Noble subjects : the Russian novel and the gentry, 1762-1861 / Bella Grigoryan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grigoryan, Bella, author.

Series:

Studies of the Harriman Institute.

Studies of the Harriman Institute

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

Russian fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 PDF (viii, 189 pages).)

Place of Publication:

DeKalb, Illinois : NIU Press, [2018]

Summary:

Relations between the Russian nobility and the state underwent a dynamic transformation during the roughly one hundred-year period encompassing the reign of Catherine II (1762-1796) and ending with the Great Reforms initiated by Alexander II. This period also saw the gradual appearance, by the early decades of the nineteenth century, of a novelistic tradition that depicted the Russian society of its day. In Noble Subjects, Bella Grigoryan examines the rise of the Russian novel in relation to the political, legal, and social definitions that accrued to the nobility as an estate, urging readers to rethink the cultural and political origins of the genre. By examining works by Novikov, Karamzin, Pushkin, Bulgarin, Gogol, Goncharov, Aksakov, and Tolstoy alongside a selection of extra-literary sources (including mainstream periodicals, farming treatises, and domestic and conduct manuals), Grigoryan establishes links between the rise of the Russian novel and a broad-ranging interest in the figure of the male landowner in Russian public discourse. Noble Subjects traces the routes by which the rhetorical construction of the male landowner as an imperial subject and citizen produced a contested site of political, socio-cultural, and affective investment in the Russian cultural imagination. This interdisciplinary study reveals how the Russian novel developed, in part, as a carrier of a masculine domestic ideology. It will appeal to scholars and students of Russian history and literature.

Contents:

Introduction : Noble subjects and citizens

The century of the letter

Pushkin's unfinished nobles

Bulgarin's landowners and the public

Dead souls in its media environment

Becoming noble in Goncharov's novels

Reading and social identity in Aksakov's Childhood years of Bagrov the grandson

Conclusion : Ann Karenina in its time.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [171]-179) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501757310

1501757318

9781609092320

1609092325

OCLC:

1035551245