Title of the article:

EAST SLAVIC TALES OF TRANSFORMATIONS: SEMIOTIC, NARRATIVE AND GENRE PARADOXES

Author(s):

Leonid G. Kayanidi

Information about the author/authors

Leonid G. Kayanidi — PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Department of  Literature and Journalism, Smolensk State University, Prgevalsky St., 4, 214000 Smolensk, Russia. E-mail: leonideas@bk.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2017

Volume

Vol. 46

Pages

Pp. 135-147

Received

June 19, 2017

Date of publication

December 15, 2017

Index UDK

398.2

Index BBK

82.3

Abstract

In the corpus of the East Slavic tales, the story of the transformation into a zoomorphic creature, usually into a cuckoo, stands apart. It is notable for semiotic, narrative and genre complexity and even paradoxicality. Its analysis allows us to see some areal features of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian fairy tale plots. Our analysis is based on the post-Propp structural methodology. A peculiarity of the semantics of the plots about transformations stems from the fact that they are based on a family-household collision. The main motive of the zooantropic transformation is the betrayal of family members (mother – by daughter, daughter – by father, wife – by husband). This family-household collision is complicated by the mythological element: the deceived hero-victim is a chthonic creature: a goblin, a serpent, a beetle. The plot of transformations is characterized by what can be called a structural “deformation”: the initial event of a fairy tale, kidnapping of a girl by a demonic creature into a chthonic world, is a “zero” shortage that creates conditions for the manifestation of a genuine antagonist, but not compensated by the final event, and the murder of zooantropic husband is the true shortage, which is compensated by turning into an animal. This final action eliminates the shortage in an asymmetric manner. It is not the murder of the pest or resurrection of the husband, but the transformation into creatures similar to the husband. This transformation is the mediation in the Lévi-Strauss sense. It is based on the logic of bricolage that is the indirect eliminating of the conflict. The place of the traditional domination of the hero over the pest is taken by the new opposition, which consists in the sphere of the animal and removes the original one — “cuckoo (life, widow) — serpent (death, murdered husband)”.

Keywords

fairy and household tale, transformation, plot, motive, structure, actants, narrative, binary opposition, bricolage, mythologism.

References

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