“Greek Novel” in the Correspondence Between O.M. Freidenberg and S.A. Zhebelev

Abstract

The article is devoted to the correspondence between Academician S. A. Zhebelev and his student O. M. Freidenberg in 1926–1940. Four of Zhebelev’s letters were preserved in the Freidenberg archive, although she usually did not store incoming correspondence, but on forming her archive, she copied letters and other documents into memoirs and then destroyed them. Analysis of the archival materials and biography of Freidenberg shows that the preserved correspondence directly or indirectly relates to a very important subject for both correspondents — the beginning of Freudenberg’s work under the guidance of Zhebelev on the Greek apocryphal “Acts of Paul and Thecla”, which became the basis for her future dissertation “The Origin of the Greek Novel” and played a decisive role in development of her literary theory.