The Modernist Russian Lyric Thinks Through Classical Myth
Journal: eScholarship (California Digital Library)
Year: 2020

This dissertation examines three modernist Russian poets’ engagement with ancient mythology to illuminate the conceptual effects of lyric poetry. In a series of close readings, I argue that these poets (Viacheslav Ivanov, Osip Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky) deploy a variety of mythic material and modes (Dionysian revelry, epic quests, modern centaurs) in their writings in order to perform intellectual work (historiography, philosophical inquiry, deconstruction) and ultimately reveal the lyric genre