Writing the Time of Troubles: False Dmitry in Russian Literature (Unknown Nineteenth Century) - Hardcover

"In this well-wrought book, Marcia Morris discusses the ways Russian writers have used the figure of False Dmitry to pose political, existential, and literary questions. ... Morris argues that each writer's approach to these questions expresses his relation to contemporaneous events as well as his view of the distant past. The argument is framed by narrative theory and trauma studies, and firmly grounded in studies of Russian history and literature--the footnotes alone provide a detailed map of the book's argument. ... We owe Marcia Morris a debt of gratitude for reading, contextualizing, and analyzing these works, including some that most of us would never encounter otherwise. This book is well worth reading." --Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California, Russian Review Vol. 78, No. 2 --Sarah Pratt "Russian Review "

Writing the Time of Troubles traces recurring fictional representations of the man who briefly reigned as Tsar Dmitry, showing how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian playwrights and novelists reshaped and appropriated his equivocal career as a means of drawing attention to and negotiating the social anxieties of their own times.