The tale of Boris Godunov—tsar, usurper, tsarecide—dating from the early seventeenth-century Time of Troubles, inspired three major nineteenth-century Russian cultural expressions: in history by Nikolai Karamzin, in drama by Alexander Pushkin, and in opera by Modest Musorgsky. Each of these famous creations was a vehicle for generic innovation, in which a specifically Russian concept of genre was asserted in opposition to the reigning European models: German historiography, French melodrama, and Italian opera. Within a Bakhtinian framework, Caryl Emerson explores these three versions of the Boris Tale, the context of their genesis, and their complex interrelationships.

The tale of Boris Godunov—tsar, usurper, tsarecide—dating from the early seventeenth-century Time of Troubles, inspired three major nineteenth-century Russian cultural expressions: in history by Nikolai Karamzin, in drama by Alexander Pushkin, and in opera by Modest Musorgsky. Each of these famous creations was a vehicle for generic innovation, in which a specifically Russian concept of genre was asserted in opposition to the reigning European models: German historiography, French melodrama, and Italian opera. Within a Bakhtinian framework, Caryl Emerson explores these three versions of the Boris Tale, the context of their genesis, and their complex interrelationships.

The tale of Boris Godunov—tsar, usurper, tsarecide—dating from the early seventeenth-century Time of Troubles, inspired three major nineteenth-century Russian cultural expressions: in history by Nikolai Karamzin, in drama by Alexander Pushkin, and in opera by Modest Musorgsky. Each of these famous creations was a vehicle for generic innovation, in which a specifically Russian concept of genre was asserted in opposition to the reigning European models: German historiography, French melodrama, and Italian opera. Within a Bakhtinian framework, Caryl Emerson explores these three versions of the Boris Tale, the context of their genesis, and their complex interrelationships.