Slavia Orthodoхa literary tradition: between canon and archetype

The paper examines theoretical, methodological and comparative problems related to the studies of literature of Slavia Orthodoxa. Special attention has been focused on different evaluations of this literary method in various scholarly circles, both in the East (Jakobson, Lotman, Uspensky, Esaulov), and the West (Picchio, Wellek, Obolensky, Bloom, etc). Starting from Bakhtin’s idea that the history and development of a literary form and expression determine its presence, the paper discusses whether it is possible to talk about Slavia Orthodoxa outside the context of the Middle Ages.