Stylistic Features of Folk Tales Max L thi Outline

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Stylistic Features of Folk Tales

• Max Lüthi

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Outline

• Administrative Announcements
• Fantasia (Disney/Musorgskii)
• Sorcery and Witchcraft
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)

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Administrative Announcements

• Web site http//clover.slavic.pitt.edu/tales/
• Course Pack in bookstore
• Examination 1 review materials on web
• Make-up examination policy described in course
  course description
• Begin reviewing now for examination
• Office hours on web

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Fantasia

• Walt Disney Studios, 1940
• Leopold Stokowski (18821977), conductor
• Introduce children to classical music
• Modest Musorgskii, Night on Bald Mountain
• Franz Schubert, Ave Maria

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Sorcery

• types of sorcerers
• volkhv
• znakhar'/znakharka
• ved'ma (witch)
• magic objects
• charm (zagovor)
• prisushka/privorot
• otsushka/otvorot

• shrieking illness (klikushestvo)
• cuts and twists
• amulets (nauzy)
• sorcery and the devil
• sorcery and the unclean dead

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Baba Yaga (1)

• Ivan Bilibin

Aleksandr Benua
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Baba Yaga (2)

• Boris Zvorykin

Anonymous
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

• Wild Horses of Fire
• Sergei Paradjanov (19241990 script and
  director)
• 1964
• Mikhaylo Kotsiubinsky
• Hutsul (Carpathian Mountains)
• Second half of 19th century

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Trans-Carpathian Ukraine
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Max Lüthi

• b. 1909
• Professor of Folk Literature, University of
  Zürich
• Das europäische Volksmärchen Form und Wesen
  (1947)
• The European Folktale Form and Function (1981)

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Approaches to theStudy of Folklore

• Psychological (Bettelheim)
• Sociological (Warner)
• Feminist (Bottigheimer, Lieberman, Gilbert and
  Gubar, Rowe)
• Philological (Bottigheimer)
• Marxist (Zipes)
• Structural (Propp)
• Stylistic (Lüthi)

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Fundamentals

• Questions
• What makes a folk tale a folk tale?
• What do all folk tales have in common?
• How may folk tales vary?
• Typological Issues
• Style
• Structure
• Motifs (types of characters, types of plot)
• Pure form

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Lüthi in a Nutshell

• One-Dimensionality
• Depthlessness
• Abstract Style

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One-DimensionalityThe Supernatural

• In most texts, the supernatural (other world) is
  perceived as bewildering, fearsome, disorienting,
  etc.
• In folk tales, the supernatural is unremarkable
• Talking animals and inanimate objects
• Witches, swan maidens, etc.
• Magic helpers
• Magic objects
• In folk tales, otherness is conveyed by
  geography (forests, kingdoms, etc.)

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Depthlessness

• Magic objects are used once for one purpose and
  then forgotten
• Alienation from injury and violence
• No emotional growth of characters
• Little process of aging
• No stable relationships

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Abstract Style

• Only the essential is mentioned
• Naming, rather than description
• People and objects are described as simple
  substances
• Simple sequences of events
• Simple tasks
• Magic objects are perfectly suited to specific
  tasks
• Everything happens at just the right time
• Formulaic numbering