Caught between world wars and Stalin’s consolidation of power, citizens of Soviet Russia of the 1920s and 1930s had little to laugh about. Yet a unique tendency toward disruptive humor surfaces in poetry and prose over these two decades. I explore disruptive humor in select longer poetry of Nikolai Zabolotsky, Aleksandr Vvedensky, and Osip Mandelstam. This project posits that the disruptive humor found in all three poets’ work arises out of or bears distinct relation to the tradition of ancient Russian laughter, which includes the yurodivye or holy fool. Zabolotsky works in the tradition of D.S. Likhachev and A.M. Panchenko’s Russian world of laughter; Vvedensky takes ancient Russian parody’s technique of subverting conventions to an extreme in his search for expressing and representing human experience; whereas Mandelstam’s disruptive humor merges the ancient Russian tradition of laughter with what he calls [western and broadly] “world culture.” All three poets draw on ancient Russian laughter to activate the potential for serious, unconventional resistance epitomized in Mandelstam’s use of the “fools” of Western literature, from Yorick to Don Quixote to Soldier Švejk.

Creator

• Vinogradova, Nadezhda

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-dmgr-c005

Subject

• Slavic literature
• Slavic studies
• Translation studies

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_985514
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16560

Keyword

• Zabolotsky
• Chinari
• Humor
• OBERIU
• Mandelstam
• Vvedensky

Date created

• 2023-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright