Title: The rise of the Russian novel
First published: 1998
Description: Overturning the standard view of early Russian prose fiction as a pale imitation of European models, Gasperetti locates the origins of the Russian novel in indigenous writing.

He traces the imitative roots of the early Russian novel and then shows how Russian writers used the ethos and devices of a native-inspired, carnivalized subculture consisting of folklore, popular fiction, and the entertainment of the carnival itself to subvert the conventions of foreign literature, thus establishing an independent course for prose fiction in Russia.

The first major study to place the genesis of the Russian tradition of novel writing in the eighteenth century, The Rise of the Russian Novel analyzes the prose fiction of the three most prominent writers of the time: Fedor Emin, Mikhail Chulkov, and Matvei Komarov. Currently subject to a remarkable renewal of interest among the Russian reading public, the novels of these three writers form the basis for Gasperetti's reassessment of Russia's early literary culture.

The Rise of the Russian Novel represents the first extensive application of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of carnival to eighteenth-century Russian literature. By focusing on the prose fiction of writers who embody the prevailing trends of literature in the age of Catherine the Great, Gasperetti provides one of the most thorough explications to date of the carnivalesque in Russian literature.

Gasperetti's approach links the first Russian novelists to the work of the young Dostoevsky and the development of Russian prose fiction in the 1840s. This study will appeal to literary scholars interested in the Russian novel and to readers concerned more generally with Bakhtin and discourse theory.
Subjects: History and criticism, Russian fiction, Russian fiction, history and criticism
Time periods: 19th century, 18th century
LC classification: PG3095 .G37 1998