Russian Fairy Tales Exam 1 Review

“volk” (people in German)

Unedited stories are collected from the

Example of folk fairy tale

Children’s and Household Tales 1812-1857 Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanas’ev

* Russian Fairytales 1855-1867
* Published in eight volumes
* Russian answer to Brothers Grimm
* Archivist and journalist
* 1862: denounced for radical associations
* Sold his personal library to eat
* Died in poverty

Zhil byl

there once was

Kontsovka

Finale, an ending detached from a story that brings it back to storyteller

Trebling

to triple something, something happens three times

Kid friendly?

last fairy tale element

Fairy Tale Elements of Marina Warner

* Short narratives
* Rooted in folklore oral tradition
* Produced by the people rather than elites
* Include Fairy tale tropes
* Even new fairytales have recognizable elements
* One Dimensional
* Contain symbolic meaning
* Primarily achieved through language; symbol meaning DOES NOT EQUAL moral lesson
* Contain wonder/magic
* Including elements of magic and the supernatural
* Happy endings
* “Fairytales express hopes”

HOW TO READ THEORY

* Learn the ideas, connect the ideas, test the ideas
* Carte du Tendre, the Map of Tenderness
* Literal map based on human emotion

What happened in 882?

Kievan Rus’ formation

What happened in 988?

* Christianization of Rus’
* Perun, pagan god included in fairy tales

What happened in 1237?

* Tatar Yoke
* Invaded by a huge empire, Genghis Khan, and were under their control for several years. Not able to establish themselves.

What happened in 1547?

* Ivan the Terrible 
* Significant figure, first czar of Russia

What happened in 1682?

* Peter the Great
* Wanted Petersburg to be a door to the West to help with commerce and to make Russia more Western

What happened in 1861?

* Emancipation of Serfs
* Able to own the land and have more of an active role in agriculture instead of being enslaved

What happened in 1917?

* October Revolution
* They were under the old calendar, it actually happened in November

What happened in 1953?

Thaw

What happened in 1991?

Collapse

What happened in 1999+?

Era of Putin

Folk culture

culture that is produced and practiced by the folk

Three categories of folk culture

material, customary, verbal

Folklore

* Supernatural elements may be present
* Part of a system of belief and knowledge
* Passed down orally rather than in writing

Folk Fairytales

* Supernatural elements must be present
* Not part of system of belief, except for very young audiences
* Passed down orally rather than in writing

Iapti

Shoes

Izba

house

Pech’

Russian stove

Banya

Russian Sauna where people wear felt hats and hit you with branches of herbs… say its soothing

Dvoeverie

Double faith or double belief

Yuletide (Koliada)

Christmas

Winter Solstice

Shrovetide (Maslenitsa)

Beginning of Lent (Mardi Gras)

Rusal’naia Week

Pentecost (fifty days after Easter)

Ivan Kupalo

St. John’s Eve

Summer Solstice

Perun

head of the pantheon, god of war, lightning, and thunder

Dazhbog

god of the sun, another name for Khors, also known for bestowing blessings

Domovoi, dvorovoi

Home Spirit

Leshii

forest spirit

Vodianoi

water spirit

Rusalki

water-nymph, siren

Baba Yaga’s Transportation:

* Mortar and pestle (mode of travel)
* Also, a broom to sweep away the tracks left behind
* Strange uses for domestic items

Baba Yaga’s spoons

* Another domestic item
* Enters your house and counts your spoons. If the count is off or if you object there is trouble

Baba Yaga’s hut

* A hut on chicken legs, can travel, often only rotates denying or granting access, maybe more iconic than Baba Yaga herself
* The hut is surrounded by a fence with glowing skulls; Baba Yaga’s property
* The location of her property is in the heart of THE WOODS, many stories start with being SENT to her hut

Baba Yaga’s Features

* Very old, unnaturally old, frail in appearance but very powerful, cannibalistic, can smell Russians
* Associated with medicine, mortar and pestle for medicines/poisons form ground herbs
* Has control over nature, wind portends arrival, animal familiars
* Her power is derived from nature
* Ambiguous gender, she has both male and female stereotypical traits. Ambiguous number, sometimes she is the Baba Yaga or a Baba Yaga
* She works in mysterious ways, can help or hurt, something between fairy godmother and evil stepmother

Baba

Grandmother, pejorative for woman in polish, humanly or timid man in russian, in ukrainian an autumnal funeral feast

Yaga

Witch, horror, chill, evil woman, fury, disease, illness

Onomastics

study of history and the origin of proper names, especially personal names

Mokosh’

Damp earth mother, goddess of earth and fertility, only female deity honored with a statue in Vladimir’s rule, Pagans conflated her with virgin mary, remythologization

