Essay Questions

What literary genre was Karamzin—and especially with “Poor Liza”—instrumental in making popular among Russian readers?

“Poor Liza” was originally published in 1792. It is interesting to note that just a century later, the literary genre to which it belongs had already becoming something of a dirty word among serious writers who were embracing Realism especially as an attack against the perceived negative aspects of what had been the most popular prose fiction genre of the 1800s. That genre was Sentimentalism and the fundamental controlling ideology of writers who worked within the genre was that emotion rather than reason was the primal motivating force for all social interaction among humans. Those writers responsible for Realism replacing Sentimentalism as the dominant genre in fiction were working directly against the predominance of idealistic perspectives toward established institutions and the generally optimistic view that the rural population was inherently more honest than city folk.

In “The Island of Bornham” Karamzin eschews sentimentalism to conduct an experiment in what other popular literature genre of the time?

“The Island of Bornham” almost seems to have been written by an entirely different author than the person who wrote “Poor Liza.” From the rough geographical setting to the open-ended mystery at the center of its narrative, this story reads far more like something Edgar Allan Poe might have composed, and few critics have possessed the necessary sense of adventure required to insist that Poe belongs to the school of Sentimentalist writers. “The Island of Bornham” is a reflection of the other massively popular literary genre challenging Sentimentalism for king of the hill throughout the first half of the 19th century. Not only is it an example of Gothic fiction, but it is considered by some to be the first example of Russian Gothic fiction.

“Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” features a plot similar to “Poor Liza” but is an example of what other genre in which Karamzin works?

The stories of Natalia and Liza have far more in common than they are dissimilar with one huge exception: the ending. While Liza commits suicide as a result of being abandoned by the man she loves, Natalia not only winds up marrying her love, but he goes on to become a favorite of the tsar. That is not the only divergence in the stories, however. Karamzin was working strictly within the Sentimentalist mode in telling Liza’s tragic tale, but Natalia benefits from his shift to historical fiction. In fact, Karamzin’s reputation as a historian is at least the equal to his legacy as a writer. The modern reader would find much about this historical fiction that is familiar since Karamzin takes great liberties with the historical source it was allegedly based on. This is because, Karamzin was, at least in this case, almost a proto postmodernist: “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” asserts itself as being steeped in historical fact when it is actually a parody of historical romances.