A Study of the Boris and Gleb Cycle

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This research project is to study the works belonging to the so-called Boris and Gleb cycle: 1) Chronicle Account of the year of 1015 entitled "On the Murder of Boris," 2) "The Tale (Skazanie) of SS Boris and Gleb" by the anonymous author, and 3) Nestor's "Lection (Chtenie) of the Lives of SS Boris and Gleb", from the viewpoint of the new methods such as the structural analysis of stories and text linguistics, and to make clear their mutual relationships and the process of their formations. For this purpose, Japanese translations of "Chronicle Article," the anonymous "Tale", and Nestor's "Lection" were made, the parallel passages found in these works were studied, and also the results of the past studies on the subject were reexamined.In executing this research project a new interest arose in the question of how the deaths of people, ordinary citizens, princes or saints, were reported in Russian chronicles and other literary works from the Middle Ages. This problem was studied in the context of the relation between the historical formation of Russian chronicles and the linguistic means to describe the deaths of people.Also the role of quotations from the Bible, which are very important element to form the text of hagiographies, and other mediaeval texts in general, was studied.