Russian Tales. Adventures of Heroes in the Original Edition

Vasily Levshin (1746–1826) was a Russian publisher and writer who dedicated his life to studying Russian folk art, resulting in a whole collection of tales about Russian heroes. The tales are a literary adaptation of folklore material, where the main... characters are Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Churila, Zmey Gorynych, Tugarin Zmey, Grand Duke Vladimir, and many others. Despite the fact that the author treated folk monuments quite freely, he managed to preserve the "Russian spirit" in his works, convey the atmosphere of that time, and of course, maintain the meaning of Russian folk tales. V. Levshin combined plots from different genres, processing them in the spirit of Western European chivalric romances, stylizing Russian heroes in the manner of "wandering knights." The "Heroic Tales" enjoyed enormous popularity, overshadowing all previous attempts in this direction and serving as a model for further imitations — they became one of the sources for "Ruslan and Lyudmila" by A. Pushkin.