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Fairy-Tale Plots and Contemporary Heroes in Early Russian Prose Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Gary Cox
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Extract

Popular literature often appropriates the structural patterns of folklore. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts has observed that in Russian narrative literature prior to the 1760s it is difficult to draw a distinct line between folklore and formal literature. Discussions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian adventure tales, the first body of original prose fiction to enjoy widespread success in Russia, have traditionally noted use of folkloric motifs, usually citing isolated moments rather than basic, underlying plot structures as examples. In fact, however, the fairytale plot, as outlined by Vladimir Propp in The Morphology of the Fairy Tale, forms the skeleton of most Russian prose tales of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 85 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1980

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References

1. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, “Novellisticheskie siuzhety v fol'klore i russkoi literature XVIII veka,” in I. Z. Serman et al., eds., Russkaia literatura XVIII veka i ee mezhdunarodnye sviasi, vol. 10: Vosemmdtsatyi vek (Leningrad, 197S), p. 17.

2. See Propp, Vladimir, Morfologiia skazki, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1969 Google Scholar).

3. Ibid., p. 90.

4. V. D. Kuz'mina, “Povesf o Bove Koroleviche v russkoi rukopisnoi traditsii XVIIXIX vekov,” in Gudzii, N. K., ed., Starinnaia russkaia povesf (Moscow, 1941), pp. 83–134 Google Scholar. Kuz'mina notes that the work becomes a fairy tale in the popular tradition?* but includes a great deal of epic content (ibid., pp. 117-18). She quotes Pushkin to the effect that the plot is constructed “comme dans le conte russe” (see ibid., p. 94, quoted from Rukoiu Pushkina [Moscow, 1935], p. 486).

5. Frye, Northrop, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), p. 36 Google Scholar.

6. Kuz'mina, “Povest’ o Bove,” pp. 115-16; Blagoi, D. D., Istoriia russkoi literatury XVIII veka (Moscow, 1955), p. 34 Google Scholar; Baklanova, N. A., “Russkii chitatel’ XVIII veka,” in Issledovaniia i materialy po drevnerusskoi literature: Drevnerusskaia Hteratura i ee sviasi s novym vremenem, vol. 2, ed. Derzhavina, O. A. et al. (Moscow, 1967), pp. 162-63, 192–93 Google Scholar.

7. “Povest’ o Karpe Sutulove,” in Skripil', M. O., ed., Russkaia povest’ XVII veka (Leningrad, 1954), pp. 148–54 Google Scholar.

8. See Adrianova-Peretts, V. P., Russkaia demokraticheskaia satira XVII veka (Moscow, 1954 Google Scholar).

9. Alexander, Alex E., Bylina and Fairy Tale: The Origins of Russian Heroic Poetry (The Hague, 1973), p. 1973 Google Scholar.

10. Kuz'mina, “Povest’ o Bove,” pp. 117-18.

11. The vestigial donor sequences from the fairy-tale plot are sometimes retained, but the donor is often merged with some other figure (the sought-after princess, the father-inlaw, or even the villain), and the object given to the hero is usually not a magical agent but an ordinary object which the hero uses shrewdly to foil the villain.

12. Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 35–59 Google Scholar.

13. The heroic patterns of “Vasilii Koriotskii” run directly counter to the tradition of the “pathetic hero” of the seventeenth century, outlined by William E. Harkins with reference to “The Tale of Woe and Misfortune” and “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn.” Vasilii seems closer to the “plucky little man” of the seventeenth-century satires (see Harkins, William E., “The Pathetic Hero in Russian 17th Century Literature” American Slavic and East European Review, 14, no. 4 [December 1955]: 512–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar). But the structural patterns of “Woe and Misfortune,” “Savva Grudtsyn,” and “Vasilii Koriotskii” are similar (see below). In fact, the pathetic hero was a necessary stage on the way to the more extroverted hero of the eighteenth century. It is crucial for the reader to identify with Vasilii, but the reader can only stand in awe of the supermen who populate earlier Russian tales. By introducing the possibility of the hero's defeat and thus eliciting sympathy from the reader, the pathetic heroes of the seventeenth century prepared the way for the reader identification which was so crucial for the eighteenth-century popular tales.

14. Frye, Secular Scripture, pp. 129-57, 186.

15. Propp, Vladimir, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki (Leningrad, 1946), p. 41 Google Scholar.

16. Propp, Morfologiia skazki, pp. 19-60.

17. Skazanie pro khrabrago viteza pro Bovu Korolevicha, ed. B. I. Dunaev (Moscow, 1915).

18. Alex Alexander has noted the very same type of displacement in the bylina, where fairy-tale plot materials are combined with epic heroism (see Alexander, Bylina and Fairy Tale, p. 96). “Bova Korolevich,” however, follows the fairy-tale plot much more closely than do most byliny.

19. “Gistoriia o rossiiskora matrose Vasilii Koriotskom,” in Moiseeva, G. N., ed., Russkie povesti pervoi treti XVIII veka (Moscow, 1965), pp. 191–210 Google Scholar.

