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The Uncensored Boris Godunov
The Case for Pushkin's Original Comedy, with Annotated Text and Translation
Chester Dunning with Caryl Emerson, Sergei Fomichev,
Lidiia Lotman, and Antony Wood


A Publication of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies
General Editors: David M. Bethea and Alexander Dolinin


Persuasively argues for including the original, 1825 version of the play Boris Godunov (later eclipsed by the "politically correct" edition) in the canon of Pushkin's works

"The Uncensored Boris Godunov is a work of vivid and meticulous scholarly excavation which invites a radical reconsideration of the established Pushkin canon. . . . A collective of distinguished American and Russian researchers leads us back through the vagaries of the play's reception towards a long-buried but still glowing literary-historical treasure: the original version of Pushkin's Comedy about Tsar Boris and Grishka Otrepiev (1825), transcribed by Sergei Fomichev from the poet's manuscript, and translated into free-moving blank verse with brilliance and discerning fidelity by Antony Wood."—Rachel Polonsky, Times Literary Supplement

"Boris Godunov is the most fascinating and problematic of all Pushkin's texts. The story of The Uncensored Boris Godunov is really a kind of detective novel: why the earlier draft has not been preferred by Pushkin scholars, why perhaps it should be, and how history proper and literary history in particular have clouded the issue of what could have been the definitive text."—David M. Bethea, Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Chester Dunning is professor of history at Texas A&M University and the author of Russia's First Civil War. Caryl Emerson is the A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and professor of comparative literature at Princeton University. Sergei Fomichev is professor of literature at the State University of Novgorod Velikii in Russia. Lidiia Lotman is senior researcher at the Pushkin Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia. Antony Wood is an award-winning translator of Pushkin's poetry. He is a member of the editorial board of the Pushkin Premiere series published by the Pushkin State Theater.

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Of Related Interest:
cover of the Pushkin Handbook is in tones of sepia, black and red-brown. The illustration is of Pushkin sitting on a park bench in autumnThe Pushkin Handbook
Edited by David M. Bethea

"This ambitious companion to Russia's greatest poet is not a dictionary, not an anthology, but a monument that unfolds like a living museum of fragile contexts easily lost: the life, the texts, the contexts, the cultural resonances. In this landmark bilingual project, Russian and American scholars come together over the ever-expanding miracle of Alexander Pushkin, whose voice once again transcends all regimes and methodologies."
—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University


Cover of Dunning is a sepia illustration of Pushkin.

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
April 2007

LC: 2004025636 PG
568 pp
.   6 x 9
6 b/w drawings

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Paper $29.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-20764-9
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