Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age

349 Pages·2007·3.41 MB·English

by  Dan Ungurianu

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Plotting
History

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Plotting
History
The Russian Historical Novel
in the Imperial Age
Dan Ungurianu
the university of wisconsin press
Support for this research was provided by the Susan Turner Fund
and the Emily Floyd Fund of Vassar College.
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/
3Henrietta Street
London we2e 8lu, England
Copyright © 2007
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ungurianu, Dan.
Plotting history : the Russian historical novel in the
Imperial Age / Dan Ungurianu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-299-22500-3(cloth : alk. paper)
1. Historical fiction, Russian—History and criticism. 2.Russian fiction—
19th century—History and criticism. I. Title.
pg3098.h5u54 2007
891.7´3081—dc22 2007011936
For
Lioba, Lena, Nika
and

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Fact, Fiction, and the Anxiety of Genre 3
1 An Overview of the Romantic Era 13
2 Fact and Fiction in the Romantic Novel 40
3 The Changing and the Unchanged 55
4 Masterpieces in Context: Taras Bulbaand The Captain’s Daughter 76
5 Tolstoy’s “Book” and a New Kind of Historical Novel 97
6 The Age of Positivism: “Historiographie Romancée” 125
7 The End of Progress: Facets of the Modernist Paradigm 149
In Lieu of a Conclusion: A Tale of Three Cities, or the Reincarnations of
Saint Petersburg in the Russian Historical Novel 189
Appendix A: Chronological and Thematic Distribution
of Works 209
Appendix B: Annotated List of Authors 263
Notes 289
Works Cited 309
Index 325

Illustrations
Plates
1 Title pages of Zagoskin’s Yury Miloslavsky 24–25
2 Title pages of Bulgarin’s Dimitry the Impostor 26–27
3 Title page illustration from Zotov’s Leonid, or Some Features from the Life
of Napoleon 32
4 Title page illustration from Bulgarin’s Dimitry the Impostor 33
5 Title page illustration from Svinyin’s Shemyaka’s Justice, or the Last Feud
of Russian Princes 60
6 Title page illustration from Bulgarin’s Dimitry the Impostor 61
7 Title page illustration from Bulgarin’s Dimitry the Impostor 64
8 French dialogue in an early version of War and Peace 103
9 Title page illustration from Bulgarin’s Petr Ivanovich Vyzhigin 104
10 Title page illustration from Bulgarin’s Petr Ivanovich Vyzhigin 105
11 Title page illustration from Zotov’s Leonid 119
12 Title page of Kelsiev’s Moscow and Tver 137
13 Illustration from Sokolov’s Volga Freebooters of Stenka Razin 138
14 Illustration from Kelsiev and Klyushnikov’s At the Time of Peter 139
15 Illustration from Sokolov’s Volga Freebooters of Stenka Razin 142
16 Illustration from Kelsiev and Klyushnikov’s At the Time of Peter 143