Fairy-Tale Plots and Contemporary Heroes in Early Russian Prose FictionAuthor(s): Gary CoxSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 85-96Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2497304 .

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GARY COX

Fairy-Tale Plots and Contemporary Heroes in Early Russian Prose Fiction

Popular literature often appropriates the structural patterns of folklore. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts has observed that in Russian narrative literature prior to the 1760s it is difficult to draw a distinct line between folklore and formal literature.' Discussions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian adventure tales, the first body of original prose fiction to enjoy widespread success in Russia, have tra- ditionally noted use of folkloric motifs, usually citing isolated moments rather than basic, underlying plot structures as examples. In fact, however, the fairy- tale plot, as outlined by Vladimir Propp in The Morphology of the Fairy Tale,2 forms the skeleton of most Russian prose tales of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Translated chivalric romances, which introduced West European customs and new attitudes toward women, provided a contrasting source for the content of adventure tales. With regard to plot structure, however, the chivalric romances are very close to the fairy tale. When Propp noted that "certain chivalric romances" display a structure very similar to that of the fairy tale,3 he was probably speaking of "The Tale of Bova Korolevich," a Russified chivalric romance which enjoyed tremendous popularity well into the twentieth century. The fairy-tale plot of the work may have contributed to its popularity in Russia, for it gradually became a part of Russian folklore, taking on more and more features of the Russian fairy tale and epic (bylina) . At the same time, the work was important as a work of formal literature, since a variant of the plot shared by "Bova Korolevich" and the Russian fairy tale became a standard pattern for works of prose fiction in Russia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The plot structure is most clearly exhibited in "The Story of the Russian Sailor Vasilii Koriotskii," an early eighteenth-century work, in which the indi- vidual details of ancient plot structure were replaced by materials from contem- porary life and more recent literary forms. In his Norton Lectures on the struc- ture of romance, Northrop Frye called this phenomenon "displacement."5 In

1. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, "Novellisticheskie siuzhety v fol'klore i russkoi literature XVIII veka," in I. Z. Serman et al., eds., Russkaia literatura XVIII veka i ee mezhdunarodnye sviazi, vol. 10: Vosemnadtsatyi vek (Leningrad, 1975), p. 17.

2. See Vladimir Propp, Morfologiia skazki, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1969). 3. Ibid., p. 90. 4. V. D. Kuz'mina, "Povest' o Bove Koroleviche v russkoi rukopisnoi traditsii XVII-

XIX vekov," in N. K. Gudzii, ed., Starinnaia russkaia povest' (Moscow, 1941), pp. 83-134. Kuz'mina notes that the work becomes a fairy tale in the popular tradition,, but includes a great deal of epic content (ibid., pp. 117-18). She quotes Pushkin to the effect that the plot is constructed "comme dans le conte russe" (see ibid., p. 94, quoted from Rukoiu Pushkina [Moscow, 1935], p. 486).

5. Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1976), p. 36.

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86 Slavic Review

order to understand the particular types of displacement used in this group of tales, it is necessary to examine the changes taking place among the reading public of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Russia. Although it was still tiny by West European or modern standards, the Russian reading public was growing, and it was precisely the newly literate groups-merchants and military men, scribes and low-ranking service nobility6-who were interested in the adventure tales. It was a motley group, unified by the fact that its members were upwardly mobile in a society where this was a fairly new phenomenon. Peter the Great's table of ranks institutionalized the process of upward mobility and thus strengthened the position of the tiny but growing middle class.

What did these readers expect from prose fiction? First, they wanted enter- tainment, and during the seventeenth century there was a marked increase in genres with little didactic purpose. The translated collections of humorous and often bawdy anecdotes and works like "The Tale of Karp Sutulov"7 are examples of this development. They also so-ught an expression of their diminished respect for the established institutions of society, and they found this in the genre which Soviet scholars refer to as "democratic satire," in which established literary, legal, and religious forms (petitions, liturgies, lawsuits) were parodied with satirical content.8 Yet on another, perhaps subliminal, level this group sought a literary culture hero, a figure who could represent their own hopes for success in an exaggerated, but not altogether unrealistic, way. The desire was ideally served by tales depicting a hero who matched the reader both in social position and ambition. The hero was typically a young merchant or the son of an impoverished nobleman. His colossal successes were then described according to a pattern which resembled the fairy-tale plot. The arena of his successes was a contemporary one, though, one in which the typical reader might hope to succeed.

