Reshetova A. A.

Travelogue as a source for study of local text (based on foreign travelers’ notes about Ryazan in the 15th–17th centuries)            Р. 101 -114.

UDC 82-992.09«14/16»

DOI: 10.37724/RSU.2023.79.2.010

 

Abstract. The present research was carried out as study of regional literary criticism, aimed at studying the Ryazan text in foreign travelogues of the 15th–17th centuries. Local texts as groups of supertexts form a significant part of national and regional culture, as they shape our knowledge of the topography and history of a particular area, its culture and traditions, and of the prevailing mentality of the population. Travelers’ notes are material evidence of the past, and they are directly related to important events in the history of Old Russian State in general and Ryazan in particular. The genre of the travelogue, which combines artistic and documentary properties, does not simply represent factual writing, as it is aimed at “restructuring” the area of interest, combining realism with imaginative literature. The object of study in the article is travelogues written by foreign travelers in the Russian Middle Ages, little studied in this perspective, or rather, fragments of such travelogues, thematically focused on the Ryazan land and creating its literary image or individual “statements” about the area. The material of the study was drawn from the 15th–17th centuries, and the authors were Giosafat Barbaro, Ambrogio Contarini, Sigismund von Herberstein, Alessandro Guagnini, and Adam Olearius. The “individualization” of the Ryazan land in these foreign sources is rather subjective (sometimes contradictory or vague). Their descriptions may also be biased, as they were drawn by “aliens,” visiting foreigners who perceived the land as a new world, alien to the visitors in terms of its political structure, historical and ethnographic specifics, cultural traditions and language. Here, the locus of Ryazan is perceived in a variety of ways: as a huge territory near the borders of Rus’, as a location of numerous transit routes, as a principality with its own history, including some tragic episodes. By then, the principality had lost its former grandeur and autonomy, and the capital city is referred to as Old Ryazan, and then as Pereslavl Ryazansky. They analyze the symbolic nature of the locus of Ryazan and the symbolic meaning of the area as a borderland that lives in conditions of constant danger, and as a formerly strong opponent of the Moscow Principality. In this regard, we focus on the chronotropic image of Ryazan, which makes it possible to estimate it as a special provincial locus with certain spatio-temporal specifics, contributing some heroic and tragic pages to the history of Rus’.

 

Keywords: regional literary criticism, local text, Ryazan text, travelogue, travelogues of foreigners of the 15th–17th centuries, G. Barbaro, A. Contarini, S. Herberstein, A. Guagnini, A. Olearius.

 

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