The Tale of Igor's Campaign
Encyclopedia
Old East Slavic language
Old East Slavic or Old Ruthenian was a language used in 10th-15th centuries by East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of the Kievan Rus...
: Слово о плъку Игоревѣ, Slovo o plŭku Igorevě; ;, Modern Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: Слово о полку Игореве, Slovo o polku Igoreve;, Slovo o polku Ihorevim) is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language
Old East Slavic language
Old East Slavic or Old Ruthenian was a language used in 10th-15th centuries by East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of the Kievan Rus...
.
The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of the Host of Igor.
The poem gives an account of a failed raid of Igor Svyatoslavich
Igor Svyatoslavich
Igor Svyatoslavich the Brave was a Rus’ prince...
(d. 1202) against the Polovtsians of the Don River region.
While some have disputed the authenticity of the poem, the current scholarly consensus is that the poem is authentic and dates to the medieval period (late 12th century).
The Tale of Igor's Campaign was adapted by Alexander Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
as an opera
Russian opera
Russian opera is the art of opera in Russia. Operas by composers of Russian origin, written or staged outside of Russia, also belong to this category, as well as the operas of foreign composers written or intended for the Russian scene. These are not only Russian-language operas...
and became one of the great classics of Russian theatre. Entitled Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
, it was first performed in 1890.
Argument
National epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
s, including The Song of Roland
The Song of Roland
The Song of Roland is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. It exists in various manuscript versions which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries...
, the Daredevils of Sasun
David of Sasun
David of Sasun or David of Sassoun is an Armenian epic hero from the Daredevils of Sassoun who drove Arab invaders out of Armenia.The Sasuntsi Davit is an Armenian national epic poem recounting David's exploits...
, and The Song of the Nibelungs
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
.
The plot is based on a failed raid of Kniaz Igor Svyatoslavich
Igor Svyatoslavich
Igor Svyatoslavich the Brave was a Rus’ prince...
, Prince of Novgorod-Seversk
Prince of Novgorod-Seversk
Prince of Novgorod-Seversk was the kniaz, the ruler or sub-ruler, of the Principality of Novgorod-Seversk. It may have been created in 1139, the date of one modern authority, and is most famous for Igor Sviatoslavich, hero of the Old Russian Tale of Igor's Campaign.-List of princes of...
(of the Chernigov principality of ancient Rus'
Rus (name)
Originally, the name Rus referred to the people, the region, and the medieval states of the Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' polities...
) against the Polovtsians (Cumans) living in the southern part of the Don region in 1185. Other Rus' historical figures are mentioned, including the bard Boyan
Boyan (bard)
Boyan is the name of a bard who was mentioned in the Rus' epic The Lay of Igor's Campaign as being active at the court of Yaroslav the Wise. He is apostrophized as Volos's grandson in the opening lines of The Lay...
, the princes Vseslav of Polotsk
Vseslav of Polotsk
Vseslav of Polotsk , also known as Vseslav the Sorcerer or Vseslav the Seer, was the most famous ruler of Polotsk and was briefly Grand Prince of Kiev in 1068–1069. Together with Rostislav Vladimirovich and voivode Vyshata made up a coalition against the Yaroslaviches triumvirate...
, Yaroslav Osmomysl
Yaroslav Osmomysl
Yaroslav Osmomysl was the most famous Prince of Halych from the first dynasty of its rulers, which descended from Yaroslav I's eldest son. His sobriquet, meaning "Eight-Minded" in Old East Slavic, was granted to him in recognition of his wisdom...
of Halych
Halych
Halych is a historic city on the Dniester River in western Ukraine. The town gave its name to the historic province and kingdom of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, of which it was the capital until the early 14th century, when the seat of the local princes was moved to Lviv...
, and Vsevolod the Big Nest of Suzdal
Suzdal
Suzdal is a town in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, situated northeast of Moscow, from the city of Vladimir, on the Kamenka River. Population: -History:...
. The author appeals to the warring Rus' princes and pleads for unity in the face of the constant threat from the Turkic East.
