Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age

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 writers combined fact with fiction and explores the range of subjects that inspired the Russian historical imagination.