The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia

by Marcus C. Levitt

Overview

The Enlightenment privileged vision as the principle means of understanding the world, but the eighteenth-century Russian preoccupation with sight was not merely a Western import. In his masterful study, Levitt shows the visual to have had deep indigenous roots in Russian Orthodox culture and theology, arguing that the visual played a crucial role in the formation of early modern Russian culture and identity.

Levitt traces the early modern Russian quest for visibility from jubilant self-discovery, to serious reflexivity, to anxiety and crisis. The book examines verbal constructs of sight—in poetry, drama, philosophy, theology, essay, memoir—that provide evidence for understanding the special character of vision of the epoch. Levitt's groundbreaking work represents both a new reading of various central and lesser known texts and a broader revisualization of Russian eighteenth-century culture.

Works that have considered the intersections of Russian literature and the visual in recent years have dealt almost exclusively with the modern period or with icons. The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia is an important addition to the scholarship and will be of major interest to scholars and students of Russian literature, culture, and religion, and specialists on the Enlightenment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875804422
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marcus C. Levitt is Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California and the author of Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: An Archaeology of Vision 3

1 Prolegomena-Making Russia Visible 15

2 The Moment of the Muses-Lomonosov's Odes 28

3 Bogovidenie-Orthodox Vision and the Odes 64

4 The Staging of the Self 78

5 Virtue Must Advertise-The Ethics of Vision 124

6 The Seen, the Unseen, and the Obvious 151

7 The Icon That Started a Riot 195

8 The Dialectic of Vision in Radishchev's Journey 222

Conclusion: Russian Culture as a Mirage 253

Notes 271

Index 340

Editorial Reviews

[A] groundbreaking new book

Slavonic and East European Review

Levitt puts forth a fascinating and highly original thesis concerning the centrality of visual motifs in Russia's Enlightenment culture. I found the discussion of Orthodox theology and the ways it echoed in eighteenth-century literature to be innovative, intellectually stimulating, and persuasive.

Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

""[A] groundbreaking new book."—Slavonic and East European Review

"Levitt puts forth a fascinating and highly original thesis concerning the centrality of visual motifs in Russia's Enlightenment culture. I found the discussion of Orthodox theology and the ways it echoed in eighteenth-century literature to be innovative, intellectually stimulating, and persuasive."—Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, California State Polytechnic University Pomona"

From the Publisher