Princess Olga’s Wars With the Derevlyans. Publication of the Fragment According to the Ostroh (Khlebnikovski) Copy With Poetological Commentary

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to at least partially fill in some gaps in the study of the Kyivan Rus’ literary heritage. Firstly, the author proposes to consider fragments of the Tale of Bygone Years ( PVL) as independent literary works that deserve a separate study. These works may have their own textual history and distinct individual style. In order to clarify the textual history of the work, we use both direct evidence (manuscripts of the Tale of Bygone Years) and indirect evidence, in particular, the paraphrase‑translations of Jan Długosz, Maciej Stryjkovskii, and seventeenth‑century Old Ukrainian authors. Secondly, the article makes accessible for the first time a complete fragment of the PVL published from the Ostroh (Khlebnikovsky) manuscript only, including the accentuation, which is of great importance for the study of the textual history and literary formation of the PVL. Thirdly, the article provides a detailed poetologic analysis of the Tale of Olga’s Wars with the Derevlyans, shows its compositional independence from the subsequent stories about Olga, and explores its complex poetic form, built on rhetorical repetitions of the series of vocabulary, as well as on the counting of syllables and accents.