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READING LIST:
Aleksandr Afanas'ev, Russian Fairy Tales
Jack Haney, Introduction to the Russian Folktale
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment; On the Meaning of Fairytales
Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After
Jan Brunvand, Vanishing Hitchhiker
Jan Brunvand, Curses, Broiled Again
This course is essentially a study in prose oral narrative and its function. You will look at narrative that is admittedly fantastic: these are the "once upon a time" stories that characterize folktale. We will examine some traditional oral tales from Russia and Ukraine and look at the use of these tales in popular culture. When in comes to popular culture, you will look at both Slavic and American material and seek to do some comparisons. You will also look at stories that claim to be true: these are stories that are presented as events that actually befell a friend or an acquaintance of a friend. "True" stories, or legends, continue to be told and we will look at some contemporary narratives, both Russian and American, and seek to determine why these legends are alive and meaningful. Finally, you will examine narrative theory. Perhaps the biggest theoretical issue when it comes to folk narrative is the question: does this narrative reflect the historical past, the past of a specific culture? Or, is this narrative tied to an individual human past; are these stories that parallel the process of a person growing up, maturing from childhood to adulthood? We will look at issues of individual development and social relevance throughout the course.
This course has a web page that can be accessed off of my faculty page. Go to http://faculty.virginia.edu/kononenko and click on our course, SLFK 211. I will be posting my lecture notes on the course page. If all goes well and we have enough server space, I will put up my PowerPoint presentations also. Videos cannot be posted at this time. Many are unique Russian cartoons and popular films that are just not available anywhere except in lecture. Please be forewarned.
I will also use the web page to post assignments, notices, section policies, review sheets and the like. When the list of paper topics is ready, it will go on the course page.
Course Goals:
1) To understand the body of traditional narrative that characterizes a specific culture. You will look at Russian and Ukrainian tales and, through these tales, gain an understanding of society and culture in the heart of the former Soviet Union.
2) To develop the ability to approach folk and popular narrative in any culture critically; to be able to apply analytical techniques to American folk and popular narratives, including narratives produced for mass consumption such as cartoons, films, serial fiction.
3) To gain an understanding of theoretical approaches to folk and popular narrative. As part of this effort, I will ask you to undertake a collection project where you do your own fieldwork and collect oral legends that you will then analyze.
Course requirements:
Class participation, contributions to discussions in section &endash; 20 % of grade
A series of short written assignments, submitted electronically on e-folio &endash; 20 %
You will be graded on both your original submission and your response to your partner's work.
Collection project: 5-10 pages of discussion and analysis plus an appendix giving the
narratives collected with full fieldwork documentation. The length of the collected narratives varies too much for me to give a page limit here. I am assuming that the total length of the paper will be 10 and 20 pages &endash; 30 %
Paper due date: December 5
Midterm exam &endash; 10 %
Exam date: October 17
Final exam &endash; 20 %
Exam date: Friday, 13 December, 9AM
Second Writing Requirement: This course does not automatically satisfy the Second Writing Requirement, but you may use it for that purpose, if you wish. To satisfy the Second Writing Requirement, you must write a long research paper of at least 10 pages and submit it once in rough draft form (due Oct. 31) and once in final form (due Dec. 5). This paper will be IN ADDITION to the collection project; it will not be a substitute for the collection project or the short e-folio written assignments. Rather, the paper will substitute for the final exam and will be worth as much as the final exam, or 20 % of your course grade. I will post a list of suggested topics no later than the end of September.
SYLLABUS
Unit one: August 29, September 3 and 5
Lecture: What is folklore? The 5 criteria of folklore and the classification systems of folklore. Tales and legends within the classification systems. Categories of the Russian tale. I will go through the 5 criteria of folklore and give you examples. I will then go through the three areas of folklore. Tales and legends are part of verbal culture and I will give examples of various genres of verbal lore.
Section: There are very few narrative genres that meet all 5 criteria of folklore these days. Perhaps the only genre that does is the urban legend. However, there are many forms, usually called popular culture, which come very close to folklore in content and function.
You will discuss the 5 criteria of folklore. You will then apply the 5 criteria. If an item is true folklore, you will show how it fits the five criteria. If an item is a popular culture hybrid, you will discuss what makes it a hybrid by showing which of the 5 criteria apply.
Reading: Start the Afanas'ev collection of tales. You will be given a list of about 50 short tales that are required reading. The other tales are recommended and can be used for your papers and other work. You will also be responsible for the required tales on exams.
