The epistolary art of Catherine the Great
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The epistolary art of Catherine the Great
（Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment, 2019:08）
Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, c2019
Available at / 7 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Bibliography of works cited: p. 353-379
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great is the first study to analyse comprehensively the letters of Empress Catherine the Great of
Russia (reigned 1762-1796) and to argue that they constitute a masterpiece of eighteenth-century epistolary writing.
In this book, Kelsey Rubin-Detlev traces Catherine's development as a letter-writer, her networking strategies, and her image-making, demonstrating the centrality of ideas, literary experimentation, and manipulation of material form evident in Catherine's epistolary practice. Through this, Rubin-Detlev illustrates how Catherine's letters reveal her full engagement with the Enlightenment and further show how
creatively she absorbed and responded to the ideas of her century.
The letter was not merely a means by which the empress promoted Russia and its leader as European powers; it was a literary genre through which Catherine expressed her identity as a member of the social, political, and intellectual elite of her century.
Table of Contents
List of
illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Note on dates, quotations and transliteration
Introduction: Catherine the Great, letter-writing and the elite Enlightenment
The letters of Catherine the Great
The elite Enlightenment of Catherine the Great
Chapter 1: Catherine the epistolarian
Catherine's epistolary education: 1742-1762
Catherine's debut: 1762-1774
In transition: 1774-1781
Mastery: 1781-1789
An Enlightenment monarch in a Revolutionary world: 1789-1796
Catherine's epistolary geography
Catherine and her contemporaries
Chapter 2: Catherine the Great and eighteenth-century epistolary style
Lettres galantes
Lettres familieres
Portrait and narrative letters
Love letters
Chapter 3: Fashioning the great Enlightenment monarch
Gender and epistolary self-fashioning
Catherine's image as an Enlightenment intellectual
Fashioning greatness
The correct exercise of military might
Compensating for military heroism: flourishing provinces
Patronage of the arts and sciences
Ethical greatness
The legislator
Chapter 4: The play of authority in epistolary form
Authority and linguistic mastery
Authority and writing practices
Epistolary etiquette
Paper use
Datelines
Salutations
Closers
Foregoing etiquette
Affection-seeking formulae
Postscripts
Signatures, addresses
and attachments
Chapter 5: Epistolary publicity and the audience for Catherine's correspondences
The injunction against publication
Building reputation through networks of
epistolary sociability
Managing celebrity through epistolary circulation
From reputation to glory: writing for posterity by addressing gens de merite
Chapter 6: Greatness contested: Catherine's epistolary response to the French Revolution
Chronology of Catherine's epistolary actions against the French Revolution
Old and new in Catherine's epistolary style
Greatness contested: confronting the past
Conclusion: new readers and new ways of reading Catherine's letters
Bibliography of works cited
Archival sources
Editions of Catherine's letters
Secondary sources: English
Secondary sources: French
Secondary sources: Russian
Secondary sources: German
Secondary sources: Italian
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
