Humanities & Social Sciences 6 (2015 8) 1026-1036 ~ ~ ~ УДК 303.446.23 From Victor Hugo to Fedor Dostoevskii: 19th-Century Perceptions of Architecture as Historical Text William C. Brumfi eld* Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Received 14.03.2015, received in revised form 22.04.2015, accepted 10.05.2015 The article examines the 19th-century European perception of architecture – and architectural style – as an expression of history and culture that can only be fully explicated through a verbal, literary text. <...> This concept was particularly active in discussions of national identity. <...> On this basis arose critical interpretations of eclectic, historicist architectural styles. <...> The article discusses the origins of this historicist concept in Victor Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris and its elaboration in the work of Nikolai Gogol, Fedor Dostoevsky and the Marquis de Custine. <...> Keywords: architectural stylization, historicism, eclecticism, Carlo Rossi, Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksei Martynov, Fedor Dostoevsky, Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow. <...> If nationalism is a secular religion, it is appropriate that the revival of medieval architecture in 19th-century European eclecticism involved the transposition of stylistic motifs from religious to secular structures. <...> This is especially evident in late 19th-century Russia, whose masonry architecture before the 18th century consisted almost entirely of churches. <...> Indeed, it can be argued that certain medieval monuments served as a defi ning expression of Russian secular identity. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: william.brumfi eld@gmail.com # 1026 # to commemorate Ivan the Terrible’s victory over the khanate of Kazan (1552), the structure celebrates the coalescence of Muscovy’s role as the defender not only of the Orthodox faith but also of Russia itself. <...> While other Russian churches rarely achieved such connotative density, church architecture (including monasteries) continued to serve until the Petrine era as the repository of national identity in architecture. <...> However, the rapid secularization of Russian society during the eighteenth century led to a redefi ning of the role of the church.2 This transformation was accompanied by an equally radical change in the design of the church, whose form could be altered to suit the latest imperial taste, William C. <...>