SOURCE: Rosenberg, Karen. “Trediakovsky on Sumarokov: The Critical Issues.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 21 (1988): 49-60.

In this essay, Rosenberg analyzes Trediakovsky's criticism of Sumarokov in the 1740s and 1750s, arguing that beyond a personal rivalry there were substantive differences between the two writers on matters of language, style, convention, and form.

In the late 1740s and early 1750s, Vasily Trediakovsky and Alexander Sumarokov engaged in a series of discussions on matters of languages and literature. According to earlier scholars such as P. O. Morozov and N. N. Bulich, the principal source of the conflict was the pugnaciousness of both parties. This point of view implies that Trediakovsky and Sumarokov did not articulate consistent positions but, rather, flung accusations largely at random and blamed each other for mistakes which each of them made in his own literary practice. The more recent work of I. Z. Serman, however, has shown that the...