The Sources of Aleksander Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel”: the West, the East, or Russia?

Abstract

The essay focuses on A. S. Pushkin’s last fairy tale, which he wrote in 1834, during the “Boldin autumn” period. Researchers have offered diverse interpretations to this complex and enigmatic text that embraces Russian folk themes interlaced with both western European and eastern imagery. Suggested rationalizations of “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel” have relied on Theodor Benfey’s “indianist theory” or on the local identity context, while other numerous diverse interpretations have pointed to conspiracy theories, the ideas of freemasonry, dystopianism, and the criticism of the absolutist rule. Still others saw this fairy tale as a covert autobiography, or a display of disguised eroticism in the spirit of the folk laughter culture, or as being influenced by the ideas of Islam, or as hinting at Russian mystic and ecstatic sectarianism. Having endeavored to examine the sources of “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel”, the author approaches it based on the comparative-historical method with the help of literary anthropology. According to L. L. Selivanova, the great poet composed what would be accepted as a genuine Russian folk fairy tale by creatively reworking all the available western and eastern material, Russian lubok culture, and even literary hoaxes.