Language and Cultural Nationalism: Slavophile Attitudes Towards Franco-Russian Bilingualism

• In Event: Language and Power in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Abstract

Command of French was a necessary accomplishment for the cosmopolitan Russian noble of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but by the mid-nineteenth century criticism of French-speaking nobles had become a common topos in Russian literature. This development had more to do with the rising moral authority of the literary community and emergent intelligentsia, and with the growth of cultural nationalism among them, than with Gallophobic reaction to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. This paper explores the linguistic aspect of mid-nineteenth-century cultural nationalism in Russia, focusing on the Slavophiles' treatment of French-speaking among the Russian nobility, with particular reference to Konstantin Aksakov's play Prince Lupovitsky.

Author

• Derek Offord, U of Bristol (UK)