Background

Alexander Veselovsky was born in Moscow on February 4, 1838 in Moscow in the family of Augusta Fedorovna Lisitskaya and military teacher Nikolai Alekseevich Veselovsky. After graduating from university in 1858, Veselovsky became a tutor in the family of the Russian ambassador in Spain, which gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe. In 1859, his first scientific publications appeared.

Education

In 1854, Alexander Veselovsky graduated from the Second Moscow gymnasium and entered the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University. After a short stay in Spain as a tutor of the son of the Russian ambassador, Veselovsky continued his studies in Berlin to prepare for a professorship, studied Slavic studies in Prague, and worked for three years in Italian libraries.

Career

After graduation, Veselovsky became a tutor in the family of the Russian ambassador to Spain, which gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe. In 1859, his first scientific publications appeared. In 1864-1867, Veselovsky lived in Italy, worked in libraries, printed correspondence in Russian newspapers. In 1869 he published his first major work, "Il paradiso degli Alberti" ("Paradise Villa Alberti").

In 1870, he defended his master's thesis on the problems of the Italian Renaissance at Moscow University and was elected assistant professor at St. Petersburg University. At that time, Veselovsky became the most prominent representative of the comparative historical method in literary studies. In 1872 he became a professor, in 1876 - a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, in 1881 - an academician. The basis of Veselovsky's scientific activity was the study of the "history of cultural thought", he was interested in the problems of the origin of poetry. One of the other topics of Veselovsky's scientific activity was Italian literature. In addition to the master's thesis, such works as "Dante and the Symbolic Poetry of Catholicism" (1886), "Petrarch in Canzoniere's Poetic Confession" (1905) are devoted to that topic. In 1891, the first volume of Veselovsky's translation of "Decameron" by Boccaccio was published.

In the last years of his life, Veselovsky turned to the study of the "secrets of personal creativity". In the work "Pushkin - a national poet" (1899) and fundamental research "V. A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and "heart's imagination'" (1904), Veselovsky considered the work of poets in the broad cultural and historical context of Western European literature and Russian life of their time. Veselovsky’s research became the basis of his general theory of poetry, which was called "historical poetics". He outlined the concept of his new theory in the book "Three сhapters from historical poetics" (1899).

Works

More photos

• book

  • "From an introduction to Historical Poetics"

    (The author considers historical poetics as "the history o...)

    1893
  • "Decameron"

    (Veselovsky's translation of “Decameron” by Boccaccio)

    1891
  • "Three сhapters from historical poetics"

    (In the monograph by A.N. Veselovsky, various techniques o...)

    1899
  • "V. A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and "heart's imagination '" 1904

Interests

• Folklore, languages, poetry

• Writers

  Boccaccio, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Dante, Petrarch

Connections

Alexander Veselovsky was born in the family of Augusta Fedorovna Lisitskaya and military teacher Nikolai Alekseevich Veselovsky. Alexander Veselovsky was the brother of a literary critic and academician Alexei Nikolaevich Veselovsky.

Father:

Nikolai Alekseevich Veselovsky

Mother:

Augusta Fedorovna Lisitskaya

Brother:

Alexey Nikolayevich Veselovsky

Colleague, professor:

Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev

Student:

Vladimir Fedorovich Shishmaryov

Student:

Dmitry Konstantinovich Petrov

References

• Imperatorskiy Moskovskiy universitet. 1755-1917. Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar
  2010
• Russkie pisateli. 1800-1917. Biograficheskij slovar. Toma 1 - 4./Russian writers. 1800-1917. Biographical Dictionary. Volume 1 - 4.