Russian Heroic Epos (Russkiy Geroicheskiy Epos)

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a prominent Russian philologist and one of the founders of the structural-typological approach to folklore studies, which later found widespread application in literary criticism. His works on folklore ('Morphology of the Fairy Tale,' 'The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale,' 'The Russian Heroic Epic,' 'Russian Agrarian Holidays,' and others) have become a treasure trove of 20th-century world scholarship. His book 'The Russian Heroic Epic' (1955) was the first and, to date, the only fundamental study devoted to bylinas. Propp undertook a plot-thematic and poetic analysis of them. This scholar's work is a kind of reference book on Russian epic poetry—from the first epic hero, Volkh Vseslavyevich, to the well-known Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya, Vasily Buslaevich, and others. The abundance of factual material and systematic analysis make this book of interest not only to folklore specialists but also to all connoisseurs of folk culture. In many ways ahead of its time, V. Ya. Propp's works have become classics of humanities research and remain relevant to this day.