Boris Godunov: Transpositions Of A Russian Theme
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in Russian cultural history have proven as enduringly magnetic as Boris Godunov — the ambitious tsar whose dramatic rise and fall has inspired centuries of artistic reinvention. Caryl Emerson's Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme traces the extraordinary afterlife of this singular historical figure across literature, opera, drama, and film, charting how each era has reshaped the Godunov myth to reflect its own anxieties, ambitions, and aesthetics. From Pushkin's foundational dramatic poem to Mussorgsky's monumental opera and beyond, Emerson maps the cultural permutations of a story that refuses to be fixed in a single definitive form. A distinguished scholar of Russian literature and Bakhtinian theory, Emerson brings formidable intellectual rigour and a rare gift for synthesis to this sweeping comparative study. The book argues that the Godunov narrative is not merely a historical tale but a recurring cultural template — a lens through which Russian identity, guilt, power, and legitimacy are perpetually interrogated. Written with the precision of a scholar and the accessibility of a masterful storyteller, this work will leave readers wondering which Boris Godunov is truly definitive — and whether such a thing could ever exist.
Author: Caryl Emerson
Format: Hardback
Published: 1986, Indiana University Press
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in Russian cultural history have proven as enduringly magnetic as Boris Godunov — the ambitious tsar whose dramatic rise and fall has inspired centuries of artistic reinvention. Caryl Emerson's Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme traces the extraordinary afterlife of this singular historical figure across literature, opera, drama, and film, charting how each era has reshaped the Godunov myth to reflect its own anxieties, ambitions, and aesthetics. From Pushkin's foundational dramatic poem to Mussorgsky's monumental opera and beyond, Emerson maps the cultural permutations of a story that refuses to be fixed in a single definitive form. A distinguished scholar of Russian literature and Bakhtinian theory, Emerson brings formidable intellectual rigour and a rare gift for synthesis to this sweeping comparative study. The book argues that the Godunov narrative is not merely a historical tale but a recurring cultural template — a lens through which Russian identity, guilt, power, and legitimacy are perpetually interrogated. Written with the precision of a scholar and the accessibility of a masterful storyteller, this work will leave readers wondering which Boris Godunov is truly definitive — and whether such a thing could ever exist.