In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between power and poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch's power. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine's reign (and some major literary works) that give a broad framework to...

Empress Catherine II produced a body of written material so vast and diverse that it seems impossible to provide a general characterization of the works contained in the authoritative twelve-volume collection assembled by A. N. Pypin from handwritten source material. This book does not attempt an all-embracing review of Catherine's entire literary output, which consists of works in multiple genres and languages. The Russian empress's writings have been the repeated subject of serious analysis for nineteenth- and twentieth-century researchers; all of these in one way or another demonstrate...