Retelling as the historian’s art: Approaching the forms of transmission in historical writing of Old Rus’ and Scandinavia

The two versions of the Tale of Bygone Years, manifested in its Kievan copies and the Novgorod First Chronicle, correspond usually either as two close copies or as a longer and an abridged redactions of the same text. This trend changes only in the episode of the conflict between Jaroslav Vladimirovich and Novgorodians (1015-1016) where the versions relate rather as two retellings; the analysis shows that the versions share the same structure based on the identical text and variation in the form of lexico-grammatical or rhetorical parallelism. Paraphrasis of this kind can be found in the contemporary historiographical vernacular tradition – for example, such is the relationship between the versions of the Hakon Jarl’s death story in Heimskringla (ca. 1220-1230) and in Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum (ca.1190). It is argued that the mode of retelling found in the Old Russian chronicle and in the konungasögur traditions can bee seen as a manifestation of medieval “authorship”, characteristic for the historiographical discourse, where it was a marker of skill to be able to introduce the change without changing the narrative too much. Moreover, the comparison with Heimskringla suggests that the medieval writers could switch between different transmission modes (copying, editing, retelling) and that in the manuscript tradition of the Tale of Bygone Years the case could be the same.

Keywords

Tale of Bygone Years, retelling, paraphrasis, Heimskringla, medieval text transmission, sagas and Old Russian chronicles, medieval vernacular history.

Received

12.08.2020

Publication date

12.08.2020

Number of characters

61039

Cite

GOST	Glebova D. Retelling as the historian’s art: Approaching the forms of transmission in historical writing of Old Rus’ and Scandinavia // Slavianovedenie – 2020. – Issue 4 C. 30-49 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://slav.jes.su/S0869544X0010411-5-1 (circulation date: 26.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0010411-5
MLA	Glebova, Daria "Retelling as the historian’s art: Approaching the forms of transmission in historical writing of Old Rus’ and Scandinavia." Slavianovedenie 4 (2020):30-49. DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0010411-5
APA	Glebova D. (2020). Retelling as the historian’s art: Approaching the forms of transmission in historical writing of Old Rus’ and Scandinavia. Slavianovedenie (4), pp.30-49 DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0010411-5

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