Iurii Lotman's Pushkiniana

Iurii Lotman authored nearly forty books and articles about Aleksandr Pushkin's works, life, and personality; there is little doubt, therefore, that the poet was central to Lotman's scholarly interests. Nonetheless, Lotman turned to Pushkin's legacy relatively late in his scholarly career: while his first article was published in 1949, his first article on Pushkin appeared only in 1960. Both Lotman's kandidatskaia and doktorskaia dissertations were devoted to far more marginal figures and issues of Russian literary development: the former to Aleksandr Radishchev and Nikolai Karamzin, and the latter to early nineteenth-century literature.