Historical roots of the fairy tale. Read online "the historical roots of a fairy tale"

Vladimir Propp is a famous scientist, researcher of Russian folk tales. He is the author of unique works on philology. Modern researchers consider him the founder of text theory.

Parents of the philologist

Vladimir Propp is a native Petersburger, he was born in April 1895. His real name is Herman Voldemar. His father was a wealthy peasant from the Volga region, a native of the Volgograd region. By education he was a philologist, a specialist in Russian and German literature. Graduated from Petrograd University.

Propp's father taught German to students at St. Petersburg higher educational institutions. When the First World War began, he took a direct part in it, working as an orderly and a brother of mercy.

Childhood and youth

After the October Revolution, the family moved temporarily to live on a farm. However, Vladimir Propp visited his parents only a few times. In 1919, his father died after a long illness. Vladimir came to the funeral, and then stayed for a while to work on the land in the farm itself. Not finding himself in peasant labor, he got a job as a school teacher in the village of Goly Karamysh, which was located 70 kilometers from the farm. Now this is the city of Krasnoarmeysk in the Saratov region. But soon Vladimir Propp returned to Leningrad.

In 1929, the Propp family was dispossessed. All property, the main owner of which at that time was his mother, Anna Fridrikhovna, was transferred as an ultimatum to the collective farm named after Stalin.

Teaching work

In 1932, Propp went to work at Leningrad University, after 5 years he became an associate professor, and in 1938 a professor. At this time he was working at the department of Romance-Germanic philology, folklore and Russian literature. From 1963 to 1964 he worked as head of the department. He also taught at the Faculty of History for about three years; his lectures were a success at the Department of Ethnography and Anthropology.

Morphology of a fairy tale

Vladimir Propp entered Russian philology as the author of a literary work. "Morphology of a Fairy Tale" was published in 1928. In it, the author examines in detail the structure of a magical work. This is perhaps the most popular study of Russian folklore in the 20th century. In his work, Propp breaks down the tale into its component parts and explores the relationship of each of them to each other. Studying folk art, he notes the presence of constant and variable quantities in fairy tales; the former include the functions inherent in the main characters, as well as the sequence in which they are implemented.

What is Vladimir Propp trying to say in his work? "Morphology of a Fairy Tale" formulates several basic principles. First, the basic constituent parts are formed by permanent elements. They serve as functions for the actors. Secondly, the number of such functions in a fairy tale is strictly limited. Thirdly, they all develop in the same sequence. True, such a pattern is present only in folklore works, and modern works do not follow it. Fourthly, fairy tales are of the same type in their structure. Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp refers to variable quantities as the quantity and methods by which functions are realized. As well as the language style and attributes of the characters.

Functions of a fairy tale

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp argues that the functions of a fairy tale ultimately constitute a single composition, the core for the entire genre. Only the details of the plots differ. As a result of enormous work, Propp identifies 31 functions. All of them are present in Russian folk tales. Most of them are located in pairs, for example, a prohibition is always opposed by its violation, a struggle is always opposed to a victory, and after persecution there is always a happy salvation.

The number of characters in Russian fairy tales is also limited. There are always no more than 7 of them. Propp includes the main character, the saboteur (his antipode), the sender, the donor, the assistant to the main character, the princess and the false hero. Taking into account all these factors, in the end we get a classic work that has a name - a Russian fairy tale. Propp insists that they are all versions of a fairy tale.

Fairy tale

In 1946, another book by Propp, “Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale,” was published by the Leningrad publishing house. In it, he dwells in detail on the hypothesis expressed by the French ethnographer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Emile Nurri. According to it, in folk tales there are often references to the performance of a sacrament to which the main character undergoes, in other words, initiation. The very structure of most Russian folk tales has the same character.

Also, analyzing the “Historical roots of a fairy tale, Propp considers the meaning of the premises, looks for references to the social institutions of the past in the works, and finds a rethinking of many rituals. The Russian folklorist notes that the main task is to establish what the rituals described in the fairy tale refer to - to a specific stage of development of society, or they are not associated with a specific historical period.

Examples of initiations

The classic example Propp gives is totemic initiations. They were completely inaccessible to women, but at the same time, in Russian fairy tales such initiation occurs with Baba Yaga, an old witch, one of the main negative characters of folklore. Thus, this character fits into the hypothesis about the ritual genesis of Russian fairy tales. Baba Yaga in this case acts as an initiating hero.

Propp concludes that fairy tales do not have a specific historical or cultural period. Styles and cycles in folk art constantly collide and mix with each other. At the same time, only classical patterns of behavior that could be present in many historical eras are preserved.

Evidence that fairy tales originate from oral traditions, which are passed down by word of mouth during initiation rites, is that the motives and functions of the characters are identical in the cultures of completely different peoples, often living thousands of kilometers from each other.

In addition, Propp cites ethnographic data as evidence. He was also directly related to this science. He demonstrates how oral traditions, passed from father to son, over time took shape into the tales we know so well. Thus, based on these ideas, he comes to the conclusion about the unity of the origin of all fairy tales among all peoples of the world. A striking example of this conclusion is Russian folk fairy tales.

Another important work for understanding the significance of Propp in Russian philology is “Russian Agrarian Holidays.” In this monograph, the author examines most Slavic holidays, customs and beliefs, coming to the conclusion that almost all of them are agricultural in nature.

Heroic epic

In 1955, Propp published a monograph entitled “Russian This is a very interesting and original study, which, however, was not republished for a long time after 1958. The work became available to a wide range of readers only in the 2000s. This is one of the author’s largest works in terms of volume Moreover, critics note not only its scientific, but also moral significance. It was relevant at that time, and remains the same today.

