About the book: 2008 / The volume presents monuments of ancient Russian literature of the 11th–17th centuries. Texts from the 11th–16th centuries. given in translations by famous, authoritative researchers, works of the 17th century. - in the originals. “Old Russian literature is not literature. This formulation, deliberately shocking, nevertheless accurately characterizes the features of the first period of Russian literature. Old Russian literature is the beginning of Russian literature, its oldest period, which includes works written from the 11th to the 17th centuries, that is, over seven centuries (and all subsequent literature spans only three centuries). The life of a person in Ancient Rus' was not like the life of a citizen of Russia in the 18th–20th centuries: everything was different - the habitat, the forms of state structure, ideas about man and his place in the world. Accordingly, ancient Russian literature is completely different from the literature of the 18th–20th centuries, and it is impossible to apply to it the criteria that define this concept over the next three centuries».