The Perception of Russia and Russian People in Théophile Gautier's and Alexandre Dumas' Travelogues

This research paper presents an analysis T. Gauthier’s and A. Dumas’ travel notes. They visited Russia at the same time: 1858-1859. French writers presented to their readers their individual vision of Russia. The narrative subject for two authors is considerably different: Gauthier is interested in the architectural and pictorial art of Russia, Dumas concerns himself with the Russian history. The author’s style of two travellers has distinctive characteristics. Gautier unites literary and visual arts in his traveling text, Dumas includes pluggable historical digressions in his notes, which claim primarily on the amusement of his narrative. The image of Russia and the Russian people is almost similar to French writers. Foreigners accurately noticed many characteristic features of Russian life that are not so noticeable to the Russians themselves. The paper also presents the main characteristics of the genre of "travelogue" and describes the controversial points in the definition of this term.