The Works of Mikhail A. Bulgakov: A Search for the Ideal Hero (Russia)

Underlying the wonderfully varied and often delightfully comic oeuvre of Mikhail Afanas'evich Bulgakov (1891-1940) was a stern intent: to examine, protest, and ultimately (particularly in his last, most challenging novel, The Master and Margarita), to answer society's many abuses of the individual. In the brutal aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Bulgakov's need for a figure who would effectively uphold his own exacting value system became ever more compelling. His protagonists quickly became instruments of retaliation; to counteract society's consistent denigration of the human spirit, he portrayed what elevates it, turning soon to the gifted individual, and most often the Writer, as the clearest exemplar--and in his frequent failures, the most to be lamented--of the values of freedom and compassion which Bulgakov was pursuing. The Master and Margarita embodies Bulgakov's meticulously developed counter-argument to the materialistic and man-centered philosophy fostered by submission to temporal authority.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Slavic Languages and Literatures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Levine, Ilene Rochelle

• Literature, Slavic and East European

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8409986

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/71568