As readers and listeners, film viewers, and perhaps children of parents who told us bedtime stories, we may consider fairy tales somehow “natural,” simple, comforting in their familiarity. Like any kind of folklore, however, traditional tales and their literary adaptations become vastly more satisfying if we approach them with tools that reveal the richness and complexity of their contents and functions. Acquiring those tools, plus the background knowledge needed to use them critically, will be our business in this course.

Why are fairy tales so pleasing? What do we think we already know about them? What do they offer to modern artists and adaptors? What can we learn from them, and what can the ways we read them teach us about ourselves?

Required texts, in Bookstore:

• Aleksandr N. Afanas’ev, Russian Fairy Tales
• Linda Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief
• Occasional handouts (keep these once we've used them)

On reserve in McCabe:

• (Aleksandr Afanasev, Russian Fairy Tales -- in case you forgot your copy)
• Aleksandr Afanasyev, Russian Secret Tales: Bawdy Folktales of Old Russia
• James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, trans., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics
• Marina Balina, Helena Goscilo and Mark Lipovetsky, eds., Politicizing Magic: An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales
• Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ed., Russian Traditional Culture
• Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, Laura Sells, eds., From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender and Culture
• Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
• James H. Billington,, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture
• Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm
• Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales
• Nancy L. Canepa, ed., Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France
• Sheldon Cashdan, The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives
• Barbara Evans Clements et al., eds., Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation
• Jane T. Costlow, Stephanie Sandler and Judith Vowles, eds., Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture
• Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynne Viola, eds., Russian Peasant Women
• Rose L. Glickman, Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880-1914
• Nikolai Gogol', The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
• Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art
• Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture
• (Linda Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief -- in case you forget your copy)
• Ayesha Kagal and Natasha Perova, eds., Present Imperfect: Stories by Russian Women
• Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature
• Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era
• Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History
• Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
• Dale Pesmen, Russia and Soul: An Exploration
• Carolyn Pouncy, ed. and trans., The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible
• Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale
• Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia
• Vasily Shukshin, Roubles in Words, Kopeks in Figures and Other Stories
• Peter Steiner, ed., The Prague School: Selected Writings, 1929-1946
• Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
• Tatyana Tolstaya, On the Golden Porch
• Tatyana Tolstaya, Sleepwalker in a Fog
• Marina Tsvetaeva, The Ratcatcher, trans. Angela Livingstone
• Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
• Christine Worobec, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period
• Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia
• Serge Zenkovsky, ed. and trans, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales
• Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi
• Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales
• Jack Zipes, ed., Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England
• Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale
• Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion

Assignments:

• Write your own fairy tale (at least 2 pages), due February 6. (See several great examples from the Spring 2004 class.)
• Write two engaging short answer or essay questions for the midterm exam, due February 22.
• A written take-home midterm test, due March 3.
• An oral or online presentation of one fairy tale or literary adaptation, chosen after consultation with instructor; hand in outline oof your presentation or URL to online materials -- to be scheduled.
• An oral presentation of one theorist or scholar of folklore or Russian culture (consult with instructor as you choose from reserve list or elsewhere) -- an admiring, neutral or critical presentation. Hand in outline of your presentation or give me the URL -- to be scheduled.
• A ten-page analytical paper applying a theory (or theories) to one or two fairy tales and discussing your results, due March 28.
• A thoughtful written examination of one of the works we have watched or read that adapts or draws on a Russian fairytale/tales -- 5 pages, due April 23.
• Final take-home examination, due on paper at the end of final examination period (May 17).

The grade break-down:

Acknowledgments of ideas and materials: David J Birnbaum (University of Pittsburgh), Helena Goscilo (University of Pittsburgh), Konstantin K Loginov (Russian Academy of Sciences, Karelian Affiliate), Irina A Razumova (Petrozavodsk State Pedagogical University, Russia), the late Felix J. Oinas (Indiana University)

WEEK TWO | WEEK THREE | WEEK FOUR | WEEK FIVE | WEEK SIX | WEEK SEVEN | WEEK EIGHT | WEEK NINE | WEEK TEN | WEEK ELEVEN | WEEK TWELVE | WEEK THIRTEEN | WEEK FOURTEEN | FINAL EXAM

The primary sources for our work are the folk tales in Afanas'ev’s volume. I won't assign them all individually, but expect you to have read the whole book (to p. 656) by the end of the fourth week of class.

