| The dissertation analyzes the narrative lyric poems of Fedor Sologub (1863-1927) in the context of the literary and folk ballad genres, studying the balladic features of Sologub's poems and their implications for understanding his poetics and his view of art. The balladic poems are grouped in terms of plots and themes. The dissertation shows the development, variation, and consistency within groups of balladic poems about adultery, courtship and marriage, tragic or unfulfilled love, seduction, struggle against an enemy, and collaboration with forces of evil.; Sologub's balladwriting spans his entire career but has its highest peak during the years 1904 to 1907. In his narrative lyric poems Sologub makes use of traditional ballad meters, refrain, frames, and other devices of repetition. He develops epithets which have special functions within his work, and he often employs a distanced narrative tone, understatement and irony. The dissertation shows how epic, dramatic and lyric elements are combined in these poems and identifies links between Sologub's prose and poetry.; Models for these poems are shown to include romantic literary ballads, populist ballads, civic poetry, urban romances, French symbolist poems, and Russian folk songs. Sologub's ballads are also briefly compared to those of other Russian symbolists, particularly Valerij Brjusov, and to German ballads of the same period.; The ballads explore numerous destinies and "masks of experience." Two basic paths, which correspond to Sologub's view of "ironic" and "lyric" mythical structures, emerge through the protagonists' stories. The first path is that of asserting one's individual will through desire and acts of passion, transgression and rebellion. The second involves resignation and relinquishing one's will as one loses oneself in oblivion or lack of desire. Both of these possibilities hold attraction and danger, and both are portrayed as potential means toward fulfillment, as well as disillusionment and a state of deep boredom with life. Within Sologub's oeuvre the ballads are pivotal texts, each of which functions as an individual, self-contained work and simultaneously participates in the author's construction and exposition of symbols and myths in his writing as a whole. |
