Jack V. Haney. An Introduction to the Russian Folktale. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. viii, 135 pp. $40.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics. Edited by James Bailey and Tatiana Ivanova. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. 464 pp. $69.95 (cloth); $29.95 (pa- per).

Jack Haney's Introduction to the Russian Folktale is the first volume of an ambi- tious project to translate anew Aleksandr Afans'ev's Russkie narodnye skazki. To help the North American reader cross over into the world of the Russian tale, it discusses the collecting and publication of Russian tales, performers and performance, tale con- tent, and the probable mythic and ritual basis of tales. Haney performs an especially valuable service by concentrating on the Russian perspective on this genre. Folktales are ubiquitous and one of the richest and most varied narrative types. They can be, and have been, approached in many ways. The Russian approach is probably the least familiar to the North American reader and the one most in need of explication. Folktales tend to be associated with the past, either the historical past or the past of an individual, namely childhood. In the West, Bruno Bettelheim's Uses of Enchant- ment and the works of Marie von Franz have encouraged us to look at tales in the con- text of human development, to see parallels between the psychological growth of the child and the adventures of tale heroes. More recently, Jack Zipes and Marina Wamer have drawn our attention to the political dimension of tales, the messages beneath the surface and even the commercial intent behind the folktale versions produced in film studios. Yet the mythical dimension of tales is equally important, and that has been the forte of Russian scholarship, starting with Vladimir Propp and his Historical Roots of the Magic Tale. Happily, it is this approach that Haney focuses upon. He begins with a discussion of world outlook, emphasizing that the relationship to fact in the Russian tale is different from the one we might expect. Tales are seen as true, perhaps not real, but possible, perhaps not true now, but at some point in the past. He then devotes a section to the collection of tales, discussing the special role and accomplishments of Alexandr Afanas'ev. The next unit is devoted to performers. Haney theorizes that tales were once a professional genre, the province of an enter- tainer called the skomorokh. This helps him later explain the focus on male heroes and the general masculine tenor of this narrative type. With the persecution and demise of the skomorokhi, then, tales became the property of the type of teller from whom they were recorded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The next three chapters are the heart of the book. Here Haney discusses the many remnants of myth and ritual in Russian tales. He starts with a section on ditheism, also called dual belief, and shows the strength of the pagan substratum in the Russian world view. He talks about sacrifice, a theme that he returns to in connection with the many animal actors in wondertales. A description of ritual practices, especially initia- tion rites, follows. Haney speculates that women's initiation rites became subsumed into marriage practices, while men's rites involved tests and journeys. He takes up the topic of male rites again toward the end when he discusses the many journeys into the forest found in tales and symbolic death, often at the hands of a grotesque elder fe- male, Baba Iaga. Symbolic death, he points out, is followed by almost cataclysmic transformation and then assumption of a proper place in society. An important section, that on the bear and the horse, discusses the bear as a sacri- ficial animal and the methods by which bears might have been sacrificed. Haney pre- sents evidence for associating bears with the cult of Veles, and discusses stories where humans turn into bears and, of course, the many stories where bears take human wives. A similar overview of the horse cult appears. Horses, too, were likely sacrifi- cial animals or substituted for human sacrifice. Often, they were prizes sought by the hero and granted protection, longevity, fertility. A little chart shows the many trans- formations of the horse in narrative and ritual. The final section of the book talks about tale types. Haney points out that animal tales present a primitive, "animalistic" approach to life and are likely the most ancient of tales. In the section on wondertales, he talks about otherworldly journeys, initiation rites, and male/female differences. The sections on legends and tales of everyday life are disappointingly short, but then again, the Afanas'ev collection itself does not con- tain that many of these tales. Russian mythology, while it partakes of the same Indo-European heritage as West European traditions, is different enough to be unfamiliar to Western readers. Russian ritual practices, too, whether those connected with marriage and other life cycle rites or those connected with calendary festivals, are not widely known. The brief descrip- tions Haney provides of all these help introduce the North American student to the Russian world. In the volume under review, Haney presents both the Russian theoreti- cal approach to tales and the background needed to understand the tales themselves. Bailey and Ivanova's collection of Russian epics provides both background for and translations of texts. The introduction is brief, but thorough, touching on all the major issues typically associated with epic scholarship. Bailey discusses collectors and col- , lecting, the wonderful stories of how the gentry discovered living performances of a genre they thought long dead. Since epics reflect historical events, there is a section on the historical epochs, events, and figures presented in the poems. Performers, the folk artists who maintained the genre, creating it anew with each singing, are dis- cussed; and Bailey also includes a section on language and poetics, his forte. Epics were found only in a few Russian areas, as the authors note in their overview of the major interpretations of Russian epic verse. As for the texts themselves. Bailey and Ivanova have opted for the standard group- ing of texts. First are the songs associated with the most distant past, stories of heroes like Sviatogor, who are so large and heavy they can walk on mountains only, or Volkh Vseslavevich, an almost shamanic shape-shifter. The Kievan cycle comes next, with several texts each about Ilia Muromets, Dobrynia, and Aliosha Popvich and single texts about heroes such as Mikhailo Potyk, Diuk Stepanovich, Churila Plenkovich, and others. These are heroes of less grand proportions though they, too, battle dragons and other monsters. Solovei the Nightingale Robber, for example, is no ordinary foe because his whistle is so piercing that it can kill. There are stories of love and fidelity and stories of love gone wrong. Almost invariably, if heroes tempt fate or display ar- rogance, they meet an untimely end. The Novgorod cycle is represented by songs about Vasilii Buslaev and Sadko, a merchant who journeys to the bottom of the sea.