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1.1 - The Age of Devotion

from History 1 - Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Simon Franklin
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

The age of devotion is a descriptive designation for the period commonly labelled medieval, when the majority of literary texts were produced for devotional purposes. In the Russian context this extends roughly to the mid-seventeenth century. This chapter outlines and illustrates three approaches to the study of this literature: synchronic, diachronic, and dynamic. The synchronic approach emphasises features that are broadly characteristic of the age as a whole, such as the religious milieu (Orthodox Christianity), the language of high culture (Church Slavonic, in various interactions with East Slavonic), the medium of transmission (manuscript rather than print), and the problem of authorship (the prevalence of anonymity, the role of the scribe). The diachronic approach has produced various attempts to identify distinct periods in literary development. The dynamic approach emphasises the mutability of literary texts, such that it is necessary to view a work as a field of variously realised textual possibilities.

Keywords

MuscovyNovgorodOrthodoxyMiddle AgesChurch Slavonicauthorshipmanuscript textualityDrakula
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 15 - 33
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi [Library of early Rus literature], 20 vols. (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1997–2020).Google Scholar
Čiževskij, Dmitrij, History of Russian Literature: From the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (The Hague: Mouton, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fennell, John, and Stokes, Antony, Early Russian Literature (London: Faber and Faber, 1974).Google Scholar
Karavashkin, Andrei, Literaturnyi obychai Drevnei Rusi [Literary custom in early Rus] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011).Google Scholar
Likhachev, D. S., Razvitie russkoi literatury X–XVII vekov. Epokhi i stili [The development of Russian literature of the tenth to seventeenth centuries. Epochs and styles] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973).Google Scholar
Likhachev, S. S., The Poetics of Early Russian Literature, trans. Christopher M. Arden-Close (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2014).Google Scholar
Zenkovsky, Serge, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles and Tales, rev. and enl. edn (New York: Meridian, 1974).Google Scholar

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