The manner of the hero's success was determined by another folkloric form, for the heroism here is of the epic (bylina), rather than the fairy-tale (skazka), type. Alex Alexander has observed that the principal difference between fairy-tale prince and epic hero (bogatyr') is that the latter is "anthropo- centric," that is, his exploits are the results not of the aid of supernatural objects given him by donors but of his own hyperbolically stated strength.9 This type of heroism is certainly characteristic of Bova Korolevich, even in West European versions, and the more the manuscript and primitive printed (lubok) editions became influenced by the Russian oral epic, the more Bova came to resemble the Russian epic hero.10 Similarly, in the original seventeenth- and early eight- eenth-century tales, the hero's own positive qualities were the source of his

6. Kuz'mina, "Povest' o Bove," pp. 115-16; D. D. Blagoi, Istoriia russkoi literatury XVIII veka (Moscow, 1955), p. 34; N. A. Baklanova, "Russkii chitatel' XVIII veka," in Issledovaniia i materialy po drevneruisskoi literature: Drevnerutsskaia literatura i ee sviazi s novym vremeneini, vol. 2, ed. 0. A. Derzhavina et al. (Moscow, 1967), pp. 162-63, 192-93.

7. "Povest' o Karpe Sutulove," in M. 0. Skripil', ed., Rutsskaia povest' XVII veka (Leningrad, 1954), pp. 148-54.

8. See V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, Russkaia demilokraticheskaia satira XVII veka (Mos- cow, 1954).

9. Alex E. Alexander, Bylina and Fairy Tale: The Origins of Russian Heroic Poetry (The Hague, 1973), p. 56.

10. Kuz'mina, "Povest' o Bove," pp. 117-18.

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Fairy-Tale Plots 87

success, but intelligence replaced strength as the hero's most important charac- teristic. Rather than fighting their adversaries, the heroes typically outwitted them." The combination of genres in the tales was complex, then: epic heroism and a fairy-tale plot were placed in a contemporary context in order to express the aspirations of an important new segment of the reading public.

Ian Watt has noted that the development of the English novel in the eighteenth century owed some of its features to the growth of a newly literate, upwardly mobile, middle-class reading public. For example, he found that a significant part of the readership was composed of young serving girls for whom a heroine like Richardson's Pamela, hoping to break into the upper class but simultaneously struggling to preserve her chasity, was a genuine culture hero.12 The same phenomenon was taking place in Russian literature during the seven- teenth and early eighteenth centuries, but on a much reduced scale. Early prose fiction in Russia took its content from readers' contemporary experiences (or at least their fantasies), and this content was given form by the structures of ancient oral literature with which their past was saturated. The fact that these structures coincided with the plot structure of the most popular translated works from Western Europe, the chivalric romances, gave the ultimate sanction to the whole enterprise.

The combination of the traditional and the modern enabled contemporary readers to connect their hopes for the future with their memories of the past. It expressed their ambitions in terms of ancient mythical patterns, and indeed, there is a certain mythical quality to a tale like "Vasilii Koriotskii."13 Northrop Frye has stated that the mythical level of romance (which he called "secular scripture") is concerned with a search for identity.14 Similarly, according to Vladimir Propp, the fairy-tale plot may be connected with ancient initiation rites.15 It is significant that these tales became popular just as Russia was strug- gling to take its place as a member of the European community of nations, for these tales, particularly those written in the early eighteenth century, were

11. The vestigial donor sequences from the fairy-tale plot are sometimes retained, but the donor is often merged with some other figure (the sought-after princess, the father-in- law, or even the villain), and the object given to the hero is usually not a magical agent but an ordinary object which the hero uses shrewdly to foil the villain.

12. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 35-59. 13. The heroic patterns of "Vasilii Koriotskii" run directly counter to the tradition

of the "pathetic hero" of the seventeenth century, outlined by William E. Harkins with reference to "The Tale of Woe and Misfortune" and "The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn." Vasilii seems closer to the "plucky little man" of the seventeenth-century satires (see William E. Harkins, "The Pathetic Hero in Russian 17th Century Literature," American Slavic and East European Review, 14, no. 4 [December 1955]: 512-27). But the structural patterns of "Woe and Misfortune," "Savva Grudtsyn," and "Vasilii Koriotskii" are similar (see below). In fact, the pathetic hero was a necessary stage on the way to the more extroverted hero of the eighteenth century. It is crucial for the reader to identify with Vasilii, but the reader can only stand in awe of the supermen who populate earlier Russian tales. By introducing the possibility of the hero's defeat and thus eliciting sympathy from the reader, the pathetic heroes of the seventeenth century prepared the way for the reader identification which was so crucial for the eighteenth-century popular tales.