"Russian heroic epic" is a comparison of the features of epics from different eras, a detailed analysis of epics. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that the basis of such works is the struggle for the spiritual ideals of the people themselves. A distinctive feature of epic works is their saturation with patriotic spirit and educational motives.

Authors from the people put the most important thing into epic works - morality, folk epic. It is a direct reflection of the moral consciousness of the society in which it was created. Propp insists that the basis of Russian epics is not foreign, but exclusively domestic stories and legends.

Another important aspect of the epic is its poetry. Thanks to her, the works are interesting and perceived by listeners and readers with any level of education. In a broad sense, for a people, epic is an integral part of its history. The epics personify the inner experiences of the people, their desire to live freely, independently and happily.

Propp's monograph allows you to get acquainted in detail with epic works, starting from ancient times. All unclear points are explained in detail here.

Major works

In addition to the above, among the main works of Vladimir Propp, literary scholars highlight the monograph “Russian Fairy Tale,” published only in 1984, a decade and a half after the author’s death.

It is also worth noting the work “Folklore and Reality”, published in the journal “Science” in 1989 and published in 1999 in the capital’s publishing house “Labyrinth”. In addition, the publication "Problems of comedy and laughter. Ritual laughter in folklore" was published. This work provides a detailed and thorough analysis of the tale of Nesmeyan with an unexpected literary interpretation.

At the end of life

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (1895-1970) is an outstanding philologist, Doctor of Science, who managed to do a lot during his life and is still considered the largest and most authoritative researcher of Russian fairy tales. His works and monographs are published in universities; literary scholars take them as a basis when creating their own studies and dissertations. Vladimir Propp lived all his life in Leningrad. He died in the city on the Neva on August 22, 1970 at the age of 75. After himself, he left many students and followers who still appreciate and remember his achievements. Among them: Cherednikova, Shakhnovich and Becker.

The so-called mythological school proceeded from the premise that the external similarity of two phenomena, their external analogy testifies to their historical connection. So, if the hero grows by leaps and bounds, then the hero’s rapid growth supposedly stems from the rapid growth of the sun rising on the horizon. Firstly, however, the sun does not increase for the eyes, but decreases, and secondly, an analogy is not the same as a historical connection.

One of the premises of the so-called Finnish school was the assumption that the forms that occur more often than others are also inherent in the original form of the plot. Not to mention the fact that the theory of plot archetypes itself requires proof, we will have occasion to repeatedly see that the most archaic forms are found very rarely, and that they are often supplanted by new ones that have become widespread.

...the first premise states that among fairy tales there is a special category of fairy tales, usually called fairy tales. These tales can be isolated from others and studied independently. The very fact of isolation may raise doubts... Although fairy tales form part of folklore, they do not represent a part that would be inseparable from this whole.

Studying the structure of fairy tales shows the close relationship of these tales with each other. The kinship is so close that it is impossible to accurately distinguish one plot from another. This leads to two further, very important premises. Firstly: not a single plot of a fairy tale can be studied without the other, and secondly: not a single motif of a fairy tale can be studied without its relationship to the whole.

It has long been noted that a fairy tale has some connection with the area of cults, with religion... But just as a fairy tale cannot be compared with any social system in general, it cannot be compared with religion in general, but must be compared with specific manifestations of this religion ... The fairy tale has preserved traces of many rituals and customs: many motifs receive their genetic explanation only through comparison with rituals... A fairy tale is not a chronicle. Between a fairy tale and a ritual there are various forms of relationships, various forms of connection...

The simplest case is the complete coincidence of ritual and custom with a fairy tale. This case is rare. So, in a fairy tale they bury bones, and in historical reality this is also how they did it. Or: the fairy tale says that the royal children are locked in a dungeon, kept in the dark, food is served to them so that no one can see it, and in historical reality this is also how it was done. Finding these parallels is extremely important for a folklorist... More often there is another relationship, another phenomenon, a phenomenon that can be called a rethinking of the ritual. Reinterpretation here will be understood as the replacement by a fairy tale of one element (or several elements) of a ritual that has become unnecessary or incomprehensible due to historical changes with another, more understandable one. Thus, rethinking is usually associated with deformation, with a change in form. Most often, the motivation changes, but other components of the ritual may also change.

The term “rethinking” is convenient in the sense that it indicates the process of change that has taken place; the fact of rethinking proves that some changes have occurred in the life of the people, and these changes entail a change in motive... We should consider the preservation of all forms of ritual with giving it in a fairy tale an opposite meaning or meaning, a reverse interpretation. We will call such cases conversion.

As a rule, if a connection is established between a ritual and a fairy tale, then the ritual serves as an explanation of the corresponding motif in the fairy tale. With a narrowly schematic approach, this should always be the case. In fact, sometimes it's just the opposite. It happens that, although a fairy tale goes back to a ritual, the ritual is completely unclear, and the fairy tale has preserved the past so completely, faithfully and well that a ritual or other phenomenon of the past only receives its real illumination through a fairy tale. In other words, there may be cases when a fairy tale from the phenomenon being explained, upon closer study, turns out to be an explanatory phenomenon; it can be a source for studying the ritual.

The variety of available interpretations and understandings of the concept of myth forces us to define this concept precisely. Myth here will be understood as a story about deities or divine beings in whose reality people believe. The point here is faith not as a psychological factor, but a historical one... A myth cannot be formally distinguished from a fairy tale. A fairy tale and a myth (especially the myths of pre-class peoples) can sometimes coincide so completely with each other that in ethnography and folklore studies such myths are often called fairy tales... Meanwhile, if you study not only texts, but also the social function of these texts, then most of them will have to be considered not fairy tales, but myths.

