Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
- The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- On Transliteration, Names, and Dates
- Introduction
- History 1 Movements
- History 2 Mechanisms
- 2.1 The Monastery
- 2.2 The Court
- 2.3 The Salon and the Circle
- 2.4 The Thick Journal
- 2.5 The Publisher
- 2.6 Queerness
- 2.7 The Censor
- 2.8 The Voice
- 2.9 The Self-Publisher
- 2.10 The Market
- 2.11 The Internet
- 2.12 Empire
- Boxes 3 Places
- Boxes 4 Narrative Voices
- History 3 Forms
- History 4 Heroes
- Index
- References
2.2 - The Court
from History 2 - Mechanisms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2024
Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
- The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- On Transliteration, Names, and Dates
- Introduction
- History 1 Movements
- History 2 Mechanisms
- 2.1 The Monastery
- 2.2 The Court
- 2.3 The Salon and the Circle
- 2.4 The Thick Journal
- 2.5 The Publisher
- 2.6 Queerness
- 2.7 The Censor
- 2.8 The Voice
- 2.9 The Self-Publisher
- 2.10 The Market
- 2.11 The Internet
- 2.12 Empire
- Boxes 3 Places
- Boxes 4 Narrative Voices
- History 3 Forms
- History 4 Heroes
- Index
- References
Summary
Throughout the imperial period, but especially in the eighteenth century, the Russian imperial court held a quasi-monopoly on the production, circulation, and conservation of literary artefacts. As the dominant political and economic force in the Russian Empire, it was able to introduce a new type of public sphere by shaping the social mission of literary texts and dictating the norms according to which literature was to be created and judged. This chapter focuses on the reign of Catherine II in order to show how the court promoted social engineering through literature, in particular through the genres of panegyric poetry and neoclassical drama. Celebrated authors in turn benefited from the court’s support. As a result, the imperial palace combined political and aesthetic functions: it introduced a new ceremonial culture and deployed princely patronage to glorify the court’s policies and to impose an absolutist social and aesthetic order.
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- The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 241 - 257Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Further Reading
de Madariaga, Isabel, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Keenan, Paul, St Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703–1761 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Joachim (ed.), ‘18th-century literature’, special issue, Russian Literature 75 (2014).Google Scholar
Lotman, Iurii M., ‘Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul'tury XVIII – nachala XIX veka’ [Essays on the history of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Russian culture], in Kuzovkina, Tatiana D. and Gekhtman, Vlada I. (eds.), Iz istorii russkoi kul'tury [From the history of Russian culture], 5 vols. (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury, 1996–2002), vol. IV, pp. 11–346.Google Scholar
Proskurina, Vera, Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ram, Harsha, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Whittaker, Cynthia H., Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Zhivov, Viktor M., ‘The myth of the state in the age of Enlightenment and its destruction in late eighteenth-century Russia’, Russian Studies in History 48.3 (2009), 10–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhivov, Viktor M., ‘Pervye russkie biografii kak sotsial'noe iavlenie: Trediakovskii, Lomonosov, Sumarokov’ [The first Russian biographies as a social phenomenon: Trediakovskii, Lomonosov, Sumarakov], in Razyskaniia v oblasti istorii i predystorii russkoi kul'tury [Investigations into the history and prehistory of Russian culture] (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul'tury, 2002), pp. 557–637.Google Scholar
Zorin, Andrei, By Fables Alone: Literature and State Ideology in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Russia (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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