The text refers to a mix of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and ancient Slavic religion. Igor's wife Yaroslavna invokes natural forces from the walls of Putyvl
Putyvl
Putyvl or Putivl is a town in north-east Ukraine, in Sumy Oblast. Currently about 20,000 people live in Putyvl.-History:One of the original Siverian towns, Putyvl was first mentioned as early as 1146 as an important fortress contested between Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky principalities of...
. Christian motifs are presented along with depersonalised pagan gods as among the artistic images. The book is distinct from contemporary Western epics because of its numerous and vivid descriptions of nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
, and the portrayal of the role which nature plays in human lives.
Discovery and publication
The only manuscript of the Tale, claimed to be dated to the 15th century, was discovered in 1795, in the library of a YaroslavlYaroslavl
Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...
monastery. The first library and school in Russia had been established here in the 12th century. The monks sold the manuscript to a local landowner, Aleksei Musin-Pushkin
Aleksei Musin-Pushkin
Aleksei Ivanovich Musin-Pushkin , count since 1797, statesman, historian and art collector. Musin-Pushkin is credited with discovering in Yaroslavl the manuscript The Tale of Igor's Campaign...
, as a part of a collection of ten texts. He realised the value of the book, and made a transcription for the empress Catherine the Great in 1795 or '96. He published it in 1800 with the help of Alexei Malinovsky and Nikolai Bantysh-Kamensky, leading Russian paleographers of the time. The original manuscript was claimed to have burned in the great Moscow fire
Fire of Moscow (1812)
The 1812 Fire of Moscow broke out on September 14, 1812 in Moscow on the day when Russian troops and most residents abandoned the city and Napoleon's vanguard troops entered the city following the Battle of Borodino...
of 1812 (during the Napoleonic occupation), together with Musin-Pushkin's entire library.
The release of this historical work into scholarly circulation created a stir in Russian literary circles, as the tale represented the earliest Slavonic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
language writing, without any element of Church Slavonic. After linguistic analysis, Ukrainian
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
scholars in the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
declared that the document contained transitional language between a) earlier fragments of the language of Rus'
Ruthenia
Ruthenia is the Latin word used onwards from the 13th century, describing lands of the Ancient Rus in European manuscripts. Its geographic and culturo-ethnic name at that time was applied to the parts of Eastern Europe. Essentially, the word is a false Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
propria (the region of Chernihiv
Chernihiv
Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...
, eastward through Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, and into Halych
Halych
Halych is a historic city on the Dniester River in western Ukraine. The town gave its name to the historic province and kingdom of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, of which it was the capital until the early 14th century, when the seat of the local princes was moved to Lviv...
) and, b) later fragments from the Halych-Volynian era of this same region in the centuries immediately following the writing of the document.
The Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
translated the work into English in 1960. Other notable editions include the standard Soviet edition, prepared with an extended commentary, by the academician Dmitry Likhachev
Dmitry Likhachev
Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov was an outstanding Soviet Russian scholar who was considered the world's foremost expert in Old Russian language and literature. He has been revered as "the last of old St Petersburgers", "a guardian of national culture", and "Russia's conscience".-Biography:Likhachov...
.
Authenticity debate
According to the majority view, the poem is a composition of the late 12th century, perhaps composed orally and fixed in written form at some point during the 13th century. Some scholars consider the possibility that the poem in its current form is a national Romanticist compilation and rearrangement of several authentic sources. The thesis of the poem's being a complete forgery has been proposed in the past but is widely discredited; the poem's language has been demonstrated to be closer to authentic medieval East Slavic than practicable by a late 18th-century forger. It was not until 1951 that scholars discovered ancient birch bark documentBirch bark document
A birch bark document is a document written on pieces of birch bark. Such documents existed in several cultures. For instance, some Gandharan Buddhist texts have been found written on birch bark and preserved in clay jars....
s that contained the medieval language.
