Ivan Zhdanov

Zhdanov, Ivan Nikolaevich 

Born June 22 (July 4), 1846, in Shenkursk, in present-day Arkhangel’sk Oblast; died July 11 (24), 1901, in Alupka. Russian literary critic and folklorist. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1899; corresponding member, 1893).

Zhdanov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1872. In 1882 he became a professor at the Institute of History and Philology in St. Petersburg, and in 1895 he began teaching at the university. His work On a Literary History of Russian Bylina Poetry (1881) studied the ties between oral poetic art and written literature. In his chief work The Russian Bylina Epic (1895), he investigated the written, folklore, and historical sources of epic. Zhdanov’s other major works include Materials for the History of the Stoglav Council (1876) and Russian Poetry in the Pre-Mongol Period (1879).

WORKS

Sochineniia, vols. 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1904–07.

REFERENCES

Chebyshev, A. A. I. N. Zhdanov: Biograficheskii ocherk. St. Petersburg, 1907.
Azadovskii, M. K. Istoriia russkoi fol’kloristiki, vol. 2. Moscow, 1963. Pages 262–66.