"Bridging Bildungsromane from London to Russia - Paradigms of Masculinity in Charles Dickens's and Leo Tolstoy's fiction" deals with the concept of masculinity, an evolving social construct that undergoes many changes. The project examines nineteenth-century paradigms of masculinity and dimensions of male experiences from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and maturity as reflected in the works of Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy. The genre of a Bildungsroman becomes a testing ground of manhood for the male characters, who grow up, mature, and face masculine expectations which they must live up to, reject, or compromise. Issues of labor, sexuality, parenting, class and control over self and the 'Other' in the 'politics of masculinity' are interconnected in David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Childhood, Boyhood, Youth trilogy, The Cossacks and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy