Pushkin: Satirist and Realist

With agile prose and analytical rigor, López Arriazu guides the reader through the passionate world of Pushkin’s work and sheds light on an aspect that has received little or no attention in the enormous body of studies on the Russian author. The chosen starting point is neoclassical satire, a genre that Pushkin reworked to shape a realism considered foundational to modern Russian literature. Furthermore, citing fundamental references such as Auerbach, Bakhtin, and Deleuze, López Arriazu manages to transcend mere analysis and develops his own reflection on realism in literature: “Realism,” he tells us, “more than a desire to capture reality, is a desire to modify it.”