How did Aleksandr Pushkin use humor and self-parody in Eugene Onegin?

In his masterpiece Eugene Onegin, Aleksandr Pushkin employs humor and self-parody to create a work of immense wit and formal complexity. Drawing inspiration from the playful styles of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Pushkin fills the novel with endless, clever digressions.1

Within these digressions, the poet adopts a dazzling array of shifting tones and engages in frequent, self-conscious self-parodies. These techniques allow Pushkin to comment on his own creative process, as the novel’s serial publication over several years enabled his evolving perspectives and the unpredictable nature of the work’s creation to become central themes of the poem itself. By constantly shifting between serious, ironic, and self-ironic stances, Pushkin demonstrates his role as a philosophical fox, using humor to explore the limitations and virtues of various ideas while navigating the social and literary clichés of his time.1