Open AccessMaiden on Man’s Laps. From the History of Russian Rousseauism
Author(s) -
Ilya Vinitsky
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
dostoevskij i mirovaâ kulʹtura. filologičeskij žurnal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2712-8512
pISSN - 2619-0311
DOI - 10.22455/2619-0311-2020-3-40-67
Subject(s) - ideology , romance , literature , philosophy , poetry , trace (psycholinguistics) , aestheticism , punishment (psychology) , romanticism , aesthetics , art , law , politics , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , political science
The concept of romantic love directed towards a young bride is anideological construction in the history of European culture as manifested in worksof Rousseau, Novalis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Any given author's modification of thisform of love is an important indication of his religious, ethical, and aesthetic beliefs,which are in turn indicative of his cultural trend and which reflect the fears and idealsof the given author's contemporary society. Here, I will trace the transformation ofthis topic in the late work of Vasily Zhukovsky in its intersection with the Rousseauisttopos of the last or "twilight" love. I will also analyze the transformation of the imageof the girl-bride, previously canonized by the patriarch of Russian Romanticism, in thepoetry of Pyotr Vyazemsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and VladimirNabokov's Lolita - works which represent different literary-ideological programswhich respond in different ways to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1769,published 1782).