Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age

by Dan Ungurianu

Overview

Balanced precariously between fact and fiction, the historical novel is often viewed with suspicion. Some have attacked it as a mongrel form, a “bastard son” born of “history’s flagrant adultery with imagination.” Yet it includes some of the most celebrated achievements of Russian literature, with Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, and scores of other writers contributing to this tradition.
    Dan Ungurianu’s Plotting History traces the development of the Russian historical novel from its inception in the romantic era to the emergence of Modernism on the eve of the Revolution. Organized historically and thematically, the study is focused on the cultural paradigms that shaped the evolution of the genre and are reflected in masterpieces such as The Captain’s Daughter and War and Peace. Ungurianu examines the variety of approaches by which Russian writers combined fact with fiction and explores the range of subjects that inspired the Russian historical imagination.

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

“Ungurianu has produced a most valuable work for literary scholars.”—Andrew M. Drozd, Slavic and East European Journal

“[Ungurianu’s] overwhelming knowledge, impeccable documentation, erudite notes, and valuable addenda make for a treasure house of information and keen analysis. . . . Essential.”—Choice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299225001
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	11/02/2007
Edition description:	1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dan Ungurianu is associate professor of Russian studies at Vassar College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     ix
Preface and Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction: Fact, Fiction, and the Anxiety of Genre     3
An Overview of the Romantic Era     13
Fact and Fiction in the Romantic Novel     40
The Changing and the Unchanged     55
Masterpieces in Context: Taras Bulba and The Captain's Daughter     76
Tolstoy's "Book" and a New Kind of Historical Novel     97
The Age of Positivism: "Historiographie Romancee"     125
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
Chronological and Thematic Distribution of Works     209
Annotated List of Authors     263
Notes     289
Works Cited     309
Index     325

Editorial Reviews

This is a book of the first importance. The spade work that Ungurianu has done on hundreds of Russian historical novels allows him to describe trends and developments of the genre with unprecedented authority.”—Vladimir E. Alexandrov, Yale University


 “A thorough and well-researched history of the historical novel in Russia up to the Revolution, Plotting History is a necessary addition to every college and university library where Russian literature and culture are studied.”—Donna Orwin, University of Toronto


“Plotting History is an outstanding achievement that deserves to find a wide audience both within and beyond Russian Studies.”—Susan Layton, Slavic Review

“An exceedingly well-produced and richly informative study of an aspect of the pre-revolutionary Russian novel that has received little specific attention in previous works on the subject, Dan Ungurianu’s Plotting History can be regarded as masterly.”—Richard Freeborn, Slavonic and East European Review

From the Publisher