Ménage à trois as (im)possible plot in Rousseau's and Goncharov's works: From “Julie, or the New Heloise” to “Oblomov”

Abstract

The article discusses how “ménage à trois” as a literary motif functions in Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov. This motif is an important aspect of the many-sided reception of Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise in the Russian novel. As intermediate links of this receptive couple (Rousseau — Goncharov) we consider different circumstances of how the frst and the second halves of Rousseau's novel were perceived in European and Russian literary and cultural contexts. We also discuss those literary and historical instances in XVIIIth — XIXth Russian culture that were based on the idea of that it was (im)possible to fnd love and create a family utopia in the form of a ménage à trois.