Untitled - Doria

expresses an ethical position. “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” teaches the reader
that truth – istina – always wins and that evil, in this tale represented by lies,
loses. In addition, the significance of one’s own home and the importance of
a sound relation between the Tsar and his subjects are emphasized. As a
whole, the tale manifests the notion of a trinity where its parts – the home,
the Tsar and the law – are of equal importance. Truth is an absolute
requirement for the continuity of this trinity.
In my present work the reading is focused on certain thematic
characteristics consisting of the relationship between father and son, between
child and Tsar, the creation of the Petrine myth and the relationship between
the written and the spoken word, which in its turn raises questions about
truths and lies, and, finally, the description of the birth of the poem. I also
explore here the ways in which the text is thematically connected with
Pushkin’s poetic mythology and how it expresses its contemporary
sociocultural context. My hypothesis is that there are three discernible
discourses or “stories” in “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, which, more or less
visibly, run parallel to and are intertwined with each other. The outer course
of events in the tale is interleaved with allegorical allusions to parts of
Russian history and the image of the Tsar. The great events are reflected in
the fates and actions of the main characters, which makes it possible to also
read the tale as a fictitious (family) chronicle. At the same time, it expresses
a meta-poetic meditation on the origin and completion of the poem. Thus,
the interplay between the written and the spoken word is also described.
The complex concepts of “poetic mythology” and “poetic myth” are
here mainly used according to the definitions provided by Roman Jakobson,
Savely Senderovich and Boris Gasparov. The relevance of these lies in the
fact that they all formulate their theories on the basis of Pushkin’s poetics.
Poetic mythology is described as a prerequisite for the birth of a poetic
universe. The poetic myth is an individual expression of a notional given
order of things at a certain point in time. It forms a system for expressing the
significance of a set of motifs specific for its creator. This does not,
however, imply that it would be a static or eternally fixed order. In his most
extensive and flexible definition of the concept, Gasparov rejects a
homogenous and congruent structure and, instead, stresses the manifoldness
and variation in the origins of the mythical components which, in principle,
are limitless. Life experiences, historical events, literature, opinions,
everyday chores – everything can constitute mythical material. This also
emphasizes the changeable, complex, dynamic, as well as the paradoxical
and occasionally unexpected in the semantic interaction, of which the poetic
myth is an expression. Thus, the myth is of a functional character – a device
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