“Dream of the Virgin” in Russian Handwritten and Folklore Traditions (17th – the Beginning of the 21st Century)

Abstract

“The Dream of the Virgin” is one of the most widespread Christian Apocrypha. It is known among many European peoples, mainly Orthodox and Catholic, namely Belarusians, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Gagauz, Greeks, Irish, Spaniards, Italians, Macedonians, Germans, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Russians, Serbs, Slovenes, Ukrainians, French, Croats, etc. The “Dream of the Virgin” is most widely represented in the folk traditions of Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Europe. Some countries have an old scholarly tradition of studying this plot. Such well-known philologists as Alexander Veselovsky in Russia and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu in Romania wrote about it as early as the 19th century. In the 20th century, this text was studied a lot in Italy, Germany, Romania, Russia, etc. The article proposes a preliminary classification of the main genre versions of the “Dream of the Virgin” in Russian manuscript and folklore traditions.