Lingering Scholarly Questions: The Double Novel and its Source

Previous series of posts outlined three areas of scholarly investigation into The Master and Margarita: the novel as Bulgakov’s view on life as an author within the Stalinist Soviet Union; the novel as Bulgakov’s effort to keep continuity with non-Soviet literary influences; the novel as Bulgakov’s philosophical and theological exploration of the human condition. In…

The Master and Margarita as Philosophical and Theological Concern with the Human Condition

My previous post discussed the second category of Bulgakov scholarship: The Master and Margarita as a product of previous literary traditions. I presented an overview of scholarship on Bulgakov’s connection to pre-revolutionary Russian authors (i.e., Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Gogol) and literary traditions (symbolism and romanticism), as well as the link between The Master and Margarita…