Authenticity of the Igor Tale - Rare, Overlooked Text

[ROBERT MANN]

Monuments of Early Russian Literature, volume VIII: 
Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche. Zabytyi spisok Nikolaia Golovina, Robert Mann ed. (Berkeley Slavic Specialties [ www.berkslav.com ], 2010), 167pp. ISBN 978 1-57201-086-4
In 1835, a rare copy of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche was published by Nikolai Golovin, a friend and distant relative of Pushkin. Golovin's edition was subsequently forgotten, overlooked and ignored by scholars for nearly two centuries. Only a few copies of Golovin's little booklet now survive. Studying Golovin's text in 2005, Robert Mann concluded that the rare version comes from the first redaction of the Skazanie -- a redaction that scholars have posited but could never find. Golovin's text of the Skazanie sheds much light on the history and interconnections of the Kulikovo tales, and it presents at least five new parallels to formulations found in the Igor Tale (Slovo o polku Igoreve) -- including important parallels to the ending of the Slovo. Mann argues that these shared features point to an oral mode of composition and transmission for both the Igor Tale and Kulikovo tales that served as sources for the Zadonshchina. Needless to
 say, Golovin's text is of great importance in the unending debate over the authenticity of the Igor Tale. Volume VIII of Monuments contains a complete transcript of Golovin's Skazanie as well as a reprint of the version published by Ivan Snegirev in 1838 (from a later redaction that was somewhat erroneously named "Basic"). In an essay that accompanies the two Skazanie texts, Mann addresses questions pertaining to the authenticity of Golovin's copy and its relationship to other known redactions of the tale as well as to the Slovo o polku Igoreve.   

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