This Master's Thesis strives to provide an answer to the twofold question of the »cognizance« (in Slovene: »pristojnost«) and »applicability« of Northrop Frye's literary theory for the purposes of interpreting the medieval Old East Slavonic chronicle known under the title »The Tale of Bygone Years« (OES: Pověst' vremennykh lět; shortened: PVL), which has been translated into Slovene by the author of the Thesis. The question of cognizance is formulated as that of the propriety of the decision to employ a specific theoretical or methodological framework in order to interpret a text, taking into account the relevance of the framework and its »timeliness« on the one hand and its cultural, »civilizational« cognizance in relation to the culture into which the interpreted text has been inscribed and through which it was subsequently relayed, on the other hand. The question of applicability is also described in the Thesis as »help in providing insight«. It depends on the cognizance of the theoretical framework in question; the cognizant theoretical framework can be expedient or not, which is determined either by taking into account potential pre-existent attempts at interpreting the text in question through this theoretical framework or by providing a fresh attempt at interpreting the text through this framework. In the Thesis we can determine – by, firstly, providing an account of the foundational principles of Fryean literary theory and its standing in the contemporary theoretical horizon, as well as its reception in the Russian-speaking cultural sphere (when dealing with the latter, we acknowledge the problematic nature of such a »civilizational essentialist« formulation) – that Fryean theory is »cognizant« in matters relating to the PVL from both of the aforementioned standpoints. After examining the historical, text-critical and ideological contexts of the PVL we approach – with the goal of determining the expedience of Frye's theoretical framework for our purposes (in this specific case, his typology of narrative categories, or »mythoi«) – a reading of the PVL by Donald Ostrowski, which employed Fryean methods relayed through Hayden White's theory of Metahistory. In the final discussion we can conclude that this reading was successful; we can thus determine that (taking minor hindrances into account) Fryean thought is useful and expedient for the purposes of interpreting the PVL.
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