"The Tale of Bygone Years": genre, compositional and style originality

The genre of "The Tale of Bygone Years" is defined as a chronicle, and the oldest. There are three versions of it, referring to 1113, 1116 and 1118 years. The author of the first was Nestor, the second - hegumen Sylvester, who did the work commissioned by Vladimir Monomakh. The creator of the third edition could not be identified, but it is known that it was intended for Mstislav Vladimirovich.

The system of genres of ancient Russian literature

Old Russian literature consists of two subsystems - genres of secular and ecclesiastical literature. The second is more closed and includes Holy Scripture, life and walking, solemn and teacher's eloquence. The genres of secular literature are represented by military narrative and chronicles, narrating about historical events by years. They have a certain similarity with Byzantine chronography. However, when the "Tale of Bygone Years" was created, the genre of the chronograph by Russian scribes was not used. He was mastered at later stages.

"The Tale of Bygone Years": a genre

Dmitry Likhachev wrote about the ensemble, or ensemble, character of the construction of ancient Russian written texts. This distinctive property of almost all works written in the era of Kievan Rus - a single text is thought of as potentially open to inclusions from other sources. So, when the task requires "specify the genre of the" Tale of Bygone Years "", it should be borne in mind that the annals include:

• Contracts (for example, the Russian-Byzantine 1907);
• The lives of the saints Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of the Caves ;
• "Speech of the philosopher" and other texts.

Stories that have a pronounced folklore background (for example, the narrative of Oleg's death, the story of how the young man-kozhemyaka defeated the Pecheneg warrior), the chronicle Tale of Bygone Years is also inherent. What genre of these works? They are similar to a fairy tale or legend. In addition, the chronicle is distinguished by the so-called story of princely crimes - like the blindness of Vasilka. The first to their genre peculiarity was indicated by Dmitry Likhachev.

Note that such "ensemble", diversity does not make the genre of the "Tale of Bygone Years" something vague, and the monument itself is a mere collection of random texts.

Specificity of construction

The main compositional units of the "Tale of Bygone Years" are weather articles beginning with the words "In the summer ...". This ancient Russian chronicles differ from Byzantine chronographs, which for the description of events of the past days as a piece of history took not a year, but the period of the reign of the ruler. Weather articles are divided into two categories. The first is the so-called weather reports, which record a particular historical fact. So, the content of the article for 1020 is limited to one news: Yaroslav had a son, named Vladimir. Especially a lot of such reports are observed in the Kiev annals for the XII century.

In contrast to them, annalistic stories not only inform about the event, but also suggest its description, sometimes in great detail. The author may consider it necessary to indicate who took part in the battle, where it took place, than ended. In this case, such an enumeration attached plot to the weather article.

Epic style

Dmitry Likhachev, who researched the Tale of Bygone Years, the genre and compositional peculiarity of the monument, distinguishes between monumental and epic styles. The latter is especially characteristic for those parts of the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years", the genre of which is defined as a military story. Epic style is characterized by a close connection with folklore, the use of images gleaned from there. A striking example of this is Princess Olga, who was represented in the chronicles as a vengeful. In addition, they become more realistic (as far as such a characterization can be applied to the characters of Old Russian literature).

Monumental style

The style of monumental historicism is the main one not only for the oldest chronicle monument, but for all literature of Kievan Rus. It manifests itself, first of all, in the depiction of characters. The Chronicler is not interested in their private lives, and also in those who are beyond feudal relations. A person is of interest to a medieval author as a representative of a particular social environment. This affected the characterization of the characters, in which the share of idealization is noticeable. The canon becomes the most important concept for the "Tale ...". Thus, any prince is depicted in the most significant circumstances, who do not know the spiritual struggle. He is brave, clever and has a loyal team. On the contrary, any church figure from the life must be pious, obediently follow the Law of God.

The chronicler does not know the psychology of his characters. Medieval author did not hesitate, referring the hero to "good" or "evil", and complex, contradictory images familiar to us in the classical literature, could not have arisen.