Notes from 'Performing Autobiography: The Multiple Memoirs of Catherine the Great (1756-96)' by Monika Greenleaf
The document uploader sucks, so here is the simplest version of my notes. I've selected the important quotes from the source, and they're pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to makes summaries of these ones.
Summary of Catherine's memoirs: 1756-58: Brief English-style memoir of her German childhood and steadfast character at the court of Elizabeth Petrovna, written by Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna for the English diplomatic envoy Sir Charles Hansbury-Williams (Memoires V, pp. 441-68) Early in 1762: Hasty few pages penned by Catherine, wife of Peter III, now ruling Tsar of Russia (Memoires VI, pp. 473-76) Second half of 1762: Third-person, heroic portrayal of coup in style of Perefice’s Histoire du roi Henry le Grand, by self-crowned usurper and revolutionary, Empress Catherine II (Memoires VII, pp. 479-85) 21 April 1771: Long memoir of a young princess’s upbringing in Germany and her canny survival in the “women’s world” of the Russin court, addressed to her lady-in-waiting and closest confidante Coutness Praskov’ia Aleksandrovna Bruce, by Empress Catherine II, model “enlightened despot of European “Republic of Letters” (Memoires I, pp. 5-69) 1791: Continuation of years leading up to coup, addressed to her old friend and ally-in-Enlightenment, Baron Aleksandr Ivanovich Cherkassov, by Empress Catherine the Great, last living absolute monarch (memoires II-III, pp. 73-186) 1794: New impersonal opening, then revised and stylistically more polished narrative analyzing Peter III and Catherine Alekseevna’s differences of character and disjunction of desitinies in the last dangerous years of Elizabeth Petrovna’s reign (Memoires IV, pp. 197-437) About the Memoirs “The memoirs…were assembled by parts, over a rather extended period of time, were written without system, being periodically reread and corrected, and in that form in which they were published” (Sochineniia Imperatritsy by A. N. Pypin; translated by Monika Greenleaf) 'Autobiography was perhaps the crowning genre in the Enlightenment system of genres, a strictly verbal proof of the power of individual reasoning to overcome external obstacles, examine its own consciousness, and submit a unified vision of life to the reason of the public.' 'Each of these four examplars [Franklin, Hume, Rousseau, Boswell] passed through many stages of revision and editing before its unruly, contradictory manuscripts yielded the requisite image of organically maturing character and independence rom mere external events.' 'Writing her memoirs was a preemptive strike against the biographers and memoirists who were eager to write her history for her.' '[Created a] lovable model in herself of a naturally elevated soul and cultivated mind...' |