Discuss the representation of the generation of fathers in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”
that the progressive thinkers of the forties had lost their edge. This evaluation by the author
himself sets a tone through which the connotation of the portrayal of the `generation of
fathers' in Fathers and Sons can be assessed.
By taking the title in the broader sense as indicating a generational, rather than a
parental and filial relationship, the "generation of fathers" is represented by Nikolai
Petrovich Kirsanov, Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov and Yevgeny Vassilievich Bazarov. The
`fathers' can be seen as the contemporaries of the "superfluous man" and romantic idealists,
who had a carefully shaped taste of arts and sense in beauty. Vishnyakova (2011) puts it,
"The "fathers" were reading the German idealists, admired French romanticism,
unconditionally worshiped beauty, and strongly believed in a hierarchy of moral values that
were not human conventions." Indeed, this characterisation is mainly brought forward by
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