Writing the Time of Troubles

Marcia A. Morris is Professor of Slavic Languages at Georgetown University. She is the author of Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian Literature, The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia and Russian Tales of Demonic Possession: Translations of Savva Grudtsyn and Solomonia.

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on Translation, Transliteration, Names, and AbbreviationsIntroduction: Recurrence, Transference, and DmitryChapter 1 PreludeChapter 2 Two Visions of Tyranny: The Late Eighteenth CenturyChapter 3 Verbal Self-Fashioning: The Early Nineteenth CenturyChapter 4 Two Visions of Reform: 1866Chapter 5 Contingent Self-Fashioning: The Fin de SiècleDmitry: Re-resurrection and ConclusionsSources Cited

“In this well-wrought book, Marcia Morris discusses the waysRussian writers have used the figure of False Dmitry to pose political,existential, and literary questions. … Morris argues that each writer’s approachto these questions expresses his relation to contemporaneous events as well ashis view of the distant past. The argument is framed by narrative theory andtrauma studies, and firmly grounded in studies of Russian history andliterature—the footnotes alone provide a detailed map of the book’s argument. …We owe Marcia Morris a debt of gratitude for reading, contextualizing, andanalyzing these works, including some that most of us would never encounterotherwise. This book is well worth reading.” —Sarah Pratt, University of SouthernCalifornia, Russian Review Vol. 78,No. 2