Niektóre zagadnienia prozy obyczajowej Tadeusza Bułharyna w świetle rosyjskiej krytyki literackiej przełomu lat dwudziestych i trzydziestych XIX wieku

Abstract

The paper deals with the appreciation of Thaddeus Bulgarin’s early fiction in connection with the views of the contemporary literary critics : the Polevoy brothers and Alexandr Marlinsky. Special attention is given to the problem of the dependence of Ivan Vyshygin’s author’s prose fiction on the Russian, Polish and West European traditions of the genre. The analysis of the above-mentioned critics’ opinions and their confrontation with later views of the Russian and Polish interpreters of Russian literature enables the author to conclude that the novel Ivan Vyshygin is not closely connected with the earlier Russian literary achievement in this domain. According to the author, Bulgarin was inspired by his co-operation with the Vilna periodic „The Gutter News” as well as by the work of French and English eighteenth-century novelists. Towards the end of the paper the author indicates that the novel Ivan Vyshygin was a successful essay in transplanting to Russian ground some characteristics of the eighteenth-century Western novel.