14. Frye, Secular Scripture, pp. 129-57, 186. 15. Vladimir Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki (Leningrad, 1946), p. 41.

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88 Slavic Review

preoccupied with national identity. They organized and expressed the reader's feelings about his own identity as a Russian and about Russia's identity as a part of Europe. They exhibited a desire to validate one's Russianness in the West European arena and a simultaneous but contrary impulse to shed one's Russian- ness and become European.

Before discussing the adventure tales themselves, it is helpful to review Propp's outline of the fairy-tale plot. It begins with the hero's departure from his parents' home as a result of the villain's crime or of some crucial insuf- ficiency. In the course of his travels, the hero meets a donor who gives him a magical agent upon successful completion of a test. Arriving in a foreign king- dom, the hero vanquishes the villain, thereby righting the wrong which caused him to leave home in the first place. The plot may end at this point with his return, marriage, and coronation, or it may be complicated by pursuit of the hero, the imposition of a difficult task, or even a new crime necessitating a second quest (Propp called the last type of complication a new "move" [khod] ).16

The plot of "Bova Korolevich"17 is a complex version of Propp's outline. It contains several moves which interrupt and frame each other to form a rather episodic structure. Except for a few rearrangements of minor functions, however, the fairy-tale plot is recognizable. Bova is driven from home and into slavery when his father is murdered by his mother's lover. He becomes a groom in a for- eign kingdom, and the ruler's daughter falls in love with him, but her hand is being forcibly sought by several neighboring kings. Bova defeats them all in battle and is offered her hand, but here a second move complicates the plot. Bova finds himself in an infidel kingdom where he is either to be put to death or converted to heathenism. He escapes just in time to return and rescue his intended bride from an unwanted marriage. The lovers make their way back to Bova's home- land where Bova exposes his father's killer and ascends the throne.

In "Bova Korolevich," the most interesting departures from the fairy-tale structure involve the testing of the hero and the subsequent donation of magical agents, standard elements of the fairy tale. In two of these the donation is con- fused with a romantic involvement, in one the connection between the test and the donation is lost, and in another the test is widely separated from the dona- tion. The agents involved are a damask sword (miech kladenets) and a disguise, and neither is really magical. Furthermore, Bova's performance is not noticeably altered by his possession of the sword. He does just as well without it. Actually, this is to be expected, because Bova is an epic hero whose successes are the result of his own extraordinary abilities rather than of any magical powers.18 The donor sequences are retained as obligatory conventions, even though the motivation for them has been lost as a result of the modernization of the hero.

16. Propp, Morfologija skazki, pp. 19-60. 17. Skazanie pro khrabrago viteza pro Bovu Korolevicha, ed. B. I. Dunaev (Moscow,

1915). 18. Alex Alexander has noted the very same type of displacement in the bylina, where

fairy-tale plot materials are combined with epic heroism (see Alexander, Bylina and Fairy Tale, p. 96). "Bova Korolevich," however, follows the fairy-tale plot much more closely than do most byliny.

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Fairy-Tale Plots 89

"The Story of the Russian Sailor Vasilii Koriotskii"19 relates a much simpler version of the fairy-tale plot, but it modernizes that plot completely. Not only are Vasilii's exploits the result of his own abilities, but they are mercan- tile and intellectual, rather than military. He never engages a villain in combat, he prefers to outwit them. Realistic objects replace the traditional magical agents. And the magical land which is the location of the object of search is Western Europe, which represented for many contemporary Russians a fairy-tale kingdom more than an actual place.