20. The first scenes in which Vasilii outwits the pirates may be viewed as preliminarycombat with the villain, for the combat that this hero engages in is always a battle of wits rather than of arms. The first such scene is more properly seen as another donor's test, however, since as a result of it Vasilii is made leader of the pirate band and given a set of keys which will function as a “magical” agent.

21. Point of view becomes an interesting problem here, for this admiral would be the hero of his own fairy tale. After all, he had left Florence in search of Iraklia after her abduction. But in Vasilii's story he is the antagonist.

22. See Piksanov, N. K., Starorusskaia povesf (Moscow, 1923), p. 72 Google Scholar; Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 44-50; Blagoi, Istoriia russkoi literatury, p. 37.

23. Jeffrey Brooks has described a remarkably similar group of plots in the “kopeck novels” of early twentieth-century Russia (see Brooks, Jeffrey, “The Kopeck Novels of Early Twentieth Century Russia” Journal of Popular Culture, 13, no. 1 [Summer 1979]: 85–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Brooks describes plot structures—involving separation, initiation (often on foreign soil), and return of the hero—that are so strikingly similar to those of the popular adventure tales of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that one wonders why he only traces their origins back as far as the lubochnaia literatura of the nineteenth century.

24. See V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, “Siuzhetnoe povestvovanie v zhitiinykh pamiatnikakh XI-XIII vekov,” in la. Lur'e, S., ed., Istoki russkoi belletristiki (Leningrad, 1970), pp. 67–107 Google Scholar.

25. “Devgenievo deianie,” in M. Speranskii, ed., Sbornik Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, vol. 99, part 7 (July 1922).

26. Povesf o Dmitrii Basarge i o syne ego borzomysle, ed. M. O. Skripil’ (Leningrad, 1969).

27. “Povest’ o kuptse,” in Skripil', Russkaia povesf XVII veka, pp. 126-35.

28. Skazanie o pokhozhdenii Eruslana Lazarevicha, ed. B. I. Dunaev (Moscow, 1917).

29. “Povest’ o gore i zlochastii,” in Skripil1, Russkaia povest’ XVII veka, pp. 103—15.

30. “Povest1 o Savve Grudtsyne,” in Skripil', Russkaia povest! XVII veka, pp. 385-99. I. P. Smirnov has noted the fairy-tale structure of this work, comparing it with Pushkin's Kapitanskaia dochka (see Smirnov, I. P., “Ot skazki k romanu,” in Istoriia zhanrov v russkoi literature X-XVII vekov, ed. Panchenko, A. M. et al., Trudy Otdela drevnei russkoi literatury Akademii nauk S.S.S.R., vol. 27 [Leningrad, 1972], pp. 284.Google Scholar).

31. “Povest1 o Frole Skobeeve,” in Skripil', Russkaia povesf XVII veka, pp. 467-76.

32. See “Gistoriia o nekoem shliakhetskom syne,” in Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 295- 313; “Gistoriia o khrabrom rossiiskom kavalere Aleksandre,” in ibid., pp. 211-94; and “Istoriia o rossiiskom kuptse Ioanne,” in Sipovskii, V. V., ed., Russkie povesti XVII-XVIII vekov (St. Petersburg, 1905), p. 4 Google Scholar. Moiseeva argues convincingly that the first of these tales was produced by the low-ranking nobility surrounding Peter's daughter Elizabeth, and that it must have been written between 1725 and 1727, since it argues for her accession to the throne (Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 150-59).

33. Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 117-18.

34. Ibid., pp. 184-86.

35. See Dukes, Paul, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility: A Study Based on the Materials of the Legislative Commission of 1767 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 218–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Acceptance of prose fiction was not extended to original Russian works until the 1830s, but it began much earlier with the importation of West European novels. 37. N. A. Baklanova maintains that the chivalric romance was the only prose genre acceptable to the upper classes and that Russian adventure tales like “Vasilii Koriotskii” were popular only among these middle groups (see Baklanova, “Russkii chitatel',” pp. 192— 93). One might object that the fact that upper-class readers scorned these tales does not necessarily indicate that they did not read them. This kind of ambivalence was certainly characteristic of the attitudes of the upper-class reading public toward prose fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Baklanova's conclusions are based primarily on owners’ inscriptions in their books. Yet it seems plausible that highbrow readers might inscribe their names only in those books that confirmed their social status. In fact, the highbrow reader may have been a fiction existing only in the minds of contemporary readers. In any case, whether or not the upper classes read or even produced such works, it is clear that the special features of the genre were developed in accordance with the tastes of the upwardly mobile, middle-class reading public.

38. This charge is difficult to understand. They could, after all, write, and this displayed a degree of education unusual for the period.

39. Čiževskij, Dmitrij, History of Russian Literature (The Hague, 1962), p. 1962 Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., p. 387.

41. See Marc Raeff, “Russia's Perception of Her Relationship with the West,” in Cherniavsky, Michael, ed., The Structure of Russian History (New York, 1970), pp. 261–66 Google Scholar.

42. Čiževskij, History, p. 392.