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Abstract:

The article provides a textual analysis of the story of how America was discovered, included in the Russian Chronograph of 1617. Since the publication of A.N. Popov’s book “Review of Russian-Language Chronographs”, the Russian translation of “Kronika Swiata” (“Universal Chronicle”) by Marcin Bielski is considered to be the source of this narrative. A detailed comparison of the relevant chapters in two handwritten sources refutes A.N. Popov’s hypothesis that the story of the discovery of America was directly borrowed from the Russian translation of the Chronicle in the version of 1670. The texts of the narratives about Columbus’s expeditions are far from identical — they are completely different. The compiler of the Chronograph of 1617 obviously handled the source very freely, significantly reduced the parts pertaining to emotional stories about cannibals, almost completely ignored the fragments describing female population, conflicts with locals and among the conquistadors, etc., and subjected the information about the flora and fauna of the new islands to stylistic and editorial modifications.