Marina Mniszek as viewed by Russian historians of the 17th — early 20th centuries

Abstract

This paper looks at the image of the Polish aristocratic woman and the crowned Queen of Moscow Marina Mniszek (Marianna / Maryna Mniszchówna / Mniszek) in the writings of the key Russian historians of the 17th — early 20th century: Tatishchev, Shcherbatov, Karamzin, Buturlin, Solov'ev, Kostomarov, Ilovaisky, Kliuchevsky, Platonov. Methodologically, the article builds on the deconstructivist epistemology of history. At the same time, it also deploys the approach and the terminology of cognitive ethnolinguistics (particularly, the idea of the so-called “profling of concepts”). The text describing historical events is seen as a type of discourse, as a kind of literary genre, and as a representation of a certain ideological system with its inherent axiology and conventional stereotypes. The article describes different types of historical narratives about Marina Mniszek submitted by these historians and different profles of her image presented in these versions: the patriarchal-rationalist, the sentimentalist, the romantic, the fundamentalist Orthodox. It also provides succinct explanations for the virtual absence of Marina Mniszek's image in the writings of positivist historians.