Alexander Nikolayevich Veselovsky () ( in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

– in St. Petersburg) was a leading

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

literary theorist who laid the groundwork for comparative literary studies.

Life and work

A general's son, Veselovsky studied privately with Fyodor Buslaev and attended the

Moscow University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, and six branches. Al ...

from 1854 to 1858. After a brief stint in Spain as a tutor to the Russian ambassador's son, Veselovsky continued his education with

Heymann Steinthal Heymann, Hermann or Chajim Steinthal (16 May 1823 – 14 March 1899) was a German philologist and philosopher. He studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and was in 1850 appointed ''Privatdozent'' of philology and mytholog ...

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and

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and spent three years working in the libraries of Italy. Upon his return to Russia, he delivered lectures in Moscow and St. Petersburg and was elected a Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1876. Veselovsky's early studies of medieval

Italian literature Italian literature is written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian, including ...

led him to believe that many plots and literary devices were imported to Europe from the

Orient The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term ''Occident'', which refers to the Western world. In English, it is largely a meto ...

through

Byzantium Byzantium () or Byzantion () was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' continued to be used as a n ...

. Looking at literature primarily from a genetic point of view, Alexander Veselovsky and his brother Aleksey (1843-1918) attempted to construct a comprehensive theory of the origin and development of poetry. In 1899, Veselovsky famously argued that "the font and syncretic root of poetic genres" may be traced to ritualized popular games and folk incantations.

Influence

In the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, Veselovsky and his followers were criticized for their "ethnographism", which allowed "source study to grow to a hypertrophied degree, thus dissolving the specific character of the literary work into a collection of ''influences''". On 14 August 1946 the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopted a resolution specifically condemning "kowtowing" to the bourgeois West by the so-called Veselovskyists. The

Russian Formalists Russian formalism was a school of literary theory in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars, such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir Propp, Boris Eikhen ...

largely shared a critical view of Veselovsky's theory, although it has been suggested that Veselovsky's doctrine was actually a point from which they evolved "in a linear, if polemical, way". Although his work has been largely forgotten by Western scholarship (probably due to lack of translations), Veselovsky has been called "one of the most erudite and original scholars Russia has produced" and "the most remarkable representative of comparative literary study in Russian and European scholarship of the nineteenth century".Rachel Polonsky (''English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance''. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Page 17) quoting Zhirmunsky's ''Sravnitelnoe literaturovedenie'', p. 84.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Veselovsky, Alexander Philologists from the Russian Empire Literary theorists Russian literary historians Comparative literature academics Comparative mythology Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences 1838 births 1906 deaths Researchers of Slavic religion Political repression in the Soviet Union Writers from Moscow Imperial Moscow University alumni Privy Councillor (Russian Empire)