Brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature. The essays address a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature, from authorship and philosophy to gender and religion in Russian Enlightenment culture.

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. Urusoväs Polion (1774). 19. Virtue Must Advertise: Self Presentation in Dashkoväs Memoirs. 20. The Dialectic of Vision in Radishchev¿s Journey from Petersburg to Moscow. Sources