No Laughing Matter: Anastasiia Verbitskaia's Comic Bent

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers III: Tragicomedy and the Khvoshchinskaia Sisters, Sofia Smirnova, and Anastasiia Verbitskaia

Abstract

Surprisingly, several of Verbitskaia's most effective writings offset seriousness with the comic. This admixture can be found in some of her best prose and plays of the 1890s, while in the twentieth century it stands out in critical commentary, in her most infamous novel, The Keys to Happiness, and her last writings, Elena Pavlovna i Serëzhka and Shest'desiat.

Author

• Charlotte Rosenthal, U of Southern Maine