19 .The phrase “self-appointed successor” is Catriona Kelly’s. My thanks to
her as well for several thoughts that I used in this discussion of canonicity. Fet,
whom I include among the canonical men poets, while not close to Pushkin was
friends with Ivan Turgenev and Lev Tolstoy.
20 .On Pushkin’s low opinion of women poets and women readers, see
V.Brio, “Pushkin o vozmozhnosti zhenskoi literatury,” Pushkinskii sbornik
(Ierusalim: Tsentr po izucheniiu slavianskikh iazykov i literatur pri Evreiskom
universitete, 1997 ), 1 : 1 , 187–200. Brio demonstrates the persistence of such atti-
tudes by suggesting at the end of the article that it is still an open question
whether a woman’s literature is possible. For Pushkin’s unflattering description
of the poet Aleksandra Fuks, whom he visited in Kazan’, see Bobrov, “A. A. Fuks
i kazanskie literatory 30–40kh godov,” 495–96.
21 .Katerina Clark shows that in the plots of the most prestigious Soviet lit-
erary genre, the socialist realist novel—which she compares with male initia-
tion rites and epics—women are either absent or depicted as dangerous
temptresses or witches (The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual [Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1981 ], 182–85). In this atmosphere, not surprisingly, Soviet
women writers dissociated themselves from “women’s writing” (i.e., writing as
women). See Helena Goscilo, “Paradigm Lost? Contemporary Women’s Fic-
tion,” in Women Writers in Russian Literature(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
1994 ), 205–28.
22 .Kiselev, “Poetessa i tsar’,” 144 ; N. I. Iakushkin, ed., Serdtsa chutkogo
prozren’em ...: Povesti i rasskazy russkikh pisatel’nits XIX v.(Moskva: Sovetskaia
Rossiia, 1991 ), 552.
23 .For example, Boris Romanov refers to Rostopchina by her childhood
nickname, “Dodo” (introduction to Stikhotvoreniia, proza, pis’ma, 13 ). M. Sh.
Fainshtein calls Kul’man, Teplova, Rostopchina, and Pavlova by their first
names (Pisatel’nitsy pushkinskoi pory, 11 , 86 , 91 , 96 , 106 , 110 , 118 ).
24 .See the bibliography of primary sources used in this study.
25 .Elaine Showalter first used the term “gynocritics” in “Towards a Femi-
nist Poetics,” 22–41. Patrocinio Schweickart cites and comments on Annette
Kolodny’s discussion of “interpretive strategies” in “Reading Ourselves,” 29.
26 .Showalter, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” 15. See also Barbara
Heldt: “If this study separates the two canons into male and female... one can
also envision future criticisms written with a view to an eventual reintegration”
(Terrible Perfection, 9 ), and Janel Mueller: “No less than the relational categories
of femininity and masculinity, women’s writing has historically been undertaken
and maintained in dynamic relation to men’s writing” (“Feminist Poetics,” 216 ).
27 .Throughout this study, the date following a poem’s title refers to its first
publication, unless an editor has provided a poem’s date of composition. It
should be noted that many women poets first published their works long after
they were written.
28 .For the dating of Zhadovskaia’s poem, see E. M. Shneiderman,
“Primechaniia,” in Poety 1840–1850-kh godov, 495. All translations are mine un-
less otherwise noted.
29 .See E. N. Kupreianova, “Primechaniia,” in Baratynskii,Polnoe sobranie
stikhotvorenii, 371.
Notes to Pages 8–10 223