From Catherine II’s coup to Alexander Pushkin’s "The captain’s daughter": A reflection on sartorial and spiritual searching in Russian culture

Ivleva, Victoria

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116393 Copy

Description

Title

From Catherine II’s coup to Alexander Pushkin’s "The captain’s daughter": A reflection on sartorial and spiritual searching in Russian culture

Author(s)

Ivleva, Victoria

Issue Date

2020-12

Keyword(s)

• Catherine II
• Peter I
• Aleksandr Talyzin
• coup uniform
• Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii regiments
• iconography of portraits
• Alexander Pushkin
• The Captain’s Daughter
• cultural archetypes
• traditional clothing

Abstract

This article examines the origins of different attributions of the uniform that Catherine II wore on the day of the coup in 1762 that brought her to the throne. It traces the importance of this episode in eighteenth-century culture and in Catherine’s self-representation by looking at memoirs, as well as by exploring the history of the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii regiments, in terms of the guards’ uniforms and their cultural meanings, and by studying royal ceremonies and the iconography of eighteenth-century portraits. The article then uses the lens of Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836) to rethink this episode in the context of early nineteenth-century history, Pushkin’s personal biography and his thoughts on Russian history and culture.

Series/Report Name or Number

ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, vol. 8

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2020 Victoria Ivleva
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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