The Imperial Sublime

the long version

"The Imperial Sublime examines the rise of the Russian empire as a literary theme alongside the creation and evolution of modern Russian poetry between the 1730s and 1840. Arising from the need to celebrate the Russian state and its expanding territories, the imperial theme quickly became enmeshed in a wider range of issues, from formal problems of gene, style, and lyric voice to the vexed relationship between the poet and Russia's ruling monarchs." "Part of a growing body of recent scholarship that has examined Russian representations of Russia's southern borderlands in the light of European orientalism and imperialism, The Imperial Sublime shows how the broader cultural discourses of empire can be adapted and inflected by a national literary system."--Jacket.