Unit two: September 10 and 12
Lecture: Folktales may be the one ubiquitous oral lore form. In other words, virtually every culture that we know about has tales and there are lots and lots of them. To deal with something as numerous as tales, scholars developed classification systems. With this in mind, I will talk about the study of tales and I will also talk about classification systems. I will discuss the categories (animal tale, magic tale, tale of everyday life) into which stories are grouped and I will give samples of Russian tales in the various categories.
Section:
Written work: you will find an item of true verbal folklore and show how the 5 criteria apply to it OR you will find a hybrid item and discuss what makes it a hybrid by showing which of the 5 criteria apply. Your written work is due in section. If we have managed to arrange e-folio for our class by then, you will submit your work electronically, by noon of your section date. Keep it short.
Discussion: You will discuss the tales you have been reading. You will try your hand at placing tales in categories and you will look for traits that are specifically Russian. Your other issue will be to discuss the extent to which there is a body of tales that every American knows. What might be included in this cultural fund of narrative? How well are these tales known? Do people know the entire plot? Certain characteristic details?
Reading: Finish Afanas'ev. Again, you will have a list of another 50 or so selected tales that are required reading.
Unit three: September 17 and 19
Lecture: The mythical and historical background of Russian tales. Basically, I will finish up the discussion of early collecting and scholarship and talk about Haney. I will supplement Haney with other Slavic material.
Section:
Written work: well, not written work, really, but a follow-up on what you did last week. Take your partner's written work from last week and critique. Do you agree with your partner's application of the 5 criteria? Why or why not &endash; meaning either give an additional reason or two to support what your partner did, or argue against your partner's work and support your position. Again, I am assuming e-folio submission. Keep it short.
Discussion: You will do something similar to what you did the preceding week, only using different tales. Since you have already looked for particularly Russian elements, things that seem strange if examined from a Western perspective, you will now seek to find patterns to have you have already observed and you will look for mythic elements. Essentially, you are paralleling your reading.
Reading: Read Haney.
Unit four: September 24 and 26
Lecture: The cultural background of Russian tales. Practices, rituals, and social roles reflected in tales. The cultural background of tales is a HUGE topic. I will pick up on some of the Haney issues. I am especially interested in what he says about initiation rites, male and female.
Section:
Written work: A short Haney-based assignment, to be submitted on e-folio, to make sure that you understand this material and to give you written practice in applying it. I will give you the specific topic a week before the assignment is due.
Discussion: Apply Haney to selected tales. If time permits, I would like you to look at both stories with totemic animals and stories of male and female initiation.
Reading: Read the first part of Bettelheim
Unit 5: October 1 and 3
Lecture: Tales and child development. The various categories of tales and the various stages of development. Theories about tales and development other than the one you will read. Bettelheim is a Freudian. I will give you a bit of background on Freudian theory and discuss theories of child development that are not based on Freud.
Section:
Written work: As before, read your partner's work and critique it. To what extent do you agree with what your partner has written about Haney? What do you like and why? Where do you disagree? Support your point of view. Again: e-folio submission and keep it short.
Discussion: You will start discussing Bettelheim's book and applying it to Russian folktales.
Reading: Read the rest of Bettelheim's book. Part II is especially fun to read. Here Bettelheim applies his theories and analyzes a number of tales from various stages of child and adolescent development.
Unit 6: October 10 and the following, week, October 15 and 17.
Lecture: finish up Bettelheim. I will cover the rest of the book and critique it. Bettelheim was attacked for advocating material with a violent content. He was, like most Freudians, criticized for an excessive emphasis on sex. I think Bettelheim was also ethnocentric, not realizing that what he said applied only to Western tales; it was universally applicable as he claimed.
Please remember that the midterm is October 17. Some more information is just below. On the day of the midterm, there will be no lecture.
Section:
Written work, due by noon, Friday, Oct. 11: A short, Bettelheim-based assignment to prepare you for this part of the midterm. As with Haney, I will give you the topic as the time approaches. We will not have time for partner feedback and so I am asking you to get your submission in by noon on Oct. 11 to give us some time to give you feedback.
Discussion: Review for Midterm. The midterm itself, just to remind you, is October 17. I am hoping to give it as a take-home and you will receive further instructions as the time approaches.
Unit 7: October 22, and 24
Lecture: I will give myself at least a week to go through some other theories of folktale. Bettelheim's approach is not the only psychoanalytical one. There are analyses of tale based on the work of C. G. Jung. These form a nice bridge between the focus on the individual (Bettelheim) and the focus on culture (Haney). There is also some very important structuralist work done by the Russian folklorist V. Propp. Propp's work, based on the tales in Afanas'ev, implies that there are certain structures that are basic to all human storytelling. These structures were isolated from Russian tales, but can be found in all sorts of popular narrative, such as cartoons, movies, serial fiction.
