'Мне? зачем же нет?': The Individual’s Historical Place in Alexander Pushkin’s 'The Bronze Horseman' and Poltava

• In Event: The History of Historical Fiction: Karamzin, Pushkin, Saltykov-Shchedrin

Abstract

The lyrical narrators in Alexander Pushkin’s Poltava and The Bronze Horseman introduce mythic-historical paradigms that initially seem to define the entirety of each text. However, Hooyman-Kelley proposes that Pushkin’s protagonists also create and act on their own localized historical mythologies as an attempt to find meaning in their individual position in history. Ultimately, this paper proposes that both Poltava and The Bronze Horseman are meditations on not just history itself but the way human beings make sense of their own historicity.

Author

• Claudia Rose Kelley, Columbia U