Imprisoned! Two Russian Narratives of Travel and Captivity in Asia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: Filipp Efremov in Central Asia and Vasilii Golovnin in Japan

Abstract

The travel accounts of Filipp Efremov, a Russian soldier who was taken prisoner in Central Asia in 1774 and Vasilii Golovnin, a naval officer who became a prisoner of the Japanese in 1811 are two works which have thus far received little attention from literary scholars but which deserve to be included in the history of Russian travel literature. This study approaches the two narratives as literature rather than documents of history; it explores the relationship between the literary travel account and that of the newly developing genre of the novel, analyzing such elements as plot, narrative technique, character development, themes, and setting. The presence of an underlying literary tension within each narrative resulting from the subtle clash of the objective informational aspects of the account and the author’s subjective personal story is considered as well.