Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (1840) is one of the
great classics of Russian nineteenth-century literature, is a novel of
unique structure, based on a series of short storied held together by a
Byronic hero, Pechorin, whose gifted but embittered nature typified the
so-called superfluous men of the 1830's. The novel, however, raises
issues of imperialism, fate, free will and the limits of self-knowledge.
The
present study draws together the now considerable body of secondary
material on Lermontov's novel, and offers new insights in the light...