Russian Folktale by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp

Series in Fairy-Tale Studies General Editor Donald Haase, Wayne State University Advisory Editors Cristina Bacchilega, University of Hawai`i, Mānoa Stephen Benson, University of East Anglia Nancy L. Canepa, Dartmouth College Isabel Cardigos, University of Algarve Anne E. Duggan, Wayne State University Janet Langlois, Wayne State University Ulrich Marzolph, University of Gött ingen Carolina Fernández Rodríguez, University of Oviedo John Stephens, Macquarie University Maria Tatar, Harvard University Holly Tucker, Vanderbilt University Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu W5884.indb ii 8/7/12 10:18 AM THE RUSSIAN FOLKTALE BY VLADIMIR YAKOVLEVICH PROPP EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY SIBELAN FORRESTER FOREWORD BY JACK ZIPES Wayne State University Press Detroit W5884.indb iii 8/7/12 10:18 AM © 2012 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. English translation published by arrangement with the publishing house Labyrinth-MP. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 880-01 Propp, V. IA. (Vladimir IAkovlevich), 1895–1970, author. [880-02 Russkaia skazka. English. 2012] Th e Russian folktale by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp / edited and translated by Sibelan Forrester ; foreword by Jack Zipes. pages ; cm. — (Series in fairy-tale studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8143-3466-9 (paperback : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-8143-3721-9 (ebook) 1. Tales—Russia (Federation)—History and criticism. 2. Fairy tales—Classifi cation. 3. Folklore—Russia (Federation) I. Forrester, Sibelan E. S. (Sibelan Elizabeth S.), translator, editor. II. Zipes, Jack, 1937–, writer of added commentary. III. Title. IV. Series: Series in fairy-tale studies. GR203.17.P77713 2012 398.20947—dc23 2012004220 P ublished with the assistance of a fund established by Th elma Gray James of Wayne State University for the publication of folklore and English studies. W5884.indb iv 8/7/12 10:18 AM To N. B., the emperor—you know who you are. W5884.indb v 8/7/12 10:18 AM CONTENTS Foreword: Toward Understanding the Complete Vladimir Propp ix Jack Zipes Vladimir Propp and The Russian Folktale xiii Sibelan Forrester The Russian Folktale by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp Introduction: In Praise of the Folktale 1 1. The History of Collection 42 2. The History of Study of the Folktale 68 3. Wonder Tales 147 4. Novellistic Tales 225 5. Cumulative Tales 275 6. Animal Tales 283 7. The Life of the Folktale 300 Notes 317 Bibliography 343 Index of authors, creators, and tale-tellers 365 index of subjects and tales 375 W5884.indb vii 8/7/12 10:18 AM FOREWORD TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLETE VLADIMIR PROPP JACK ZIPES For many years now Vladimir Propp has been famous in the West mainly for his innovative study, Morphology of the Folktale (1928), fi rst published in English in 1958. His other major work, Th e Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale (1946), was partially translated into English in 1984 in Th eory and History of Folklore, a crude pastiche with sundry articles and a misleading introduction by Anatoly Liberman. It was suggested—and Liberman is not the only scholar to have done this—that Propp had yielded to communist pressure and abandoned his “genuine” commitment to true scholarship to become a Marxist ideologue when he published Historical Roots. Moreover, other Western scholars spread the same false rumors, arguing that Propp’s so-called formalist approach to folklore had been considered heretical in the Soviet Union, that Soviet folklorists were all obliged to follow a party line of orthodox historical materialism, and that Propp was largely ignored as a folklorist in the Soviet Union. Nothing could be further from the truth, and thanks to Sibelan Forrester’s scrupulous and meticulous translation of Th e W5884.indb ix 8/7/12 10:18 AM x foreword Russian Folktale, fi rst published posthumously in 1984, it is now possible to gain a fuller understanding of Propp’s development as a folklorist and the monumental contributions he made not only to Russian folklore but also to international folklore. Th e Russian Folktale is based on lectures that Propp delivered at Leningrad State University in the 1960s and represents the culmination of his thinking about the genesis, relevance, and structure of the Russian folktale. Unfortu- nately, Propp died in 1970 as he was preparing the lectures for book publication and could not put the fi nishing touches on them. However, thanks to notes by his former students, his lectures were eventually published as a book and complement Morphology of the Folktale and Th e Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale, so that we are now in a position