"OLD PRINCES": A LEGEND TIME CATEGORY AND ETHICAL REFERENCE POINT IN OLD RUSSIAN LITERATURE
This paper concerns the problem of interpretation of one basic historical category in medieval Russian literature: old prince's times of long ago. This literary formula is a concentration of three main constants of Old Russian mentality: the idea of ideal Past, the calculation of time according the alternation of rulers and the conception of Rurikid's kin sacral identity coupled with the continuity of their dynasty.