The Imperial Script of Catherine the Great

"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 that across a variety of genres and formats, with a greater or lesser degree of independence and originality, the literary works of Catherine II always express her politics and ideology. If Catherine's policy had the transfer of imperial power to Russia, a kind of translatio imperii, as its strategic goal, then the literary and cultural accomplishments of the empress had to establish a translatio studii, that is, the transfer of the Roman cultural paradigm, knowledge, and civilization onto Russian soil. This book will be devoted to an analysis of these paradigms as they emerged between Catherine II's creations on the page and in the empire itself"--