One of the crucial points of the authenticity controversy is the relationship between Slovo and Zadonschina, an unquestionably authentic poem, which was created in the 15th century to glorify Dmitri Donskoi
Dmitri Donskoi
Saint Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy , or Dmitry of the Don, sometimes referred to as Dmitry I , son of Ivan II the Meek of Moscow , reigned as the Prince of Moscow from 1359 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1363 to his death. He was the first prince of Moscow to openly challenge Mongol authority in...
's victory over Mamai
Mamai
Mamai of Borjigin kin, was a powerful military commander of the Blue Horde in the 1370s which is now the Southern Ukrainian Steppes and the Crimean Peninsula....
in the Battle of Kulikovo
Battle of Kulikovo
The Battle of Kulikovo was a battle between Tatar Mamai and Muscovy Dmitriy and portrayed by Russian historiography as a stand-off between Russians and the Golden Horde. However, the political situation at the time was much more complicated and concerned the politics of the Northeastern Rus'...
and preserved in six medieval copies. There are almost identical passages in both texts where only the personal names are different. The traditional point of view considers Zadonschina to be a late imitation, with Slovo as its pattern. The forgery version claims the reverse: that Igor's Tale was written using Zadonschina as a source. Recently, Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
's and Andrey Zaliznyak
Andrey Zaliznyak
Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak, is a Russian linguist who specializes in the research of linguistic monuments of Old Novgorod....
's analyses show that the passages of Zadonschina with counterparts in Slovo differ from the rest of the text by a number of linguistic parameters, whereas this is not so for Igor's Tale. This fact is taken as evidence of Slovo being the original with respect to Zadonschina. Zaliznyak also points out that the passages in Zadonschina which parallel those in the Igor's Tale but differ from it can only be explained if Slovo was the source for Zadonshchina (the differences can be the result of the distortion of the original Slovo text by the author and different editors of Zadonshchina versions), but not vice versa.
Proponents of the forgery thesis have quite differing arguments, which are sometimes contradictory. Some authors (Mazon) see numerous gallicisms in the text; others (Trost, Haendler) see germanisms, yet others (Keenan) bohemisms. Zimin is certain that the author could only be Ioil Bykovsky, while Keenan is equally sure that only Jozef Dobrovsky could be the falsifier.
Current dialectology
Dialectology
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...
upholds Pskov
Pskov
Pskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...
and Polotsk as the two cities where the Tale was most likely written. Numerous persons have been proposed as its authors, including Prince Igor and his brothers.
Early reactions
When the first modern edition of the Tale was published, questions about its authenticity were raised, mostly because of its language. Suspicion was also fueled by contemporary fabrications (for example, the Songs of OssianOssian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
, proved to be written by James Macpherson
James Macpherson
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...
). Today, majority opinion accepts the authenticity of the text, based on the similarity of its language with that of other texts discovered after the Tale.
Proposed as forgers were Aleksei Musin-Pushkin
Aleksei Musin-Pushkin
Aleksei Ivanovich Musin-Pushkin , count since 1797, statesman, historian and art collector. Musin-Pushkin is credited with discovering in Yaroslavl the manuscript The Tale of Igor's Campaign...
, or the Russian manuscript forgers Anton Bardin and Alexander Sulakadzev. (Bardin was publicly exposed as the forger of four copies of Slovo). Josef Sienkowski, a journalist and Orientalist, was one of the notable early proponents of the falsification theory.
Soviet period
The problem of the national text became more politicized during the years of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Any attempts to question the authenticity of Slovo (for example, by the French Slavist André Mazon or by the Russian historian Alexander Zimin) were condemned. Government officials also repressed and condemned non-standard interpretations based on Turkic lexis, such as was proposed by Oljas Suleimenov (who considered Igor's Tale to be an authentic text). Mazon's and Zimin's views were opposed, for example, by Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
.
