An Analysis of Mikhail Chulkov's The Comely Cook: Focusing on the Heroine and the Narrators

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze Mikhail Chukov s The Comely Cook, which is published in 1770. As the Classicism literary system was being collapsed, prose took on a new status in Russian literary history. The 1760s and 1770s were the first periods of rapid development of proses in the history of Russian literature, laying the foundation for the subsequent development of prose. And one of the most important works during this period was The Comely Cook. In this paper, the heroine and narrators are analyzed. In the transition period to the Modern era, the concept of love and morality changed and I hope these changes to be revealed by closely analyzing the heroine’s development of personality and how it is positioned. This is related to the form of the work, and it can be noted that this work is composed of the form of an autobiography (or a memoir). The discrepancy between the heroine s action time-point and narrative time-point is the basis for tracing the change of her personality and the shape of the narrators.