Boris Tomashevsky

Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky (Russian: Бори́ с Ви́ кторович Томаше́ вский,

Professor
IPA: [təmɐˈʂɛfskʲɪj]; 29 November 1890, Saint-Petersburg – 24 August 1957,
Boris Tomashevsky
Gurzuf) was a Russian Formalist literary critic, theorist of poetry,textual analyist,
historian of Russian literature, Pushkin scholar, translator, and writer. He was a Born November 29, 1890
member of the Moscow linguistic circle the OPOJAZ and the Union of Soviet Saint Petersburg,
Writers. Russia
Died August 24, 1957
(aged 66)
Biography
Gurzuf
Tomashevsky finished Gymnasium (high school) in 1908 but was unable to attend
Nationality Russian
the Polytechnical Institute. He received training in statistics and electrical
Education PhD
engineering in Liège and Paris.[1] and took classes at Sorbonna. Upon returning to
Russia he came out with his first publications on questions of engineering and on Alma mater Sorbonna
literary themes in 1915. He associated with the social circle connected with the Known for Literary critic, theorist
journal Apollo. He participated in World War I, fighting on the Austrian front from of poetry and textual
1915 to 1918. At the end of the war he worked in Moscow
. criticism, researcher of
Pushkin's work, writer
Moving to Petrograd, he joined the Art History Institute in 1921 but later moved to
the Pushkin House, where he managed the manuscript department in 1946-57 and
Scientific career
the department of Pushkin studies in 1957. He started giving lectures on text Fields Literary criticism,
analysis, literary theory, and the work of Pushkin at the State Institute of Art History, Textual criticism,
From 1924 he taught in the department of Russian literature at Leningrad University. Theory of poetry
He died and was buried inGurzuf.[2] Institutions Pushkin House,
National Institute of
Academic Activity Art History, Leningrad
University
Tomashevsky was involved in compiling the Ushakov Dictionary and supervised the
Notable I. M. Semenko
first Soviet editions of Pushkin's and Dostoyevsky's collected works. He supervised
students
the editing of A. N. Ostrovsky's collected works, A. P. Chekhov's selected texts, and
later, the entire academic collection of Pushkin's collected works (1937-`949). He helped establish the Pushkin Museum in Gurzuf He
participated in the в составлении словаря языка Пушкина and editing of Pushkin's "Literary Heritage" volumes. He helped with a
number of publications of texts by poets from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in a series called "Library of a Poet."

He wrote major works on versification, poetics, stylistics, text analysis, Pushkin studies, and French poetry
.

He wrote Pushkin. Contemporary Problems of historical literary study in 1925. His monograph Theory of Literature (Poetics), also
published in 1925, was the first systematic exposition of Formalist doctrine. Another important theoretical work is The Writer and the
Book: An Outline of Textology (1928, second edition 1959). He was especially interested in the theory of versification. In his metrical
[3] and succeeded in
studies, following in the footsteps ofAndrey Bely, he applied statistical procedures to the study of Russian poetry
"raising versification to a quantified science".[4] His other major works include On Poetry (1929), A Short Course in Poetics (5th
edition -Leningrad, 1931),and many articles.Tomashevsky's works have been translated into several languages.

References
1. Mikhail Bakhtin. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. University of Texas Press, 1986. Page 8.
2. http://gurzufmuseum.com/muzej-bvtomashevskogo.html
 3. Tzvetan Todorov. The Poetics of Prose. Cornell University Press, 1977. Page 265.
4. Quoted from: Evgeny Dobrenko, Marina Balina.The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian
Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Page 272.

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omashevsky&oldid=796428140"

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