The Moral and Religious Conflict in N. M. Karamzin's <I>Poor Lisa</I>

Abstract

M. Karamzin’s Poor Lisa is a precedent in Russian literature: it both celebrated and brought down the principles of Sentimentalism. However, many aspects of this canonical text still remain understudied. The present research featured the moral and religious issues in N. M. Karamzin’s Poor Lisa. It also involved some fragments from N. M. Karamzin’s The History of the Russian State; Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter, and Filalet to Melodor. The methods included the historical and literary approach, as well as comparative and typological analyses. As for N. M. Karamzin’s religious views, the authors agree with those literary critics and historians who relied on N. M. Karamzin’s biography and statements and declared him an orthodox Christian. The research concentrated on various moral and religious components of the story. Lisa’s worldview was shaped by that of her parents, who built their family relations based on the Old Russian Household Book. Lisa’s traditional Orthodox background explains many of her decisions, which critics tend to interpret through the prism of Sentimentalism. Spatial images of the novel seem to correlate with ceremonial tradition: they show how Lisa’s Christian worldview was gradually overtaken by the pagan belief system. The central motif of Lisa’s purity and innocence correlates with those of oblivion, delusion, the death of soul, punishment, built, sin, etc. As a result, the novel can be treated as a dialogue of two world outlook systems: Sentimental ethics vs. religious and moral ideas. The reader sees Lisa from the point of view of a compassionate narrator with a Sentimental worldview. However, a more complex problem of religious ethics appears as a moral background.