Leo Tolstoy War And Peace Analysis

Leo Tolstoy is quite popular for writing the novel, War and Peace. Categorized among the longest novels ever written, war and peace is subdivided into four volumes each with sub parts and containing numerous chapters. The epic novel is based on the story of the Napoleonic intrusion of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy happened to had served in the Crimean war and wrote a number of short stories and novels which featured scenes of war. His participation in the war gave him a better insight when it came to writing the novel War and Peace. To begin with, Tolstoy mustered up the title and some of his ideas from a well known economist and anarchist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon. Leo Tolstoy began writing the novel war and peace in the year when he eventually espoused and settled down.

Reckoned as one of the most significant works of history, the War and peace novel is considered as one of the best literature achievements of Leo Tolstoy. However, according to Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873-1877), another major achievement in his literature genre, deserves credit as a true novel. This was due to the fact he firmly believed that the best Russian literature was not in line with the standard norms. As a result, he hesitated in stating War and Peace as a novel. Mysteriously, Tolstoy defines War and Peace neither a novel, poem nor a historical chronicle. This can be attributed to the fact that large portions of the work are philosophical discourse rather than narrative. War And Peace delimitates the happenings surrounding the invasion of Russia by the French and the impingement of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist Society.

The first publication of the book in entirety was first made in 1869. However, segments of an earlier version of the novel, which was then kn...

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... her only son. Finally, we have the Kuragin family comprised of three children of dubitable character.

Tolstoy based his writing on these five families to reflect the happenings of the Napoleon war. In the first place the book was written in Russia. However, parts of the novel are written in French. Characters in the novel are seen to alternate between the two languages. This was a reflection of the Russian 19th century aristocracy, whereby a foreign language, French, was widely spoken and considered a prestigious language than Russian. The use of French diminishes as the book advances and wars with the French escalate. Tolstoy carries this out in his text to demonstrate how Russia has liberated itself from foreign cultural supremacy.

Reference

“War and Peace.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 March. 2014. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and _Peace