...Asia is the oldest cultural continent, a cauldron in which streams of peoples moved, mixed and displaced each other. In the space of this continent we have all stages of culture from the almost primitive Ainu to the Chinese who reached the highest cultural peaks... Therefore, in Asian materials we have a mixture that makes research extremely difficult... To a lesser extent this applies to Africa. Here, however, there are also peoples at a very low level of development, like the Bushmen, and pastoral peoples, like the Zulus, and agricultural peoples, peoples who already know blacksmithing. But still, mutual cultural influences are less strong here than in Asia. Unfortunately, African material is sometimes recorded no better than American material.

The ideas of the Egyptians are known to us through tombstone inscriptions, through the “Book of the Dead,” etc. We mostly know only the official religion, cultivated by the priests for political purposes and approved by the court or nobility. But the lower classes could have different ideas, different, so to speak, plots than the official cult, and we know very little about these popular ideas.

The dependence of ritual and myth on economic interests is clear. If, for example, they dance to make it rain, then it is clear that this is dictated by the desire to influence nature. Something else is unclear here: why they dance for these purposes (and sometimes with live snakes, and not do something else. We could understand more quickly if water was poured for these purposes (as is also often done). This would be an example of application simile magic, and nothing more. This example shows that the action is caused by economic interests not directly, but in the refraction of a certain thinking, which is ultimately determined by the same thing that determines the action itself. Both myth and ritual are a product of some thinking.

Primitive thinking does not know abstractions. It is manifested in actions, in forms of social organization, in folklore, in language. There are cases when a fairy tale motif is inexplicable by any of the above premises. So, for example, some motifs are based on a different understanding of space, time and multitude than the one to which we are accustomed. Hence the conclusion that forms of primitive thinking should also be involved to explain the genesis of a fairy tale.

But folklore is not limited to fairy tales. There is also a heroic epic related to it in plots and motifs, there is a wide area of all kinds of tales, legends, etc. There is the Mahabharata, there is the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Edda, epics, the Nibelungs, etc. All these formations are usually left aside. They themselves can be explained by a fairy tale, and often go back to it. It happens, however, that something else happens, it happens that the epic has conveyed to our days details and features that a fairy tale does not provide, that no other material provides.

From the very first words of the tale - “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state” the listener is immediately seized by a special mood, a mood of epic calm. But this mood is deceptive. Events of the greatest tension and passion will soon unfold before the listener. This calmness is only an artistic shell, contrasting with the internal passionate and tragic, and sometimes comic-realistic dynamics.

The elders somehow know that the children are in danger. The very air around them is filled with a thousand unknown dangers and troubles. A father or husband, leaving himself or letting his child go, accompanies this absence with prohibitions. The ban, of course, is violated, and this causes, sometimes with lightning-fast surprise, some terrible misfortune: naughty princesses who went out into the garden for a walk are carried away by snakes; naughty children who go to the pond are bewitched by a witch - and now they are already swimming like white ducks. With the disaster comes interest, events begin to develop.

Among the... prohibitions, we will be occupied for now by one: the ban on leaving the house... Here we could think about ordinary parental care for their children. Even now, when parents leave home, they forbid their children to go outside. However, this is not quite true. There's something else going on here. When the father persuades his daughter “not even to go out onto the porch,” “not to leave the high tower,” etc., then this is not a simple apprehension, but some deeper fear. This fear is so great that parents sometimes not only forbid their children to go out, but even lock them up. They also lock them in an unusual way. They put them in high towers, “in a pillar,” they imprison them in a dungeon, and this dungeon is carefully leveled with the ground.

Frazer, in The Golden Bough, showed the complex system of taboos that once surrounded kings or high priests and their children. Their every movement was regulated by a whole code, extremely difficult to comply with. One of the rules of this code was to never leave the palace. This rule was observed in Japan and China until the 19th century. In many places, the king is a mysterious creature, never seen by anyone.

...let us consider some other prohibitions surrounding the king, and we will choose the most characteristic ones, characteristic of all varieties of this custom. Among these prohibitions, Frazer points out the following: the king should not show his face to the sun, so he is in constant darkness. Further, it should not touch the ground. Therefore, his home is raised above the ground - he lives in a tower. No one should see his face, so he is completely alone, and he talks to his subjects or associates through a curtain. Eating is surrounded by a strict system of taboos. A number of products are generally prohibited. Food is served through a window.

I’m curious, where does the ban on sunlight come from?..

It must be said that Frazer makes no attempt to situate or explain his material historically. He begins his examples with the Japanese Mikado, then moves on to Africa and America, then to the Irish kings, and from there he jumps to Rome. But from his examples it is clear that this phenomenon is relatively late. In America, it was observed in ancient Mexico, in Africa - where small monarchies had already formed. In a word, this is a phenomenon of early statehood. The leader or king is credited with magical power over nature, over the sky, rain, people, livestock, and the well-being of the people depends on his well-being. Therefore, by carefully guarding the king, they magically protected the well-being of the entire people. “The king, the fetish of the Benings, revered by his subjects as a deity, should not have left his palace.” “King Loango is attached to his palace, which he is forbidden to leave.” “The kings of Ethiopia were idolized, but they were kept locked in their palaces,” etc. If such monarchs tried to leave, they were stoned.

