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Article: Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter. The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theatre.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Comparative Drama
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 www.wmich.edu/compdr. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003. Pp. 296. $40.00 casebound.
Elise Wirtschafter offers an intelligent reading of some 260 largely forgotten plays. She suggests the lapse of memory is unjust, not so much in the light of aesthetic standards but because the texts shed considerable light on the formation of Russian society in the eighteenth century. The overriding and convincing argument of the book is that theater both reflects and shapes Russian social history at a crucial moment of its transition into the modern era. Since the plays at issue illuminate Enlightenment principals that have recently been looked at with considerable nostalgia and some ...