Classics in Russia 1700-1855: Between Two Bronze Horsemen

Description

The author shows how the history of the classical tradition in Russia cannot be separated from the history of Russia's orientation to Western Europe in general. His book, based on many little-known and previously unexplored Russian materials, is the result of the first comprehensive research on the study of the Greek and Roman classics in Russia, and its sociocultural — utopian as well as ideological — function within the framework of Russian cultural and intellectual history and Russian educational policy from the accession of Peter the Great to the death of Nicholas I. A tradition does not exist apart from the people who adhere to it and the networks they create in order to ensure some kind of growth and continuity. Therefore the author has ordered his material into an interpretive framework based on a prosopographical approach towards the subject. Among specific writers and poets discussed are Pushkin, Gogol, Goncharov and Turgenev. Preface and acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 I. Imperator Peter the Great 8 II. Petro Primo Catharina Secunda 38 III. Diamonds for scholarship: the birth of "Altphilologie" in Russia 68 IV. Aere perennius: Alexander Pushkin 128 V. Interlude: the frame of reference 173 VI. The iron age: 1825-1855 196 VII. The lost past of Nikolai Gogol 251 VIII. The two sides of Ivan Goncharov 305 IX. "The ideal professor": Timofei Granovsky 323 Epilogue 356 Index of names 357