The royal children are kept in complete darkness. “They built a prison for her.” “Only dad and mom didn’t tell (their two sons) to show any light for seven years.” “And the king ordered to build rooms in the ground so that she could live there, day and night, all with fire, and so that she would not see the male sex.” The prohibition of light here is completely clear. In Georgian and Mingrelian fairy tales, the princess is called mzeфunaqav. This term can have two meanings: “not seen by the sun” and “not seen by the sun.” The prohibition of sunlight is also present in the German fairy tale, but the light of the sun here is reinterpreted as the light of a candle. The girl here became the wife of a lion, she is happy with him, but she asks him to visit her parents with her. “But the lion said that it was too dangerous for him, because if a ray of light touched him there, he would turn into a dove and would have to fly with the pigeons for seven years.” He nevertheless leaves, but the girl “ordered to build a hall with such thick and strong walls that not a single ray could penetrate, and he had to sit in it.”

Closely related to this ban on light is the ban on seeing anyone. Prisoners should not see anyone, and no one should see their faces either... The same ideas that lead to the fear of the evil eye are at play here. Popadya was put in a dungeon. “Perhaps someone will put the evil eye on her” (357). The Vyatka fairy tale has preserved the consequences that can occur if you look at the prisoners. “She lived in the basement. Anyone who looks at the Muskov regiment (i.e., men), young people, will see that the people were very sick.”

...one more detail: the way the food is served. “They just put it there for her, and don’t go inside”... the royal children are given provisions for five years at once. This, of course, is a fantastic deformation... The Abkhaz fairy tale very well preserved two more prohibitions: the ban on touching the ground and the ban on ordinary food. The royal children are fed food that promotes their magical qualities: “They kept their sister in a high tower. They raised her so that her foot did not touch the ground or soft grass. They fed her only with the brains of animals” (Abkhazian fairy tales). In Russian fairy tales, the prohibition not to touch the ground is not directly stated, although it follows from the seat on the tower.

The connection between restrictions and “magical qualities” is interesting...

Thus, we see that the fairy tale has preserved all types of prohibitions that once surrounded the royal family: the prohibition of light, sight, food, contact with the earth, communication with people. The coincidence between the fairy tale and the historical past is so complete that we have the right to claim that the fairy tale here reflects historical reality.

If we compare the materials collected from Frazer with those materials provided by the fairy tale, we can see that Frazer talks about kings, leaders, and the fairy tale sometimes talks about royal children. But it must be said that in fairy tales sometimes the king himself and his children are in the dungeon...: “the king built himself a huge basement and hid in it and buried him there,” and secondly, in historical reality, prohibitions were mandatory not only for kings, but also for heirs. From Frazer we find: “The Indians of Granada in South America keep future leaders and their wives in captivity until the age of seven. The conditions of imprisonment were harsh: they were not allowed to see the sun - otherwise they would lose the right to the title of leader.”

The tale preserves another type of prohibition, which is not attested in this connection, but is attested in a somewhat different connection. This is a ban on cutting hair. Hair was considered the seat of the soul or magical power. Losing hair meant losing strength... The prohibition of cutting hair is not stated directly anywhere in the fairy tale. However, the long hair of the imprisoned princess is a frequently encountered feature. This hair gives the princess a special attractiveness. The ban on cutting hair is not mentioned in descriptions of the imprisonment of kings, royal children and priests, although it is quite possible. But the ban on cutting hair is known in a completely different connection, namely in the custom of isolating menstruating girls. It is well known that menstruating girls were imprisoned.

Often the deity or serpent does not kidnap the girl, but visits her in prison. This is how things happen in the myth of Danae, and this is how it sometimes happens in Russian fairy tales. Here a girl becomes pregnant from the wind... The seat in the tower clearly prepares for marriage, moreover, for marriage not with an ordinary being, but with a being of divine order, from whom a divine son is born, in the Russian fairy tale - Ivan the Wind, and in the Greek myth - Perseus. More often, however, it is not the hero's future mother who is imprisoned, but the hero's future wife. But in general, the analogy between custom and fairy tale is much weaker here than the analogy of the motive for the imprisonment of kings and royal children. In the fairy tale, both girls and boys, and brothers and sisters together, are subjected to exactly the same conclusion.

The imprisonment of girls is older than the imprisonment of kings. It is already present among the most primitive, most primitive peoples, for example among the Australians. The tale retains both types. These two forms flow from one another, layer on top of each other and assimilate with each other, and the isolation of the girls is preserved in paler forms and is more weathered. The isolation of the royal heirs is of later origin; a number of historically attested details have been preserved here.

The imprisonment of kings in historical reality was motivated by the fact that “a king or priest is endowed with supernatural powers or is an incarnation of a deity, and in accordance with this belief, the course of natural phenomena is assumed to be more or less under his control. He is held responsible for bad weather, bad harvests and other natural disasters.” This is what led to special care for him, led to protecting him from danger. Frazer accepts this fact, but does not try to explain why the influence of light or the eye or contact with the earth is fatal. The fairy tale has not preserved motivations of this nature for us. The life of the surrounding people in the fairy tale does not depend on the prisoners. Only in one case do we see that the violation of the ban “made the people very sick.” In the fairy tale, it is only about the personal safety of the prince or princess.

