Course Description
Interpretations of Russian fairy tales within the frameworks of four different approaches: structuralism, psychoanalysis, socio- politics, and feminism. Analyses of Russian fairy tales’ structure and images. Their significance for Russian literature, art, music, and cinema.
Athena Title
The Russian Fairy Tales
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course introduces students to a wide selection of Russian fairy tales and teaches them to read these texts not just as entertaining stories, but also as cultural artifacts that contain symbolic imagery and structural and thematic formulas that can be viewed as keys to understanding Russian cultural heritage. Students will learn to analyze fairy tales within the frameworks of structuralism, psychoanalysis, sociology, and feminism. The course will also demonstrate how Russian fairy tales inspired writers of the 19th and 20th centuries to create a distinctive tradition of Russian literary tales. Students will have an opportunity to compare original Russian fairy tales and their renditions in cinema in order to appreciate their continuing importance for the contemporary Russian culture.
Topical Outline
1. Introduction to the course a. Study of folklore, fairy tales as a separate genre of folkloric tradition b. Max Lüthi “Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales” 2. The Russian folk tradition: Dvoeverie a. Main elements and concepts in the pagan system of beliefs b. Introduction of Christianity 3. Supernatural beings and sorcery a. Spirits of the house, forest, field, and water b. Witches/wizards and magic acts c. Vampires 4. Animal tales a. Symbolic meanings of animals b. Cumulative structure c. Collective tales d. Foolish wolf/bear and cunning fox tales 5. Formalism/structural approaches a. Vladimir Propp “The Morphology of the Folktale”: functions and spheres b. Petr Bogatyrev and Roman Jakobson “Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity”: the notion of authorship c. Heroes: Ivan the Fool, Emelja the Simpleton, Prince Ivan, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Vasilisa the Wisest, Maria Morevna d. Villains: Baba Jaga, Koshchej the Deathless, Zmej Gorynych 6. Psychoanalytic approaches a. Carl Jung “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” b. Bruno Bettelheim “The Uses of Enchantment” (Freudian) c. Sheldon Cashdan “The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales” (Self Theory) d. Youngest child and two siblings tales e. Animal spouse tales 7. Feminist approaches a. Marina Warner “From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers” b. Marcia Lieberman “Some Day My Prince will Come: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale” c. Karen Rowe “Feminism and Fairy Tales” d. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar “The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination” e. Wicked stepmothers tales f. Bad wives tales g. Wise maidens tales 8. Socio-political approaches a. Jack Zipes “Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales” b. Marina Balina et als. (eds.) “Politicizing Magic: An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales” 9. Literary Fairy Tales a. Alexandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol (Romanticism) b. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (Satiric Realism) c. Valentin Kataev, Arkadij Gajdar, Pavel Bazhov (Socialist Realism) d. Daniil Kharms (The Absurd) e. Tatjana Tolstaja, Liudmila Petrushevskaja (Post Soviet tales)