Church Sermon for the New Year: The Evolution of the Genre in the First Half of the 18th Century

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Krasheninnikova, O. A. “Church Sermon for the New Year: The Evolution of the Genre in the First Half of the 18th Century.” Dva veka russkoi klassiki, vol. 7, no. 4, 2025, pp. 6–23. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2025-7-4-6-23
Abstract:
This article analyzes the genre and thematic group of Russian New Year’s sermons of the first half of the 18th century, which originated during the reign of Peter the Great, with the beginning of his chronology reform in 1700. The article examines examples of New Year’s sermons by leading preachers of the first half of the 18th century: Stefan Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Stefan Kalinovsky, Sylvester Kulyabka, and Gideon Krinovsky. Each of these preachers’ artistic interpretations of the newly established New Year’s holiday are unique and represent a specific stage in the development of this genre. Feofan Prokopovich was the first to contrast social time with sacred time. In the sermons of Elizabethan writers, the New Year’s threshold increasingly came to be perceived as a reminder of the vanity and transience of earthly human existence, the inevitability of death, and the transition to eternity. The genre of the New Year’s sermon underwent a significant evolution in its development: moving away from covering issues of social development, this sermon in the Elizabethan era turned to the inner world of man, and began to address existential questions.
Keywords: New Year’s Eve sermon, Elizabethan sermon, solemn sermons, moral and didactic sermon, Stefan Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Stefan Kalinovsky, Sylvester Kulyabka, Gideon Krinovsky.
Author: Olga A. Krasheninnikova
Information about the author:
Olga A. Krasheninnikova, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1518-7923

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received: July 11, 2025
Approved after reviewing: September 01, 2025
Published: December 25, 2025
Issue: 2025 Volume 7 No. 4
Department: Russian Literature of the 18th–19th Centuries
Pages: 6-23
DOI: Visit Website
EDN:
https://elibrary.ru/QOWMKI
UDK: 821.161.1.09"18"
Publication Type: Research Article

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