But the concern for preserving the king is itself based on a more ancient... idea that the air is filled with dangers, forces that can break out over a person at any moment... Nilsson already pointed to it: everything is filled with the unknown, inspiring fear. The taboo arises from the fear that contact will cause something like a short circuit... “For the Maya,” says Brinton, “the forests, air and darkness are filled with mysterious creatures who are always ready to harm or serve him, but usually to harm, so that the predominant number of these the creatures of his fantasy are malicious creatures.” It is safe to say that ethnographers like Brinton and Nilsson are mistaken in only one thing: the forces and spirits surrounding a person seem “unknown” only to ethnographers, and not to the peoples themselves - these know them well and imagine them very concretely and call their names. In a fairy tale, fear, it is true, is often undefined, but just as often it is defined and precise: they are afraid of creatures that can kidnap the royal children. This religious fear, in the refraction of the fairy tale, creates concern for the royal children and results in an artistic motivation for the misfortune that follows the violation of the ban. It is enough for the princess to leave her imprisonment, take a walk in the garden, breathe some fresh air, so that “out of nowhere” a snake appears and carries her away. In short, children are protected from kidnapping. This motivation appears quite early...

Of all the types of prohibitions with which they tried to protect themselves from demons who appear in fairy tales in the form of snakes, ravens, goats, devils, spirits, whirlwinds, koshchei, yagas, and kidnapping women, girls and children - of all these types of prohibitions the best in a fairy tale the ban on leaving the house is reflected. Other types of cathartics (fasting, darkness, prohibition of looking and touching, etc.) are reflected less clearly. But still, not everything is clear here. Thus, based on some indirect signs, one can judge that being underground or in the dark or on a tower contributed to the accumulation of magical powers not due to prohibitions, but simply as such...

...in ancient Peru they kept “solar maidens” locked up. People have never seen them. They were considered the wives of the sun, in fact serving as the wives of the deputy sun god, i.e. Inca.

The prohibition “not to leave the high chamber” is invariably violated. No locks, no constipations, no towers, no basements - nothing helps. Immediately after this comes trouble... Some kind of trouble is the main form of closure. Out of adversity and opposition a plot is created. The forms of this disaster are extremely diverse...

After imprisonment or imprisonment, kidnapping usually follows. To study this abduction, we will have to study the figure of the abductor. The main, main kidnapper of girls is snakes. But the snake appears twice in the tale. He appears with lightning speed, takes the girl away and disappears. The hero goes after him, meets him, and a fight takes place between them. The nature of the snake can only be clarified from an analysis of snake fighting. Only here can one get a clear picture of the snake and explain the abduction of the girls... While the beginning of the tale is varied, the middle and end are much more uniform and constant.

Another type of fairytale beginning does not contain disaster. The tale begins with the king announcing a national cry, promising the hand of his daughter to the one who jumps to her window on a flying horse. This is one type of difficult task. This task can only be explained in connection with the study of the magical assistant and the figure of the old king, and the assistant is usually obtained in the middle of the tale. Thus, here too, the middle of the tale will explain to us its beginning.

...is there some kind of unity hidden behind this diversity? The middle elements of the tale are stable. Kidnapped

Whether it is a princess, whether a stepdaughter is expelled, or whether a hero goes for rejuvenating apples - in all cases he ends up with the yaga. This uniformity of the middle elements gives rise to the assumption that the initial elements, with all their diversity, are united by some kind of uniformity.

...something bad happens. The course of action requires that the hero somehow learn about this misfortune. Indeed, this moment in the fairy tale appears in very diverse forms: here is the national cry of the king, and the story of the mother or random people we meet, etc. We will not dwell on this moment. How the hero finds out about the trouble is unimportant for us. It is enough to establish that he has learned about this misfortune and that he is setting off. At first glance, setting off does not contain anything interesting. “The shooter went on a journey,” “The son mounted a horse, went to distant kingdoms,” “The well-done Sagittarius mounted his heroic horse and rode to distant lands,” - this is the usual formula for this dispatch. Indeed, these words do not seem to contain anything problematic. However, it is not the words that are important, but the fact that the hero sets off on his journey is important. In other words, the composition of a fairy tale is based on the spatial movement of the hero. This composition is characteristic not only of fairy tales, but also of epics (Odyssey) and novels; This is how, for example, Don Quixote is built. A wide variety of adventures can await the hero along this path. Indeed, the adventures of Don Quixote are very diverse and numerous, just like the adventures of the heroes of other, earlier knightly semi-folklore novels (“Vigalois” and others). But unlike these literary or semi-folklore novels, a genuine folklore tale does not know such diversity. Adventures could be very diverse, but they are always the same, they are subject to some very strict pattern. This is the first observation.

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Historical roots of fairy tales

Introduction

Under fairy tales Propp V.Ya. understands those fairy tales whose structure he studied in “Morphology of Fairy Tales.”

Here we will study that genre of fairy tale that begins with the infliction of some damage or harm, or with the desire to have something and develops through the sending of grief from home, a meeting with the donor, giving him a magical gift. Often, having already returned home, the brothers throw him into the abyss. Subsequently, he arrives again, is tested through difficult tasks and becomes king and marries in his kingdom. This is a short schematic summary of the composition.

Among fairy tales there is a special category - magical. They form part of folklore. Studying the structure of fairy tales shows the close relationship of these tales with each other. For us, fairy tales are something whole; all their plots are interconnected and conditioned.

Fairy tale and image

The fairy tale has a connection with the area of cults and religion. Fantastic images were initially reflected only in the mysterious forces of nature, now acquiring social attributes and now becoming representatives of historical forces.

The fairy tale has preserved traces of many rituals and customs. For example, the fairy tale tells that a girl buries the bones of a cow in the garden and waters them with water. The simplest case is the complete coincidence of ritual and custom with a fairy tale.

Fairy tale and myth

Myth and fairy tale differ not in form, but in their social function.

