SOURCE: "Dramatic Genre as a Tool of Characterization in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time," in Russian Literature, Vol. XI, No. II, February 15, 1982, pp. 163-72.

In the following essay, Cox asserts that the intense self-examination to which Pechorin subjects himself renders A Hero of Our Time a precursor to the psychological realism that dominates much subsequent Russian literature.

The question of genre is one of the most intriguing puzzles of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. The work is presented to us as a series of short pieces, each representing a different prose genre typical of Romantic literature, and yet the sum of these short pieces is a more complete picture of events and characters, a novel. Herbert Eagle has noted that in each of the shorter components, the reader's Romantic genre expectations are overturned. Thus, by beginning with Romantic genres and types and then restructuring their elements...