Modern Language Review

Margarita Vaysman's book provides a well-researched, innovative analysis of metafiction in the nineteenth-century Russian realist novel. Grounded in contemporary literary and critical theory, in which metafiction is defined as a 'narrative technique that forces readers to be aware that they are reading a work of fiction' [End Page 172] (p. 1), Vaysman's study exposes the nuanced, often surprising ways Russian writers used self-conscious literary techniques to advance their own political and artistic agendas. As she justly notes in the Introduction, despite the fact that faithful readers of nineteenth-century Russian literature can easily identify self-conscious narrative devices in their favourite texts, metafiction is thought to be a postmodern literary phenomenon. As a result, few studies have explored metafiction in the Russian tradition. In order to address this scholarly gap, Vaysman offers three rich case studies, one each on novels by Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Aleksei Pisemskii, and Avdotʹia Panaeva, which demonstrate that, contrary to the accepted critical stance, metafiction is both a defining characteristic of realist poetics and a major reason why these authors became both immensely popular and influential.

Vaysman's first chapter offers a succinct, informative history of the problem of ideological self-awareness in literary studies. Vaysman then turns specifically to Russian literature, where, she successfully argues, metafiction has thrived in practice—if not in name—since the appearance of the very first novels written in the Russian language. The subsequent three chapters narrow their focus to analyse three Russian realist novels, all published within one twelve-month period in the 1860s, which make extensive use of metanarrative strategies: Chernyshevskii's What Is to Be Done?, Pisemskii's Troubled Seas, and Panaeva's A Woman's Lot. Unsurprisingly, given that the 1860s were a time of rapid social change in Russia, accompanied by vigorous debates on the relationship between art and politics, each of these very different authors used metafiction to compel 'their audience to re-examine its ideological assumptions' (p. 2). A major strength of Vaysman's study is that she devotes ample attention to close readings of self-conscious narrative strategies in each text. Chapter 2, 'A Matter for Debate', interrogates realism's central aesthetic conflict between the faithful depiction of reality and the desire to instruct in Chernyshevskii's most famous work, while Chapter 3, 'An Author of a Different Kind', uses corpus research into Pisemskii's correspondence to illuminate the author's views on the exchange between politics and literature in his Troubled Seas. However, Chapter 4, 'A Woman's Answer', is arguably the best. Through a sophisticated analysis of A Woman's Lot, Vaysman shows how Panaeva wielded metanarrative techniques in order to challenge the patriarchal status quo.

Since Vaysman acknowledges that her sample of nineteenth-century Russian realist novels is not comprehensive but rather representative, other works could be added to her investigation. One such area for future research would be to continue the line of enquiry that her chapter on Panaeva begins and examine other marginalized writers' use of metafiction as a way to challenge dominant notions of the permissible in imaginative literature. On occasion, the analysis would also have benefited from additional information, so that readers could better appreciate the historical context of the novels under scrutiny. For example, providing the cost of What Is to Be Done? in roubles as a measure of Chernyshevskii's popularity would have had greater impact if readers had also been given the relative value of the rouble at the time; more careful editing would have addressed this minor issue.

Overall, Vaysman's engaging, timely study should be considered essential reading [End Page 173] for scholars who seek to understand nineteenth-century Russian literature more thoroughly, as well as for anyone who is interested in the complex correlation between politics and aesthetics.