Russian National Identity: Literary Folklore and Russian Self-Definition, 1760-1900

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My research investigates the formation of Russian national identity, during the long 19th century (c.1760-1900), through the lens of Russian literary folklore-viz. learned literary works styled as folktales-, revealing how literary folklore not only reflected its authors' notions of national identity, but helped shape these notions, through a helical cycle of reception & influence.An identity crisis in the late 18th century sparked a quest to re-discover Russia's 'lost' national character. Political movements (Decembrists & Official Nationality), cultural movements (Slavophiles), social movements (early anti-Westernisation trends) & literary movements (Romanticism) predominantly looked to rural peasantry & the lower social classes as the bastions of Russia's national spirit. These movements created a new literature drawn from folk lore & customs to promote the Russian morals which, they believed, the elite had forgotten after a hundred years of Westernisation. This new literature-'literary folklore'-is crucial to our understanding of Russian identity. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that the evolution of Russian literary folklore & its interrelatedness with the (re)development of national identity has received almost no critical study. My research addresses this gap in the scholarship.