A fairy tale and a myth (especially the MFA of pre-class peoples) can sometimes coincide so completely with each other that in ethnography and folklore studies such myths are often called fairy tales. The beginning

From the very first words of the tale - “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state”... the listener is immediately seized by a special mood, a mood of epic calm.

Isolation of the royal children in a fairy tale

The royal children are kept in complete darkness (“They built her a prison”). The prohibition of light here is completely clear. In Georgian and Mingrelian fairy tales, the princess is called mzeфunaqav. This term can have two meanings: “not seen by the sun” and “not seen by the sun.” Closely related to this ban on light is the ban on seeing anyone.

The girl's conclusion:

· Prohibition of cutting hair

· A girl's imprisonment is usually followed by her marriage

· The motif of imprisonment of girls and women was widely used in novelistic literature

Trouble and opposition

Out of adversity and opposition a plot is created. Any trouble is the main application form. The course of action requires that the hero somehow learn about this misfortune.

Space in a fairy tale plays a dual role. On the one hand, it is in a fairy tale. On the other hand, it seems to be completely absent. All development takes place at stops and they are designed in great detail.

Types of Yaga

Yaga is a very difficult character to analyze. Her image is made up of a number of details. These details, put together from different fairy tales, sometimes do not correspond to each other, do not combine, do not merge into a single image. Basically the fairy tale knows 3 different forms of Yaga.

The entire course of development of the tale, and especially the beginning, shows that Yaga has some kind of connection with the kingdom of the dead.

propp fairy tale magic cult

The forest is Yagi's permanent accessory. Moreover, even in those fairy tales where there is no Yaga (“Kosoruchka”), the hero or heroine certainly ends up in the forest.

The forest is dense, dark, mysterious, somewhat conventional, not entirely believable. The connection between the rite of passage and the forest is so strong and constant that it is also true in reverse.

The forest in fairy tales generally plays the role of a delaying barrier. The forest into which the hero finds himself is impenetrable. This is a kind of thing that catches aliens. This function of the fairy-tale forest is clear in another motif - in the throwing of a comb, which turns into a forest and detains the pursuer. Here the forest detains not the pursuer, but the stranger, the stranger. You can't go through the forest. We see that the hero receives a horse from Yaga, on which he flies through the forest.

A hut on chicken legs

The hut in women's fairy tales has some features. The girl, before going to Yaga, goes to see her aunt, who warns her about what she will see in the hut and how to behave.

In American hunting myths you can see that in order to get into a hut, you need to know the names of its parts. There, the hut retained clearer traces of zoomorphism, and sometimes an animal appears instead of the hut.

To get into the hut, the hero must know the word. There are materials that show that he must know the name ("Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves").

The forest is the initial indispensable condition of the ritual, and subsequently the transition to another world. The fairy tale is the last link of this development.

“Give me something to drink and feed”

A constant, typical feature of Yaga: “she feeds and treats the hero.” The hero refuses to speak until he is fed. Food has a special meaning here.

"Mistress of the Forest"

The peculiarity of Yaga’s image is her sharp feminine physiology. She is always a husbandless old woman.

"Yaga Problems"

Along with testing the magical power of the deceased, ideas about testing his virtue began to appear. Testing the magical power of the deceased and transferring an assistant to him for further travel through the kingdom of the dead turned into a test and reward of virtue. This is how the function of setting tasks arose.

“Exile and children taken into the forest”

When the decisive moment came, the children, one way or another, went into the forest to a scary and mysterious creature. For a folklorist, 3 forms are known: taking children away by their parents, staging the abduction of children into the forest, and sending the boy into the forest on his own without the participation of his parents.

If children were taken away, it was always done by the father or brother. The mother couldn't, because... the very place where the ceremony was performed was forbidden to women.

In fairy tales, taking children into the forest is always a hostile act, although in the future things turn out very well for the exile or the one taken away.

"Stolen Children"

The creature that abducted children was Lamia. The creatures that came from the forest were disguised as animals or birds, imitating them and imitating them. The sound of rattles was heard in the forest, everyone ran away in horror.

"Severed Finger"

This is a type of self-harm. In a fairy tale, the hero, often in a hut, loses his finger, namely the little finger of his left hand. Losing a finger often occurs in the following situations:

· In Yaga and similar creatures. The finger is cut off to find out if the boy is fat enough.

· The dashing one-eyed man. Here the running hero sticks his finger to some object.

· In the house of robbers. The victim's finger is cut off because of the ring.

"Signs of Death"

This throws light on the motive of the hero or heroine being sent into the forest to die, and it is necessary to show the signs of the completed death - bloody clothes, a cut out eye, liver, heart, bloody weapon.

"Yaga Furnace"

The burning, frying, and cooking of initiates can be traced already at the earliest stages of the initiation rite known to us. Burning, roasting, roasting in all these cases leads to the greatest good, i.e. to those abilities that are needed by a full member of clan society.

"Magic Gift"

With the help of a gift, a goal is achieved. This gift is some object (Ring, ball) or animal (horse). We see how closely the image of Yaga is connected with initiation rites. The guardian assistant was associated with the totem of time.

"Travesty"

The person performing the ceremony was a woman. Yaga and the forest teacher in the fairy tale represent a mutual equivalent. Both burn or boil children in a cauldron. But when the yaga does this or unsuccessfully wants to do this, it causes a desperate struggle. If a forest teacher does this, the student acquires omniscience. But the yaga is also a beneficent creature. In some cases, we see that men dressed as women played the role. According to other evidence, all members of the unions had a common mother, an old woman. In female nature one can see a reflection of matriarchal relationships.

