How “Thick” Journal Changed the Titles of Russian Novels: The Evolution of 2000 Titles (1763–1917)

Using a dataset of 2,036 titles of Russian novels from 1763 to 1917, the article raises the issue of average title length evolution over 150 years of the history of original novels. Unlike British novels, in which, according to Franco Moretti’s hypothesis, the titles became shorter due to market competition, the titles of Russian novels from the 1840s onwards became shorter primarily due to the influence of the ‘thick journals’ as a particular cultural form and institutional framework. Lead and authoritative Russian critics set the trend towards the usage of shorter and more symbolically loaded titles, discrediting the archaic and long titles common for picaresque novels. In addition, it turned out that the shortening of titles led to a change in the correlation of their elements — additional metatextual information (abstract, genre, author), since the 1830s almost completely left the title to the subtitle. As a result, the titles acquired a special artistic status and greater semantic significance.