Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age by Dan Ungurianu (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 533 attributes toLermontov's post-romanticism can be discerned in aspects of our own postmodern condition (the book's final sub-section is indeed entided Tost-Romanticism in Postmodern Perspective'). Perhaps it is this factor that has brought Lermontov so visibly to the attention ofRussianists of late, although scholars such as Vladimir Golstein (Lermontov's Narratives of Heroism, Evanston, IL, 1999) and David Powelstock [Becoming Mikhail Lermontov:The Ironies ofRomantic Individualism in Nicholas Ps Russia, Evanston, IL, 2005) have preferred issues of self-presentation and the relationship between author and text to the issues of genre, typology and period that engage Allen's attention. In fact, throughout A Fallen Idol isStill a God,Allen frequendy focuses in detail on thework of previous critics.Yet this is not (merely) about demonstrating her familiaritywith existing traditions of scholarship and establishing the originality of her own approach. Rather, she mines the work of others ? whether in agreement or disagreement ? in order to demonstrate not somuch themultiplicity of interpretations that any literarywork necessarily invites, but rather the very ambivalence (and what she also terms anomie) that is integral to Lermontov's oeuvre. Just as Allen facilitates the reader's grasp of existing scholarship, she also defdy situates Lermontov more generally within the contexts of European Romanticism, something thatwill make her book ofparticular interest to comparativists (and not just in the field ofRussian studies). At just over 200 pages, this is not an especially long book, but it is as multifaceted and thought-provoking as many more extended works (and thus reveals a perhaps accidental affinitywith Lermontov's own writing). Written with clarity and grace, and including Russian poetic texts in both translation and the original, A Fallen Idol isStill a God testifies,notwithstanding our own postmodern anxieties about the value of culture and the judgement of taste, to why we continue to care about reading. Wadham College, Oxford Philip Ross Bullock Ungurianu, Dan. Plotting History: The Russian HistoHcal Novel in theImperialAge. The University ofWisconsin Press, Madison, WI and London, 2007. xii + 335 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Works cited. Index. $65.00. An exceedingly well-produced and richly informative study of an aspect of the pre-revolutionary Russian novel that has received litde specific attention in previous works on the subject, Dan Ungurianu's PlottingHistory can be regarded as masterly. It is not, stricdy speaking, a chronological study, as ismade clear in the Introduction. It centres on the 'change of literary and cultural paradigms' discernible in the periods of romanticism, realism and earlymodernism, arguably because 'each of these periods produced its own distinct type of historical novel, defined primarily by itscontemporary context rather than by the inertia of or polemic against the genre's tradition' (p. 9). This approach, however contentious, is largely justified by the succeeding chapters. 534 SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20I0 Beginning in the 1830s and 1840s, historical novels (exact definition of the genre is impossible) were churned out. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, for instance, advertised a samovar-propelled machine for theirmass production. Walter Scott was themodel even ifhis influencewas disputed or his reputed impar tiality not emulated, as Professor Ungurianu discusses in dealing with the varied works ofLazhechnikov, Polevoi, Zagoskin and Bulgarin. Chapter three offersan admirable outline of the attitudes of authors in the age ofRomanti cism to such issues as nationalism or the role of the peasantry. But what sparked Professor Ungurianu's interest in the historical novel as a subject for study is soon revealed inhis enthusiastic review ofThe Captain'sDaughter, along with Taras Bulba, the classic works thathave most conspicuously survived from the past. Pushkin's treatment of history is examined in exemplary detail. Naturally theTolstoyan contribution to the subject has to have a central place. IfA. K. Tolstoi's Prince Serebryanyis described as 'arguably Russia's finest romantic historical novel' (p. 99), then L. N. Tolstoi's 'book' is treated quite justifiably as a new kind of historical novel, whose novelty isbest under stood by the negative reactions to it.One such reaction was that ofAvraam Norov, a young officer in 1812 at Borodino (at the remarkably young age of 17, it seems!), who claimed thatWar andPeace contained lapses, but this study insists that 'nowhere [...] can one find...