Rank and Style is a collection of essays by Irina Reyfman, a leading scholar of Russian literature and culture. Ranging in topic from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the essays focus on the interaction of life and literature. In the first part, Reyfman examines how obligatory state service and the Table of Ranks shaped Russian writers' view of themselves as professionals, raising questions about whether the existence of the rank system prompted the development of specifically Russian types of literary discourse. The sections that follow bring together articles on Pushkin, writer and...

Vasilii Trediakovsky (1703-69) was one of the eighteenth century poets instrumental in creating a Russian literature based on West European models, yet a striking discrepancy exists between his obvious importance and his notoriously bad reputation among his contemporaries and later generations of Russian writers and critics. In exploring the mechanisms of the creation and transmission of literary reputation, the author uses material that is frequently dismissed as irrelevant and unreliable: rumors, anecdotes, and opinions. This material is used to detect mythological patterns in accounts of...