How the Russians read the French : Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy / Priscilla Meyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meyer, Priscilla.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.

Lermontov, Mikhail I͡Urʹevich, 1814-1841.

Russian literature--19th century--French influences.

Russian literature.

Lermontov, Mikhail I︠U︡rʹevich, 1814-1841--Criticism and interpretation.

Lermontov, Mikhail I︠U︡rʹevich.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881--Criticism and interpretation.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor.

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910--Criticism and interpretation.

Tolstoy, Leo.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xiv, 277 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [2008]

Summary:

Russian writers of the nineteenth century were quite consciously creating a new national literary tradition. They saw themselves self-consciously through Western European eyes, at once admiring Europe and feeling inferior to it. This ambivalence was perhaps most keenly felt in relation to France, whose language and culture had shaped the world of the Russian aristocracy from the time of Catherine the Great.

Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Lev Tolstoy engaged with French literature and culture, Priscilla Meyer contends, to define their own positions as Russian writers with specifically Russian aesthetic and moral values. Rejecting French sensationalism and what they perceived as a lack of spirituality among Westerners, these three writers attempted to create moral and philosophical works of art that drew on sources deemed more acceptable to a Russian worldview, particularly Pushkin and the Gospels. Through close readings of A Hero of Our Time, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina, Meyer argues that each of these great Russian authors takes the French tradition as a thesis, proposes his own antithesis, and creates in his novel a synthesis meant to foster a genuinely Russian national tradition, free from imitation of Western models.

Contents:

Introduction: The Russians and the French 3

1 From Poetry to Prose: Pushkin, Gogol, and the Revue etrangere 15

The Revue etrangere 15

The Bronze Horseman 17

"The Overcoat" 26

Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy 33

2 Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time 34

Lermontov and the French 38

Pushkin 75

Synthesis: Foreign and Native 87

3 Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 89

France 90

A Modern Gospel 139

Synthesis: Novel and Gospel 150

4 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 152

The French and Adultery 154

The Gospels 200

From Romanticism to Realism 210

The Everyday 217

The Hierarchy of Subtexts 218

Appendix "The Flood at Nantes" 223.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-261) and index.

ISBN:

9780299229306

0299229300

OCLC:

223848620