Pushkin's 'The Tales of Belkin': Formalist and structuralist readings and beyond the literary theories

In this dissertation, I demonstrate the artistic design and the thematic unity employed in Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin's first completed short stories entitled The Tales of Belkin (1831). The work consists of five independent tales compiled by Belkin, each of which in fact was written during the author's famous "Boldino Autumn" and attributed to a fictitious narrator named Ivan Petrovich. They are: "The Undertaker" (September 9, 1830), "The Stationmaster" (September 14, 1830), "Mistress into Maid" (September 20, 1830), "The Shot" (October 14, 1830), and "The Snowstorm" (October 20, 1830). Before submitting them for publication in 1831, Pushkin arranged the stories in a particular order, different from the chronology of their completed dates. In other words, he placed the last two tales---"The Shot" and "The Snowstorm"---at the beginning, and called them collectively Tales of the Deceased Ivan Petrovich Belkin, Published by A. P. for his book.;There has been little discussion of this matter in Pushkin scholarship. When it comes to a theoretical approach to the tales as a cycle, no comprehensive study has yet been published either in Russia or elsewhere. By identifying and elucidating autobiographical, folkloristic, and thematic elements, the present study differs from, and goes beyond previous analyses. Drawing on both Formalist and Structuralist approaches to a literary work, my analysis demonstrates how the five tales in the Belkin cycle are interwoven structurally and thematically. Not only to enrich the interpretation but also to account for the possibility of different readings of Pushkin's The Tales of Belkin, I employ three new terminologies: theory of an inverted triangle, macro-plot, and zero-character, none of which has been used in literary criticism of Russian literature or in literary theory.;My reading should help future readers understand the enigmatic meaning of Pushkin's stories created in the Belkin cycle. Another merit of this dissertation lies in the fact that my theoretic approach is accompanied by certain folkloristic readings of the texts. Folkloric interpretation of each tale, which has largely been ignored in Pushkin scholarship and has never been previously applied to the Belkin cycle in particular, helps us to identify the architectonics, literary values, and artistic contribution that Pushkin achieves throughout The Tales of Belkin.