“Reading” Fashion in A. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: ‘Word’ as ‘Image’ in 1820s Imperial Russia

Contributor: Dr. Elena Murenina and Elizabeth LaFave

This digital humanities project emphasizes the visual potential of the canonical literary text to prospective readers, by linking the original Russian work with a pictorial gallery of textual references, through the incorporation of intercultural perspectives. The interactive digital exhibit was developed by the utilization of interdisciplinary methods to employ concepts from disciplines of literary criticism, cultural studies, art history and digital humanities. An in-depth textual analysis and close reading of Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (1823-1830), was used to evaluate the cultural significance of the relationship between fashion dynamics in Imperial Russia and the canonicity of the text itself, to develop a set of literary citations where visual representations, including archival sources, proved helpful in the overall comprehension of nineteenth century Russian life in relation to the novel and its characters.