V. M. Zhivov ’s contribution to the study of the Russian 18th century rhetorical tradition

V. M. Zhivov worked at the questions of the theory and history of rhetoric on the material of Russian rhetorical tradition of the XVIII century. In his reviews on the scientific and critical editions of De Arte Rhetorica by Feofan Prokopovich and Clavis Poetica by Fyodor Kvetnitskij the scholar pointed out the importance of studying of the literary theory for the understanding of Russian literature of the XVIII century in its entirety and significant literary connections. The main content of this article is devoted to the work of V. M. Zhivov as a managing editor of the recent reissue of philological works by M. V. Lomonosov in the VII volume of his Complete Works, dedicated to the 300th anniversary of his birth (2011). The work of V. M. Zhivov is connected not only with his general editing of the entire volume, but also with the development of methodological principles of commenting Lomonosov’s work on philology, in particular, two of his Rhetorics, a short one (1744) and a long one (1748), — in order to provide a more objective scientific picture than it took place in the second academic edition of the 1952. There are presented materials of Zhivov’s correspondence with the author of this article, this correspondence reflects the discussion on the problems of the sources used by Lomonosov in his works on rhetoric and their commenting.