The initial misfortune motivating Vasilii's departure from home is, not a crime but lack of money. This brings us immediately into the world of the con- temporary Russian and makes the hero a member of the group at which these tales were aimed. Vasilii joins the navy and goes to Holland where he is soon adopted by a wealthy merchant. The merchant functions as a donor and sends Vasilii on a few business trips which serve as tests. As a reward for his success he is given a large sum of money to visit his real father in Russia. The use of money in the magical agent function is perhaps the ultimate modernization of the fairy-tale plot in this text. On his way to Russia the hero is shipwrecked and washed ashore on an island ruled by pirates. Using his cash supply cleverly, he convinces the pirates that he is an experienced brigand and is finally chosen as their leader.20 He falls in love with Iraklia, a Florentine princess whom the pirates have abducted, and soon after this he again hoodwinks the pirates, which allows the two lovers to escape.

The second move begins as the pair arrives in Caesarea, where Vasilii quickly becomes Caesar's adopted brother. (Both the real and the adoptive fathers have been utterly forgotten by this time, and the first move is never really completed.) At this point a new villain arrives, the Florentine admiral who was betrothed to Iraklia before her abduction.21 The admiral carries Iraklia off and orders Vasilii killed, but Vasilii escapes and exposes the admiral as a fraud. The lovers are married, and Vasilii eventually become king of Florence.

As in "Bova Korolevich," the donor sequences are the sections in which interesting changes take place. In the chivalric romance they seemed to develop into romantic involvements, while here they are often associated with the adop- tive father motif, a standard element in these stories and perhaps the most sig- nificant variation on the standard fairy-tale plot.

Some scholars, N. K. Piksanov and A. Pypin for example, have noted that the latter sections of "Vasilii Koriotskii" rely heavily on a translated romance, "The Story of the Nobleman Doltorn," while others, such as G. N. Moiseeva and D. D. Blagoi, have minimized the connection, noting that the same motifs

19. "Gistoriia o rossiiskom matrose Vasilii Koriotskom," in G. N. Moiseeva, ed., Russkie povesti pervoi treti XVIII veka (Moscow, 1965), pp. 191-210.

20. The first scenes in which Vasilii outwits the pirates may be viewed as preliminary combat with the villain, for the combat that this hero engages in is always a battle of wits rather than of arms. The first such scene is more properly seen as another donor's test, however, since as a result of it Vasilii is made leader of the pirate band and given a set of keys which will function as a "magical" agent.

21. Point of view becomes an interesting problem here, for this admiral would be the hero of his own fairy tale. After all, he had left Florence in search of Iraklia after her abduction. But in Vasilii's story he is the antagonist.

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90 Slavic Review

could have been drawn from the fairy tale.22 The debate misses the point, how- ever. The themes are found in both translated romances and Russian folk tales, and they probably derive from common sources in world folklore. It was partially this extraordinary coincidence of themes from widely disparate sources which made the tales so significant for contemporary Russians. In a single text, the reader encountered themes from his preliterate past clothed in the form of the newest literary borrowings from Western Europe.

The typical reader of "Vasilii Koriotskii," like its hero, would have been a member of the struggling, upwardly mobile middle groups in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian society (service nobility, merchants, scribes, administrative personnel, soldiers). The tale represented a wish-fulfillment fan- tasy for that reader, for the hero's fabulous (skazochnye) successes were exag- gerated versions of the contemporary reader's own aspirations: travel in Western Europe, accumulation of great wealth, and, perhaps most important, acceptance as an equal by cultivated West Europeans.

It is helpful at this point to outline the variant of the fairy-tale plot found in "Vasilii Koriotskii." Certain elements, such as the donation of magical agents, had become almost vestigial by this time, while several new elements, such as the adoptive foreign father motif, had become standard. But the structure is still recognizable as a variant of the fairy-tale plot. The structure consists of the following basic elements:

(1) The hero leaves home, usually as a result of a lack of money, but some- times simply to seek adventure.

(2) He takes up residence with a prominent and wealthy foreigner who often adopts him. The adoptive father is sometimes introduced as a donor or a helper and sometimes as the father of the sought-after princess.

(3) The hero experiences phenomenal success. (This element may fit into Propp's plot outline as either test and donation of magical agent or as victory in combat.)

(4) He falls in love with a beautiful woman, often the daughter of his new father, but their marriage is prevented by real or imagined class differences.

(5) The lovers are separated. (This fits into Propp's scheme as a second move involving a new crime and a new quest, or it may be seen as a difficult task imposed upon the hero.)

(6) The hero experiences a series of adventures, in which he again outwits his enemies. (In terms of Propp's outline, this may be seen as victory in combat, pursuit and rescue, or resolution of a difficult task.)

