Russian Reception of Christopher Marlowe’s Creative Work in the 1830 – 1850-s

Abstract

The article comprehends circumstances of the appearance of a wide range of translated articles (mostly anonymous, in some cases with the names of F.Eckstein, Th.Show) in the Russian press in the 1830 – 1850-s in which a general characteristics of the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe’s creative work in the context of his epoch was presented for the first time. It also gives short opinions of Christopher Marlowe which appeared in the 1840 – 1850-s in the articles on literary criticism and publicistic articles, created by the leading Russian writers I.S.Turgenev (“Faust, a Tragedy. Goethe’s Work. The Translation of the First Part and Summary of the Second One. M.Vronchenko. 1844. Saint-Petersburg”, 1845), N.A.Nekrasov (“From the Editor”, 1850), A.V.Druzhinin (letters XXIII and XXV of the cycle “Letters of the Nonresident Subscriber”, 1851; an introduction to the translation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, 1856). The article presents the experience of Christopher Marlowe’s creative work study in the history of Russian literature of the second part of the XIXth century allowing to comprehend circumstances of genesis and development of interest to his creative work among Russian writers, translators, literary critics, literature researchers, art critics, explain his poetic’s elements penetration into Russian literature and culture. In the process of the analysis the articles of the given period devoted to the development of Elizabethan drama are taken into account; the use of these materials allowed to comprehend Marlowe’s works in important for their understanding historical and literature context.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s3p391