Excerpt from Russian Epic Studies, 1947, Vol. 42Among Western scholars the conviction has long existed that medieval Russia produced little in literary art and culture comparable to the early achievements in epic poetry, verse tales, and in prose in the vernaculars of Western Europe. To a certain extent, early nineteenth-century Russian apologists of native medieval culture helped to promote this false notion.Subsequent collectors, scholars, and literary historians, however, have conclusively established that Russian literature during the first two centuries of its existence (eleventh and twelfth) not only assimilated important genres of medieval Byzantine literature, but on the basis of them produced many original works of distinction in those genres which were also typical of medieval Western European literature. As in the medieval West, no doubt a great deal of what was written in Kievan Rus' has been lost to us, but that which has survived is considerable in bulk, and much of it testifies to the fact that early Russian literary culture reached a high point of genuine creative growth until it was checked by barbarian incursions from the steppes and then retarded for some time by the severity of the Tatar yoke.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.