The reception of the parable of the prodigal son in “The tale of Igor's campaign”

At the very beginning of the literary work the author of “The Tale…” announces his reluctance to speak about Igor’s campaign in “old words”. In the mentality of Old Russian authors of the 11th-12th centuries the concept of “old” was equal to paganism, the concept of “new” was equal to Christianity. The evangelical Parable of the Prodigal Son is regarded as the moral estimation of the Old Russian prince’s deed. The researchers’ interpretations of the parable’s reflection in “The Tale…” are studied in the article. In the mythopoeical conception of B.M. Gasparov the closed cyclical time of the myth was reflected in “The Tale…” in the semantic antithesis of death/resurrection, and the protagonists act in the artistic space of the two worlds - the living and the dead. As a matter of fact, B.M. Gasparov attributed to the system of images of a Christian literary work the features of a pre-Christian pagan myth. A religious symbolical approach by A. Aleksandrov is opposed to the above-mentioned point of view. The linear Christian time and particular geographical realities are reflected in “The Tale…”. The present is formed of spaces of time making an indivisible time stream from the past to the present, at the same time the artistic space of the literary work is divided into symbolical and geographical, which cannot be seen in the mythopoetical texts. The author of “The Tale…” uses a repeating composition with notional parallels: it was/it has become, the beginning/the end. The reflection of the Evangelical Parable of the Prodigal Son in “The Tale…” testifies that this literary work is Christian and it does not stand out of the religious context of the literary works of Old Russia of the 12th century.