By Robert K. Massie
ISBN-10: 0345298063
ISBN-13: 9780345298065
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Against the huge canvas of 17th- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia unfolds the awesome tale of Peter the good, topped co-tsar on the age of ten. Robert okay. Massie delves deep into the lifetime of this eye-catching historic determine, chronicling the pivotal occasions that formed a boy right into a legend—including his “incognito” travels in Europe, his unquenchable interest approximately Western methods, his obsession with the ocean and institution of the stupendous Russian army, his construction of an unbeatable military, his transformation of Russia, and his relationships with these he enjoyed so much: Catherine, the powerful but light peasant, his loving mistress, spouse, and successor; and Menshikov, the fascinating, daring, unscrupulous prince who rose to wealth and gear via Peter’s friendship. Impetuous and obdurate, beneficiant and harsh, delicate and unforgiving, a guy of huge power and complexity, Peter the good is introduced absolutely to existence.
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Extra info for Peter the Great: His Life and World
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9 28 Women’s Byt during Thaw and Stagnation Men also stray from the strictures of gender, but women’s writing confines depictions of these errant males either to exaggerations of “acceptable” behavior (alcoholic war veterans) or absence (some children simply do not know the identity of their fathers). 10 This absence exemplifies the Soviet Victorianism dominating official public discourse from the 1930s to the mid-1980s. However, eliding gays and lesbians also shows that post-1953 private life was less a sphere than an edifice.
27 The above assertions convey a key commonality that runs throughout criticism of women’s writing: the raw material of byt must be transformed into the finished product of literature. Typicality is another concern. This unresolved problem of typicality, a crucial issue encompassing content as well as exposition, was inherited by post-Stalinist authors through critical and socialist realism. Two conceptions of typicality—what I term a transformative and reflective approach—dominated literary criticism from the 1960s through the mid-1980s.
As Iurii Lotman notes, byt is most identifiable during times of crises. Such moments shape women’s writing and determine how it uses the quotidian to convey specifically female problems. In this context, the threshold chronotope, which Bakhtin links to a life-changing event for a character, is of special interest to the present discussion. 43 The chronotope of crisis became a model for women’s battles with time and place, undergoing a series of changes as women’s writing itself diversified in the late- and post-Soviet era.
Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
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