January 21
Introduction to syllabus and topic; "the Folk" in Russia [Lecture notes]

• For Jan 23, read Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief, ix-xii, 3-18, 51-63, 169-77

January 23
Russian paganism; deities and festivals; terminology Lecture Notes

• For Jan 25 -- Ivanits 64-82, 178-89; Afanasev, "The Foolish German," 600; Pushkin, "Rusalka" -- handout (translation by Genia Gurarie)

January 25
Domestic and nature spirits; genres of Russian folklore; Folklore as an academic discipline [Lecture Notes]

• For January 28 -- Ivanits 190-205; Ong, Orality and Literacy (on reserve or on Blackboard), 139-55; Afanasev, "Ivan the Peasant’s Son and the Thumb-Sized Man," 262-68

January 28
The style of folk tales [Lecture Notes]

• For Jan 30 -- Ivanits 19-50, 127-68; Ong, 5-30

January 30
Saints and devils; folk versus fairy tales [Lecture Notes]

• For February 1 -- Ivanits 83-124; Worobec, Possessed (on reserve), 3-19; Semyonova Tian-Shanskaya, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (on reserve), 1-21; Afanasev, "The White Duck," 342-345

February 1
Sorcery and healing; shrieking [Lecture Notes]

• For February 4 -- review Ivanits on saints and devils; continue reading in Afanas'ev. You can view the PowerPoint slides for the talk in advance; if you wish to print them out but don't know how, here are instructions.

Guest Lecture on reading Russian icons: Professor David Birnbaum, University of Pittsburgh

• For February 6 -- Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, 22-49; Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, 3-19, 102-11

February 6
Psychoanalytic approaches to fairy tales: Freudian (Bettelheim), Jungian (Maria-Luise von Franz), Self Theory (Sheldon Cashdan) [Lecture Notes]
Original fairy tale due (at least 2 pages, double-spaced)

• For February 8 -- Semyonova Tian-Shanskaya, 50-61; Afanas'ev, "Salt," 40-44; "The Three Kingdoms," 49-53; "Ivanushko, the Little Fool," 62-66; "The Princess Who Wanted to Solve Riddles," 115-17; "The Dead Body," 118-119; "The Wicked Sisters," 356-60; "The Golden-Bristled Pig, ...," 533-541; "Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Grey Wolf," 612-24

February 8
"Youngest Child" tales; "Ivan Durak" ("Ivan the Fool") or "Ivanushka Durachok" ("Little Ivan the Little Fool") [Lecture Notes]

• For February 11 -- Bogatyrev and Jakobson, "Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity," in Steiner, ed., The Prague School, 32-46

February 11
Mussorgski, "Night on Bald Mountain"; Film clip: Disney, Fantasia (1940); the authorship of folklore [Lecture Notes]

• For February 13 -- Semyonova Tian-Shanskaya, 139-56; Bettelheim, 78-83, 90-96; Afanas'ev, "Misery," 20-24; "The Armless Maiden," 294-99; "The Magic Swan Geese," 349-51; "Two Ivans, Soldier’s Sons," 463-75; "Shemiaka the Judge," 625-27

February 13
Typologies of tales; "Two Sibling" tales [Lecture Notes]

• For February 15 -- Semyonova Tian-Shanskaya, 62-94; Bettelheim, 282-91, 295-310; Zipes, "On the Use and Abuse of Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: ...," in Breaking the Magic Spell, 179-205

February 15
"Animal Bride" and "Animal Groom" tales; Cocteau, La Belle et la Bête (1946); Disney, Beauty and the Beast (1991); Adamson/Jenson, Shrek (2001) [ Lecture notes]

• For February 18 -- Semyonova Tian-Shanskaya, 95-115; online, Aksakov, " The Little Scarlet Flower;" Afanas'ev, "The Frog Princess," 119-123; "The Snotty Goat," 200-02

February 18
More on "Animal Bride" and "Animal Groom" tales; shamanism [Lecture Notes]

• For February 20 -- Bottigheimer, "Silenced Women in the Grimms' Tales," in Fairy Tales and Society, 115-31; Lieberman, "Some Day My Prince Will Come," in Zipes, Don't Bet on the Prince, 185-200

February 20
Feminism and fairytale scholarship [Lecture Notes]

• For February 22 -- "Peter and Fevronia of Murom," Zenkovsky, 236-247; Afanas'ev, "The Wondrous Wonder, the Marvelous Marvel," 13-14; "The Princess Who Wanted to Solve Riddles," 115-17 (review); "The Mayoress," 141; "The Wise Little Girl," 252-55

