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- A Post-Romantic Dialogue with Romanticism: “The Aspern Papers” and “The Queen of Spades”
- Lugovtsova A.E. A Post-Romantic Dialogue with Romanticism: “The Aspern Papers” and “The Queen of Spades”. Vestnik of Kostroma State University, 2025, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 97–103 (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-2-97-103
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-2-97-103
- УДК: 821(73).09”19” ; 821.161.1.09”19”
- EDN: KQPDST
- Publish date: 2025-03-20
- Annotation: Henry James’s novella “The Aspern Papers” (1888/1908) has frequently been examined in connection with Alexander Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades” (1834). Scholars—both Russian and Western—have analysed various parallels between the two works, including specific scenes and narrative structures. Some Jamesian scholars suggest that the author may have been familiar with Pushkin’s text. The idea for “The Aspern Papers” emerged in early 1887 from an anecdote about a Boston sailor obsessed with finding letters from English Romantic poets through an elderly woman who had once known them in her youth. Similarly, “The Queen of Spades” has been linked to the literary tradition of “anecdotes,” further aligning the two works in terms of genre. Another striking similarity lies in their settings: both stories unfold in “cities on water” (St. Petersburg and Venice), and while Pushkin’s aristocratic gambling milieu is central to his narrative, James transposes this dynamic into the world of expatriate literary circles. This comparative approach highlights how authors from different literary traditions reinterpret a shared plot structure, illustrating what makes each work a product of its respective era—Romanticism in Pushkin’s case and Post-Romanticism in James’s.
- Keywords: Henry James, Alexander Pushkin, short fiction, Russian Romanticism, Western European Post-Romanticism, “dialogue of generations.”
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