This paper deals with the topic of border literature viewing it as an
exchange of ‘narrative cores’ between cultures, genres, different registers (from
popular to high literature, from forms of orality to writing). Special attention will
be paid, in particular, to the ‘dogane’ or heavenly spheres in medieval folk tales
and poems (the Byzantine "Life of Basil the Younger", fairy tales, fabliaux, legends
of French, German, Slavic folklore), seen in connection with the distribution of
souls in Dante’s "Divine Comedy".
