The Song of Prince Igor: An Epic Song from the Twelfth Century

This is Robert Mann's translation of the only surviving epic song from the Kievan period. The tale depicts the defeat of Prince Igor Sviatoslavich by the Polovtsy in 1185. As Mann explains in his commentary, the tale incorporates numerous song lines and motifs from early Russian wedding ritual. Phases in the battle are portrayed metaphorically as moments in the wedding ritual. The Kiev prince has a dream that is fashioned after a wedding song in which the bride dreams that she will be taken away from her maiden home. Foreign nations sing praise and reproach, a motif that follows the wedding practice of singing praise and reproach to participants in the wedding. This edition also contains translations of a later epic tale from the Moscow period (known as the Zadonshchina). Mann is the author of: Lances Sing: a Study of the Igor Tale; The Igor Tales and Their Folkloric Background; Pesn' o polku Igoreve; Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche: Zabytyi spisok N. G. Golovina (Berkeley Slavic Specialties); Where the Ice Never Melts; A Bunch of Stories; Discoveries in Russian Literature:); Dostoevsky: What They Don't Teach You in School.