Ancient plots from Apollodorus's work “Mythological library” in V. A. Zhukovsky's creative perception

The work “Mythological library”, written by Apollodorus and later translated from French by Clavier, acquainted V. A. Zhukovsky with ancient mythology in 1805-1811. While reading the book, V. A. Zhukovsky made a series of notes and wrote a few comments to the plots he found interesting. There were the myths about Oedipus, Kretheus and Tyro, Amythaon and Idomena, Bias and Pero, Talaos and Lisimache. These mythological plots, unconventional by nature and similar to Zhukovsky’s biography, are described in the article. V. A. Zhukovsky’s emersion into the texts of “Mythological library” chronologically corresponds with the development of the ballad genre in his works. It is considered that by genre the written plots of that period were close to ballads. This approach was also shared by V. A. Zhukovsky. The myths introduced both diverse and contradictory understanding of the world.