With the existence of an initiation rite, this process should have already ended: the rite is a condition for admission into the male union. The leader of the ceremony was dressed as a woman. Hence the connection with gods and heroes dressed as women (Hercules, Achilles), to the hermaphrodization of gods and heroes.

The departure of children into the forest was a departure to death. That is why the forest appears both as Yaga’s home and as the entrance to hell. With the advent of agricultural religion, the entire “forest” religion turns into pure evil spirits: the great magician turns into an evil sorcerer. That way of life that destroyed the ritual and its creators and bearers: the witch who burns children is herself burned by the storyteller, the bearer of the epic fairy tale tradition.

Under the way of life that replaced it and turned the sacred and terrible into a half-heroic, half-comic grotesque.

Big house and small hut

In the fairy tale there is a direct return home from the forest hut. Usually children or girls. The hero does not always meet a “big house” on his way, but often he himself builds (or encounters) a hut and remains to live in it for a long time.

Brothers range from 2 to 12, but there are also 25 and 30.

Set table

The hero sees here a different presentation of food than what he is used to.

Robbers

These are brothers. Robbery is the prerogative of the newly initiated, namely the young hero.

Distribution of duties.

This brotherhood has its own very primitive organization. It has an elder who is chosen.

Sister

A dynamic start with the appearance of a girl in this fraternity. In men's houses there are always girls who served their brothers. She lives in a special room at home. Her treatment is chivalrous. Group marriage tended to become individual marriage. Marriage sought to become individual, and children played a major role in this endeavor.

Birth of a child

· Treatment of children varies

Beauty in the coffin

Everything that was done in the men's house was a secret for the women. Temporary death is a characteristic feature of the rite of passage.

Unwashed

The hero is often dirty, smeared with soot. He makes an alliance with the devil and is forbidden to wash himself. For this, the devil gives him untold wealth, after which the hero marries.

Forbidden closet

The motif of the forbidden closet goes back to the “big houses” complex. There was a forbidden room in which there was an animal carved from wood. The closet can be in the “big house”, in the house of robbers, in the parental home, in the next world.

Grateful animals

Combined characters (assistants). A fairy tale knows no compassion. If the hero releases the animal, then he does it not out of compassion, but on the basis of an agreement.

Magic gifts

Assistant

Helper is an expression of strength and ability. All assistants represent one group of characters.

Transformed Hero

The transformed hero in a fairy tale can be considered a helper as a personified ability of the hero.

Transfers the hero to another kingdom. The motif of feeding the eagle is created based on an existing event. There is a close connection between the eagle and the shaman.

winged horse

The horse did not appear to replace forest animals, but in completely new economic functions. The horse dresses in the form of a bird. The horse and the eagle are the hero’s only assistants.

Claws, hair, skins, teeth.

Many magical objects were parts of an animal's body: skins, hairs, teeth. Upon initiation, young men received power over animals.

Items that summon spirits.

Representing force as an invisible being is a further step towards creating the concept of force. This creates the concept of rings and other objects from which a spirit can be summoned.

Living and dead water

“Alive and dead” are the same as strong and weak. A raven flying away with two bubbles brings exactly this water. A dead man trying to get to another world uses only water. A living person who wants to get there also uses only one water. A person who has set foot on the path of death and wants to return to life uses both types.

Crossing

An emphasized, convex, bright moment of the hero’s spatial movement.

Crossing as a hero.

In a fairy tale, the hero, in order to cross to another kingdom or back, sometimes turns into an animal.

· The bird is knitted with the sea

· This is an image of freedom, peace, pride

In Rome, when emperors died, an eagle was released to carry the soul of the ruler to heaven. In Christianity, in the image of winged angels carrying away the soul, we have the last remnants of this faith.

With the death of totemism, the forms change. All crossing methods have one new origin. They reflect the idea of the deceased’s journey to the afterlife. Even such forms as a ladder, a tree and a belt reveal their original animal form when compared.

Serpent Form

· Motif of snake fighting

· He is sometimes assimilated into the appearance of the hero and represented as a horseman. The horse stumbles under the serpent.

Connection with the mountains

The snake lives in the mountains. Such a location does not prevent him from being a sea monster at the same time. Sometimes he lives on the mountains, but when the hero approaches him, he comes out of the water.

Snake Snatcher

He kidnaps women with lightning speed and unexpectedly.

Ritual absorption and coughing up

Fight => chase => attempt to swallow the hero

· The hero finds diamonds in the snake’s stomach or head,

· The girl in the fairy tale is placed in a glass coffin.

· The crunch of the mountain in which the snake lives.

· The princess sits on a glass tower.

The center of gravity of heroism shifts from absorption to killing. With the advent of cattle breeding and agriculture, this process ends.

Myths

In Greek myth, there is no kidnapping of a girl by a dragon. This idea could live among the people without being attested in Greek literature, through which we know the myth.

Functionally, he is close to the snake of our fairy tale. He has 3 dog heads, poisonous resin drips from his mouth, and he has a snake tail with which he stings

The fairy tale reflects all stages of development, starting from the more ancient ones, like acquiring knowledge of a bird’s language through a snake, and transitional ones, like carrying a fish in the stomach to foreign lands.

Far away.

Everything connected with the distant state can take on a golden color (golden palace). Pig - golden bristles, duck - golden feathers, golden-horned deer, golden-tailed deer, golden-maned and golden-tailed horse, etc.

3 kingdoms

A fairy tale about how the hero on his way finds himself in the kingdom of copper, silver and gold. Copper and silver are the passing stages, gold is the arrival stage.

There is no uniformity. There is diversity.

