The play of ideas in Russian Enlightenment theater

by Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

"How did enlightened Russians of the eighteenth century understand society? How did they reconcile their professed ideals of equality and justice with the authoritarian political structures in which they lived? Historian Elise Wirtschafter turns to literary plays to reconstruct the social thinking of the past and to discover how Enlightenment Russians understood themselves." "Opening with an illuminating discussion of the development of theater in eighteenth-century Russia, Wirtschafter goes on to explore dramatic representations of key social questions. Based on an examination of more than 260 secular plays written during the last half of the century, she shows how dramas for the stage represented and debated important public issues - such as the nature of the common good, the structure of the patriarchal household, the duty of monarchs, and the role of the individual in society."--Jacket.