The book is written in Russian St. George is one of the most productive leitmotives in European, especially Russian, culture. The early medieval cult of the saint fell on fertile soil resulting in hagiography, iconography, religious and state symbolism, and finding its way into folklore, literature, and painting. Tracing this motif leads to profound insights concerning important texts, authors and cultural situations. The book starts with a source survey of the cult's origin and its medieval history in all cultural genres and then proceeds with concrete in-depth studies of this motif in individual Russian texts and with authors from the 12th through the 20th century. The sum of these studies contributes to a phenomenology of culture.

The Author: Savely Senderovich was born in Odessa in 1935. He studied Slavic philology at Odessa University (1952-58), aesthetics at Leningrad University (1961-64), and Russian literature at New York University (1974-77). Since 1977 he is a professor of Russian literature and medieval studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He is the author of books on Pushkin, 19th-20th century Russian poets, and Chekhov.