Eighteenth-Century Libertinism in a Time of Change: Representations of Catherine the Great

During and soon after Catherine II's long reign in Russia, accounts of her in her native Germany often included gendered representations of her sexual behavior. Assessments in prayers, biographies, caricatures, and histories shifted from chaste and virtuous to adulterous and libertine. Meanwhile, interpretations of sexuality also changed. Extramarital sexuality among aristocrats and royals that long elicited no shock became a target of middleclass criticism, boosted by anti-royalist sentiments of the French Revolution and new middle-class notions of faithful womanhood. Two novels about Catherine written soon after her death, Miranda (1798) by Johann Friedrich Ernst Albrecht and Der Günstling (1808) by Caroline Auguste Fischer, navigate these shoals. (RD)