(7) The lovers are reunited and married, and the hero receives great wealth and/or a kingdom.

Although a number of functions are interchangeable in this structure, it should be clear that this is a variant of Propp's fairy-tale plot.23

22. See N. K. Piksanov, Starorusskaia povest' (Moscow, 1923), p. 72; Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 44-50; Blagoi, Istoriia russkoi literatury, p. 37.

23. Jeffrey Brooks has described a remarkably similar group of plots in the "kopeck novels" of early twentieth-century Russia (see Jeffrey Brooks, "The Kopeck Novels of

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Fairy-Tale Plots 91

This plot is neither new to Russian tales of this period nor unique to them. It underlies both the Russian fairy tale and the European chivalric romance. It is well attested in popular literature of all periods throughout the world. Field- ing's Tom Jones is probably the most successful version. The popularity of the plot structure is probably attributable to the fact that it permits treatment of the maturation of the hero in a way that is both aesthetically and emotionally satis- fying. During the period in question, as Russia was "coming of age" in the European community, this plot structure gained so much in popularity in Russia that it became virtually standard for all prose tales. "Bova Korolevich" and "Vasilii Koriotskii" follow it very closely, and most original Russian prose tales approximate it to some degree. The use of a plot structure which seemed simul- taneously rooted in both Russian folklore and West European literature un- doubtedly contributed to the impact of the tales on the contemporary Russian reader.

These themes first appeared in Russian literature in translated Byzantine saints' lives of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.24 They are also found in the earliest translated Greek romances, particularly in "The Deeds of Devgenii," translated into Russian as early as the twelfth or thirteenth century.25 "The Tale of Dmitrii Basarga and His Son Quick-Wit," a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Russian version of a foreign work,26 attributes fabulous success in foreign lands to a young Russian merchant. The theme is also basic to "The Tale of the Mer- chant," an original seventeenth-century Russian work which adheres quite closely to the fairy-tale plot.27 In "The Tale of Eruslan Lazarevich," an early seven- teenth-century Russian version of a Turkish tale,28 the plot outlined above is ap- parent as the basic structure, despite a string of episodic adventures which does not fit into the framework.

An interesting variation on Propp's plot structure is the biblical tale of the prodigal son. Here the hero, like the fairy-tale prince, begins by leaving home, but his exploits in foreign lands end in failure, and he returns to a forgiving father. The ending gives the variation a mythical significance that opposes that found in traditional fairy-tale plots. It exhibits the medieval religious attitude toward the hero's maturation, dramatizing the failure of attempts to establish an identity apart from the parent. As the seventeenth-century Russian reader

Early Twentieth Century Russia," Jouirnal of Popular Culture, 13, no. 1 [Summer 1979]: 85-97). Brooks describes plot structures-involving separation, initiation (often on foreign soil), and return of the hero-that are so strikingly similar to those of the popular ad- venture tales of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that one wonders why he only traces their origins back as far as the lubochnaia literatura of the nineteenth century.

24. See V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, "Siuzhetnoe povestvovanie v zhitiinykh pamiatnikakh XI-XIII vekov," in Ia. S. Lur'e, ed., Istoki russkoi belletristiki (Leningrad, 1970), pp. 67-107.

25. "Devgenievo deianie," in M. Speranskii, ed., Sbornik Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, vol. 99, part 7 (July 1922).

26. Povest' o Dmitrii Basarge i o syne ego borzomysle, ed. M. 0. Skripil' (Leningrad, 1969).

27. "Povest' o kuptse," in Skripil', Russkaia povest' XVII veka, pp. 126-35. 28. Skazanie o pokhozhdenii Eruslana Lazarevicha, ed. B. I. Dunaev (Moscow, 1917).

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92 Slavic Review

moved away from old religious attitudes and toward identification with a modern secular hero, the literature exhibited an almost dialectical tension between these two plot structures. "The Tale of Woe and Misfortune" comes much closer to the plot model of the biblical parable.29 The hero's failures do not result from financial shortages or social barriers. They are poorly motivated, products of an ill-defined nemesis which stalks the hero throughout the tale. The attempt to establish an identity distinct from one's parents is seen as being inherently doomed to failure. Rather than returning to his parents, as we would expect from the biblical parallel, the hero finally enters a monastery, thereby demon- strating a return to the religious principles associated with his parents, without physically returning to them. This unites him with the secular heroes of later tales, such as "The Tale of the Brave Russian Cavalier Alexander" and "The Tale of the Petty Nobleman's Son," in which attempts to return home are disastrous.

