Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
8 - French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Nikolai Karamzin is known in Russian culture as the author of sentimental tales and the multi-volume History of the Russian State (Istoriia Gosudarstva Rossiiskogo) and as the creator of a ‘new literary style’ (novyi slog) modelled on the norms of French. However, egodocuments were also an extremely important part of his legacy, and in these his moral and linguistic personality found its clearest expression. Like the ego-documents of most cultivated Russian noblemen of that time, these texts of Karamzin's were distinguished by their French and Russian bilingualism. We can pick out two basic types of text from Karamzin's French manuscripts: first, Karamzin's own letters and notes, and second, excerpts that he collected in his handwritten albums and notebooks from the works of French thinkers. I shall deal with the first of these types of text in the first and second sections of this chapter (the second section will be devoted entirely to Karamzin's letters to his second wife), and in the third and fourth sections I shall examine albums he addressed to two women in the imperial family. The aims of the chapter are to outline the range of Karamzin's French manuscripts, note the general patterns of Franco-Russian bilingualism reflected in them and bring out the traits of Karamzin's linguistic personality against the background of the bilingualism of the Russian nobility. The chapter should show how the writer proceeds from the laws of etiquette and genre to functionally differentiated authorial use of French and Russian.
KARAMZIN's BILINGUAL LETTERS
Letters make up the bulk of Karamzin's French texts and a significant proportion of them are bilingual. Philologists who have examined the question of bilingualism among the Russian nobility have noted the following patterns: Russian was used in official papers, documents addressed to the sovereign and letters to friends, while French was used in society correspondence, letters to women, especially one's fiancée, and so forth. At the same time ‘bilingualism was the norm for the educated Russian’ (Paperno 1975: 155), and many letters therefore contain codeswitching, that is to say interpolations in the other language.
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- French and Russian in Imperial RussiaLanguage Use among the Russian Elite, pp. 152 - 171Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015