512 pp / Softcover / April 2014 / ISBN 978-0-7727-2162-4 / $45.95
Edited and translated by Amanda Ewington
In the wake of Peter the Great’s westernizing reforms, Russians raced to build the kind of modern literary culture that Europeans had achieved centuries earlier. Until recently, women’s contribution to this fascinating period of rapid assimilation and creation has been ignored. This volume challenges us to reimagine the early Russian literary canon, by considering a broad range of pioneering women poets who remain largely unknown, even in their homeland. Readers of Russian and English alike will appreciate this unprecedented bilingual collection of fully annotated texts, with critical introductions for each poet.
“Russian Women Poets of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries is a bold, pioneering achievement. Not only does it bring to light a poetic tradition that has been totally forgotten for over two centuries, even in its country of origin, but it does so in a broadly inclusive fashion. This corpus of texts sheds significant light on the genesis and formation of modern Russian verse and on the ways in which this new cohort of poets strove to find their voice during a complex era of shifting literary, cultural and gender values, navigating between the male-oriented high genres of Neoclassicism and the ‘feminized’ modes of Sentimentalism.”
– Marcus C. Levitt, Professor, Slavic Languages, University of Southern California
To view an excerpt from the introduction, please click here [PDF].
Amanda Ewington is Associate Professor and Chair of the Russian Studies Department at Davidson College. She is author of A Voltaire for Russia: A. P. Sumarokov’s Journey from Poet-Critic to Russian Philosophe (2010). A past president and active member of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association, she has presented numerous papers on Russian women writers. She is currently pursuing a project on women and the stage in eighteenth-century Russia.
The Russian Review, 74:1 (January 2015). pp. 145. Reviewed by Stephanie Sandler.
Early Modern Women’s Journal, 10:1 (Fall 2015). pp. 256-258. Reviewed by Vera Proskurina.
The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies no longer sells or distributes books in “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series.” Starting July 2015, volumes can be purchased by individuals and institutions from the Chicago Distribution Center. Contact CDC by email (orders@press.uchicago.edu), by fax (800-621-8476 or 773-702-7212), or by phone (800-621-2736 or 773-702-7000).
512 pp / Softcover / April 2014 / ISBN 978-0-7727-2162-4 / $45.95
