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Abstract: The article deals with the main stages of formation of ethnopoetics as an area of scientific investigation, the role of ethnological research in the field of cultural philosophy devoted to the problems of the Russian national character, the Russian world outlook, and the national worldview. The problem of “literary transplantation” (D. Likhachev) is examined on the material of P. Katenin’s controversy with Zhukovsky about the Russian version of the genre of ballad. The article reveals the adaptive mechanisms in the sphere of the Russian culture inheritance (as a target domain) of some ideological and aesthetic complexes borrowed from the West. Drawing on the works by V. A. Zakharov, the author defines the term “ethnopoetics”, which emphasizes the organic connection of two principles at once, one of which boils down to the basic ethnocultural categories (in our case, the axiological foundations of the national spiritual and religious traditions), and the other operates its own philological categories directly leading into the sphere of historical and ontological poetics. The author demonstrates the essential parameters and boundaries of the modern field of ethnopoetics and its links with internal subdivisions (imagology, religious philology) and related disciplines (regional studies, geopoetics, etc.). The ethnological aspects of ethnopoetics are considered on the example of the works of two Russian writers, who interpreted the symbolic space of Russia in different ways, comparing it either with the image of the vast steppe (N. Gogol), or with the image of huge, full-flowing rivers (D. Mamin-Sibiryak), but at the same time directly linking it with the heroic character of the Russian people, and the depth and immensity of the Russian soul. In terms of national typology, the article defines the systemic categorial foundations of ethnoconfessional characterization of Russian classical literature: collegiality, Easter traditions, Christocentrism, aesthetics of foolishness and hesychasm, Slavic phenomenon of giving and sympathy for the poor, faith in miracles, and belief in the soteriological vertical (or idea of spiritual salvation). The author reveals the writer’s attitude to imagological images and stereotypes on the example of the fragments of the novel “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy and the essay “The Languor of the Spirit” by N. Leskov. The article argues that the reception and representation of the images of the “other” (first of all, a representative of the German nation) in the works of these authors acquires an axiological coloring, turning into an imagological reflection on the essence of the Russian national character.