Ethnocultural interpretation of A.S. Pushkin’s realism in Anglo-American criticism of the 20th century

UDC 82.09(410+73)
DOI 10.20339/PhS.6-25.159

Koroleva Svetlana B.,

Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor,

Head of the Scientific Research Laboratory “Fundamental and

Applied Research on Aspects of Cultural identification”

Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University named after N.A. Dobrolyubov

e-mail: svetlakor0808@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7587-9027

The article is devoted to the development in Anglo-American literary criticism of the 20th century of the ethnocultural approach to realism in A.S. Pushkin’s works and, more broadly, in Russian literature of the 19th century. It is argued that this approach was developed by Maurice Baring in the 1910s and became a productive paradigm for interpreting the fundamental features of Pushkin’s work. It is proved that at the basis of this approach there is correlation of realism (as mental orientation on “closeness to nature and fact”, softened by “omnihumanity”) in Pushkin’s poetry with such features of the Russian national character as common sense, matter-of-factness, and adaptability. It is revealed that this approach was formed under the influence of Dostoevsky’s Pushkin Speech. Having received the approval of D.S. Mirsky, it influenced the concept of Pushkin’s poetry and prose in the works of such prominent literary scholars and critics as Yanko Lavrin (the concept of the intuition of life and the spirit of the times in Pushkin’s work), Edmund Wilson (interpretation of the realism of The Bronze Horseman through historical and political prism), John Bailey (correlation of the ideological pathos of the poem with the idea of the Russian people’s reverence for tyrants), and Anthony Briggs (interpretation of “national issues” in The Bronze Horseman). The ethnocultural approach largely predetermined the penetration of the imagological myth of Russia into Anglo-American Pushkin studies of the 20th century.

Keywords: ethnocultural approach, realism, A.S. Pushkin, M. Baring, D.S. Mirsky, Ya. Lavrin, J. Bailey, A. Briggs, Anglo-American criticism of the 20th century

The research was conducted with the support of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, project No. 24-28-00706)

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