Puškin Today

Puskin Today highlights the remarkable variety and compass of a figure who by all accounts is absolutely central to Russian culture, even ÒRussiannessÓ itself. A multifaceted writer whose experiments at the boundaries of genre have never been equaled, Alexander Puskin is, moreover, an ever-evolving cultural myth. In this volume a distinguished group of American Slavists address PuskinÕs writings from a multiplicity of contemporary literary perspectives. Part One introduces Western readers to the wealth of critical methodologies now being applied to the study of Puskin. Chapters focus on a text or texts and a dominant methodology: literature as social institution, reader response criticism, structuralism, intertextuality, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and cultural mythology. The essays in Part Two broach some of the most puzzling issues in the poetÕs life and works. The contributors are David M. Bethea, Sergej Davydov, Paul Debreczeny, Caryl Emerson, George Gutsche, William E. Harkins, Simon Karlinsky, Leslie OÕBell, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Stephanie Sandler, J. Thomas Shaw, Victor Terras, William Mills Todd III, and Walter Vickery.