov, Vladimir Nabokov, and the empress of Russian popular culture Alla Pugacheva. The author presents a new perspective on this topic, showing how the commedia dell’arte has nourished a rich cultural tradition in Russia.
Trade Review"Olga Partan’s research is interdisciplinary and innovative. [...] Partan easily combines a variety of different fields in the overall picture of Russian culture’s infatuation with the commedia dell’arte. The author enthusiastically and fascinatingly surfs in the immense world of literature and art, substantiating her very interesting and innovative hypothesis that the impact of Italian commedia dell arte on Russian culture was significant not only during the epoch of Russian modernism, but from its very first performances in early modern Russia until the beginning of the twenty first century." — Women East-West NewsletterTable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Early Harlequinized Art
- Chapter 2: Anna Ioannovna’s Italian Decade
- Chapter 3: Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte: Vasilii Trediakovsky and Aleksandr Sumarokov
- Chapter 4: Ramifications of the Italian Decade
- Chapter 5: Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat: The Italian Ancestry of Akakii Bashmachkin
- Chapter 6: The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte
- Chapter 7: The Commedia dell’Arte in Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot
- Chapter 8: Harlequin and His Lath: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel Look at the Harlequins!
- Chapter 9: From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture, Alla Pugacheva
- Epilogue: The Italian Arlecchino on the Post-Soviet Stage