Tension between the fairy-tale plot and the prodigal-son plot can also be perceived in "The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn,"30 a work that lies on the border- line between medieval and modern literature since the attitude toward the hero is more ambivalent. To be sure, Savva's exploits are the result of a pact with the devil, and as such they must be condemned throughout the text, and can be expiated at the end only by the hero's entry into a monastery, as in "The Tale of Woe and Misfortune." At the same time, however, the reader senses a certain enjoyment of his adventures which underlies and belies the official con- demnation. The fact that Savva's attentions are directed not toward the daughter of his adoptive father, but toward his wife, may reflect the influence of the translated collections of ribald anecdotes popular at the time. This detail greatly alters the implications of the liaison, but not the pattern. The most significant change is sociological: the fairy-tale plot is acted out within the realistic context of the contemporary Russian mercantile world, and this points to the growth of the mercantile reading public as well as to an interest in familiar heroes.

The modernization of the attitude toward the hero is complete in "The Tale of the Russian Nobleman Frol Skobeev,"31 in which there is no condemnation of the amatory adventures of the upwardly mobile, middle-class hero. The fairy- tale plot is implicit rather than obvious. The entire work concentrates on Frol's struggle for acceptance by his father-in-law, and his real family is never men- tioned. Using Shklovskii's famous distinction, this tale can be said to incorporate the fabula of the fairy tale, while the siuzhet is arranged somewhat differently.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, an important change was intro- duced into the traditional adventure tale: the destination of the hero's journey was always Western Europe, as in "Vasilii Koriotskii." This was clearly a response to actual developments in Russian society. The heroes of "The Tale of the Petty Nobleman's Son," "The Tale of the Brave Russian Cavalier Alexan-

29. "Povest' o gore i zlochastii," in Skripil', Russkaia povest' XVII veka, pp. 103-15. 30. "Povest' o Savve Grudtsyne," in Skripil', Russkaia povest' XVII veka, pp. 385-99.

I. P. Smirnov has noted the fairy-tale structure of this work, comparing it with Pushkin's Kapitanskaia dochka (see I. P. Smirnov, "Ot skazki k romanu," in Istoriia zhanrov v russkoi literature X-XVII vekov, ed. A. M. Panchenko et al., Trudy Otdela drevnei russkoi literatury Akademii nauk S.S.S.R., vol. 27 [Leningrad, 1972], pp. 284-320).

31. "Povest' o Frole Skobeeve," in Skripil', Russkaia povest' XVII veka, pp. 467-76.

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Fairy-Tale Plots 93

der," and "The Tale of the Russian Merchant Ioann"32 are all members of the lower nobility or merchant classes who seek their fortunes in Western Europe. Their successes are breathtaking: they are offered kingdoms and the hands of princesses (or at least wealthy and beautiful women) in marriage. Moreover, the three tales do not adhere to the structure of the fairy-tale plot as closely as does "Vasilii Koriotskii." In "Alexander," the adventures of the hero are loosely strung together, with only the hero's departure from his homeland conforming to the fairy-tale plot. This tale seems more closely related to "Peter of the Golden Keys," another popular translated romance.33 "The Petty Nobleman's Son" and "The Russian Merchant Ioann" follow the fairy-tale plot closely through the first five steps, but both tales truncate the plot structure after the hero returns to his homeland. The nobleman's son dies upon his return (as does the brave cavalier Alexander), while the merchant Ioann goes into business with his father and forgets his foreign sweetheart.

