Vicissitudes of Genre in the Russian Novel: Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” Chernyshevsky’s “What is to be Done?,” Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” Gorky’s “Mother”

The 1860s witnessed one of the most vibrant periods in the history of modern Russian literature. This book focuses on what was arguably its most influential genre – the Russian tendentious novel. While tracing the genre’s early development through works such as Fathers and Sons and Notes from Underground, it simultaneously unfolds a unique approach to reading late-nineteenth-century Russian literature by showing how rich conflicting interpretations of the classics continue to be possible and by indicating numerous deep-rooted connections between the tendentious novels of the nineteenth century and their twentieth-century literary progeny.