Literary Theory in Practice: Rethinking Jurij Tynjanov's ‘The Wax Figure’ 1

This article examines Iurii Tynianov's novella ‘Voskovaia persona’ (‘The Wax Figure’) in light of his ideas about tradition and innovation as outlined in his collection of articles Arkhaisty i novatory (Archaists and Innovators). In the novella, Tynianov artistically expresses his views on literary evolution, which he perceives as a continuous historical process of confrontation between old and new canons. The article analyzes the characters who symbolically represent the struggling traditions such as Peter I, Rastrelli, the wax master Iakov, and his brother Mikhalko. Finally, this paper demonstrates how parody – an important mechanism of literary evolution – plays itself out in ‘The Wax Figure’ and studies Tynianov's novella in the context of Pushkin's, Gogol's and Belyi's Petersburg texts.