SOURCE: Graham, Hugh F. “Digenis Akritas and the Devgenievo Dejanie—A Reappraisal.” Studies in Medieval Culture 4, no. 3 (autumn 1974): 483-95.

In the following essay, Graham analyzes the Russian version of Digenes Akritas, the Devgenievo Dejanie.

The fascinating comparative study of the manuscripts of Digenis Akritas and the Devgenievo Dejanie has continued to attract international scholarly attention, although it suffered a great loss with the recent death of M. Henri Grégoire, who numbered it prominently among his scholarly interests and who developed many provocative hypotheses concerning it. At present our Soviet colleagues are taking the lead; worthy of particular commendation is the way in which they pay careful attention to both the Greek and the Russian versions, as the work of Kuz'mina¹ and Syrkin² abundantly testifies. Their work has finally brought Akritic studies to the position that Grégoire repeatedly called for; he always emphasized that the failure to...