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3.3 - Verse I

from History 3 - Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Michael Wachtel
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

This chapter traces the development of Russian poetry from the earliest known texts to the late nineteenth century. The emphasis is on versification (syllabic, syllabo-tonic, and tonic [also called accentual] systems, all of which appear at times in Russia), genre, and style. Examples come primarily from the work of canonic poets. A distinction is drawn between folkloric and literary verse, which intersected only infrequently. Some attention is devoted to the ways that Russian poetry was indebted to Polish, German, and French models. The focus is on two periods: the eighteenth century, when secular Russian literature first began to flourish, and the ‘Golden Age’ of Aleksandr Pushkin.

Keywords

versificationAleksandr Pushkinfolklorebylinasolemn odeelegy
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 498 - 519
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Bailey, James, Three Russian Lyric Folk Song Meters (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1993).Google Scholar
Gasparov, M. L., A History of European Versification, trans. G. S. Smith and Marina Tarlinskaja, ed. Smith, G. S. with Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Andrew (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Catriona, A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 1820–1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Khitrova, Daria, Lyric Complicity: Poetry and Readers in the Golden Age of Russian Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, Marcus C., Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, Sarah, Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: The Poetry of Tiutchev and Boratynskii (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Reyfman, Irina, Vasilii Trediakovsky: The Fool of the ‘New’ Russian Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Scherr, Barry P., Russian Poetry: Meter, Rhythm, and Rhyme (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Silbajoris, Rimvydas, Russian Versification: The Theories of Trediakovskij, Lomonosov, and Kantemir (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).Google Scholar
Zhivov, Victor, Language and Culture in Eighteenth Century Russia, trans. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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