{"id":{"repo_id":"columbia-diss","oai_identifier":"oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D89311CK"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/columbia-diss/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D89311CK","repository":{"repo_id":"columbia-diss","name":"Columbia University","base_url":"https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/oai"},"display":{"title":"Noble Farmers: The Provincial Landowner in the Russian Cultural Imagination","abstract":"This dissertation examines a selectively multi-generic set of texts (mainstream periodicals, advice literature and fiction) that responded to a cultural need to provide normative models for the Russian nobleman's domestic life and self, following the 1762 Manifesto that freed the gentry from obligatory state service. The material suggests that a prominent strain in the Russian novelistic tradition that took the provincial landowner as a central object of representation developed in the course of a series of encounters between prescriptive and creative literatures. In chapter one, the cross-pollination between generically diverse segments of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century print culture (namely, Andrei Bolotov's agricultural advice and Nikolai Novikov's satirical and Nikolai Karamzin's mainstream journalism) is read as crucial for the formation of a proto-novelistic prose idiom for the representation of the nobleman in the provinces. In chapter two, the growing professionalization and concomitant commercialization of Russian letters is treated as a prominent factor in the polemical relations between Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Gogol. I suggest that prescriptive literature about farming and journalistic responses to it are a significant component in the intertextual links between Bulgarin's Ivan Vyzhigin and Gogol's Dead Souls. In chapter three, Ivan Goncharov's oeuvre is read as a self-conscious attempt to arrive at the novelistic representation of a successful province-bound nobleman. His novelistic trilogy--A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia), Oblomov and The Precipice (Obryv)--is situated vis-à-vis a growing corpus of Russian domestic advice literature to suggest that Goncharov's prose re-works the extra-literary material. In broad terms, the study may be viewed in two, mutually supplementary, ways as (1) a \"thick description\" of three moments in the formation of novelistic gentry selves understood to be always in dialogue with prescriptive texts that sought to provide a normative discourse about a productive noble private life in the provinces and (2) a re-appraisal of writers long considered central to the establishment of the Russian novelistic tradition, with especially close attention paid to how these foundational figures navigated a multi-generic field of cultural production.","abstract_html":"This dissertation examines a selectively multi-generic set of texts (mainstream periodicals, advice literature and fiction) that responded to a cultural need to provide normative models for the Russian nobleman's domestic life and self, following the 1762 Manifesto that freed the gentry from obligatory state service. The material suggests that a prominent strain in the Russian novelistic tradition that took the provincial landowner as a central object of representation developed in the course of a series of encounters between prescriptive and creative literatures. In chapter one, the cross-pollination between generically diverse segments of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century print culture (namely, Andrei Bolotov's agricultural advice and Nikolai Novikov's satirical and Nikolai Karamzin's mainstream journalism) is read as crucial for the formation of a proto-novelistic prose idiom for the representation of the nobleman in the provinces. In chapter two, the growing professionalization and concomitant commercialization of Russian letters is treated as a prominent factor in the polemical relations between Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Gogol. I suggest that prescriptive literature about farming and journalistic responses to it are a significant component in the intertextual links between Bulgarin's Ivan Vyzhigin and Gogol's Dead Souls. In chapter three, Ivan Goncharov's oeuvre is read as a self-conscious attempt to arrive at the novelistic representation of a successful province-bound nobleman. His novelistic trilogy--A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia), Oblomov and The Precipice (Obryv)--is situated vis-à-vis a growing corpus of Russian domestic advice literature to suggest that Goncharov's prose re-works the extra-literary material. In broad terms, the study may be viewed in two, mutually supplementary, ways as (1) a "thick description" of three moments in the formation of novelistic gentry selves understood to be always in dialogue with prescriptive texts that sought to provide a normative discourse about a productive noble private life in the provinces and (2) a re-appraisal of writers long considered central to the establishment of the Russian novelistic tradition, with especially close attention paid to how these foundational figures navigated a multi-generic field of cultural production.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Grigoryan, Bella"],"institution":null,"degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011","date_published":"2011","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:44:25Z","subjects":["Slavic literature","Russian literature","Landowners in literature","Gentry in literature","Farmers in literature","Journalism","Agriculture","Bolotov, Andreĭ Timofeevich, 1738-1833","Novikov, Nikolaĭ Ivanovich, 1744-1818","Bulgarin, Faddeĭ, 1789-1859","Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, 1809-1852","Mertvye dushi (Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich)","Ivan Vyzhigin (Bulgarin, Faddeĭ)"],"languages":["English"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://doi.org/10.7916/D89311CK","outbound_label":"DOI","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Grigoryan, Bella"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2011"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Theses"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Slavic