The transfigured kingdom : sacred parody and charismatic authority at the court of Peter the Great

Resource Information

The work The transfigured kingdom : sacred parody and charismatic authority at the court of Peter the Great represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The transfigured kingdom : sacred parody and charismatic authority at the court of Peter the Great

Title remainder

sacred parody and charismatic authority at the court of Peter the Great

Statement of responsibility

Ernest A. Zitser

Title variation

Sacred parody and charismatic authority at the court of Peter the Great

Creator

• Zitser, Ernest A

Subject

• Peter, I, Emperor of Russia, 1672-1725
• Rites and ceremonies -- Russia
• Russia -- Court and courtiers
• Russia -- History -- Peter I, 1689-1725

Language

eng

Summary

• "In this analysis of late Muscovite and early Imperial court culture, Ernest A. Zitser provides a corrective to the secular bias of the scholarly literature about the reforms of Peter the Great. Zitser demonstrates that the tsar's supposedly "secularizing" reforms rested on a fundamentally religious conception of his personal political mission. In particular, Zitser shows that the carnivalesque (and often obscene) activities of the so-called Most Comical All-Drunken Council served as a type of Baroque political sacrament - a monarchical rite of power that elevated the tsar's person above normal men, guaranteed his prerogative over church affairs, and bound the participants into a community of believers in his God-given authority ("charisma")
• The author suggests that by implicating Peter's "royal priesthood" in taboo-breaking, libertine ceremonies, the organizers of such "sacred parodies" inducted select members of the Russian political elite into a new system of distinctions between nobility and baseness, sacrality and profanity, tradition and modernity." "Tracing the ways in which the tsar and his courtiers appropriated aspects of Muscovite and European traditions to suit their needs and aspirations, The Transfigured Kingdom offers one of the first discussions of the gendered nature of political power at the court of Russia's self-proclaimed "Father of the Fatherland" and reveals the role of symbolism, myth, and ritual in shaping political order in early modern Europe."--Jacket

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

947/.05

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

DK133

LC item number

.Z58 2004

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography