The Rhetorics and Myths of the Finnish War (1808–1809) in Baratynsky’s “Eda”

P. 59–78.

Bodrova A. S.

Translator: A. Morse

The article is dedicated to the reflection of the Finnish war (1808–1809) in poetry and press of the first third of the XIX century and to the participation of Russian literature in the construction of the narrative of the Finnish war. I observe the simultaneous ideological shaping of the campaign in the Russian printed materials, the acceptance of the war by its participants and their younger contemporaries, and then look at the reflection of these images and ideological constructs in the poem “Eda” by E. Baratynsky. Comparing synchronic literary responses to the Finnish campaign and interpretations of it offered in the press to that which we find in Baratynsky’s text and similar statements on the Finnish War, we get a more vivid picture of the essential rhetorical and conceptual breakdown that occurred in the late 1800s – early 1810s in conceptualizing the fate of the empire’s peoples.

Keywords: Баратынский, Е.А., язык и идеология, Baratynsky E.A., мифология истории, поэтика жанра, language and ideology, идеология власти, political myths, Давыдов Д.

In book

Russian National Myth in Transition. Acta Slavica Estonica, VI. Studia Russica Helsingiensia et Tartuensia, XIV

Т. VI. Вып. XIV. , Тарту: University of Tartu Press, 2014.