The iconic masks of the Italian commedia dell’arte—Harlequin, Pierrot, Colombina, Pulcinella, and others—have been vagabonding the roads of Russian cultural history for more than three centuries. This book explores how these masks, and the artistic principles of the commedia dell’arte that they embody, have profoundly affected the Russian artistic imagination, providing a source of inspiration for leading Russian artists as diverse as nineteenth-century writer Nikolai Gogol, modernist theater director Evgenii Vakhtangov, Vladimir Nabokov, and the empress of Russian popular culture Alla Pugacheva. The author presents a new perspective on this topic, showing how the commedia dell’arte has nourished a rich cultural tradition in Russia.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Chapter 1: Early Harlequinized Art
Chapter 2: Anna Ioannovna’s Italian Decade
Chapter 3: Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte: Vasilii Trediakovsky and Aleksandr Sumarokov
Chapter 4: Ramifications of the Italian Decade
Chapter 5: Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat: The Italian Ancestry of Akakii Bashmachkin
Chapter 6: The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte
Chapter 7: The Commedia dell’Arte in Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot
Chapter 8: Harlequin and His Lath: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel Look at the Harlequins!
Chapter 9: From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture, Alla Pugacheva
Epilogue: The Italian Arlecchino on the Post-Soviet Stage
About the author
Olga Partan is Assistant Professor of Russian at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her Ph D with a dissertation on the commedia dell’arte in Russian culture from Brown University in 2004. She has authored several articles and book chapters on Russian literature and the performing arts, and a Russian-language memoir You were right, Filumena! (Moscow: PROZAi K, 2012).
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