The Baroque Age

The chronology of the Baroque age in Russian culture is contested, but by the broadest definition it can be located in the second half of the seventeenth century and approximately the first third of the eighteenth century. The emergence of the Baroque tends to coincide with the emergence of the court as a focus and patron. General features include a greater prominence of individuality (even originality), a greater emphasis on entertainment as one function and purpose of literary production, and a highlighting of performative verbal and formal devices. This chapter explores two types of literary production that particularly exemplify aspects of the Baroque mode: parody and satire, and syllabic verse. As a case-study in the latter, the chapter introduces a cycle of poems by the most prominent and prolific Baroque versifier, and arguably Moscow’s first professional writer of literature, Simeon Polotskii.

Art · Art history · Baroque · Early Modern Spanish Literature

• Printing Moscow

  Simon Franklin•The Slavonic and East European…•2010

  Add to list

• The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia

  Gitta Hammarberg, Marcia A Morris•The Slavic and East European…•2001

  Add to list

• A History of Seventeenth-Century Russian Literature

  Norman W Ingham, William Edward Brown•The Slavic and East European…•1981

  Add to list

• Vertograd mnogocvetnyj

  Ronald Vroon, Simeon Polockij et al.•The Slavic and East European…•2002

  Add to list