Koshchey’s Features

* Age is old, unnaturally old, thin, tall, scraggly hair. His power is explicitly unnatural as opposed to Baba Yaga, whose powers are natural
* To kill him, you destroy his death. There are variations, but ultimately it is very complicated and hidden
* His name means “without death”
* Onomastics include: captive, boy/youth, general, Ivan Tsarevitch
* His maidens are romantic threats/rivals, always capturing and marrying them, his age makes it weird/unnatural, is the hero’s “shadow”

Heroes of Russian Fairytales

* Centers characters over plots
* Reminiscent of mythology
* Big difference from western fairytales

Rule of Proximitiy

The further away you are form home, the more danger you potentially encounter from the spirits

Domovoi spirit location and attributes

The Home-

* Occasionally mischievous, particularly to poor housekeepers
* Oracle through tough
* Widely believed in
* Kind and helpful

Kikimora/Shishimora(f) spirit location and attributes

The Home

* Female domestic spirit with similar qualities
* Tangle a woman’s needlework if not neatly put away

Dvorovoi spirit location and attributes

The Yard

* Not favorably disposed toward family
* Not as widely respected by peasants
* Very mischievous

Bannik spirit location and attributes

The Bathhouse

If not placated by offerings of soap or fir branches, could:

* Burn you
* Suffocate you in steam
* Burn down the bania

Ovinnik spirit location and attributes

The Threshing Barn

If not placated by offerings of bliny, could:

* Burn down the barn or cause it to explode
* Destroy entire farmstead

Leshii (m) spirit location and attributes

The Forest

* Guardian of forests and beasts
* Capable of varied metamorphoses
* Woodcutters are victims; herdsmen and hunters strike pacts

Vodianoi (m) spirit location and attributes

The Waters

* Human form or half-fish half-man
* Drowns overly bold swimmers and divers
* Forms pacts with millers and fishermen

Polevoi (m) spirit location and attributes

The Fields

* Favorite time is noon
* Working at noon could cause you to be stricken ill
* Metamorphosizes sometimes in the shape of a dust storm

Poludnitsa (f) spirit location and attributes

The Fields

* Beautiful Maiden of the fields
* Dressed in white

Rusalka (f) spirit location and attributes

The Waters

* Souls of unbaptized or stillborn infants
* Interwoven images of beauty and treachery
* Associated with Rusal’naia Week

Max Luthi

Swiss and enjoys folktales, created: The European Folktale: Form and Nature (1947) (1981 - English Translation)

FairyTale elements

Zhil Byl, Kontsovka, Trebling, Kid Friendly, The Woods, One-dimensionality, depthlessness, abstract

One-Dimensionality

* Nothing to do with “dimensions”
* Magic is mundane
* Talking animals, enchanted objects, witches, dragons, etc.
* “Otherness” created through geographical distance, not magic
* Distant mountains, thrice ninth kingdom, THE WOODS

Depthlessness

* Characters: no psychological death
* No stable relationships, little display of aging, characters don’t “grow,” no moral dilemmas (no reluctant hero), Plot armor (characters can’t be harmed like in reality)
* Object: no stable presence
* Objects appear and disappear at the convenience of the story

Abstract Style

* The means of achieving depthlessness
* Only the essential is mentioned
* Language
* People/objects described with simple substances of colors (“Skin as white as snow”)
* Plotting
* Events happen at convenient times for the purposes of the story
* Formulaic numbering trumps drama (Trebling)

Bogatyrev & Jakobson Background

* Bogatyrev and Jakobson were friends since college
* Both interested in folklore studies and linguistics
* Helped found Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPJAZ, which became centers for Russian formalism
* Early carrer in Czechoslovakia -- fled during WWII
* Bogatyrev returned to USSR; Jakobson remained in the West

“Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity” (1929) MAIN IDEAS

* Folkloric materials and literary materials need to be studied in different ways because they have different modes of production
* Folkloric materials are ORAL, literary works are in WRITING tradition
* ^^ This difference should change how we consider issues of **authorship;** a question of “intentionality” and “ownership”
* **Key Insight: Communities rather than individuals are the authors or pieces of folklore**
* Author vs. Teller

St. Luke

* Credited as having painted the first icon: “theotokos”
* Our lady of vladimir

Theology

* “Windows into Heaven”
* Icons are uncovered/revealed… not authored or created
* The artist is merely the vehicle, similar to the teller of a folktale
* Literal __Divine inspiration__
* Painted according to rigid traditions, not the creative or personal vision
* Chudotvornaya - “Wonderworking”

Icon Conventions

* Abbreviated names of Holy Figures:
* Jesus, Mary
* Long texts describing events eg. “Beheading of John the Baptist”
* Hierarchy: More important figures are generally larger and depicted toward the center
* Faces of more important figures are generally turned toward the viewer
* More important figures undergo less distortion

Why do Icons look the way they do?

