'This is a superb work of scholarship - thoughtful, wide-ranging, and with implications that go far beyond its topic. Tracing Trediakovsky's reputation through the ages - the first time this has been done - the author develops interesting ideas about how reputations are formed and modified. She makes good use of myth theory and current revisionist ideas about the establishment of canons of classics.'Hugh McLean, University of California, Berkley

• A note on transliteration; Introduction: myths and literary history; 1. Vasilii Trediakovsky: man and myth; 2. The 'new' Russian literature; 3. Criticism, parody, and myth; 4. Archaists and innovators: the fool in their polemics; 5. Radishchev and Pushkin: accepting with the fool; 6. The afterlife of the myth about Trediakovsky; Conclusion; Notes; Index.