Section: I would like to give you a chance to go over the midterm and to discuss anything in Bettelheim that you missed. After that, it is time to look to popular culture. I will want you to identify folktale elements in popular culture and to critique how these elements are used. I am planning to have you look at a Russian tale-based cartoons and to discuss how the cartoon and the tale are related. What happens when oral material is presented cinematically?
Reading: Zipes
Unit 8: October 29 and 31
Lecture: I may well need to give myself some leeway as I will probably be running behind by this point. My goal, of course, is to talk about Zipes. I need to tell you about Zipes' other work and then we need to start looking at the issues that Zipes raises. He is looking at the sort of material that most of us are familiar with: not pure oral tales, but the tales that appear in written form, or in cartoons, or movies. What happens when an oral tale crosses over into popular culture? To what extent is it changed and manipulated? Commercial considerations are especially appropriate in the case of American material and attempts to instill a Soviet worldview are especially noticeable in Soviet cartoons.
Section:
Written work: Short assignment based on Zipes; it will be applying Zipes to folktale-based popular culture. As before, I will give you the specific assignment as the time approaches.
Discussion: I want to give you a chance to discuss what Zipes says about American culture in general, and Disney in particular, and I want you to watch more Russian cartoons.
Reading: Brunvand, Vanishing Hitchhiker.
Unit 9: November 5 and 7
Lecture: Popular culture based on folktales is really important to contemporary culture. So is an oral narrative form called the legend. We all tell these and there are news groups and web sites devoted to these, and books published about them and so forth. We will look at the genre characteristics of the legend. I will do a bit of classification work, as we did with tales at the beginning of the course. There are various true story types and I need to go through these for you. Then we start looking at early Brunvand and what he says about legends: how does one tell that something is lore rather than fact?
Section:
Written work: Response to your partner's Zipes analysis, structured and submitted as before.
Discussion: Basically two-fold: you will go over Brunvand's work and you will discuss urban legends that you know. At this point, all I want is for you to recount what you have heard and to provide variants to each other's versions of legends.
Reading: The Brunvand book with the more contemporary legends, namely Curses, Broiled Again. In addition to doing your reading, you will need to do some serious thinking about your collection project. You will be presenting your topics in section next week. Please note that you will be doing your collection project with a partner. I encourage you to give some thought to selecting a compatible partner.
Unit 10: November 12 and 14
Lecture: Once I finish the traits of legend and the relationship of legend to other true genres, I need to discuss the social relevance of legends. If many forms of oral narrative lore are not practiced in contemporary society, why do legends continue to exist? What sorts of topics are treated in legends? What functions do legends serve? What other forms of oral lore are still widely told? How are legends related to these?
Section:
Written work: Submit a short paragraph describing your collection project. My assumption is that you will collect urban legends from your peers and analyze. If you are dying to do another topic, now is the time to let me know. You must clear alternative topics with me by noon on Nov. 15.
Discussion: You will get to talk about the more contemporary legends in the newer of the Brunvand books. I also want you to do some analysis. Bruvnand does not do that much with the social issues behind urban legends. This will be your job.
You will also need to form your collection project pairs.
Reading: You are done. It is collection project time.
Unit 11: November 19 and 21
Lecture: Legends are as important and as widely told in Russia and Ukraine as they are here. I will need to give you some historical background. Then I get to tell you contemporary legends. After that, with your help, we look for the social issues and concerns that might be reflected in Russian and Ukrainian legends. I have a few Russian and Ukrainian legends in English translation (done by me). The rest I will present orally in lecture. This applies especially to the most recent legends.
Section: No regular section meetings. Rather, you will have appointments to discuss your collection projects. Each team will have a specific time at which you will need to meet with your TA or with me to present your plan for fieldwork and your preliminary data.
Collection project: I will be giving you guidelines for both the collecting phase and the write-up phase. There are certain ways that oral interviews need to be documented. There are certain standard formats for the presentation of oral data. I will give you these as the time approaches.
Unit 12: November 26, December 3 and 5
Lecture: I may need an hour or two to finish up. I will let you know. What I am aiming for is no lecture or section, but the second round of group meetings in connection with your work on your projects.
Section: As above. Teams will be meeting with either your TA or me to work on your projects. Remember, the final and polished version of your project is due by 5PM on Dec. 5.
December 13, Friday, 9AM &endash; final exam. I am hoping to make the final a take-home, due by noon of the exam date, or by the end of what would have been our exam period. This may not work out and you should keep our exam slot open.
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