Early Modern Russian Letters

Marcus Levitt (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1984) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California. 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 and contributor) and Making Russia Visible: The Status of the Visual in Eighteenth-century Russian Literature (forthcoming).

"Professor Marcus Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature, crowns years spent studying poet and playwright Alexander Sumarokov with a new collection of articles, some now made available in English for the first time. Containing a series of engaging essays on various aspects of Sumarokov’s oeuvre together with a variety of other studies concerning Russian culture, literature, history and philosophy, this volume will serve as an indispensable guide to all those studying eighteenth-century Russia for many years to come."

• Foreword. Part One: SUMAROKOV AND THE LITERARY PROCESS OF HIS TIME. Preface. 1. Sumarokov: Life and Works. 2. Sumarokov’s Reading at the Academy of Sciences Library. 3. Censorship and Provocation: The Publishing History of Sumarokov’s “Two Epistles”. 4. Slander, Polemic, Criticism: Trediakovskii’s “Letter from a Friend to a Friend” of 1750 and the Problem of Creating Russian Literary Criticism. 5. Sumarokov’s Russianized “Hamlet”: Texts and Contexts. 6. Sumarokov’s Drama “The Hermit”: On the Generic and Intellectual Sources of Russian Classicism. 7. “The First Russian Ballet”: Sumarokov’s “Sanctuary of Virtue” (1759) Defining a New Dance. 8. Was Sumarokov a Lockean Sensualist? On Locke’s Reception in Eighteenth-Century Russia. 9. Barkoviana and Russian Classicism. 10. The Illegal Staging of Sumarokov’s Sinav and Truvor in 1770 and the Problem of Authorial Status in Eighteenth-Century Russia. 11. Sumarokov and the Unified Poetry Book: His Triumphal Odes and Love Elegies Through the Prism of Tradition. 12. The Barbarians among Us, or Sumarokov’s Views on Orthography. Early Modern Russian Letters: Part Two: VISUALITY AND ORTHODOXY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN CULTURE. Preface.13. The Rapprochement between “Secular” and “Religious” in Mid to Late Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture. 14. The “Obviousness” of the Truth in Eighteenth-Century Russian Thought. 15. The Theological Context of Lomonosov’s “Evening” and “Morning Meditations on God’s Majesty”. 16. The Ode as Revelation: On the Orthodox Theological Context of Lomonosov’s Odes. 17. An Antidote to Nervous Juice: Catherine the Great’s Debate with Chappe d’Auteroche over Russian Culture. 18. The Polemic with Rousseau over Gender and Sociability in E. S. Urusova’s Polion (1774). 19. Virtue Must Advertise: Self Presentation in Dashkova’s Memoirs. 20. The Dialectic of Vision in Radishchev’s Journey from Petersburg to Moscow. Sources