Overview
Noble Sentiments and the Rise of Russian Novels rewrites the history of nineteenth-century Russian novels. Hilde Hoogenboom examines how Russians created a new literature against substantial odds: 90 per cent of novels published in Russia through the 1850s were foreign. Using data from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century catalogues, Hoogenboom visualizes readers' large appetite for translated sentimental and sentimental realist novels, many by such internationally renowned women as Madame de Genlis, Sophie Cottin, and George Sand. The book reveals that, contrary to stereotypes of emotional excess, Sentimentalism was a tenacious, opportunistic chameleon that allowed writers to both challenge and reaffirm the social order. Russian writers used European novels as they sought to understand themselves and the challenges of their position as hereditary service nobles in charge of an empire with fifty million serfs. Together, noblemen and noblewomen adapted the fundamental European literary conversation on a sentimental moral education in duty to the greater good to their search for a life of purpose. Hoogenboom's study sheds new light on Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy and introduces readers to major authors Evgeniia Tur and Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia. Their debates and rivalries with each other and with European novelists gave birth to an exciting, influential literature.
Full Product Details
Author: Hilde Hoogenboom
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.90cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.600kg
ISBN: 9781487500528
ISBN 10: 1487500521
Pages: 332
Publication Date: 09 June 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
""Hilde Hoogenboom’s book uses statistics on imported, translated, and bought titles to paint a novel picture of Russian literary processes, in which Pushkin reads Sophie Cottin, not the authors he claimed to read; Turgenev envies Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia’s stellar publication record; and Sofia Tolstaya stands her ground against her famous husband. Hoogenboom’s numbers are solid, and her argument is convincing. One must read her book to appreciate the corrections she offers to the conventional view of the nineteenth-century literary canon."" -- Irina Reyfman, Professor of Slavic Languages, Columbia University ""Through a series of highly readable and superbly researched case studies, Noble Sentiments and the Rise of Russian Novels tackles the peculiar trajectory of the novel in nineteenth-century Russia. By setting the genre’s erratic evolution alongside the more dynamic parallel account of translated fiction, Hoogenboom offers a fresh view on the history of the novel and its reception as it played out for contemporary readers. This is literary history of the best kind, alive to reader-response, informed by the multiple methodologies of history of the book, literary criticism, gender studies, and social history. This extremely significant scholarly work will entice readers to think again about the multiple forces of internationalism, local publishing economies, and fashions in taste that influence the creation of a national tradition."" -- Andrew Kahn, Professor of Russian Literature, University of Oxford ""Focusing on the 'war of duties' staged by European sentimental novels, and using rich data on the European book market, Hilde Hoogenboom's study dramatically revisits nineteenth-century Russian prose fiction. Far from the male-centered and nationalist canon depicted by traditional literary histories, her transnational look at Russian literature shows that it was fully integrated into the European market and largely dominated by women writers, both foreign and domestic, whom male Russian writers claimed to despise only because they were competing with their long-lasting popularity."" -- Rodolphe Baudin, Professor of Russian Literature, Sorbonne Université
Author Information
Hilde Hoogenboom is an associate professor of Russian at Arizona State University.
