The traditions of Ermolay-Erazmus's "The story of Peter and Febronia" in Alexander Pushkin's novel the "Captain's daughter"

This article raises the question of the Old Russian sources of the Alexander Pushkin's novel The Captain's Daughter, and presents an attempt to identify the traditions of Ermolay-Erazmus's The Tale of Peter and Fevronia in it. The main purpose of the research was to identify the parallelism between the Pushkin's novel and The Tale on the figurative, narrative and thematic levels, therefore, it was based on the comparative method. The main characters of both books are compared in pairs: Prince Peter and Peter Grinev first, and then Fevronia and Masha Mironova. The results of the analyses lead to the conclusion that the male images reflect the spiritual formation from self-will to Christian humility, and the key moment of the characters' spiritual evolution is the meeting with «wise» virgins, etc. As for the female images, the key parallel between them is the praise of their wisdom at the end of both stories. Thus, the material of the research enables us to speak about the traditions of The Tale of Peter and Fevronia being preserved in Pushkin's last novel.