LECTURES ON RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES BY H. BLAIR: THE HISTORY OF PUBLICATIONS AND RECEPTION

The article focuses on the history of publications and the reception of H. Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in Russia with the aim of analyzing how his ideas fitted in Russian philology. The least abridged translation of Blair’s Lectures was the first translation published in 1791. There are reasons to believe that it was initiated by Princess Dashkova. Later several extracts from the Lectures were published. In the 19th century, the strongest influence of the Lectures is found in Readings on Literature by academician I.I. Davydov, who acknowledged his debt to Blair in the preface to his book. Blair was also mentioned in other rhetorics, including those by N.F. Koshanskij and A.F. Merzlyakov; the latter wrote about him in a most enthusiastic way. While the first translation dealt mostly with chapters on eloquence, later translators focused on poetry as the ancient form of art. These views correlated with the text typology (theory of slovesnost’) which was being elaborated at that time by Russian authors, who also strived to expand the field of rhetoric by blending it with poetics. Without exaggerating the impact of Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres on Russian culture, one must admit that they were part of the scholarly context in which new ideas were put forward and elaborated by Russian philologists.