Karamzin's Prose Fiction: the Poetics of Co-Creation. (Volumes I and II) (Russia).

Abstract

A solipsistic focus on author has been recognized as the differentia specifica of Sentimentalist poetics. My study concentrates on this aspect of N. M. Karamzin's short prose fiction. Author in the text, 'narrator,' is defined according to the verbal-functional principles of 'utterance' advanced by the Baxtin school and further developed by Jakobson, Dolezel, and Titunik. The solipsistic principle is reformulated accordingly as a dense concentration of certain verbal features within the reporting context of a text. My task is thus to investigate the specific constellations of functions and verbal features which account for the ambiance of narrator in Karamzin's works. His works fall within three basic structural types: idylls, serious Sentimental tales, and humorous Sentimental tales. One chapter is devoted to each type, and specific works within each type are subjected to close analysis. The idyll is shown to be crucial in the formation of Sentimentalist poetics and its transformations to be a signal feature in the development of Sentimentalism. The three types reflect the evolution of Karamzin's narrative methods. Contrary to a generally held view of this evolution as a teleological progression from subjective to more objective narrative methods, I found that all the works are governed by a subjective narrator-narratee context, and that the differences in methods are due to highlighting different aspects of this context. The works evolve from a stress on the psychology of the Sensitive narrator-narratee and sympathetic co-creation towards "professional" aspects of narrator and parody of earlier Russian literature (Xeraskov, (')Emin, Karamzin), with particular emphasis on technical aspects of the narration in progress, which frequently amounts to whimsical double talk. The facile shifts in functions between narrator, narratee, and personage, as well as the preponderance of certain structures (the trifle, the fragment) and devices (ellipsis, praeteritio, intonational, emotive, and other means for expressing the inexpressible) are analyzed and related to the solipsistic principle. The serious Sentimental tales have tended to set the tone in Karamzin scholarship. Part of my aim has been to provide a more balanced picture of Karamzin's range, and consequently of Russian Sentimentalism, which is more flexible than has generally been recognized.