Tale of Boiarynia Morozova

Margaret Ziolkowski is Professor in the department of German, Russian and East Asian Languages at Miami University. She is the authorLiterary Exorcisms of Stalinism: Russian Writers and the Soviet Past (1998) andHagiography and Modern Russian Literature(1988).

She has given the field an elegant, subtle edition of a most useful, too-long-neglected primary source. Along with recent studies by Serhii Plokhy and Isolde Thyret, she vividly reminds us of the religious ferment of the seventeenth century in Muscovy and Europe generally. Thanks to Ziolkowski, boiarynia Morozova can now take her place among the many zealots who were her contemporaries. Anyone seeking an introduction to and thoughtful discussion of seventeenth-century religious culture, the hagiographical tradition, or the appropriation of a religious figure by later secular revolutionaries will benefit from this book.

• Chapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 Tale of Boiarynia MorozovaChapter 3 Archpriest Avvakum's "Lament for the Three Martyrs"Chapter 4 Excerpts from the Correspondence of Feodosia Morozova with Avvakum and His FamilyChapter 5 Commentary