Русский Бертольдо

During the age of Enlightenment, when reading «Bova Korolevich» or «Eruslan Lazarevich» was already looked upon in Russia as vapid, «Bertoldo» could have rather easily fallen into the same category. But it was destined for a different fate. Croce’s novel successfully adapted to the times. By adjusting its register to that of the epoch it fell into line with Enlightenment satire, even though it thereby inevitably eliminating some characteristic features of the popular comedy. Now the French reworkings of «Bertoldo» (just like their Russian translations) gained acceptance and found their ways into the private libraries of the eighteenth-century nobility.

The wide range of venues in which the Russian «Bertoldo» appeared throughout the century (from «popular» novels to theatrical versions and Enlightenment interpretations) bears witness to a rather rare phenomenon, the reading of a specific text simultaneously in «low» and «elite» strata of Russian society. The polyvalence of an archetype reborn on new soil enabled it to resonate in an unsurpassed way both with those older cultural demands which still survived in Russian society, as well as to new ones evoked by the epoch.

The monograph is structured in the following way:

Beside the historiographic foreword and conclusion there are three chapters:

1) The genesis of Bertoldo. Translations and reworkings of the novel in 17 ^th— 18 ^thcenturies.

2) The Russian «Bertoldo»: manuscripts, editions, and texts for staging.

3) «Bertoldo» and the Russian reader of the 18 ^thcentury.

A previously unknown Russian translation of «Bertoldo» occupies a central place in the monograph, published here in full on the basis of manuscript no. 191 in the library of Moscow University, and accompanied by linguistic and historical-culturological commentary. The appendix also includes some unknown and little known texts connected to the fate of «Bertoldo» in eighteenth-century Russia.

Visual material occupies an important place in this study. The illustrations for «Bertoldo» were quite popular, and in Italy they even gained an independent standing. Throughout the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they went through an artistic evolution in this «rationalist direction» through which the novel’s text underwent quite a few changes. The selection of illustrations consists of unique drawings for the Russian manuscript translation of «Bertoldo», models of western European book graphics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as other iconographic sources, which substantively enrich the history of this Italian «popular» book in eighteenth-century Russia/