German romanticism and Russian literature: rhetoric and ethical irony in Lermontov's A Hero of our Time

Abstract

This internship research project aims to study the relationship between German Romanticism and the Russian literature contemporary to it, more specifically the novel A hero of our time, by Mikhail Lermontov, object of our doctoral research. Such a study shall be carried out on two fronts: the first, through authors who are known to have directly influenced Russian letters, such as Schelling, Schiller and Goethe; as for the second, it shall be done through contemporary authors with no direct influence on Russian literature, but who made absolutely relevant theoretical contributions to the study of our object, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his writings on irony. Finally, considering, as did Kierkegaard, this phenomenon not only in its rhetorical dimensions but also in its ethical ones, we also intend to study romantic writings on Shakespeare's Hamlet, given the enormous relevance the English playwright had for Romanticism and, similarly, his model role for literary characters such as Mikhail Lermontov's Pechorin. (AU)