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  • 4.9 - The Madman

  • from History 4 - Heroes
  • Edited by Simon Franklin, University of Cambridge, Rebecca Reich, University of Cambridge, Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
    Published online:
    31 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024, pp 824-841

  • Summary

    The figure of the madman has been invoked in Russian literature from the medieval period to the present day. This chapter investigates the evolution of that tradition with an emphasis on the period from Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. It identifies four strains of literary madness: the divine madman, exemplified by the holy fool who tests society’s virtue and speaks truth to power; the creative madman, whose irrational behaviour stems from poetic inspiration and the generative power of the word; the rational madman, who follows a logical system to pathological extremes or inverts that paradigm by revolting against reason; and the political madman, whose sanity is often pathologised by a society that itself has lost its mind. Together, these paradigms of madness constitute an intertextual web of allusions and character types that have been embodied and amended over time.