to grasp Propp’s comprehensive approach to folktales and folklore in general. In his insightful essay, “V. Ya. Propp: Legend and Fact” (1986), Kirill Chistov, a former student of Propp’s, clarifi es certain “myths” that had been spread about Russian folklore and Propp’s status as a folklorist. First, Chistov explains that Propp was never regarded as a formalist in the Soviet Union but rather was considered a structuralist and an innovative folklorist. With- out any training in folklore, Propp used a structuralist approach to analyze the Russian wonder tale long before structuralism became fashionable in the West during the 1960s. Second, Chistov demonstrates that Propp’s Morphol- ogy of the Folktale was well received in the Soviet Union when it appeared in 1928 and was discussed and cited by many scholars until and aft er his death in 1970. In fact, Propp was never censored by the Soviet academy or govern- ment. Chistov demonstrates that Propp never abandoned his morphological approach to the folktale, nor was he forced to recant this approach. In con- trast, it took the West thirty years to fi nally recognize the value of Propp’s approach by bringing out the fi rst translation ofMorphology of the Folktale in 1958, when structuralism became popular in Western intellectual circles. Because many Soviet works in folklore had been published between 1930 and 1970, there had never been a linguistic barrier to publishing Morphology of the Folktale, only a lack of favorable conditions in the West. In short, Propp was ignored more in the West than he was in the Soviet Union. Once translated, however, Propp’s work had a great impact, even though it was pegged as some kind of formalist study. Consequently, Propp’s early works have never been fully understood in the West even when he endeavored to explain his att ach- ment to history, ethnography, and anthropology in articles and essays. W5884.indb x 8/7/12 10:18 AM foreword xi Th e Russian Folktale, I hope, will rectify some of the misleading impressions of Propp’s work that various critics have disseminated. As Forrester points out in her preface, Propp intended from the very beginning of his career to work within a historical-anthropological framework; he wanted to include a chapter on the historical origins of the wonder tale in Morphology of the Folk- tale and would have preferred to use the term wonder tale in the title rather than just folktale. In fact, he could have been even more exact by using the term Russian wonder tale, because his focus in Morphology of the Folktale was primarily on a hundred tales from the huge groundbreaking collection published by the great Russian folklorist Aleksandr Afanas′ev. Th e tales selected by Propp from this nineteenth-century collection all belong to the category of wonder tales (Aarne-Th ompson-Uther tale types 300–749) registered in Th e Types of International Folktales: A Classifi cation and Bibliography.1 In other words, there is a an “organic” development in Propp’s work on folktales from the 1920s to 1970 that is made eminently clear in Th e Russian Folktale. As Propp explains in Th e Russian Folktale, he believes that in order to establish what constitutes a genre, one has to demonstrate that there is a con- stant repetition of functions in a large body of tales. Th e purpose of his Mor- phology of the Folktale was to establish the thirty-one functions of the wonder tale and then later in Th e Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale to trace the origins of the functions and genre to rituals and customs of primitive peoples. Propp, never a Marxist or a communist, was evidently strongly infl uenced by the British anthropological school of Edward Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Sir James George Frazer, which he describes in the early chapters of Th e Rus- sian Folktale. Indeed, Th e Russian Folktale is a book that brings together his structuralist leanings with his profound interest in the evolutionary process that brought about the genre of the wonder tale. But it is also more than just a summary of his own work and interests, for it was intended to provide a general history about the rise of folklore studies in Russia and Europe. Although Propp was not a trained folklorist, he had a masterful command of the history of folklore by the time he began delivering the lectures that formed Th e Russian Folktale, and he provides important information about European folklore studies, debates, and collectors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, always with a focus on Russia. He then substantially re- views and supplements the theses that he had introduced in Morphology of the Folktale, distinguishing carefully between plots, motifs, and functions. His discussions of various tale types are illuminating.

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