Vagabonding Masks

The Italian Commedia dell'Arte in the Russian Artistic Imagination

Olga Partan author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Academic Studies Press

Published:30th Mar '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Vagabonding Masks cover

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.

"Olga Partan’s research is interdisciplinary and innovative. [...] Partan easily combines a variety of different fields in the overall picture of Russian culture’s infatuation with the commedia dell’arte. The author enthusiastically and fascinatingly surfs in the immense world of literature and art, substantiating her very interesting and innovative hypothesis that the impact of Italian commedia dell arte on Russian culture was significant not only during the epoch of Russian modernism, but from its very first performances in early modern Russia until the beginning of the twenty first century." — Women East-West Newsletter

ISBN: 9781618115713

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

294 pages