Book excerpt: Pushkin’s status as the founding father of Russian literature owes much to his stylistic and linguistic innovations across a wide range of literary genres. But equally important is the influence he exerted on his successors via his exploitation of myth in its widest sense. His poetry, prose and drama frequently draw upon myths of classical antiquity, myths of modern European culture – grand narratives such as the Don Juan legend and Dante’s Inferno – as well as uniquely Russian myths, particularly those associated with St Petersburg and its founder Peter the Great. It was through the elaboration of such myths that Russia attained to a sense of both its cultural uniqueness and its inscription in the broader context of European culture. The contributors to Alexander Pushkin: Myth and Monument explore these myths from a variety of critical viewpoints and highlight the specific ways in which Pushkin uses myth – among these his recurrent emphasis on the symbolism of monuments and statuary, famously referred to by Roman Jakobson as Pushkin’s ‘sculptural myth’. Alexander Pushkin: Myth and Monument is the second volume devoted to Pushkin published in the SSLP series, the first being Pushkin’s Secret: Russian Writers Reread and Rewrite Pushkin. A third volume – Pushkin’s Legacy will follow.