K voprosu o sootnošenii épistoljarnoj i chudožestvennoj prozy v Rossii v poslednej četverti XVIII veka

Abstract

The problem of the relationship between Russian epistolary and fictional prose during the last quarter of the eighteenth century arose as a consequence of Yu. Tynyanov’s happy intuition that in certain epochs familiar letters could achieve the status of literary genre. In recent studies familiar correspondence has appeared as almost the only factor prompting the development of Russian sentimentalist prose. In this article a thorough investigation of Mikhail Muravyev’s published and unpublished letters and prose fiction (1776-1797) shows that the relationship between these two literary forms was far more complicated, because in fact on the one hand they both owed much to classical and contemporary West European sources and, on the other, in each of them the same elements had different functions and “worked” in a different way.