Turgenev

Fathers and Sons

Ivan Turgenev was a nineteenth-century Russian novelist and playwright, among the first Russian writers to gain wide readership in Europe.

His novel *Fathers and Sons* (1862) captured generational conflict and introduced the term nihilist to describe the story's radical young protagonist.

She's taking a seminar on Turgenev and Dostoevsky.

historical

nineteenth century

Years 1801-1900

censorshipOfficial content restriction
exileBanishment from homeland
generation gapAge-based cultural disconnect

radicalism · conservatism · social change · political novel · Russian literature · Golden Age · Pushkin · Tolstoy · Dostoevsky · literary circle

Russian

intelligentsia

Educated, intellectual class

gentryHighborn but not noble
MoscowRussia's capital city
Saint PetersburgMajor Russian Baltic port

samovar · troika · dacha · birch · steppe · provincial · Westernizer · autocracy · nobility · peasantry

cultural

Baden-Baden

German thermal resort town

ParisFrance's chief city
expatriateOne living abroad permanently
salonGrooming establishment or gathering

opera · Flaubert · Zola · Henry James · cosmopolitan · francophile · European · liberalism · aesthete · correspondence

literary

nihilism

Rejection of objective meaning

realismAccepting things as they are
proseUnversified language
novelistWriter of prose narratives

short stories · psychological · elegiac · lyrical · serialization · naturalism · romanticism · novellas · characterization

Opposites

19th-century Russian literary style

TurgenevDostoevsky

19th-century Russian author

Tolstoy · War and Peace · The Brothers Karamazov · Victor Hugo · Balzac

political-cultural orientation

TurgenevDostoevsky

19th-century Russian author

reactionary · Tolstoy · Solzhenitsyn · nativist

literary temperament and worldview

TurgenevDostoevsky

19th-century Russian author

Tolstoy · zealot · Ayn Rand · moralist · Victor Hugo

Familiarity: Top 1,000,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Concrete · Rated G