Russian Literature in the Age of Pushkin and Gogol Prose

Essays on Russian prose writers from the Napoleonic to the Crimean Wars. During this period Russian culture and prose literature emerged as an autonomous phenomenon, no longer dependent on the patronage of the state. Includes discussion of the impact writing during this period had on the ever-widening abyss between the government and the literate public, the search for a national identify, the Decembrist Revolt and the resurgence of freemasonry.