The largest collection of novellas, consisting of several dozen individual texts, was translated from Polish in 1680. It is the Facetiae,27 which combines both classical European novellas, begin­ning with Boccacio, and the “minor genres” of comic literature (usually called “simple forms”), namely jokes, witticisms and anecdotes. It is the “simple […]

The closest to the “simple forms” is The Tale of the Drunkard, the oldest copies of which date back to around the middle of the seventeenth century.28 It is a string of anecdotes all constructed on the same model. A drunkard who praises God “with every cup” knocks at the […]

One of the best-known seventeenth-century novellas is The Tale of Shemyaka’s Trial, the title of which has become a popular saying (“Shemyaka’s trial” means an unfair trial). Apart from the prose texts of the tale, there are also some verse renderings. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the tale was […]

This tale is known from one manuscript only which has unfortunately been lost (the collection in which the tale was included consisted of several quires some of which have not survived). As he sets off on a trading voyage, the Russian merchant Karp Sutulov tells his wife Tatiana that if […]

However the century spent in assimilating the West European novella and producing indepen­dent works in this genre did yield a totally original and outstanding work, namely, The Tale of Frol Skobeyev. There are good grounds for assuming that it was written already in the reign of Peter the Great.30 The […]

One of the most important elements in the history of literature is the history of literary invention. This is a matter not so much of the authenticity or lack of authenticity of the information conveyed by the text, as of the evolution of the author’s premises and the reader’s response. […]

Its plot combines both episodes in the story of Azov—-the capture of the fortress by the Don Cossacks in 1637 and its defence against the Turks in 1641 (see p. 448). Moreover the author had at his disposal both the “historical” and the “poetic” tales about these events. He borrowed […]

The first of these tales begins with a reference to the well-known idea that “Moscow is the Third Rome”. Without indulging in reflections on Moscow as the last invincible bulwark of Orthodoxy, the author makes use of one motif only that accompanied this traditional idea, the motif of the sacrifice. […]

The second work in the cycle represents a new step in the development of historical fiction, the mastery of artistic invention. In the Legend the subject receives a consistently fictional treatment. Here Moscow is not called the “Third Rome”, and the motif of sacrifice is firmly rejected. If one can […]

Another specimen of historical fiction is The Tale of the Page Monastery of Tver, one of the finest tales of the seventeenth century.39 It is the legendary story of the founding of the Page Monastery under the first Grand Prince of Tver, Yaroslav (died 1271), son of Yaroslav and grandson […]