Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
10 - Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Foreign languages exerted an influence on Russian throughout the eighteenth century. The number of foreign words assimilated into Russian, taking all foreign languages together, is thought to have been at least 8,500 (Birzhakova et al. [1972] 1999: 83). French had a central place among the foreign languages known in Russia, but it did not have the same impact on Russian in all spheres. Its contact with Russian would seem to have been particularly intense in the female domain, in things to do with beauty, clothes and fashion.
What role did fashion play in the acquisition of French lexis by Russian? I shall aim to provide material for an answer to this question from two types of source: first, fashion advertisements in the Russian press, which in truth were translations of material taken from French sources; and secondly, satirical publications and comedies, which parodied the special variety of Franco-Russian in which lovers of fashion expressed themselves. Taken as a whole, these texts enable us to paint a rounded picture, at one and the same time, of fashion, its vocabulary and its reception.
THE FIRST PUBLICATIONS ON FRENCH FASHIONS IN RUSSIAN
Under pressure from Peter the Great, the Russian nobility adopted European costume, making use of German, French and even Hungarian and Polish models. From Peter's time the роба (a loanword from the French robe) was one of the main models for ladies at court. This was a dress with a corset and a very wide skirt supported on both sides by a sort of frame called a ‘pannier’. This item of clothing was reserved for great occasions, whereas a робронт was worn on so-called ‘ordinary’ holidays. The word denoting this latter design also comes from a French expression, robe ronde (literally, ‘round dress’), which was the name for a relatively comfortable and simple dress whose skirt was shaped like a bell.
The робронт had pride of place in the female wardrobe in the reign of Catherine II. In an inventory of the dowry of Varvara Razumovskaia, dated 1774, for example, we find twenty-two of them.
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- French and Russian in Imperial RussiaLanguage Use among the Russian Elite, pp. 193 - 208Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015