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Russian Folktales: A Reader | |||||
Focus Student Edition 2000 • 1-58510-014-5 • paper • 96 pages • 7 x 10 • $19.95 | About the Author | Contents | Foreword | | |||||
Russian text with introduction, notes, and vocabulary. This text features eight delightful Russian folktales, each introduced with pre-reading exercises and exercises for comprehension.
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Jason Merrill is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. He has taught all levels of Russian language and courses on Russian literature, culture, and cinema. He also teaches an introduction to the literature and cinema of Eastern Europe. He has published articles in the journals Russkaia literatura [St. Petersburg], Slavic and East European Journal, Elementa, and The Silver Age of Russian Culture. He has contributed articles to American Contributions to the Thirteenth International Congress of Slavists and Approaches to Teaching Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. He is the author of Russian Fairy Tales: A Student Reader. He currently serves as the Book Review Editor for Folklorica: The Journal of the Slavic and East European Folklore Association. | |||||
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This reader is intended for students who have studied Russian grammar and would like to read Russian folktales (скáзки) in the original Russian.[1] It is intended as a supplement to intermediate and upper-level language or culture courses. The main goal in selecting these particular tales was to introduce students to the best-known characters and plots of Russian folktales, all within the limited space of a reader. The folktales in this reader, which are arranged from shortest to longest, need not be read in order. The exercises, notes and glossary never assume knowledge of a previous folktale (although the introductory exercises are always a good starting point, regardless of which folktales you read). The back of the reader contains notes to each tale, in which difficult phrases too large for the glossary are translated and discussed. In order to keep the page free of distractions, there are no notes in the margins nor are there footnotes that refer the reader to the entries in the notes. The notes are organized by sub-section of the relevant folktale. The glossary covers all of the words in the folktales and the exercises. In all questions of word meaning and stress I have relied on Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language (Словáрь рýсского языкá; 20th edition, 1988) and Dal’s Interpretive Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (Толкóвый словáрь живóго великорýсского языкá). If there is no stress marked on a word, and that word begins with a vowel that also happens to be a capital letter, the stress falls on that first syllable. In addition to the folktales, the reader contains an introduction (in English) and a series of introductory exercises (in Russian). Both are designed to provide students with factual and linguistic background that will be helpful no matter which folktale one is reading. Before each folktale are pre-reading grammar exercises (упражнéния) and discussion questions (вопрóсы для обсуждéния) that introduce students to difficult grammar points that repeat in the folktale, and also give them an idea of what the plot of the story will be. Longer folktales are divided into sections, with comprehension questions after each section. Dividing the folktales this way will allow students to check their comprehension as they read, and will make each section a self-contained assignment. The folktales are followed by exercises and discussion questions that are intended to help students check their overall comprehension and build on what they have learned. Students will quickly discover that folktales are replete with examples of colloquial and obsolete forms, which I have tried to indicate in the glossary. Hopefully reading folktales will not involve more trips to the glossary than reading other texts, because many of these words are formed from familiar roots (you might never have seen the verb вздýмать, but you should be able to guess at its meaning), and because there is a good amount of repetition within the plots of folktales. Only in a few extreme cases, in all of which the word in question appears only once, have obsolete forms been replaced with more contemporary variants (for example, ватажиться was replaced with общáться, вельми´ with óчень). [1] I will translate the Russian word “скáзка” as “folktale” in the English sections of this work, except in the few cases where I am referring specifically to what Vladimir Propp calls a “magical tale” (волшéбная скáзка). The latter term is translated as “fairy tale” in Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale and as “wondertale” in his Theory and History of Folklore. In these cases I will translate it as “fairy tale” (despite the fact that there are no fairies in Russian folktales), because this is the closest existing English term. Students interested in questions of terminology should read Louis Wagner’s Preface to Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (ix). | |||||
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Russian Folktales: A Reader 
