Russian fairy tale
An exhaustive analysis of the stories, describing the stages of their plots and the classification of the characters based on their functions, was developed later, in the first half of the 20th century, by Vladimir Propp (1895-1970).
During the 18th Century Romanticism period, poets such as Alexander Pushkin and Pyotr Yershov began to define the Russian folk spirit with their stories.
Throughout the 1860s, despite the rise of Realism, fairy tales still remained a beloved source of literature which drew inspiration from writers such as Hans Christian Andersen.
[3] Fairy tales were thought to have a strong influence over children which is why Joseph Stalin decided to place restrictions upon the literature distributed under his rule.
The separation from written forms led Russians to develop techniques that were effective at creating dramatic and interesting stories.
Such techniques have developed into consistent elements now found in popular literary works; They distinguish the genre of Russian fairy tales.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish-American author and Nobel Prize winner, claims that, “You don't ask questions about a tale, and this is true for the folktales of all nations.
The Sleeping Beauty is still played in New York at the American Ballet Theatre and has roots to original Russian fairy tales from 1890.
[12] As a major proponent during Russian formalism,[15] Shklovsky was one of the first scholars to criticize the failing methods of literary analysis and report on a syntagmatic approach to folktales.
"[12] Syntagmatic analysis, championed by Vladimir Propp, is the approach in which the elements of the fairy tale are analyzed in the order that they appear in the story.
Wanting to overcome what he thought was arbitrary and subjective analysis of folklore by motif,[16] Propp published his book Morphology of the Folktale in 1928.
In his 1926 paper titled "The Morphological Study of Folklore", Nikiforov states that "Only the functions of the character, which constitute his dramatic role in the folk tale, are invariable.
[19] One source claims that Nikiforov's work was "not developed into a systematic analysis of syntagmatics" and failed to "keep apart structural principles and atomistic concepts".
This lack in collections of folklore was due to the control that the Church Slavonic had on printed literature in Russia, which allowed for only religious texts to be spread.
[24] Pushkin gained his love for Russian fairy tales from his childhood nurse, Ariana Rodionovna, who told him stories from her village when he was young.
[25] His stories served importance to Russians past his death in 1837, especially during times political turmoil during the start of the 20th century, in which, “Pushkin’s verses gave children the Russian language in its most perfect magnificence, a language which they may never hear or speak again, but which will remain with them as an eternal treasure.”[26] The value of his fairy tales was established a hundred years after Pushkin’s death when the Soviet Union declared him a national poet.
