Politicizing Magic
An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales
Published on 25. October 2005
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-0-8101-2031-0 (ISBN)
Description
We were born to make fairy tales come true. As one of Stalinism's more memorable slogans, this one suggests that the fairy tale figured in Soviet culture as far more than a category of children's literature. How much more becomes clear for the first time in Politicizing Magic, a compendium of folkloric, literary, and critical texts that demonstrate the degree to which ancient fairy-tale fantasies acquired political and historical meanings during the catastrophic twentieth century. Introducing Western readers to the most representative texts of Russian folkloric and literary tales, this book documents a rich exploration of this colorful genre through all periods of Soviet literary production (1920-1985) by authors with varied political and aesthetic allegiances. Here are traditional Russian folkloric tales and transformations of these tales that, adopting the didacticism of Soviet ideology, proved significant for the official discourse of Socialist Realism. Here, too, are narratives produced during the same era that use the fairy-tale paradigm as a deconstructive device aimed at the very underpinnings of the Soviet system. The editors' introductory essays acquaint readers with the fairy-tale paradigm and the permutations it underwent within the utopian dream of Soviet culture, deftly placing each - from traditional folklore to fairy tales of Socialist Realism, to real-life events recast as fairy tales for ironic effect - in its literary, historical, and political context.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
696 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-2031-0 (9780810120310)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Persons
Marina Balina is a professor of Russian at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her publications include Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style with Nancy Condee and Evgeny Dobrenko (Northwestern, 2000), Soviet Treasure: Culture, Literature, and Film with Evgeny Dobrenko and Jurii Murashov (Akademiheskii project, 2002), and Dictionary of Literary Biography: Russian Writers Since 1980 with Mark Lipovetsky (Gale Group, 2003). Helena Goscilo is UCIS Research Professor of Slavic at the University of Pittsburgh. She has authored and edited more than a dozen volumes, most recently Russian Culture in the 1990s, a special issue of Studies in 20th Century Literature (2000). She is also the editor of Shamara and Other Stories by Svetlana Vasilenko (Northwestern, 2000). Mark Lipovetsky is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of five books, including Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos (M. E. Sharpe, 1999) and Modern Russian Literature, 1950s-1990s with Naum Leiderman (Academia, 2003).
Content
Part I: Folkloric Fairy Tales; Introduction: Helena Goscilo; The Frog Princess; The Three Kingdoms; Baba Yaga; Vasilisa the Beautiful; Maria Morevaa; Tale of Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf; The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon; The Magic Mirror; The Magic Ring; Danila the Luckless; Ilya Muromets and the Dragon; The Maiden Tsar; Part II: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism; Introduction: Marina Balina; Tele of the Military Secret, Malchish Kibalchish and His Solemn Word; The Golden Key or The Adventures of Buratino (excerpts); The Flower of Seven Colors; The Old Genle Hottabych (excerpts); The Malachite Caskat; Part III: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism: Critique of Soviet Culture; Introduction: Mark Lipovetsky; Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups; The Dragon (excerpts); Tales of the Troika (excerpts); Before the Cock Crows (excerpts); That Same Munchausen (act I)