Current Issue of Student Literary Journal Voyages Devoted to Fairy Tales
Current Issue of Student Literary
Journal Voyages Devoted to Fairy Tales
by Alisa Giardinelli
11/15/10
Voyages, published semi-annually, is a reviewed students' literary journal that features poetry, prose, literary translations, literary criticism, and cultural and philosophical essays in both a second language and English. The current volume, devoted to fairy tales, grew out of work for last semester's "Russian Fairy Tales" course.
Asked to create their own fairy tales, students were required to include literary elements characteristic of the genre and of Russian fairy tales specifically, but not necessarily Russian cultural details. As a result, says Assistant Professor of Russian Brian Johnson, the class produced highly varied and individualized tales.
"Some closely reflected their Russian models while others were decidedly 'non-Russian' and were grounded in the modern-day world," he says. "Yet all of the students' tales were readily identifiable as belonging to the fairy tale genre through the use of the conventions such as magic numbers, formulaic lines, epithets, repetitive elements and images, as well as the basic task/resolution plot line."
Why submit work to Voyages? "This can be the first opportunity for our students to publish their creative work, which has already happened for a number of our authors," says editor Marina Rojavin, visiting assistant professor of Russian. "This also can be viewed as an opportunity to distinguish themselves from others, to get noticed and respected by their peers."
The submission deadline for the next volume is Nov. 15. Below, students from the fairy tales class share some of their stories.