In 1975 Olzhas Suleimenov
Olzhas Suleimenov
Olzhas Omaruli Suleimenov is a Soviet poet, Kazakhstani politician, and Soviet anti-nuclear activist.-Life:Suleimenov was born on 18 May 1936 in Alma-Ata. He graduated from Geological Sciences Department of Kazakh State University in 1959. Suleimenov also finished Gorkii Institute of Literature in...
challenged the mainstream view of the Tale in his book Az i Ya. He claimed to reveal that Tale cannot be completely authentic since it appeared to have been rewritten in the 16th century.
Mainstream Slavists, including Dmitri Likhachev, and Turkologists criticized Az i Ya, characterizing Suleymenov's etymological and paleography conjectures as amateurish. Linguists such as Zaliznyak pointed out that certain linguistic elements in Slovo dated from the XV-XVI centuries, when the copy of the original manuscript (or of a copy ) had been made. They noted this was a normal feature of copied documents, as copyists introduce elements of their own orthography and grammar, as is known from many other manuscripts. Zaliznyak points out that this evidence constitutes another argument for the authenticity of Slovo. An anonymous forgerer would have had to imitate not only very complex XII century orthography and grammar but also to introduce fake complex traces of the copying in the XV-XVI centuries.
Recent views
Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.-Career:Pritsak began his academic career at the University of Lvov in interwar Poland where he...
inter alia), linguists are not so skeptical. The overall scholarly consensus accepts Slovo's authenticity.
Some scholars believe the Tale has a purpose similar to that of Kraledvorsky Manuscript. For instance, the Harvard historian Edward L. Keenan
Edward L. Keenan
Edward L. Keenan is Andrew W. Mellon professor emeritus of history at Harvard University. He works primarily on medieval Russia, especially the cultural and political history of Muscovy c. 1400 - c...
says in his article, "Was Iaroslav of Halych really shooting sultans in 1185?" and in his book Josef Dobrovsky and the Origins of the Igor's Tale (2003), that Igor's Tale is a fake, written by the Czech scholar Josef Dobrovský
Josef Dobrovský
Josef Dobrovský was a Bohemian philologist and historian, one of the most important figures of the Czech national revival.- Life & Work :...
. Other scholars contend that it is a recompilation and manipulation of several authentic sources put together similarly to Lönnrot's Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
.
In his 2004 book, the Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak
Andrey Zaliznyak
Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak, is a Russian linguist who specializes in the research of linguistic monuments of Old Novgorod....
analyzes arguments and concludes that the forgery theory is virtually impossible. It was not until the late 20th century, after hundreds of bark documents were unearthed in Novgorod, that scholars learned that some of the puzzling passages and words of the tale were part of common speech in the 12th century, although they were not represented in chronicles and other formal written documents. Zaliznyak concludes that no 18th-century scholar could have imitated the subtle grammatical and syntactical features in the known text. He did not believe that Dobrovský could have accomplished this, as his views on Slavic grammar (as expressed in his magnum opus, Institutiones) were strikingly different from the system written in Igor's Tale. In his revised second edition issued in 2007, Zaliznyak was able to use evidence from the posthumous edition of Zimin
Zimin
Zimin is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kleszczewo, within Poznań County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately south-east of the regional capital Poznań.The village has a population of 300....
's 2006 book. He argued that even someone striving to imitate some older texts would have had almost impossible hurdles to overcome, as mere imitation could not have represented the deep mechanics of the language.
Juri Lotman supports the text's authenticity, based on the absence of a number of semiotic
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
elements in the Russian Classicist literary tradition before the publication of the Tale. He notes that "Russian Land" (русская земля) was a term that became popular only in the 19th century. A presumed forger of the 1780s-1790s would not have used such a term while composing the text.
Orality
Robert MannRobert Mann
Robert Mann is a musician, composer, and conductor.He was a founding member and first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet for 52 years, and mentor to younger generations of string musicians....
