Email this article 
Post a Comment The Origins of the Byliny: a Working Hypothesis
Abstract
The oral heroic poems found in the Northern province of Olonets in the late nineteenth century, usually known as byliny, present a unique case of oral preservation of medieval literature within European context. For decades, due to the lack of manuscript copies of those texts, theories about their origin have been highly conjectural and subject to many ideological demands. While any definitive conclusion on their authorship, place and time of composition has to remain necessarily speculative, the present article, analysing the internal evidence of the poems and what can be concluded from studies on orality in other literary traditions, proposes that they were originally composed in written form in a clerical environment in the Northern area of Kyivan Rus’.
DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2022.11.2.15
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Astafieva L. A., Siuzhet i stil′ russkikh bylin, Moscow, 1993.
Astakhova A. M., Byliny: Itogi i problemy izucheniia, Moscow, 1966.
Astakhova A. M., Mitrofanova V. V., Skripil M. O., Byliny v zapisiakh i pereskazakh XVII–XVIII vekov, Moscow, 1960.
Bailey J., Ivanova T., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics, New York, 1999.
Franklin S., The Russian Graphosphere, 1450–1850, Cambridge, 2019.
Froyanov I. Ya., Iudin Yu. I., Bylinnaia istoriia, St. Petersburg, 1997.
Gatsak V. M., Fol′klor. Problemy istorizma, Moscow, 1988.
Gippius A. A, Mikheev S. M., “Assassins of the Great Prince Andrey”: an inscription about the murder of Andrey Bogolyubsky from Pereslavl-Zalessky, Slověne, 9/2. 2020, 63–102.
Iudin Iu. I., Geroicheskie byliny. (Poeticheskoe iskusstvo), Moscow, 1975.
Jakobson R., Selected Writings, 4: Slavic Epic Studies, Hague, 1966.
Jakobson R., Simmons J., Russian Epic Studies (= Memoirs of the American Folklore Society), Philadelphia, 1949.
Jauss H. R., Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, Theory and History of Literature, Minneapolis, 1982.
Novikov Yu. A., Bylina i kniga: ukazatel′ zavisimykh ot knigi bylinnykh tekstov, Vilnius, 1995.
Novikov Yu. A., Skazitel′ i bylinnaia traditsiia, St. Petersburg, 2000.
Oinas F. J., ed., Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington, London, 1978.
Oinas F. J., Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology, Columbus, 1984.
Oinas F. J., Soudakoff S., eds., The study of Russian Folklore, Hague, 1975.
Ong W. J., Orality and Literacy, London, New York, 2002.
Petrov N. V., Russian Folk Epics: Characters and Storylines, Moscow, 2017.
Propp V. Ya., Morphology of the Folk Tale, Moscow, 1969.
Propp V. Ya., Russkii geroicheskii epos, Leningrad, 1955.
Putilov B. N., Epic skazitel'stvo: typology and specificity, Moscow, 1997.
Putilov B. N., Geroicheskii epos i deistvitel'nost′, Leningrad, 1988.
Selivanov F. S., Poetika bylin, Moscow, 1977.
Skaftymov A. P., Poetika i genezis bylin: Ocherki, Moscow, 1924.
Stefanovich P. S., Boyare, otroki, družiny: The Military and Political Elite in the 10th and 11th Centuries Rus′, Moscow, 2012.
Torres Prieto S., Cantos épicos rusos, Madrid, 2003.
Vesterholt O., Tradition and individuality. A study in Slavonic Oral Epic Poetry, Copenhagen, 1973.
Zguta R., Russian Minstrels. A history of the Skomorokhi, Philadelphia, 1978.
Zhirmunsky V. M., Epicheskoe tvorchestvo slavianskikh narodov i problemy sravnitel′nogo izucheniia eposa., Moscow, 1958.
Zumthor P., Introduction à la poésie orale, Paris, 1983.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2022 Susana Torres Prieto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.