Traditional Russian oral narrative songs recounting the deeds of legendary and semi-historical heroes (bogatyrs) of Kievan Rus, sung by professional or semi-professional performers and transmitted orally for centuries before being collected and written down from the 19th century onward.
Facts
Place of OriginKievan Rus and the northern Russian oral tradition, orally transmitted from roughly the 11th century onward. 1 StructureUnrhymed narrative verse in an irregular tonic meter of roughly three stresses per line, sung to a simple recitative melody, built from stock formulas and repeated epithets. 1 Notable ExampleThe bylina cycle of Ilya Muromets, the best-known of the legendary Kievan bogatyrs. 1 Connections
Associated With
Pushkin drew directly on the Russian oral byliny/skazka tradition, most visibly in Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820).
Form Of Genre
Epic, Genres Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
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