“The Pretty Cook” and Others: A Novel Plot in the Memoirs by Anne de Palmier

The article examines a memoir text from the late 18th – early 19th centuries that has not previously come to the attention of researchers in the context of the novelization of documentary narration. Particular attention is paid to identifying the elements of the literary code of the memoirs and determining the function of each element in the composition of A. de Palmier’s memoirs. The pretext of Palmier’s notes includes M. D. Chulkov’s novel “The Pretty Cook, or the Adventures of a Dissolute Woman”, A. P. Sumarokov’s tragedies, and G. R. Derzhavin’s odes. The article describes in detail the influence of Chulkov’s novel on the narrative structure of A. de Palmier’s memoirs and its role in creating the image of the autobiographical heroine and identifies signs of the literary orientation of the author of “A Short Extract from the History of My Life from 1794 to 1808”: epigraph, preface, and plot echoes. Based on the analysis of the memoir text, a conclusion is made about the contamination of the enlightenment-classicist, sentimental and romantic attitudes in Palmier’s notes, which corresponds to the main trends in the development of culture in the late 18th – early 19th centuries and determines the specificity of Palmier’s memoirs and their relationship to the literary tradition. References to books of different themes, belonging to past eras or contemporary to the author, describing different spheres of human existence, create the necessary background for Palmier’s narration. The echoes of literary (and not only) works found in Palmier’s memoirs support the opposition of “virtuous heroine” vs “vicious world” that is central to the memoirist.