Article

Name: The Story of Maiden Laciona as a Russian Handwritten Tale from the Age of Elizaveta Petrovna. Part 1: Features of Court Life

Authors: Lyubov A. Kurysheva

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Plot, motif, genre in literature and folklore

Abstract:

The Story of Maiden Laciona is a handwritten text, known in a single copy dating back to the 1750s–1760s. This article examines the dating of the tale and the significance of such a narrative element as a vision.

The cultural, historical and everyday details of the story allow us to date the its origin to the reign of Elizabeth of Russia (Elizaveta Petrovna). Moreover, the aesthetic markers, such as the description of clothing and jewelry, the design of the ceremonial procession, the mention of the musicians’ specialization, refer specifically to the court life and fashion. The markers observed in The Story of Maiden Laciona are corroborated by a range of documentary sources, including the memoirs of French embassy secretary J.-L. Favier, Chevalier d’Eon, jeweler J. Pauzié, academician and first historiographer of Russian artistic culture J. Stäehlin, as well as the description of the coronation celebrations in Moscow in 1742.

The main point of the narrative is the description of the vision that Laciona summons with her art to entertain the guests. It is described how Venus descends from the opened heavens into the room, accompanied by cupids and Mercury, holding a scepter and a ball of golden thread in her hands. She unites the lovers – Laciona and Ludvik, commanding the cupids to shoot at their hearts. Due to the biblical allusions and the high concentration of Church Slavonic vocabulary, the apparition of Venus becomes a highly semiotic episode. The image of Venus with attributes of other female characters – the empress and Ariadne – leads us to the version that the Empress Elizabeth herself is veiled beneath the guise of Venus. As previously shown by researchers, Venus and Ariadne were among the favorite mythological characters who usually represented the empress in court festivities, theatrical productions, and decorative and monumental painting. The ball of golden thread symbolizes the help that the goddess gives to lovers. It has been suggested that in the mid-18th century, the images of a ball of golden thread and a labyrinth were used as a metaphor for help or a way out of a difficult situation. They were replaced by the expressions “Ariadne’s ball” and “Ariadne’s thread” at the end of the 18th century.

Keywords: Russian literature of the 18th century, handwritten fiction, The Story of Maiden Laciona, ekphrasis, Elizaveta Petrovna, G. Tiepolo, M. I. Vorontsov, E. R. Dachkova, M. V. Lomonosov

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