Borrowings from the Old Slavic Digenis Akritis in the Muscovite Buovo d’Antona (Bova Korolevich)

Abstract

The Byzantine Greek “romantic epic” Digenis Akritis and the Venetian romance Buovo d’Antona, translated into different Slavic languages under different circumstances and traversing Slavic space by different routes, reached Muscovy in the sixteenth century – each undergoing significant editing there and ultimately becoming textually entangled. It has not been noticed before that the editor of a Muscovite redaction of Buovo borrowed a number of passages from an early redaction of the “formulaically styled” Slavic Digenis. The encounter of Buovo with Digenis may help explain the former work’s subsequent popularity in Russia, as it transformed the courtly hero Buovo d’Antona into the Russian folk hero Bova Korolevich. It also helps sketch a context for the direct ancestor of the most important extant manuscript of the Slavic Digenis.