The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin

"In The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin, Todd examines the tradition of familiar letter writing that developed in the early 1800s among the Arzamasians - a literary circle that included such luminaries as Pushkin, Karamzin, and Turgenev - and argues that these letters constitute a distinct literary genre."--BOOK JACKET. "Todd gives a thorough prehistory of the convention of "correspondence", both salon and scientific, in the eighteenth century, with extensive citations. He then concentrates on the themes, strategies, and autobiographical functions of the letter for several master writers in Pushkin's time; by considering the writers' peculiar working out of semiprivate personae fashioned in public view, one can better understand such later first-person works as Dostoevsky's Poor Folk and Notes from the Underground, Tolstoy's Confession, and works of Chekhov."--BOOK JACKET.