Самокритичный реализм: Три новые книги о русской прозе середины xix века

This review article is devoted to three recently published books on Russian literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Contrary to the trend already established in the Soviet scholarship, the authors of these books consider the works of Russian literature of this period not as a naive attempt to reflect social reality, but as the result of a complex reflection by the writers on the capabilities of literature and its connections with reality. The books all take different approaches and analyze different authors. Margarita Vaysman (2021) performs narrative analysis of the works of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Alexey Pisemsky, and Avdotya Panaeva. Alexey Kozlov (2021) describes the literary position of almost forgotten novelist and critic Nikolay Akhsharumov. Finally, Chloë Kitzinger (2021) considers the character-systems in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.