Image of Russia in eighteenth-century French literature.
Item
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Title
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Image of Russia in eighteenth-century French literature.
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Identifier
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AAI9720120
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identifier
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9720120
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Creator
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Mosakowski, Marek W. A.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Renee Waldinger
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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The image of Russia in eighteenth-century France was very complex. It covers a wide spectrum, starting from the infatuation with the Petrine reforms after 1725 and the creation of dangerous Russian myths by Fontenelle, Voltaire, Diderot and other philosophes, who pleaded the Russian cause with just a minimum, or without any degree of criticism. With the passage of time this apologetic trend was somewhat subverted by unflattering accounts of eye-witnesses. However, in the last decades of the century it was recapitulated by Segur, when Russia's modernization was no longer disputed and was acknowledged as a fact.;Our dissertation is divided into three parts. The first is concerned with Fontenelle's Eloge du Czar Pierre Ier and its role in propagating the Russian myth in France. It also focuses on some less familiar passages of Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois, dedicated to Russian reforms, and on the correspondence between Catherine II and Grimm. The second part treats the image of Russia, positive for the most part, presented in French fictional literature. The following authors are discussed: Argens, Locatelli, Boissy, Dorat, La Harpe and Thomas. The third part presents several memoires de voyage, published by a number of diplomats and writers who travelled to eighteenth-century Muscovy and thus had a chance to experience it directly. Russian testimonials of Saint-Pierre, Rulhiere, Autroche and Corberon often contradicted Fontenelle's laudatory Eloge, Dorat's uncritical Pierre-le-Grand and Thomas' La Petreide. The analysis of this revisionistic trend and creation of a more balanced image of Peter the Great and his followers is a major component of the third part. It shows the difference between the Russia of the philosophes, infatuated with the new developments in the East envisaged from a purely theoretical perspective, and the historical reality. But regardless of many critical voices, which often deplored the Muscovite barbarity and the difficult situation of Russian women, there was an evident evolution in the perception of Russia in France. Various literary accounts demonstrate that as the century drew to its close, Russia was treated more seriously and considered by the French an equal partner, not a distant, Asiatic empire.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
