Numerous studies have been devoted to the major Russian literary movements: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism, Futurism, Socialist Realism, and so on. Russian Sentimentalism as a literary movement, chronologically following Neoclassicism and preceding Romanticism (and sometimes referred to as Preromanticism), spanning roughly the last quarter of the eighteenth century, has generated surprisingly few monograph length studies and none in English. Furthermore, the existing studies tend to focus on Sentimentalist poetry rather than prose. This is all the more surprising, given the crucial role this movement played in literary (and linguistic) evolution and in legitimizing prose fiction as a viable literary concern. Modern Russian prose fiction was indeed born during the second half of the eighteenth century, and Sentimentalist prose is intimately tied to the roots of the modern Russian novel. The present study aims to examine these roots by outlining a theory of Sentimentalism with an emphasis on prose, using modern theoretical concepts introduced by M. M. Bakhtin and V. N. Voloshinov, and further developed by other scholars.

The main part of this study is devoted to close readings of the short prose fiction of N. M. Karamzin, applying the theoretical principles developed. Karamzin, as the major representative of Russian Sentimentalism, has fared better as an object of study than the movement he represents. He has been widely studied as a writer, historian, journalist, political thinker, and linguistic innovator, reflecting the enormous influence he exerted in numerous areas of Russian intellectual history.