| In this dissertation, I examine fashion, specifically the reception of different manifestations of French culture that came into Russia during the eighteenth century. I explore the cultural and ideological significance of Peter's vestimentary reform, the resulting phenomenon of foppishness that emerged in the attempt to adopt the attributes of European culture in life and costume, and the notion of masquerade that permeated eighteenth-century Russian public life, politics and ideology, together with all aspects of the literary culture of the day. I argue that fashion is profoundly implicated in cultural, political and ideological struggles around the search for national identity.;I examine Russian satirical representation of petits-maîtres and petites-maîtresses that served as vehicles for reasserting Russian cultural identity; explore the functions of apparel, modish accessories and make-up as means of conveying polemics, parody and travesty in a number of "sartorially-invested" genres; and survey the use of sartorial imagery in social and literary discourse. Since Peter's reforms led to women's sartorial emancipation and the creation of a new culture of femininity, these changes are also a subject of my research.;I concentrate primarily on the works of Antioch Kantemir, Ivan Elagin, Aleksandr Sumarokov, Vladimir Lukin, Denis Fonvizin, Iakov Kniazhnin, Ivan Krylov, Vasilii Maikov, Ippolit Bogdanovich and Nikolai Strakhov, as well as journalistic polemics between Nikolai Novikov and Catherine II, examining them in the context of the European tradition exemplified by such authors as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, Joseph Addison, Richard Style, Alexander Pope, Robert Dodsley, Ludvig Holberg and others.;Since there is no accepted general theory that deals with the literary existence of dress, I have been guided in my analysis by reference to various aspects of the dress theories propounded by Thomas Carlyle, Herbert Spencer, Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel, Alfred Kroeber, J. C. Flügel, James Laver, and Roland Barthes, as well as by the writings of Iurii Lotman, Raisa Kirsanova, Aileen Ribeiro, Terry Castle, Daniel Roche, Valerie Steele and other scholars who explore the issue of theatricality, cultural aspects of dress and the semantics of masquerade. |