After the mid-eighteenth century, the fairy-tale plot lost its hold on the reading public. Although isolated themes from it still appeared, particularly in works by authors like Emin and Chulkov,34 the structure as a whole no longer dominated popular prose fiction. The reason for the change may be partly socio- logical. As class barriers resolidified during the reign of Catherine the Great,35 it became increasingly difficult to imagine the kind of spectacular rise in status in which these tales specialized. Adventure tales continued to be produced and read during the last half of the eighteenth century, but as prose fiction became acceptable to upper-class tastes, the manuscript tales were edged out in public esteem and popularity by more sophisticated translations from Europe.36

The ascendancy of the adventure tales continued for about a century and a half, roughly from the end of the Time of Troubles to the beginning of Catherine's reign, a period of increased social mobility, particularly after Peter the Great's reforms. Members of the emerging middle groups in society could almost realistically hope for the kind of stellar success the heroes of the stories enjoyed. Since the consumers of highbrow literature scorned prose fiction, at least officially,37 the genre was left to these middle groups. They filled it with

32. See "Gistoriia o nekoem shliakhetskom syne," in Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 295- 313; "Gistoriia o khrabrom rossiiskom kavalere Aleksandre," in ibid., pp. 211-94; and "Istoriia o rossiiskom kuptse Ioanne," in V. V. Sipovskii, ed., Russkie povesti XVII-XVIII vekov (St. Petersburg, 1905), p. 4. Moiseeva argues convincingly that the first of these tales was produced by the low-ranking nobility surrounding Peter's daughter Elizabeth, and that it must have been written between 1725 and 1727, since it argues for her accession to the throne (Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 150-59).

33. Moiseeva, Russkie povesti, pp. 117-18. 34. Ibid., pp. 184-86. 35. See Paul Dukes, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility: A Study Based

on the Materials of the Legislative Commission of 1767 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 218-51. 36. Acceptance of prose fiction was not extended to original Russian works until the

1830s, but it began much earlier with the importation of West European novels. 37. N. A. Baklanova maintains that the chivalric romance was the only prose genre

acceptable to the upper classes and that Russian adventure tales like "Vasilii Koriotskii" were popular only among these middle groups (see Baklanova, "Russkii chitatel'," pp. 192- 93). One might object that the fact that upper-class readers scorned these tales does not necessarily indicate that they did not read them. This kind of ambivalence was certainly characteristic of the attitudes of the upper-class reading public toward prose fiction in the

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94 Slavic Review

patterns from the oral literature they had known in the past, and used it to chronicle their hopes for the future. The upstart nature of this literature was underlined by Dmitri Chizhevsky, and his hostility toward the writers and read- ers of these tales is in itself an interesting cultural statement. Calling the authors "totally uneducated persons,"38 he characterized the readers as "literate soldiers, petty chancery officials, merchants and bourgeois, squires." He granted that:

they occasionally fell into the hands of . . . an educated person who cer- tainly-if only he knew a foreign language and possessed some taste-read them as one reads detective stories today.39

Chizhevsky did manage to say "one positive thing" about the authors of these tales:

they were certainly "the new men," upstarts who in these new times saw all doors open "to the higher sphere," open to themselves and their like, just as a 20th century servant-girl, under the influence of films, considers it conceivable that she may marry a millionaire, or at least become a film star. Only the servant girls write no film scripts, but the Russian upstarts (or those who merely aspired to such a status) wrote novels in the first half of the 18th century.40

Chizhevsky did not like this literature, but his analogy is right on the mark. Like the eighteenth-century English servant girl reading Pamela or the American schoolboy reading Horatio Alger novels during the Depression, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian readers of prose tales sought in them the vicarious fulfillment of their dreams of glory. And since these readers were emerging from the popular masses, what better vehicles for their fantasies than patterns from the oral literature which had dominated their literary past.

The most striking new feature of the variant of the fairy-tale plot found in these tales is the development of the adoptive father motif. The theme had been present earlier, usually associated with the character of the father of the sought- after princess. In these tales, it developed independently and became an obligatory element. All of the heroes leave home and become proteges of prominent older men in their new country or sphere of activity. If the filial nature of the relation- ship is not explicitly stated, it is always implied. Any interest in the man's daugh- ter is usually an outgrowth of the adoptive father relationship, rather than the

late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Baklanova's conclusions are based primarily on owners' inscriptions in their books. Yet it seems plausible that highbrow readers might inscribe their names only in those books that confirmed their social status. In fact, the highbrow reader may have been a fiction existing only in the minds of contemporary readers. In any case, whether or not the upper classes read or even produced such works, it is clear that the special features of the genre were developed in accordance with the tastes of the upwardly mobile, middle-class reading public.

38. This charge is difficult to understand. They could, after all, write, and this displayed a degree of education unusual for the period.

