Conversations about Russian culture. Everyday life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX century)

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (1922-1993) - world -famous scientist, outstanding literary critic, culturologist, one of the founders of Russian semiotics, professor of Tartu University.
"Conversations of Russian culture" are a unique book, a study on the most attractive period of Russian history - the 18th century. It was then, according to Lotman, that the Family Album of our today"s culture, its "home archive", arose.
balls, dendism, card game, matchmaking, duel - all this still attracts us with its charm and aesthetics. The reader awaits many literary references and real stories, which are not talked about in history or literature lessons: what has a complaint to Nicholas I turned on to poor nutrition at the Smolny Institute of one of the graduates? What is the difference between a French letter to the sovereign, written by a man, from the same, but written by a woman? What surprised the captain of the Japanese schooner in the Russian wedding rite? Particular attention is paid to the book of a woman: how exactly Europeanization affected the family structure, how the appearance of a woman has changed with the reforms - her clothes, a type, an image in literature and education.
The publication is richly illustrated by photographs of household items and photore products of works of art from the meetings of the State Hermitage and the Russian Museum, as well as facsimile of drawings from the drafts of A. S. Pushkin