Studies in the Humanities – serie

Many Americans and Europeans have for centuries viewed Russia as a despotic country in which people are inclined to accept suffering and oppression. What are the origins of this stereotype of Russia as a society fundamentally apart from nations in the West, and how accurate is it? In the first book devoted to answering these questions, Marshall T. Poe traces the roots of today's perception of Russia and its people to the eyewitness descriptions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travelers. His fascinating account—the most complete review of early modern European writings about Russia ever undertaken—explores how the image of "Russian tyranny" took hold in the popular imagination and eventually became the basis for the notion of "Oriental Despotism" first set forth by Montesquieu.Poe, the preeminent scholar of these valuable primary sources, carefully assesses their reliability. He argues convincingly that although the foreigners exaggerated the degree of Russian "slavery," they accurately described their encounters and correctly concluded that the political culture of Muscovite autocracy was unlike that of European kingship. With his findings, Poe challenges the notion that all Europeans projected their own fantasies onto Russia. Instead, his evidence suggests that many early travelers produced, in essence, reliable ethnographies, not works of exotic "Orientalism."

Composed in the 1360s, Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (Famous Women) was the first attempt at female biography in the history of post-classical Western literature. However, its humanistic credentials coexist uneasily with the remnants of medieval misogyny. This book – the first full-length study of De mulieribus claris in English – argues that it is essential to take into account the ideological complexities of early humanism confronted with the «woman question». It seeks to unravel the difficulties of the text, looking at its genesis, sources, relations to other writings – including Boccaccio’s vernacular works – its political dimensions, and its structure and methodology, to shed light on Boccaccio the humanist rewriting and rethinking his previous attitudes toward women.