The problem of the hagiographic canon in the life of Alexander Oshevensky

The Life of Alexander Oshevensky is a compiled hagiographic work based on borrowings from a wide range of sources, which, due to this fact, can serve as convenient material for the study of the hagiographic canon as a problem of historical poetics. Fundamentally new in the work is the source-based approach to the problem, rooted in the belief that the establishment of direct sources used by the hagiographer is, in the absence of other evidence, practically the only way to solve it. The work on identifying literary sources of the Life of Alexander Oshevensky, begun by Ivan Yakhontov (1881), was more successful when it concerned the action and the plot, and far less successful when it concerned rhetorical digressions. The article examines the textual and artistic features of those fragments of the Life of Alexander Oshevensky, which, according to the assumption of researchers, were borrowed from the Life of Euphrosynus of Pskov, the Life of Isidorus of Rostov (the Tverdislov) and the Life of Antonius the Roman. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the direct source of these fragments were other literary monuments, namely the Life of Demetrius Prilutsky in the Menologian edition and the Life of Zosimus and Sabbatius of Solovki in the First Stylistic edition. The sources were determined using the methods of textual analysis, structural analysis and comparative analysis of a recurring motif in different hagiographic works. In addition, the article introduces into scientific circulation a previously unnamed source of the Life of Alexander Oshevensky, namely, the Life of Paulus of Obnora.