39. Dmitrij Cizevskij, History of Russian Literature (The Hague, 1962), p. 392. 40. Ibid., p. 387.

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Fairy-Tale Plots 95

reverse. In general, the seventeenth-century examples of this genre fit rather loosely into the adoptive father pattern, while the pattern is more clear-cut in the eighteenth-century tales, where the land of destination is always Western Europe.

While resisting the temptation to launch a full-scale Freudian interpretation of this element, it should be possible to determine some cultural and psychological explanations for the mass- appeal of this obligatory detail. A strong sense of national inferiority was characteristic of Russian dealings with the West in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.41 The sentiment is treated in two contra- dictory ways in the adventure tales. First the homegrown hero is made into a contemporary epic hero whose abilities are so exaggerated that in no time at all he has the entire Western world at his feet. The second reaction is the opposite -the hero casts off his Russianness, forgets his Russian parents, and in a sense changes his identity by becoming the son of a West European father. This dis- plays the full ambivalence toward the Russian tradition characteristic not only of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but of the nineteenth century as well, as exhibited by the Slavophile/Westernizer controversy. One's Russianness is the object of exaggerated pride and implicit self-hatred.

Chizhevsky took Soviet literary historians to task for finding a "national consciousness" in these stories:

one can hardly trace a national consciousness . . . in these works in which the only function of Russia seems to be that of a country one would like to leave in order to seek one's fortune elsewhere.42

And yet that is precisely what one does find: a painfully divided national con- sciousness which seeks to salve its wounded pride by unjustified boasting of the native tradition on the one hand and by an utter denial of that native tradi- tion on the other.

The attitude is further borne out by the treatment of the hero's return to his homeland. Bova Korolevich returns, but his father is dead. Eruslan Lazarevich is persuaded only with difficulty to return even to his wife and child; his father is completely forgotten. Savva Grudtsyn and the young hero of "The Tale of Woe and Misfortune" enter monasteries rather than return home. This is a reversal of the reader's expectations, since in other ways these tales rely heavily on the parable of the prodigal son. Frol Skobeev's real father is never even men- tioned, leading to the initial assumption that Frol has left home.

A more complex attitude is evident in the eighteenth-century tales. Vasilii Koriotskii seems to feel tension between his real and adoptive fathers in the early part of the story. He is traveling home to Russia for a visit when the storm washes him ashore on the pirates' island. After this, both author and hero appear to forget the real and adoptive fathers, and neither is mentioned again. Except for the title, the hero's father is never referred to in "The Tale of the Petty Nobleman's Son," but the theme of return to the homeland is included. The

41. See Marc Raeff, "Russia's Perception of Her Relationship with the West," in Michael Cherniavsky, ed., The Structure of Russian History (New York, 1970), pp. 261-66.

42. Cizevskij, History, p. 392.

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96 Slavic Review

hero does return, but the result is his death. Furthermore, the motivation for his death is unconvincing. He dies of overexcitement upon seeing the naked body of his former fiancee. It is as though the return to his homeland is in itself enough to cause his death. The same seems to be true of the brave Russian cavalier Alexander. Like Vasilii Koriotskii, Alexander sets out for Russia, but never completes his journey. A swimming accident, utterly unmotivated, causes his death along the way. The only hero in these tales to return to Russia, to be reunited with his real father, and to proceed to live "in well-being" in Russia is the merchant Ioann. This tale was the last written of those in question, and the truncation of the fairy-tale plot signals other important changes in the genre. It was also a product of the merchant environment, which produced the most conservative tales in this group ("The Tale of Woe and Misfortune," "Savva Grudtsyn," and "Ioann").

Russian prose tales of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then, are significant in a number of ways. They are an interesting combination of ancient literary form with contemporary content. Their structure is that of the old fairy tale. The heroism described is developed along the lines of the folk epic (bylina), while the hero himself and his environment are contemporary. The tales are sociologically interesting since they seem tailored to suit the literary tastes of the newly literate, upwardly mobile middle groups of seventeenth- and eight- eenth-century Russian society. The peculiar mixture of ancient form with modern content permitted the reader to make sense of his contemporary experi- ence in terms of the literary forms of his past, and they gave a quasi-mythical structure to his aspirations. Finally, they are interesting to the historian of ideas, since they exhibit a typical reaction to Russia's entry into the European com- munity of nations, boasting on the one hand of Russia's superiority, yet simul- taneously desiring to cast off Russian identity altogether and become European.

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