ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the increasing importance of the peasantry in post-1789 literature of England, Russia, and France. Poets of the Romantic Age, including Blake and Wordsworth, as well as Continental poets such as Heine, Hugo, and Shevchenko, were strongly aware of the deterioration of conditions of the poor from the late 18th century. Following the lead of the West, Russian writers, who were generally middle class or noblemen, wrote about the poor. Some, including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, found in the peasantry the essence of Russian national identity, a rich source of Russian insight and wisdom; in contrast, Chekhov, a doctor with many years’ experience of treating peasants, emphasizes their squalor, drunkenness, fatalism, and resistance to progress. In France, the peasantry are central in two major novels: Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862) and Zola’s Germinal (1885), both expressing outrage at the failure of the French Revolution to eradicate poverty.
