The Russian Folktale by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp by Sibelan Forrester

Author:Sibelan Forrester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2012-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

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NOVELLISTIC TALES

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF NOVELLISTIC TALES

I will move on now to another major type of folktales: everyday, realistic, or novellistic tales. They are completely different in character from the wonder tale. Why do they have three names, and which of the three is best? Terminology has great significance in any branch of scholarship. It should be as precise as possible. But here we encounter a great difficulty. All three names are possible, but no one of them possesses the precision of a scientific term, and each of them may be applied only conditionally and with limitations.

Folktales could be called realistic because the characters in them are not fantastic creatures from another world but real people. But despite that, as we will see, these tales are far from what we would call realism. They can be called novellistic because they are entertaining, interesting short narratives. But they are still not novellas but real folktales. Finally, they could be called everyday tales, because they give the everyday life of peasants before the Great Reforms a fairly broad depiction, although their goal was never to describe everyday life.

These tales differ so sharply from wonder tales that we could ask whether the two forms of folktales might be two different genres of folk narrative art.

If we saw a certain quality of dual levels in the wonder tale, the presence of two worlds, here there is only one. It is our own world, the one we live in. True, describing everyday life was never the goal of these tales. For example, they give no description at all of the setting where the action takes place. The setting is not described; it is only thought of or imagined or given as a kind of background against which the action develops, and it is dashed off with sketchy strokes. But although such tales offer no direct descriptions, everyday life makes up not only their background but also the material, the arsenal that the everyday tale makes use of for artistic goals. For this reason, the everyday tale has the most intimate connection with reality. It is impossible to evaluate the condition of the prerevolutionary Russian village according to the material of wonder tales, but everyday tales do offer this possibility. The characters always belong to a definite social category. The hero of everyday tales is already not a prince, not the youngest of three sons. He is a young lad, a villager, a soldier, a worker, a peasant. His antagonist is a nobleman, a landowner, a priest, a judge, a rich peasant, a magnate. Therefore these tales often have a character marked by class. They give a vivid reflection of the class antagonism of the old village.

These tales may serve as a means to study the peasant worldview and the peasant philosophy of life. Just like wonder tales, they are thoroughly optimistic. The hero always triumphs over his opponents. But the character of the struggle here is different, as is the morality of these tales. In the wonder tale good always triumphs.

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