February 22
More on feminist approaches; "Bad Wife" tales; "Wise Maiden" tales; riddles [Lecture Notes]

• For February 25 -- Afanasev, "The Maiden-Tsar," 229-34; "The Merchant’s Daughter and the Maidservant," 327-31; "The Merchant’s Daughter and the Slanderer," 415-18; "Maria Morevna," 553-62; "The Feather of Finist, the Bright Falcon," 580-88

February 25
Strong heroines (or not)
Two questions for midterm exam due

• For February 27 -- Seifert, "Marvelous Realities: ...," in Canepa, Out of the Woods, 131-151; Afanasev, "The Bad Wife," 56-57; "The Wise Maiden and the Seven Robbers," 134-40; "The Taming of the Shrew," 161-62; "The Indiscreet Wife," 226-67; "Husband and Wife," 369-370; "The Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise," 427-37; "The Goldfish," 528-32

February 27
More on feminist approaches to fairy tales [Lecture Notes]

• For February 29 -- browse critically in Barbara G. Walker, A Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, McCabe reference section, BL458 .W34 1983

February 29
Comparative mythology; review of psychoanalytic textual analysis [Lecture Notes]

• For March 3 -- Cashdan, "Envy," 85-105; Afanas'ev, "Jack Frost," 366-69; "The Golden Slipper," 44-46

March 3
Cinderella tales; Self Theory looks at Envy; Zolushka (music and film clip) [Lecture Notes]

• For March 5 -- Warner, "Wicked Stepmothers," in From the Beast to the Blonde, 218-40

March 5
Wicked stepmothers; film clip from Disney, Cinderella (1950) Lecture Notes]

• For March 7 -- Bettelheim, 66-73; Afanas'ev, "Burenushka, the Little Red Cow," 146-50; "The Maiden Tsar," 229-34 (review); "Daughter and Stepdaughter," 278-79; "The Grumbling Old Woman," 340-41

March 7
Wicked stepmothers [Lecture Notes]

• For March 17 -- Afanas'ev, "Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth," 76-79; "Baba Yaga," 194-95; "Koshchey the Deathless," 485-93

March 17
Classic Villains: Baba Yaga and Koshchey the Deathless [Lecture Notes]

• For March 19 -- Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 3-24, 149-55; Afanas'ev, "The Magic Swan Geese," 349-51 (review)

March 19
Russian Formalism; Structuralist approaches to fairytales [Lecture Notes]

• For March 21 -- Propp, 25-65; Afanas'ev, "The Crystal Mountain," 482-84; "The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa," 494-97

March 21
Proppian analysis in practice [Lecture Notes]

• For March 24 -- Bottigheimer, "Eroticism in Tradition, Text and Image," in Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys, 156-66; Tatar, "Sex and Violence," in The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, 3-38; Afanasyev, Russian Secret Tales, "A Timorous Young Girl," 29-33; "No!" 42-44; "The Peasant and the Devil," 49-50; "A Crop of Prickles," 59-65; "The Enchanted Ring," 65-74 (also in Balina et al., Politicizing Magic, pp. 96-102); "The Excitable Lady," 77-79; "The Comb," 127-31; "The Greedy Pope," 148-50

March 24
"Censored tales" [Lecture notes]

• For March 26 -- Lotman and Uspenskii, "Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture...,” in Nakhimovsky and Nakhimovsky, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, 30-66

March 26
Folklore and linguistics; semiotics and verbal archeology [Lecture Notes]
Analytical paper due (10 pages)

• For March 28 -- "Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber," in Bailey and Ivanova, eds., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics, 28-36; "Sadko" -- handout; Afanasev, "Ivanushka the Simpleton," 142-145; "Foma Berennikov," 284-87; "Ilya Muromets and the Dragon," 569-75

March 28
Epics and byliny; bogatyrs; varieties of folk humor [Lecture Notes]-->

• For March 31 -- Bettelheim, pp. 199-215; on-line, Pushkin, "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights," www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/pushkin/seven.html or russian-crafts.com/tales/dead_pr.html; Afanas'ev, "The Magic Mirror," clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/MagicMirror.pdf

March 31
Snow White Tales; Disney, clip from Snow White (1937) [Lecture Notes]

