The studies of Boris Eikhenbaum on the work of Mikhail Lermontov

from Formalism to the History of Culture

Abstract

The present paper analyses some aspects of the studies undertaken by the Russian critic Boris Eikhenbaum on the works of Mikhail Lermontov – namely the 1924 monograph ''Lermontov: an Essay in Literary Historical Evaluation'' and the 1941 article "Lermontov's literary position" (Literaturnaya pozitsiya Lermontova). Given that the 1924 monograph belongs to the properly formalist phase of Eikhenbaum, when he sought to affirm with clearly controversial intentions the constitutive autonomy of the work of art in relation both to its context and to the personality of its author, whereas the 1941 text pertains to his late works, in which the author reappears as a mediation between the work of art and its historical context, we intend to compare the two texts and, in spite of their flagrantly distinct methodological approach, to observe how the conjunction of these two approaches may contribute to an integrated study of Lermontov's works, including both textual analysis and historical contextualization and in line with modern Cultural Studies.