Professor Gavriel Shapiro (Cornell University, USA)
(organised by the DELC’s research strand “Cultural Encounters/Dialogues)
“Robert Burness as Valdimir Nabokov’s English Tutor (1907-1908)”.
17 May 2017: Screening Room (G.04), 50 George Square; 17.00.-19.00.
All welcome!
Enquiries: alexandra.smith@ed.ac.uk; Eleoma.Bodammer@ed.ac.uk
Gavriel Shapiro is Professor of Comparative and Russian Literature at Cornell University. His major publications include Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (1993), Delicate Markers: Subtexts in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” (1998), The Sublime Artist’s Studio: Nabokov and Painting (2009), The Tender Friendship and the Charm of Perfect Accord: Nabokov and His Father (2014), and Thanksgiving All Year Round (2016). Shapiro also edited Nabokov at Cornell (2003) and has contributed over sixty articles and book chapters to various scholarly periodicals and critical collections. He received fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and from the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C.
A native of Edinburgh and a graduate of Fettes College and of Oxford University, Robert Burness (1873-1927) was Vladimir Nabokov's English tutor in St. Petersburg in 1907-8. Burness made a name for himself as a prolific translator of Russian poetry. The talk explores some biographical and literary parallels and affinities between the Scottish man of letters and the Russian-American writer of world renown.