• For April 2 -- von Franz, "Taboos," handout; Afanas'ev, "Maria Morevna," 553-62; "Vasilisa the Beautiful," 439-47 (review); "The Maiden Tsar," 229-34 (review)

April 2
Jungian interpretations of evil; favorite villains; more on Snow White tales [Lecture Notes]

For April 4 -- Bettelheim, 225-36; Afanas'ev, "Prince Ivan and Princess Martha," 79-86; "The Enchanted Princess," 600-11

April 4 Sleeping Beauty tales; Sleeping Beauty (ballet) [Lecture Notes]-->

• For April 7 -- Ivanits, 5-12 (review); Ostrovskii, "The Snow Maiden," clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/snow_maiden.html

April 7 Literary fairy tales; Ostrovskii, "The Snow Maiden" [Lecture Notes]

• For April 9 -- Gogol', "Viy" (available in several editions, including on reserve); Afanas'ev, "Ivan the Cow's Son," 234-49; "The Sorceress," 567-68; "The Vampire," 593-98; Ivanits, "The Colonel and the Witch," 194-95

April 9
Sorcery and magic; literary horror tales [Lecture Notes]-->

For April 11 -- Pushkin, "The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son, the Glorious and Mighty Knight Prince Guidon Saltanovich, and of the Fair Swan-Princess," in verse at http://home.freeuk.com/russica4/books/salt/saltan.html or in prose at http://russian-crafts.com/tales/saltan.html

April 11
Fairy tales in Verse; Pushkin and his nanny (the Superfluous Man vis-à-vis the Folk?) [Lecture Notes

• For April 14 -- Pushkin, “The Golden Cockerel,” online at clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/golden_cockerel.html

April 14 More on the Russian literary fairy tale; censorship and Aesopian language [Lecture Notes]

• For April 16 -- Tatar, "Fact and Fantasy: The Art of Reading Fairy Tales," in The Hard Facts..., 39-57; Zipes, "Who’s Afraid of the Brothers Grimm? ...," in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, 45-70; Miller, Folklore for Stalin, 3-24, 95-109
  (start reading Tsvetaeva, The Ratcatcher [on reserve and on Blackboard])

April 16
Folk and fairy tales to amuse or improve children; other distortions [Lecture Notes]

For April 18 -- finish reading Tsvetaeva, The Ratcatcher

April 18
Tsvetaeva, The Ratcatcher [Lecture Notes]-->

• For April 21 -- Zipes, "Breaking the Disney Spell," in Bell et al., From Mouse to Mermaid, 21-42; Gaidar, "The Tale of the Military Secret" (also in Balina et. al., Politicizing Magic, pp. 123-30); Shukshin, "Before the Cock Crows Thrice," in Roubles and Kopeks, on reserve, pp. 107-63 and also in Politicizing Magic, pp. 345-80

April 21
Marxist criticism; "vulgar" Marxist criticism [Lecture Notes]

• For April 23 -- Cashdan, “Objects that Love,” 107-27

April 23 Self Theory looks at Magical Objects; Review psychological approaches to fairy tales [Lecture Notes]

• For April 25 -- Evgeny Zamyatin, excerpts from "Fairy-Tales for Grown-Up Children," in Politicizing Magic, pp. 251-66; Stanislaw Lem, "The Third Sally, or The Dragons of Probability," in The Cyberiad, pp. 85-102, on Blackboard

April 25
Zamyatin and Lem: Fairy-Tales and Science Fiction as social critique
[Lecture Notes]

Five-page examination paper due

• For April 28 -- Tatyana Tolstaya, "Date with a Bird," in On the Golden Porch, 116-30; "The Poet and the Muse," in Sleepwalker in a Fog, 117-31; Afanas'ev, "The Feather of Finist, the Bright Falcon," pp. 580-88 (review)

April 28
Tatyana Tolstaya; Mythical birds
[Lecture Notes]

• For April 30 -- Nina Sadur, "The Cute Little Redhead" -- handout; "The Witch’s Tears," in Kagal and Perova, Present Imperfect, 125-40; see online, Birnbaum and Sarsenov, "Who is the Cute Little Redhead?" at clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/sadur_redhead_2003-11-19.pdf

April 30
Nina Sadur [Lecture Notes]

• For May 1 -- Skim syllabus and notes, prepare questions for end-of-semester review

May 1
Discussion, review; any remaining oral presentations
Hand out final exam

Final take-home exam due to me (on paper!) outside Kohlberg 340 by the end of exam period (May 15).

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