Alexander Veselovsky
Alexander Veselovsky was a prominent Russian scholar in the field of comparative literature, born in 1838 and graduating from Moscow University in 1858. He became a professor at St. Petersburg University in 1872 and initially focused on the Italian Renaissance before shifting his attention to comparative studies in literature and folklore. His influential doctoral dissertation explored the connections between Eastern and Western legends, emphasizing the presence of parallel stories across cultures. Drawing from German historical schools and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, Veselovsky sought to trace the development of common folk motifs and poetic forms throughout history.
His research encompassed various aspects of the Slavic oral tradition and aimed to construct a universal history of poetics. Notably, he employed an empirical and sociological approach, which later evolved into an anthropological perspective, suggesting that similar motifs could arise spontaneously among disparate cultures. Among his significant works are studies on Christian legends and investigations into Russian spiritual verse. Veselovsky's contributions to literary criticism and theory have had a lasting impact on the field, and he passed away in 1906, leaving behind a rich legacy of scholarly inquiry.
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Alexander Veselovsky
Writer
- Born: February 16, 1838
- Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
- Died: October 23, 1906
- Place of death: St. Petersburg, Russia
Biography
Alexander Veselovsky was the greatest comparative literature scholar in Russia. Born in 1838, he graduated from Moscow University in 1858 and became a professor at St. Petersburg University in 1872. Beginning as a scholar of the Italian Renaissance, he soon gravitated to his lifelong interest in comparative studies of literature and folklore. His doctoral dissertation, “From the History of Literary Intercourse Between East and West: The Slavic Legends of Solomon and Kitovras and the Western Legends of Morolf and Merlin” (1872), attempts to account for parallel stories in different cultures.
Some of the major influences on Veselovsky were German. In 1810-1820, the historical school in Germany, which included the Brothers Grimm, theorized that because both language and folk poetry were rooted in antiquity, similarities in linguistic uses as well as motifs and plots suggested that now-scattered peoples once shared a common, primordial mythology. Veselovsky studied with Heymann Steinthal in Berlin in 1862, learning of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Veselovsky used these theories to trace the evolution of those common folk motifs and plots through the ages. His lifelong project was to write a universal evolutionary history of poetics. Interested in the Slavic oral tradition, he set out to trace the morphology of poetic devices, themes, and genres from prehistory through the Romantic Movement. His method was empirical and sociological rather than mythological.
Other major works included Opyty po istorii razvitiya khristianskoy legendy (1875-1877; history of the development of Christian legends) and Razyskaniye v oblasti russkogo dukhovnogo stikha (1879-1891; investigations in the area of Russian spiritual verses). In the second of these, Veselovsky examines the prehistoric origins of literature and folklore using an anthropological approach. He assumes that creativity and poetic language were conferred on artists in the dim past and that the critic’s job is to search for remnants of that once syncretic whole as creativity and language migrated over time and space, from one culture to another. Later in his career, using an anthropological approach, Veselovsky came to a different conclusion: common motifs and plots were probably generated spontaneously among scattered peoples even without social interaction, due to the psychic attributes of all human beings in a certain stage of cultural development.
Veselovsky’s wide-ranging interests are reflected in his many essays on such topics as theories of borrowing, origins of legends and fairy tales, parallel psychological states as reflected in poetic style, and historical poetics. He died in 1906.