Russian literature: Western Influence: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Western Influence: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Western influence was manifest in the 17th cent. in numerous translations and in the establishment (1662) of the first theater in Russia. Under Peter I the Westernizing process was enormously accelerated; at the same time the Russian alphabet was revised and Russian works began to be published in the vernacular. Close contact with Europe began a century of the application of Western literary modes to Russian materials.
Prince Antioch Kantemir (1708–44) blended European neoclassicism with portraiture of Russian life and wrote poetry in the syllabic system common to French and Polish. Poetry in tonic form, more suitable to Russian, was written by V. K. Tredyakovsky and was brought to a brilliant level by M. V. Lomonosov. A. P. Sumarokov, the founder of Russian drama, combined European forms and Russian themes in his fables and plays.
The literature of the reign of Catherine II revealed the influence of the European Enlightenment. Catherine's own dramas compounded classical style and satirical tone, as did the journals of N. I. Novikov and the grandiose odes of G. R. Derzavhin. Satire was combined with realistic motifs in the plays of D. I. Fonzivin (1745–92), author of Russia's first truly national drama,
Sections in this article:
- Introduction
- World War II to the Present
- Soviet Literature, 1917–39
- An Age of Masterpieces: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- Romanticism and Modern Style: The Early Nineteenth Century
- Western Influence: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Early Literature
- Bibliography
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