Mikhail Bulgakov’s Caucasian menippean satire

Peruško, Ivana. (2013). Mikhail Bulgakov’s Caucasian menippean satire. Umjetnost riječi : časopis za znanost o književnosti, 57(1-2). pp. 227-247. ISSN 0503-1853

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Abstract

The paper explores and analyzes four journalistic feuilletons, written during the author’s stay in Vladikavkaz, Beslan and Grozny. Some of them (In the Café, The Week of Enlightenment) can be classified as border or hybrid literary genres, but more importantly, they announce some of Bulgakov’s later literary techniques and narrative choices, which helped him to become known as one of the best Russian (Soviet and Post-Soviet) heretical and satirical writers. Despite the fact that not all Bulgakov’s feuilletons are equally good, in terms of historical, cultural and personal literary development, they are highly relevant. Two of them (Future Perspectives, Theatrical October) have been found just recently, thanks to Vsevolod Saharov and some other Russian scholars. Accordingly, they are new to Russian readers and even to Russian literary critics. Some of them have been analyzed as separate units. This paper is the first attempt at a serious comparative research of Bulgakov’s early Caucasian work. The discussion is based on two theoretical references: Mikhail Bahtin’s famous theory of carnivalesque and Menippean satire, and Vladimir Paperny’s contemporary study of Lenin and Stalin Soviet culture. The latter defines two conflicting trends – Culture One of the 1920s, and Culture Two of the 1930s and 1940s.

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