'Oh God, Why Do You Delay?’: Biblical Motifs in the Writings of Anna Bunina

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers I: The Poets Bunina, Pavlova, and Rostopchina

Abstract

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, studies of biblical motifs in the works of canonical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian authors have become commonplace; yet, in this as in so many other domains, female voices have been largely ignored. Aiming to redress this absence, this paper situates the poetry, prose, and translations of Anna Bunina (1774-1829) within early nineteenth-century debates about biblical translation and Scripture’s place in modern Russian literature. As this paper argues, despite being a protégé of the conservative defender of the Church Slavonic Bible, A. S. Shishkov, Bunina appropriated eighteenth-century literary uses of the Bible to issue a radical challenge to prevailing male discourses about individual spiritual experience.

Author

• Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, U of Southern California