Turgenev's “Rudin” in the Context of Russian Prose of 1840-1850s

‘Rudin’ is traditionally seen as the first example of a novel written by Turgenev, an emergence of form and genre, which by the time of ‘Rudin’’s publication and later on made his literary success. This study proposes to see this success through the structurally central situation of the novel – love seen as a challenge which a man fails to accept, finding himself defeated. This model can be related to two different traditions – intellectual discourse of Stankevich’s Circle, on the one hand, and Russian prose of the 1840s (Panaev, Herzen), on the other. Young members of the circle considered love a central concept for their philosophical visions of the Universe, which is extremely important in the context of Turgenev’s intention to reconstruct the intellectual atmosphere of 1830-40s in ‘Rudin’. The fictional context is relevant either as it employs the same plot scheme. This work attempts to identify the features of the text through its main situation, reading it through these two different contexts.