The Realistic Historical Novel and the Mythology of liberal Nationalism: Scott, Manzoni, Eötvös, Kemény, Tolstoy

I’m posting my dissertation, which I submitted to the Dept. of Comparative Literature at Princeton in 1981, to make it easier for my sister to read it. (She asked for it.) I never intended to guide it through to be published. The topic was as eccentric and unsexy back then as it is today. The fashions then were Structuralism and Post-, and New Left social hermeneutics. I made use of both, but in the end I just made a crazy quilt of things that interested me. I never questioned what I was doing, and my advisor, the great Joseph Frank, didn’t put a leash on me. I’m a historian at heart, and going back over the text I’m happier now with it than I was when I finished it. I’d try to write it better, but it did succeed in one of my goals, to place two 19th century novels that are important to Hungarians among the classic European historical novels. That said, it’s still a white elephant, which is perfectly ok. I like elephants.

I. Introduction

II. Walter Scott’s Waverley

III. Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi

IV. József Eötvös’s Hungary in 1514

V. Zsigmond Kemény’s The Fanatics

VI. Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Bibliography