In 1833 Alexander Pushkin began to consider the topic of madness, a subject little explored in Russian literature before his time. He brilliantly plumbed both the destructive and creative sides of madness, a strange fusion of violence and insight. Gary Rosenshield illustrates the surprising valorization of madness in the prose novella "The Queen of Spades and the lyric "God Grant That I Not Lose My Mind" and analyzes the poem "The Bronze Horseman for its confrontation with the legacy of Peter the Great. He situates Pushkin in a greater framework with such luminaries as Shakespeare, Sophocles, Cervantes, and Dostoevsky, providing an absorbing study of one of Russia's greatest writers.