TY - JOUR
T1 - Sentimental novels and Pushkin
T2 - European literary markets and Russian readers
AU - Hoogenboom, Hilde
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - This article examines literature in Russia, as opposed to Russian literature, through the window of Tat′iana's reading, especially two novels by Sophie Cottin, in Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. A quantitative, sociological approach to European markets for novels shows that Russians and Europeans were reading the same popular French, German, and English sentimental novels by August von Kotzebue; Stephanie-Felicite, comtesse de Genlis; August Lafontaine; and Cottin. Pushkin, however, positioned himself in the Russian literary field with the canonical novels of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Richardson, and Madame de Stael, against the “mediocre” novels of Cottin. Nevertheless, in his ongoing efforts to write Russian novels, Pushkin covertly engaged with popular sentimental novels to integrate their conservative emphasis on duty, virtue, and love with Russian noble life. I argue that a likely intertext for the eponymous heroine of The Captain's Daughter was Cottin's European bestseller Élisabeth, ou Les exilés de Sibérie (1806).
AB - This article examines literature in Russia, as opposed to Russian literature, through the window of Tat′iana's reading, especially two novels by Sophie Cottin, in Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. A quantitative, sociological approach to European markets for novels shows that Russians and Europeans were reading the same popular French, German, and English sentimental novels by August von Kotzebue; Stephanie-Felicite, comtesse de Genlis; August Lafontaine; and Cottin. Pushkin, however, positioned himself in the Russian literary field with the canonical novels of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Richardson, and Madame de Stael, against the “mediocre” novels of Cottin. Nevertheless, in his ongoing efforts to write Russian novels, Pushkin covertly engaged with popular sentimental novels to integrate their conservative emphasis on duty, virtue, and love with Russian noble life. I argue that a likely intertext for the eponymous heroine of The Captain's Daughter was Cottin's European bestseller Élisabeth, ou Les exilés de Sibérie (1806).
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U2 - 10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.553
DO - 10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.553
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84942512052
SN - 0037-6779
VL - 74
SP - 553
EP - 574
JO - Slavic Review
JF - Slavic Review
IS - 3
ER -