Turgenev: A Reading of His Fiction

Unlike his contemporaries, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) has until recently received less than his fair share of attention from Western scholars. This comprehensive examination of Turgenev's fiction begins by outlining the writer's life and sketching his personality. It provides a brief survey of his poetry and plays as the prelude to the fiction and reviews some aspects of his literary criticism in their bearing upon it. The main body of the book is devoted to readings of the individual works - A Sportsman's Sketches, the novels and all the stories. Professor Seeley focuses principally on the complexity and subtlety of Turgenev's portrayal of the psychology of his characters - a hitherto neglected aspect of his art. His approach challenges traditional views still current in the critical literature of both the East and the West. The book has been designed to be accessible not only to Slavists, but also to scholars and students of other literatures.