Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: The Comely Cook, Vanka Kain, and Poor Liza

Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: The Comely Cook, Vanka Kain, and Poor Liza

Chulkov, Mikhail
Komarov, Matvei
Karamzin, Nikolai

Paperback

Series: Niu Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Literary CriticismFiction Anthologies

ISBN10: 0875806740
ISBN13: 9780875806747
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: Jun 15 2012
Pages: 250
Weight: 0.75
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.40
Language: English

For those who cannot read the language of the original texts, the lively and varied world of eighteenth-century Russian literature has been largely inaccessible. In this valuable collection, expert translator David Gasperetti presents three seminal tales that express the major literary, social, and philosophical concerns of late-eighteenth-century Russia.

The country's first bestseller, Matvei Komarov's Vanka Kain tells the story of a renowned thief and police spy and is also an excellent historical source on the era's criminal underworld. Mikhail Chulkov's The Comely Cook is a cross between Moll Flanders, with its comic emphasis on a woman of ill-repute who struggles to secure her place in society, and Tristram Shandy, with its parody of the conventions of novel writing. Finally, Nikolai Karamzin's Poor Liza, the story of a young woman who kills herself over a failed love affair, set the standard for writing sentimentalist fiction in Russia.

Taken as a whole, these three works outline the beginnings of modern prose fiction in Russia and also illuminate the literary culture that would give rise to the Golden Age of Russian letters in the middle of the next century.

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