Alexey Alexandrovich Yudin,
State Public Scientific Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Old Russian Azbukovniks and Vremennik by Ivan Timofeev: The Way to Creating an Author’s Style
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-2-3
The article is devoted to the identification and interpretation of some literary sources of Ivan Timofeev’s “Vremennik”. The work of the Russian author of the beginning of the 17th century is considered among other monuments of the Time of Troubles, the characteristic features inherent in these monuments are revealed. The similarity of lexical tools and figurative techniques is seen in particular when comparing the text of the “Vremennik” with the “Letopisnaya povest [Chronicle Tale]” attributed to various authors of the beginning of the 17th century, as well as with the “Novaya povest’ o preslavnom rossiyskom tsarstve [New Tale about the Glorious Russian Kingdom]” by an anonymous Russian patriot author. It is proved that the examples of the use of foreign vocabulary by Ivan Timofeev in his work are not based on oral tradition, as some scientists previously believed, but on the book tradition, common among professional writers of that time, figures of the so-called “Prikaznaya shkola [Prikaz School]”. In particular, it is established that some foreign words could have been borrowed by the author from the lexicographical composition “12 chinov tsarskih [12 ranks of the tsar]”, which is often found in the convoy of the Azbukovniks. Ivan Timofeev could have known this dictionary from a manuscript belonging to the Novgorod Metropolitan Isidore, who, as reported in the only surviving list of the “Vremennik”, prompted Ivan Timofeev to create his chronicle. The unique allegorical style of the author when describing the main characters follows the principle of “Nomen est Omen”, often used by the figures of the “Prikaz School” to show their literary skills. The lexical originality of the “Vremennik” is based, among other things, on the materials of Old Russian dictionaries created in the early Modern times in the Moscow state.
Publishing: 28/04/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 17.01.2022
How to cite: Yudin A.A. Old Russian Azbukovniks and Vremennik by Ivan Timofeev: The Way to Creating an Author’s Style // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 2 (22), pp. 42–62. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-2-03.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2022
Keywords: Ivan Timofeev’s “Vremennik”, Nomen est Omen, Azbukovnik by David Zamaray, Semyon Shakhovskoy, Ivan Katyrev-Rostovsky, source studies, textual criticism, Old Russian literature, Moscow State