The Uncensored Boris Godunov

The Uncensored Boris Godunov
Author: Chester Dunning
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 579
Release: 2006-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0299207633

Includes the original Russian text and, for the first time, an English translation of that version. “Antony Wood’s translation is fluent and idiomatic; analyses by Dunning et al. are incisive; and the ‘case’ they make is skillfully argued. . . . Highly recommended.”—Choice

Boris Godunov and Little Tragedies

Boris Godunov and Little Tragedies
Author: Alexander Pushkin
Publisher: Alma Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0714545910

A drama of ambition, murder, remorse and retribution, Boris Godunov charts the decline of a Russian statesman, whose dynastic aims were foiled by a guilty past and an audacious upstart. Based on history and inspired by Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin's daring masterwork is presented here in its rarely published uncensored version of 1825.Set in Vienna, Flanders, Madrid and London, Pushkin's celebrated Little Tragedies - Mozart and Salieri, The Mean-Spirited Knight, The Stone Guest and A Feast during the Plague - each focus on a protagonist's driving obsession - with status, money, sex or risk-taking - and its devastating consequences.

Boris Godunov and Other Dramatic Works

Boris Godunov and Other Dramatic Works
Author: Alexander Pushkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2009-08-27
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0199554048

James E. Falen's verse translation consists of 'Boris Godunov', 'A Scene from Faust', the four 'Little Tragedies' and 'Rusalka'. The text features an introduction on Russia's most cosmopolitan playwright.

Tragic Encounters

Tragic Encounters
Author: Maksim Hanukai
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0299341402

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.

The People's Artist

The People's Artist
Author: Simon Morrison
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0195181670

Sergey Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's greatest composers--and one of its greatest mysteries. Until now. In The People's Artist, Simon Morrison draws on groundbreaking research to illuminate the life of this major composer, deftly analyzing Prokofiev's music in light of new archival discoveries. Indeed, Morrison was the first scholar to gain access to the composer's sealed files in the Russian State Archives, where he uncovered a wealth of previously unknown scores, writings, correspondence, and unopened journals and diaries. The story he found in these documents is one of lofty hopes and disillusionment, of personal and creative upheavals. Morrison shows that Prokofiev seemed to thrive on uncertainty during his Paris years, stashing scores in suitcases, and ultimately stunning his fellow emigres by returning to Stalin's Russia. At first, Stalin's regime treated him as a celebrity, but Morrison details how the bureaucratic machine ground him down with corrections and censorship (forcing rewrites of such major works as Romeo and Juliet), until it finally censured him in 1948, ending his career and breaking his health.

Stars and Spies

Stars and Spies
Author: Christopher Andrew
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2021-10-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 147355828X

A vastly entertaining and unique history of the interaction between spying and showbiz, from the Elizabethan age to the Cold War and beyond. 'A treasure trove of human ingenuity' The Times Written by two experts in their fields, Stars and Spies is the first history of the extraordinary connections between the intelligence services and show business. We travel back to the golden age of theatre and intelligence in the reign of Elizabeth I. We meet the writers, actors and entertainers drawn into espionage in the Restoration, the Ancien Régime and Civil War America. And we witness the entry of spying into mainstream popular culture throughout the twentieth century and beyond - from the adventures of James Bond to the thrillers of John le Carré and long-running TV series such as The Americans. 'Thoroughly entertaining' Spectator 'Perfect...read as you settle into James Bond on Christmas afternoon.' Daily Telegraph

Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment"

Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Dostoevsky's
Author: Janet G. Tucker
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9042024941

Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment presents for the first time an examination of this great novel as a work aimed at winning back “target readers”, young contemporary radicals, from Utilitarianism, nihilism, and Utopian Socialism. Dostoevsky framed the battle in the context of the Orthodox Church and oral tradition versus the West. He relied on knowledge of the Gospels as textreceived orally, forcing readers to react emotionally, not rationally, and thus undermining the very basis of his opponents' arguments. Dostoevsky saves Raskol'nikov, underscoring the inadequacy of rational thought and reminding his readers of a heritage discarded at their peril. This volume should be of special interest to secondary and university students, as well as to readers interested in literature, particularly, in Russian literature, and Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground

Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground
Author: Elizabeth A. Blake
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2014-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810167565

While Dostoevsky’s relation to religion is well-trod ground, there exists no comprehensive study of Dostoevsky and Catholicism. Elizabeth Blake’s ambitious and learned Dostoevsky and the Catholic Underground fills this glaring omission in the scholarship. Previous commentators have traced a wide-ranging hostility in Dostoevsky’s understanding of Catholicism to his Slavophilism. Blake depicts a far more nuanced picture. Her close reading demonstrates that he is repelled and fascinated by Catholicism in all its medieval, Reformation, and modern manifestations. Dostoevsky saw in Catholicism not just an inspirational source for the Grand Inquisitor but a political force, an ideological wellspring, a unique mode of intellectual inquiry, and a source of cultural production. Blake’s insightful textual analysis is accompanied by an equally penetrating analysis of nineteenth-century European revolutionary history, from Paris to Siberia, that undoubtedly influenced the evolution of Dostoevsky’s thought.

The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin

The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin
Author: Andrew Kahn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 4
Release: 2006-12-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139827413

Alexander Pushkin stands in a unique position as the founding father of Russian literature. In this Companion, leading scholars discuss Pushkin's work in its political, literary, social and intellectual contexts. In the first part of the book individual chapters analyse his poetry, his theatrical works, his narrative poetry and historical writings. The second section explains and samples Pushkin's impact on broader Russian culture by looking at his enduring legacy in music and film from his own day to the present. Special attention is given to the reinvention of Pushkin as a cultural icon during the Soviet period. No other volume available brings together such a range of material and such comprehensive coverage of all Pushkin's major and minor writings. The contributions represent state-of-the-art scholarship that is innovative and accessible, and are complemented by a chronology and a guide to further reading.

Criticising the Ruler in Pre-Modern Societies – Possibilities, Chances, and Methods

Criticising the Ruler in Pre-Modern Societies – Possibilities, Chances, and Methods
Author: Karina Kellermann
Publisher: V&R Unipress
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 3847010883

In vormodernen Monarchien beobachten wir Widerspruch und Widerstand gegen einzelne Herrscher, ihre politischen Entscheidungen und ihre Verwaltung, aber in der Regel keine direkten Angriffe auf die Ordnungsprinzipien und das politische System. Wenn Unzufriedenheit zu Aufständen und Revolten führten, blieb es normalerweise bei einem bloßen Austausch des Regenten. Subtilere Methoden der Herrscherkritik konnten sich mittels fester Usancen oder spezifischer Codes und Spielregeln innerhalb des legalen Rahmens Gehör verschaffen und zielten darauf ab, die Qualitäten des Regenten zu verbessern oder spezifische Modi der Amtsführung zu reformieren. Diese verschiedenen Formen und Praktiken von Herrscherkritik in vormodernen monarchischen Gesellschaften sind Gegenstand dieses Bandes. When looking at pre-modern monarchical societies, one does not expect to observe fundamental dissent directed at the social order as such or at the political system. As a rule, criticism was limited to individual monarchs, their performance and decisions. While discontent could lead to insurrection and rebellion, which normally only culminated in the ruler being replaced by another monarchical figurehead, the subtler methods of voicing criticism were applied within a framework of legality, of a set of customs or of a code of rules of the game and intended to improve the performance of the incumbent or reform his conduct at court. The various forms of verbal or staged censure of rulers in pre-modern monarchical societies are the subject of this volume.