Karamzinolatry and Epigonism

The Karamzinist-Shishkovite polemic exhibits Karamzinolatry and epigonism in their positive and negative manifestations. Karamzinolatry is characterized by intensity, a tendency to create martyria, and epigonism. Epigonism is examined as specific to this era and as a theoretical phenomenon in a close analysis of its nature and its function in Shishkovite texts. Ideas from, e.g., Tynianov, Ginzburg, Maiofis, and Proskurin are extended. Shishkov's Rassuzhdenie and Shakhovskoi's plays exemplify a major function of epigones: they serve as proxies for the target, Karamzin. Epigonic texts, indeed hierarchies of them, are interwoven with lines from Karamzin to discredit him and his aim of modernizing Russian literature. Epigonism becomes a potent weapon against Karamzin personally and against the central tenets of Sentimentalism. It gains in complexity as Karamzinists themselves professed (at least rhetorical) epigonism: the stylistic imitation of women.