Dramatising Posthumous Love in Russian Sentimentalism: Vladislav Ozerov’s Polyxena

The present article argues that the unique innovations of Vladislav Ozerov, a prominent 19th-century Russian dramatist, paved the way for creating a new genre of Neo-mythological drama in European theatre. The article investigates Ozerov’s intertextual adaptation of well-known Classical sources of the Polyxena legend (The Iliad, Euripides’ Trojan Women, and Hecuba and Seneca’s Troades) against the background of Russian mythological drama of the 19th century. It proposes that Ozerov contributed to Russian theatre by dramatising the theme of posthumous love, organically blending anachronistic psychological and sentimental motifs with canonical Classical dramatic traits.