«К ласковому читателю»: предисловие в структуре паломнического текста

Abstract

The article draws a wide range of pilgrimage descriptions from the twelfth — beginning of the twentieth century to analyze the preface as an obligatory element of a pilgrimage account. The study focuses on the following issues: the origin and possible models for the preface to pilgrimage accounts, the complex of motifs peculiar to this kind of prefaces, the functional role of the preface in pilgrimage accounts of different times, self-representation of their authors and editors, the transformation of this structural unit of pilgrim accounts, formal ways of marking it. It has been discerned that motifs and themes traditional for the preface to a pilgrimage account were already present in the oldest text of the genre, the Pilgrimage of Prior Daniel. The article suggests that prefaces to pilgrimage accounts were modeled after the preface to lives of saints.