Legacies of the Stone Guest

The Don Juan Legend in Russian Literature

Alexander Burry

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780299342104
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299342135
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: Literature

The story of Don Juan first appeared in writing in seventeenth-century Spain, reaching Russia about a century later. Its real impact, however, was delayed until Russia's most famous poet, Alexander Pushkin, put his own, unique, and uniquely inspirational, spin on the tale. Published in 1830, TheStone Guest is now recognized, with other Pushkin masterpieces, as part of the Russian literary canon. Alexander Burry traces the influence of Pushkin's brilliant innovations to the legend, which he shows have proven repeatedly fruitful through successive ages of Russian literature, from the Realist to the Silver Age, Soviet, and contemporary periods. Burry shows that, rather than creating a simple retelling of an originally religious tale about a sinful, consummate seducer, Pushkin offered open-ended scenes, re-envisioned and complicated characters, and new motifs that became recursive and productive parts of Russian literature, in ways that even Pushkin himself could never have predicted.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Don Juan in Western Europe and Russia
• 1. The Artist-Seducer as Liberator: Pushkin’s Stone Guest
• 2. Don Juan in Everyday Life: The Era of Realism
• 3. Don Juan in the Silver Age
• 4. Soviet and Post-Soviet Don Juans
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index