Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts by Marcus C. Levitt

[christa kling]

Dear Colleagues and Students, 
 
We have recently published Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts by Marcus C. Levitt (ISBN 978-1-934843-68-0, cloth, 440 pages).  Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in using this title for courses. 
 
Summary: Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russia.  The essays concern a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature.  The first part of the collection explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a formative role in literary life of his day.  In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment’s privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian self-image, and that its “occularcentrism” was profoundly shaped by Orthodox religious views. Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative explorations of a vital but little studied period.
 
Author: Marcus Levitt is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California. In 1984 he received a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Columbia University. Taught in Columbia's Humanities Program and Duke University. Dr. Levitt is known for both his work on eighteenth-century Russian culture and on Pushkin. Major publications include: Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880, Cornell University Press,1989, Early Modern Russian Writers, Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, volume 150 in the series The Dictionary of Literary Biography (1995; Editor ad contributor), Making Russia Visible: The Status of the Visual in Eighteenth-century Russian Literature (forthcoming).
 
Contents:
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Part One
SUMAROKOV AND THE LITERA RY PROCESS
OF HIS TIME
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Sumarokov: Life and Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Sumarokov’s Reading at the Academy of Sciences Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3. Censorship and Provocation: Th e Publishing History
of Sumarokov’s “Two Epistles” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4. Slander, Polemic, Criticism: Trediakovskii’s “Lett er . . .
from a Friend to a Friend” of 1750 and the Problem
of Creating Russian Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5. Sumarokov’s Russianized “Hamlet”: Texts and Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6. Sumarokov’s Drama “Th e Hermit”: On the Generic
and Intellectual Sources of Russian Classicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7. “Th e First Russian Ballet”: Sumarokov’s “Sanctuary of Virtue” (1759)
Defi ning a New Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8. Was Sumarokov a Lockean Sensualist? On Locke’s Reception
in Eighteenth-Century Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
9. Barkoviana and Russian Classicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
10. Th e Illegal Staging of Sumarokov’s Sinav and Truvor in 1770
and the Problem of Authorial Status in Eighteenth-Century Russia . . . . . . . 190
11. Sumarokov and the Unifi ed Poetry Book: His Triumphal Odes
and Love Elegies Th rough the Prism of Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
12. Th e Barbarians Among Us, or Sumarokov’s Views on Orthography . . . . . . . 248
Early Modern Russian Lett ers:
vi
Part Two
VISUALITY AND ORTHODOXY
IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN CULTURE
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
13. Th e Rapprochement Between “Secular” and “Religious”
in Mid to Late Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
14. Th e “Obviousness” of the Truth in Eighteenth-Century Russian Th ought . . 294
15. Th e Th eological Context of Lomonosov’s “Evening”
and “Morning Meditations on God’s Majesty” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
16. Th e Ode as Revelation: On the Orthodox Th eological Context
of Lomonosov’s Odes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
17. An Antidote to Nervous Juice: Catherine the Great’s Debate
with Chappe d’Auteroche over Russian Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
18. Th e Polemic with Rousseau over Gender and Sociability
in E. S. Urusova’s Polion (1774) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
19. Virtue Must Advertise: Self Presentation in Dashkova’s Memoirs . . . . . . . . . 379
20. Th e Dialectic of Vision in Radishchev’s
Journey fr om Petersburg to Moscow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
 
 
All the best,
 
Christa Kling
Sales and Marketing
Academic Studies Press
christa.kling at academicstudiespress.com
 
 
 


      

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