Periodizacija literatury dopetrovskoj epochi i konec Srednevekovja v Rossii / Periodization of Pre-Petrine Literature and the End of the Middle Ages in Russia

Starting from the debate of the Fifties between D.S. Likhachev and R. Picchio regarding the ideas of “pre-renaissance” and “Slavic revival”, the article presents an analysis of the traditional periodization of Russian literature. Likhachev and Picchio agree in distinguishing a “Middle age” literature, which lasts until the end of the seventeenth century, from a later literature of “Modern” age, as we see in their publications here especially examined: the “Literature library of Ancient Rus” (Biblioteka literatury Drevney Rusi), edited by D.S. Likhachev, L.A. Dmitriyev, A.A. Alekseyev, N.V. Ponyrko (1997–2006) and the “History of Russian literary civilization”, directed by M. Colucci and R. Picchio (1997). On the basis of their comments on reconstruction of the literary canon the author focuses on some aspects of literary development in the first decades of the 16th century, that in Western history mark the passage from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period, with particular reference to his researches on Maksim the Greek, as well as on the idea of Rome in Moscow. In the conclusion it is proposed that for Russian literary civilization, as for the rest of the European continent, we can identify a caesura that divides the medieval period from the modern era. In this perspective it is possible to better understand the literary production of the Muscovy and the first Russian empire not only in relation to the claim of the Rus heritage or to the Balkan and Byzantine world, but more generally in the wide European cultural and literary panorama.