The seventeenth century has gone down in Russian history as an age of revolt. Between the Time of Troubles and 1698, the year of the last revolt by the Streltsy,[1] there were several large-scale popular uprisings, and many minor ones. They were particularly strong and fre­quent in the middle and […]

Among the translations of the seventeenth century the tales of chivalry occupied an important place and interest in them grew constantly. Whereas in the first half of the century the reader knew only The Tale of В ova, the King’s Son and Eruslan Lazarevich, by the end of the century […]

Legends about the deeds of the knight Bovo d’Anton, which grew up in mediaeval France, spread throughout Europe. This tale reached Russia in the following fashion: in the middle of the sixteenth century in Dubrovnik, a Slav republic on the shores of the Adriatic, the publications of neighbouring Venice circulated […]

This is the Czech Prince Bruncvik, to whom Russian readers appear to have been introduced in the second half of the seventeenth century.6 The Tale of Bruncvik is a translation of a Czech work of the same name. It tells of the adventures of a fictitious prince in exotic “unknown […]

This tale belongs to the genre of the courtly romance9 (the hero conceals his identity for a long time, believing that he can only reveal it when he has performed some noble deeds; “and they called him the Knight of the Golden Keys, because he had two gold keys attached […]

According to the records of folklore specialists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the heroic poem about Sukhan is known in two versions. One focuses on the social aspect, portraying the unjust prince’s quarrel with Sukhan. The other concentrates entirely on the heroic theme, on Sukhan’s heroic feat. It is […]

The Tale of Vasily the Golden-Haired, Prince of the Czech Land.11 This tale belongs to the adventure genre, but the question of its origin is not yet clear. It may derive from a non-extant Czech source,12 which was adapted by a Russian scribe with a good knowledge of Greek. The […]

In the seventeenth century the genre system of Russian prose underwent a radical change. As a result of this change it lost its official functions and its ties with ritual and mediaeval literary convention. The “fictionalisation” of prose took place, turning it into free fictional narrative. The vita gradually lost […]

The Tale of Woe and Misfortune, and How Woe-Misfortune Led a Youth to Monkhood19 in verse has survived in one copy only. Its fate resembles that of many fine Old Russian works: only one manuscript has survived of The Lay of Igor’s Host, Vladimir Monomachos’ Instruction and The Tale of […]

The translated novella was gradually absorbed by Russian literature throughout the whole of the seventeenth century. The intermediary country through which European novella subjects reached Russia was Poland. The History of the Seven Wise Men. Already in the first half of the seventeenth century Russian readers had access to The […]