Eighteenth Century Narrative Variations on “Frol Skobeev”

Abstract

One of the most striking innovations in late eighteenth century prose fiction was the introduction of a distinct narrator's voice. To throw some light on the emergence of this innovation, I will compare three works: “Povest’ o Frole Skobeeve,“ an anonymous work from the 1720s; Ivan Novikov's “Novgorodskikh devushek sviatochnyi vecher,” which appeared in a 1785 collection of his short stories; and Nikolai Karamzin's “Natal'ia, boiarskaia doch',” which appeared serially in his Moskovskii zhurnal in 1792. These works will be viewed as representative of three stages in the eighteenth century development of narrative prose structure.