literature","Russian literature","Landowners in literature","Gentry in literature","Farmers in literature","Journalism","Agriculture","Bolotov, Andreĭ Timofeevich, 1738-1833","Novikov, Nikolaĭ Ivanovich, 1744-1818","Bulgarin, Faddeĭ, 1789-1859","Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, 1809-1852","Mertvye dushi (Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich)","Ivan Vyzhigin (Bulgarin, Faddeĭ)"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["English"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://doi.org/10.7916/D89311CK"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["This dissertation examines a selectively multi-generic set of texts (mainstream periodicals, advice literature and fiction) that responded to a cultural need to provide normative models for the Russian nobleman's domestic life and self, following the 1762 Manifesto that freed the gentry from obligatory state service. The material suggests that a prominent strain in the Russian novelistic tradition that took the provincial landowner as a central object of representation developed in the course of a series of encounters between prescriptive and creative literatures. In chapter one, the cross-pollination between generically diverse segments of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century print culture (namely, Andrei Bolotov's agricultural advice and Nikolai Novikov's satirical and Nikolai Karamzin's mainstream journalism) is read as crucial for the formation of a proto-novelistic prose idiom for the representation of the nobleman in the provinces. In chapter two, the growing professionalization and concomitant commercialization of Russian letters is treated as a prominent factor in the polemical relations between Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Gogol. I suggest that prescriptive literature about farming and journalistic responses to it are a significant component in the intertextual links between Bulgarin's Ivan Vyzhigin and Gogol's Dead Souls. In chapter three, Ivan Goncharov's oeuvre is read as a self-conscious attempt to arrive at the novelistic representation of a successful province-bound nobleman. His novelistic trilogy--A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia), Oblomov and The Precipice (Obryv)--is situated vis-à-vis a growing corpus of Russian domestic advice literature to suggest that Goncharov's prose re-works the extra-literary material. In broad terms, the study may be viewed in two, mutually supplementary, ways as (1) a \"thick description\" of three moments in the formation of novelistic gentry selves understood to be always in dialogue with prescriptive texts that sought to provide a normative discourse about a productive noble private life in the provinces and (2) a re-appraisal of writers long considered central to the establishment of the Russian novelistic tradition, with especially close attention paid to how these foundational figures navigated a multi-generic field of cultural production."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Noble Farmers: The Provincial Landowner in the Russian Cultural Imagination"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:creator":["Grigoryan, Bella"],"dc:date":["2011"],"dc:description":["This dissertation examines a selectively multi-generic set of texts (mainstream periodicals, advice literature and fiction) that responded to a cultural need to provide normative models for the Russian nobleman's domestic life and self, following the 1762 Manifesto that freed the gentry from obligatory state service. The material suggests that a prominent strain in the Russian novelistic tradition that took the provincial landowner as a central object of representation developed in the course of a series of encounters between prescriptive and creative literatures. In chapter one, the cross-pollination between generically diverse segments of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century print culture (namely, Andrei Bolotov's agricultural advice and Nikolai Novikov's satirical and Nikolai Karamzin's mainstream journalism) is read as crucial for the formation of a proto-novelistic prose idiom for the representation of the nobleman in the provinces. In chapter two, the growing professionalization and concomitant commercialization of Russian letters is treated as a prominent factor in the polemical relations between Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Gogol. I suggest that prescriptive literature about farming and journalistic responses to it are a significant component in the intertextual links between Bulgarin's Ivan Vyzhigin and Gogol's Dead Souls. In chapter three, Ivan Goncharov's oeuvre is read as a self-conscious attempt to arrive at the novelistic representation of a successful province-bound nobleman. His novelistic trilogy--A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia), Oblomov and The Precipice (Obryv)--is situated vis-à-vis a growing corpus of Russian domestic advice literature to suggest that Goncharov's prose re-works the extra-literary material. In broad terms, the study may be viewed in two, mutually supplementary, ways as (1) a \"thick description\" of three moments in the formation of novelistic gentry selves understood to be always in dialogue with prescriptive texts that sought to provide a normative discourse about a productive noble private life in the provinces and (2) a re-appraisal of writers long considered central to the establishment of the Russian novelistic tradition, with especially close attention paid to how these foundational figures navigated a multi-generic field of cultural production."],"dc:identifier":["https://doi.org/10.7916/D89311CK"],"dc:language":["English"],"dc:subject":["Slavic literature","Russian literature","Landowners in literature","Gentry in literature","Farmers in literature","Journalism","Agriculture","Bolotov, Andreĭ Timofeevich, 1738-1833","Novikov, Nikolaĭ Ivanovich, 1744-1818","Bulgarin, Faddeĭ, 1789-1859","Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, 1809-1852","Mertvye dushi (Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich)","Ivan Vyzhigin (Bulgarin, Faddeĭ)"],"dc:title":["Noble Farmers: The Provincial Landowner in the Russian Cultural Imagination"],"dc:type":["Theses"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:44:25Z"}