А.S. Pushkin in the English-language methodology of teaching literature: approaches to learning

The main questions posed by the author in the article are a study of the degree of the presence of our national poet’s work on foreign online methodological resources and an analysis of the specifics of students’ work with educational sites and platforms where the legacy of Alexander Pushkin is considered. The analysis of electronic methodological materials focuses on the Anglo-Saxon tradition of studying the work of A.S. Pushkin, in which the main body of the studied works of the writer is his prose. The specific approaches implemented on educational platforms are the dominance of historical and social “explanations” of A.S. Pushkin’s works; the constant comparison of Pushkin’s plots with their interpretations in other forms of art; the analysis of the writer’s stylistics as a source of artistic search of modern writers. Digital scenarios of lessons on the work of A.S. Pushkin allow us to identify typical methods of studying it at the secondary school level. First of all, they should include the technique of substantial transformation of a literary text, as an example: the lesson does not study the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, but the Stuttgart ballet “Onegin”. A systematic method of studying the work of A.S. Pushkin is also a functional retelling of Pushkin’s prose text. Being a simplified technique within the framework of the Russian high school methodology, in the Western tradition, retelling when studying a foreign classic writer in high school is considered as a necessary element of bringing the realities of Russian artistic culture of the nineteenth century closer to the modern student. In cases where Pushkin’s lyrics are analyzed in the lesson, the main product of the lesson is creative writing by students, namely: when studying Pushkin’s poetic heritage, students create their own poem in prose, using Pushkin’s text as a model. Western approaches to the study of A.S. Pushkin, reflected in online methodological materials, systematically rely on the study of interpretations of his texts in other forms of art, on the study of the “secondary” artistic product generated by the writer’s works.

Pushkin’s work, foreign cultural methodological approaches, creative writing, derivative artistic product