Moscow, Moscovia, Muscovite: The Moscow Canon of English Literature

This paper focuses on the formation and modifications of the “Moscow canon” in English literature. The author refers to some 16th-century travelogues and English literary texts from different epochs. The work aims to provide a systematic description of how motifs and images that constitute the “Moscow canon” of English literature was formed and modified. The author reveals the main connotations present in the notes of English travellers which they took while travelling around Russia in the sixteenth century. The name “Moscovia” was used as a synonym for “Russia” and had peculiar connotations in travelogues connected with the historical context of its appearance in English culture. The connotations used by English travellers in their notes for the words “Moscow”, “Moscovia”, and “Muscovite” had a considerable influence on the image of Russia in English literature both in the seventeenth century and until the present day. It is argued that the “Moscow canon” (as a literary phenomenon, apart from inter-genre travel books) started in Elizabethan literature with a fragmentary use of images borrowed from travels around Moscovia as striking phenomena of a different, non-English part of the world. It is demonstrated how in the English literature of the Enlightenment, the motifs connected with the image of Moscovia are perfected in their form and function and, at the same time, re-evaluated. Starting with the early nineteenth century, the “Moscow canon” was more and more often used in plots focusing on the opposition between British and Russian characters, or a British character plunging into the Russian world. The corresponding images and motifs acquire a deeper and more complicated interpretation in literary works: through them, English writers and poets search for the keys to understanding both Russia and the fundamental problems of modernity. In different historical periods and in the framework of different aesthetic systems, authors chose different “Moscow” motifs and interpreted them in diverse ways. Each time, entering a new created world, these motifs were adapted to certain functions and ideas.

The Prodigal Son in Elizabethan Literature

This chapter considers the influence of Roman comedies, such as those of Terence, on the development of a Prodigal Son tradition in Elizabethan literature. It is argued that the potential danger of rebellion against authority, and fears about change and its consequences in a period of stability following religious and economic upheaval, offer a context in which the parable might be meaningfully adapted. The ubiquity of the paradigm is explained in the light of this historical setting, and the tendency for writers to identify with the figure of the Prodigal is explored.

The Prodigal Son in English and American Literature

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of the best-known stories in the Bible, has captured the imagination of commentators, preachers, and writers. This book explores the reconfiguring of the character of the Prodigal Son and his family in literature in English. It considers diverse literary periods and genres in which the paradigm is particularly prevalent, such as Elizabethan literature, the work of Shakespeare, the novels of female Victorian writers, the American short story tradition, novels focused on the lives of ordained ministers, and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Iain Crichton Smith. Drawing on scholarship from biblical and literary studies, it aims to demonstrate the remarkable potency of the parable in generating new, and at times contradictory, meanings in different contexts. These include issues left open in the parable, such as the Prodigal Son’s motive for leaving and his response to his father’s welcome, which are given multiple expressions, both positive and negative. Historical and literary criticism are brought into dialogue to explore this remarkably resilient and nimble character as he dances through drama, novels, and poetry across the centuries.

Wittgenstein’s Shakespeare

Wittgenstein’s oddly negative assessment of Shakespeare has caused consternation among literary critics. From F. R. Leavis to the present, English critics have often assumed that Wittgenstein was simply a bad judge of poetry and that he knew little about the literature of his adopted country. Or again,Wittgenstein stands accused, by critics like George Steiner, of demanding clear ethical values from literature - values Shakespeare, who never quite took sides with particular characters, did not proclaim. This essay argues that such criticisms fail to understand Wittgenstein’s own context as an Austrian writer, brought up on the German classics of the 18th and 19th centuries. It s true that this “classical” literature, coming two centuries later than Shakespeare, was much more subjective, more personal than Elizabethan literature, and that Wittgenstein was accustomed to a psychology not characteristic of Shakespeare. It is the demand for realism, for characters with whom the reader can identify that makes Shakespeare unsatisfactory to Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s fugitive remarks about Shakespeare show great acumen and insight; he understood the Tragedies - for example, King Lear, much better than one might conclude from some of his strictures. Despite the gulf between the two writers, Shakespeare’s “dreamwork,” as Wittgenstein calls it, became a model for the philosopher’s own writing