* Representations are not of objects but of the palace of objects in the world
* Painter’s/Viewer’s perspective is not privileged
* Internal point of view; there is no single perspective and no shadows because no external source of light

Perspective in Icons

* Point of view from multiple perspectives
* What can be seen form all sides, not just one vantage point
* Spatial
* Different slides are visible simultaneously
* Temporal: events that are separated in time are depicted in single image
* The painting is supposed to be all knowing and all seeing, it must represent all point of views and represent everything

Andrei Rublev (1360-1430 roughly) Art

* The Holy Trinity (1410-20)
* The Annunciation (1410)
* The Birth of Christ (1405)

What ever happened to Baby Jesus?

* “Homunculus”
* The invention of Childhood
* Consider how this impacts the history of Fairytales (child friendly?)

Lubki

* Russian Popular Prints
* Mid-17th century to early 20th century
* Woodblock Printing
* Singular form “Lubko”
* STYLE:
* Bold colors, expressive lines, balanced composition, simplicity of drawing, inclusion of text
* Traces of the Icon; 
* Important figures disproportionally large, perspective based on multiple points of views
* Themes include: religious, satirical, everyday life, jesters and fools, information and news
* Early prints mostly religious

Embroidery

* early form of art and everyone knew how to do this and they could beautify everyday objects
* Borders of the embroideries are important

Viktor Vasnetsov

* Religious background, educated in the Imperial Academy of Arts
* Wanderers Movement (Peredvizhniki)
* 1870s mobile exhibitions, anti-academic restrictions, realist school, independent society where they would travel to villages and show people art
* Subjects: lives of common people, social inequalities, russian landscape
* In around the 1870s he stops depicting peasant life and starts to move toward depicting folk fairytales, such as Knight at the Crossroads (1878), Flying Carpet (1880)
* “Russian Revival”
* Response to Western-European influence, preserving their own culture. Modern architectural movement of late-19th century, imagines “true” Russian Architecture
* Grounded in Byzantine Architecture, folk art, and fairytales
* Was seen in buildings (hut on chicken legs) but also shown in clothing such as the hat budenovka

Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)

* Go back to lecture pdf, hes going too fast
* Inspired by Vasnetsov, highly educated

Byliny

* Epic poems of legendary heroes
* Called starina (old) by performers
* Rediscovered in mid-19th century
* Collectors recorded by hand while performers sand
* Performed as song and verse
* Byliny passed from royal courts to the peasantry
* Performances were improvised
* Have to know types of Art Forms for Test

Mythological Epics

* Pagan mythologies, demigods, gods
* Prequels to later Byliny

Kievan Epics (most essential type of Byliny)

* Grand Prince Vladimir
* Quasi-historical (kind of historical stories)
* Centered on Kiev, the capital of Rus’
* Byliny told at feasts in Royal Court
* Royal bedtime stories?

Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev

* Ruled: 980-1015
* Baptism of Rus’
* The ruler in Kievan Epidcs
* Not the hero, but central to the plot and setting
* Overtime, Grand Prince Vladimir became abstracted--shorthand for a generic ancient ruler

The Bogatyrs

* Heroes of Byliny
* Knights of the Round Table crossed with VIkings
* Protect the Rus’ from threats
* Code of honor: defend widows, orphans, the poor (like robin hood, jesus, etc)
* Leisure time devoted to romance and hunting

The Bogatyrs of Vladimir’s Court

* Ilya Muromets, Ideal Russian hero
* Dobrynia Nikitich, Known as diplomat
* Aliosha Popvish, Trickster (comic relief)

Ilya Muromets

* Initially lame, miraculously healed by Jesus or wise men
* Works on parents farm, rough and not genteel
* Goes to Kiev, capturing Nightingale the Robber en route
* Sometimes quarrels with Vladmir, sometimes imprisoned
* Is the people's hero!!
* Defears Tartars, sometimes with divine aid

Tartar Yoke Review

* Genghis Khan and offspring taking over all of Rus for years and years. Rus’ is conquered and has to give military aid, under control of Khan’s state
* Eventually in 1480 Prince Ivan III renounces allegiance to Khan
* Grandson Ivan IV (the terrible) moves from Kiev to Moscow taking the title “Tsar”
* Defeating of the Tartar Yoke is significant

Novgorodian Epics

* Quasi-historical
* Novgorod Republic
* Ind. City state (11-14th century), Economic Power (fur trade)
* Merchant heroes, travel to distant land
* Novgorod Merchants:
* Sadko - merchant and gusli player
* UNUSUAL TERM ON TEST FROM SADKO
* Vasily Buslaev - Drunkard the traitor
* After Tartar Yoke broken, Russia expands massively between 1500-1700
* Stories don’t just reflect the world we live in, they shape it as well