Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade ReviewReviews'The monograph truly brings to life the complexity of Catherine’s voice as reflected in her letter writing art as it evolved over decades. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the cultural history of the eighteenth century, and an inspiring example of cultural and literary analysis of epistolary heritage.'
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL), from their 2020 book awards.
'The book exhibits great imagination in the range of skills Rubin-Detlev demonstrates in spanning the broad historical grasp, theorisations of the letter genre and of gender construction as well as a fine sense of nuance when teasing out subtleties of evolving word usage or cliché, the nuances of Catherine’s switching between languages, and textual detail. All of these facets are seamlessly integrated with an engaging and imaginative writing style especially impressive in a first book.'
Prof. Judith Pallot (Christ Church, Oxford) and Prof. Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London), judges of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) Alexander Nove Prize 2019.
‘Kelsey Rubin-Detlev’s monograph... constitutes an important contribution to the study of the sources of the time of Catherine II.’ Aleksandr Lavrov, Cahiers du Monde russe (translated from French)
Table of ContentsList 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 début: 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 familières
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 mérite
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
