Vol. 40 (2019)
Review

Luigi Magarotto’s Monograph “The Conquest of the Caucasus in Nineteenthcentury Russian Literature. Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy”

Published 2020-10-20

Keywords

  • Pushkin,
  • Lermontov,
  • Tolstoy,
  • Russia,
  • Caucasus,
  • Romantic Orientalism
  • ...More
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How to Cite

Kenchoshvili, S. (2020). Luigi Magarotto’s Monograph “The Conquest of the Caucasus in Nineteenthcentury Russian Literature. Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy”. Literary Researches, 40, 276–280. Retrieved from https://literaryresearches.litinstituti.ge/index.php/literaryresearches/article/view/3911

Abstract

Luigi Magarotto’s monograph devoted to the study of ideological and artistic features of reflection of the theme of the conquest of the Caucasus by Russia in the works of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Lev Tolstoy is deeply engaged in its subject in the literary, political social and cultural situation of the XIX century Russia. The study is based on the idea that the origin of the interest of Russian writers to the Caucasus is rooted in the Romantic orientalism and the assumption characteristic for Russian Romantics that the southern territories, including Georgia, belong to the East. It is argued that the attitude of the Russian writers to the Caucasus was closely connected with a specific kind of patriotism and an ideology that Russian empire was doing a favor to peoples brought into the empire against their will. The advantage of this study is the involvement of different kinds of metatexts and its multilateral comparative aspect, including the Russian-Georgian literary relations and a number of typological parallels. All this expands our understanding of the nature and evolution of the theme of the conquest of the Caucasus in the works of the three greatest Russian writers of the 19th century.