Leskov, Nikolai (Semyonovich) - Faith Wigzell (essay date 1989)
Faith Wigzell (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: "Folk Stylization in Leskov's Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda" in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 67, No. 2, April, 1989, pp. 169-82.
[In the following excerpt, Wigzell examines the influence of folklore and other traditional and popular forms in one of Leskov's best-known stories.]
When Henry Gifford declares that 'Leskov was a writer who loved the pigments of language almost for their own sake,'1 he is focusing on the facet of Leskov's work most attractive to the contemporary reader: his linguistic virtuosity. As Gifford continues: 'Nearly always he invests himself in a speech disguise; either choosing a narrator, some experienced man with much local and unaccustomed lore whose idiom he can enter; or . . . reflecting the consciousness—and the vocabulary—of his protagonists.'2 This feel for the linguistic idiom of individuals and groups,whether reflected in...
[The entire page is 5212 words long]
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