(1989, 2005) argues that the leading studies have been mistaken in concluding the Tale is the work of a poet working in a written tradition. Mann points to evidence suggesting that the Tale first circulated as an oral epic song for several decades before being written down, most likely in the early 13th century. He identifies the opening lines as corresponding to such an oral tradition: "Was it not fitting, brothers, to begin with the olden words of the heroic tales about the campaign of Igor..." The narrator begins by referring to oral epic tales that are already old and familiar. Mann has found numerous new parallels to the text of the Tale in wedding songs, magical incantations, byliny
Bylina
Bylina or Bylyna is a traditional Russian oral epic narrative poem. Byliny singers loosely utilize historical fact greatly embellished with fantasy or hyperbole to create their songs...
and other Old Russian sources. He was the first researcher to point out unique textual parallels in a rare version of the Tale of the Battle against Mamai
Mamai
Mamai of Borjigin kin, was a powerful military commander of the Blue Horde in the 1370s which is now the Southern Ukrainian Steppes and the Crimean Peninsula....
(Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche), published by N.G. Golovin in 1835. It contains what Mann claims is the earliest known redaction of the Skazanie, a redaction that scholars posited but could not locate.
Based on byliny and Old Russian sources, Mann has attempted to reconstruct an early Russian song about the conversion
Conversion
-Economy and Finance:* Currency conversion or exchange rate* Conversion , one of the options strategies* Economic conversion-Law:* Conversion , conversion by taking a chattel out of the possession of another with the intent of exercising a permanent or temporary dominion over it, despite the...
of the Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
an State. Mann believes that this early conversion cycle left its imprint on several passages of the Tale, including the motif sequence in which the pagan Div warns the Tmutorokan idol that Igor's army is approaching.
Editions and translations
- Aleksei Musin-PushkinAleksei Musin-PushkinAleksei Ivanovich Musin-Pushkin , count since 1797, statesman, historian and art collector. Musin-Pushkin is credited with discovering in Yaroslavl the manuscript The Tale of Igor's Campaign...
, Alexei Malinovsky and Nikolai Bantysh-Kamensky (1800) Ироическая пѣснь о походѣ на половцовъ удѣльнаго князя Новагорода-Сѣверскаго Игоря Святославича, писанная стариннымъ русскимъ языкомъ въ исходѣ XII столѣтія съ переложеніемъ на употребляемое нынѣ нарѣчіе. Москва, въ Сенатской Типографіи, 1800. - Mansvetus Riedl, Szozat Igor hadjaratarul a paloczok ellen (1858)
- Leonard A. Magnus, The Tale of the Armament of Igor (1915)
- Eduard Sievers, Das Igorlied (1926)
- Karl Heinrich Meyer, Das Igorlied (1933)
- Henri Grégoire, Roman Jakobson, Marc Szeftel, J. A. Joffe, La Geste du prince Igor, Annuaire de l'Institut de philologie et ď histoire orientales et slaves, t. VIII. (1948)
- Dmitry LikhachevDmitry LikhachevDmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov was an outstanding Soviet Russian scholar who was considered the world's foremost expert in Old Russian language and literature. He has been revered as "the last of old St Petersburgers", "a guardian of national culture", and "Russia's conscience".-Biography:Likhachov...
, Слова о полку Игореве, Литературные памятники (1950) - Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, The Song of Igor's Campaign: An Epic of the 12th Century (1960)
Further reading
- Magnus, Leonard Arthur. The Tale of the Armament of Igor. Oxford University Press, 1915. The first English translation.
- Mann, Robert. Lances Sing: A Study of the Old Russian Igor Tale. Slavica: Columbus, 1989.
- Mann, Robert. The Igor Tales and Their Folkloric Background. Jupiter, FL: The Birchbark Press of Karacharovo, 2005. Pesn' o polku Igoreve: Novye otkrytiia. Moscow: Iazyki Slavianskoi Kul'tury, 2009.
External links
- The original edition of 1800
- Roman Jacobson's edition
- Vladimir Nabokov's edition
- Several Russian translations
- Text and Ukrainian interpretations
- Leonard Magnus English translation of 1915, parallel English/Russian
- Katherine Owen, "The Lay of Igor’s Campaign and the Works It Has Inspired", Analysis of artistic adaptations