ballads were being compared to the works of Homer as part of the on-
going “Homeric question,” the debate over whether Homer was one or
many authors. European poets who wrote literary imitations of the
genre represented themselves as Homeric bards (as discussed in chap-
ter 2 ). As recently as 1978 a Russian scholar described the ballad as a
“lyrico-epic genre” (Iezuitova, “Ballada v epokhu romantizma,” 138 ).
European literary ballads differed significantly from their folk mod-els. From the beginning ballad collectors and imitators mixed the orig-
inally stark ballad genre with the richer, metrical romance—stories of
knights and medieval pageantry, told in more flexible octosyllabic cou-
plets. In England, for example, writes Albert Friedman, poets not only
intermingled “bardism, primitive poetry, minstrelsy and balladry” (Bal-
lad Revival, 175 ), but also added psychological descriptions, a variety of
meters, a greater emphasis on the narrator, and many elements from ur-
ban folk forms, such as broadsides and street calls ( 257 , 260 ).
If European literary ballads differed appreciably from their folk mod-els, Russian literary ballads differed from them even further. At the end
of the eighteenth century no collections of Russian folk ballads existed,
nor did even the concept of such a genre. European models, therefore,
provided Russian writers with their knowledge of both folk ballads and
literary imitations of them.^34
Vasilii Zhukovsky popularized the European literary ballad in Rus-sia by translating or writing thirty-nine ballads based on European
models. His ballads both reflected and established gender norms for
writers and characters. Like other ballad writers, Zhukovsky repre-
sented himself as a bard, a tribal poet-singer, and a declaimer of verses
about heroes and their deeds—for example, in “Pesn’ barda nad
grobom slavian- pobeditelei” (Song of the bard at the grave of the Slavic
victors, 1806 ) and “Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov” (The singer in the
camp of Russian warriors, 1812 )—a literary stance not possible for
women, as we have seen in chapter 2. As for gender norms for charac-
ters, one of Zhukovsky’s most pervasive themes is men’s violence against
women; many of his ballads depict men as representatives of evil or
death who victimize young women. In “Liudmila” ( 1808 ), for example,
the heroine’s beloved, who comes for her at midnight, turns out to be a
corpse. After their ride together Liudmila dies as well. The heroine of
“Adel’stan” ( 1813 ) marries a knight who nearly succeeds in sacrificing
their child to evil forces. Other such examples can be found in “Eolova
arfa” (The Aeolian harp, 1814 ) and “Dvenadtsat’ spiashchikh dev” (The
twelve sleeping maidens, 1810 ). Zhukovsky’s one depiction of an old
Gender and Genre 71