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 a Product of its Literary Precursors

My previous post discussed the first category of Bulgakov scholarship, which focuses on the novel as Bulgakov’s personal commentary of Soviet life. I divided theme into five categories to show the various ways scholars explored The Master and Margarita this topic. This post continues to the second category of Bulgakov scholarship: The Master and Margarita…