Pushkin and the Pushkin Myth in Contemporary Russian Literary Studies

The aim of the article is to present an analytical review of research conducted in the mainstream of modern Russian Pushkin studies. The author analyzes the material of reports presented at the international Pushkin conferences of recent years; summarizes the content of articles published in this issue of the RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism ; and identifies perspective areas of Pushkin research. Focusing on different aspects of the main areas that have emerged in modern Russian Pushkin studies, it describes the latter ones as follows: poetics and problems of Pushkin’s work in the context of tradition and era; poetics of Russian literature in the context of perception of Pushkin’s personality and work; the Pushkin myth (including its cretive interpretation and deconstruction) as a way of identification and selfidentification in popular culture and the individual author’s picture of the world; the ‘other’ Pushkin: his perception in other national cultures, with an emphasis on the distinctive features of foreign images of Pushkin. The relevance of comparative and receptive issues included in the problematic fi of modern Pushkin studies is accentuated; and the problems of correlation between the ‘Petersburg theme’ in Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman and Byron’s Venetian text, of Pushkin’s way of developing the European myth of Don Juan in Russian literature, of reception of Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” abroad, and of penetration of the imagological myth about Russia into foreign Pushkin studies are commented on as examples. The following conclusions were made in this research: the contemporary fi of Russian Pushkin studies is distinguished by a diversity of issues and continuity with respect to the methodological tradition and the achieved results of research in this area; the comparativereceptive aspect is one of the most relevant in contemporary Pushkin studies; the depth and originality of the research perspective of the articles presented in this issue of the RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism testify to the inexhaustible responses of Russian and world cultures to the poet, as well as to the endless prospects for discoveries along the paths of Pushkin studies.