SOURCE: "Folk Stylization in Leskov's Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda" in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 67, No. 2, April, 1989, pp. 169-82.

In the following excerpt, Wigzell examines the influence of folklore and other traditional and popular forms in one of Leskov's best-known stories.

When Henry Gifford declares that 'Leskov was a writer who loved the pigments of language almost for their own sake,'¹ he is focusing on the facet of Leskov's work most attractive to the contemporary reader: his linguistic virtuosity. As Gifford continues: 'Nearly always he invests himself in a speech disguise; either choosing a narrator, some experienced man with much local and unaccustomed lore whose idiom he can enter; or . . . reflecting the consciousness—and the vocabulary—of his protagonists.'² This feel for the linguistic idiom of individuals and groups,whether reflected in the speech of his characters or in a highly distinctive skaz, lends...