The letters of Catherine the Great and the rhetoric of enlightenment
Journal: Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford)
Year: 2015

This thesis offers the first reading of the letters of Catherine the Great as a unified epistolary corpus with literary merit as well as historical value. It explores how the empress employed a key eighteenth-century literary form—the letter—not only to make tactical interventions in political and cultural life, but also to shape her persona. The often contrastive style of her letters balances a charming epistolary voice, suited to the letter as a practice of sociability, with exhibitions of the