They live in a palace, reminding us of the animal-like inhabitants of the “big house”. In the next world people are snakes, lions, bears, mice. Those. animals in the totemic sense.

Sometimes the princess is depicted as a hero, a warrior; she is skilled in shooting and running, rides a horse, and enmity towards the groom can take the form of open competition with the hero.

2 types of bride:

· One is freed by the hero from the snake, he is her savior. This is the type of meek bride.

· Another was taken by force. She is kidnapped or taken against her will by a cunning man who has solved her problems and mysteries.

· The hero is shown that he must search, go there and return or die.

· Get the golden branch

Palace, garden, bridge. The task of building a palace itself is incomprehensible. The motif of the golden palace, from the thirtieth kingdom, and the golden one are one and the same palace. The garden is mysterious and beautiful. A bridge is a barrier, an obstacle.

Bathhouse test

The task is to sit in a hot bath. This challenge may involve a food challenge.

Competitions

Usually before the wedding

· On the strength and dexterity of the hero

· Running, shooting

The wedding night

Often this is where the fairy tale ends. Sometimes all the villagers mysteriously die on the first night. Fear of the wedding night is fear of the yet unestablished power of the Tsar-Maiden.

Fairy tale as a whole

Development proceeds through layering, replacement, reinterpretation, and on the other hand, through new formation.

Fairy tale as a genre

The plot and composition of a fairy tale are determined by the tribal system at that stage of its development. The tale has passed on from earlier eras

Folklore, and in particular fairy tales, is not only uniform, but despite its uniformity it is extremely rich and diverse.

- 35.38 Kb

test work in cultural studies

Analysis of the book by V.Ya. Propp “Historical roots of a fairy tale” (chapters 1-2)

Performed:

Checked:

Moscow, 2010

Biography

PROPP, VLADIMIR YAKOVLEVICH(1895–1970), Russian folklorist, one of the founders of modern text theory. Born April 17 (29), 1895 in St. Petersburg. In 1914–1918 he studied Russian and German philology at Petrograd University, and subsequently taught German at universities in Leningrad. Since 1932 - teacher, since 1938 professor at Leningrad State University, successively in the departments of Romance-Germanic philology, folklore and, until 1969, Russian literature. Propp died in Leningrad on August 22, 1970.

One of Propp’s first publications (after several articles) was a small book, The Morphology of a Fairy Tale, published in Leningrad in 1928, which was met with sympathy, but in the next three decades was known only to a narrow circle of specialists. Subsequently, Propp continued his research within the walls of Leningrad State University; Thanks to the books The Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale (1946) and the Russian Heroic Epic (1955, 2nd ed. 1958), he gained a reputation as a venerable folklorist. In 1958, an English translation of Morphology of a Fairy Tale was published in the United States, followed by American reprints and translations into many other languages. Propp's early work became a world-class scientific bestseller, and in the USSR in 1969, more than forty years after the first publication and just before the death of the scientist, the second Russian edition of the Morphology of Fairy Tales appeared, which almost immediately became almost the same bibliographic rarity as the first (up to reissues of the 1990s).

The exceptional resonance caused by the publications of Morphology of the Fairy Tale in the West, and its subsequent enormous influence, were due to the new context in which this book found itself at the turn of the 1950s–1960s: the widespread dissemination of structural-semiotic (see STRUCTURALISM) methods and the appearance of an early version generative grammar. Propp, in the late 1920s, proposed a relatively small set of deep functions that define the seemingly infinite variety of narrative structures of fairy tales, as well as a formal apparatus for generating these surface structures. More than three decades later, all this, on the one hand, turned out to be consonant with the ideas of early generative grammar, and on the other, demonstrated the applicability of such methods to structures of a higher level than the sentence. It is not surprising that Propp’s work became one of the most important starting points for the formation of text theory and narrative analysis in the 1960s and attracted the attention not only of specialists in folklore, semiotics and literary criticism, such as C. Lévi-Strauss, A. Greimas (1917– 1992) or S. Bremont, but also a wide range of linguists, and somewhat later, in the 1970s, also specialists in discourse theory, artificial intelligence and cognitive science - D. Rumelhart and others (see DISCOURSE). References to Propp (sometimes as part of polemics with them) became mandatory in their works, and in the 1970s, many domestic linguists first learned about the scientist by reading foreign publications.

The world fame of the Morphology of Fairy Tales forced us to take a different look at the later and far from structuralist works of Propp, whose creative legacy, including articles, is now considered as a single whole and published with this in mind.

Bibliography

Propp V. Ya. “Historical roots of a fairy tale” - L. Leningrad State University Publishing House, 1986 - 364 p.
Propp V. Ya. “Folklore and reality” - M.: Nauka, 1989. - 233s.

Historical roots of fairy tales

The main problem in the assigned work

The book is one whole, and one topic smoothly flows into another. And each topic presented is fully revealed by the author. There are also detailed premises. The main problem posed in this work is to expand the scope of study and find the historical basis that brought the fairy tale to life and find out the sources of the fairy tale in historical reality.

In fairy tales there is no precise reminder of any particular stage of culture: here various historical cycles and cultural styles mix and collide with each other. Only patterns of behavior that could exist in many cultural cycles and at different historical moments have been preserved here.

The fairy tale is so rich and varied that it is impossible to study the entire phenomenon of the fairy tale in its entirety and among all peoples. Therefore, the material must be limited, and we will limit it to fairy tales.

Terminology

Chapter 1

"Magic Tales"- these are special fairy tales that can be called magical.

"Morphologies of fairy tales" - in this book, Propp identified the fairy tale genre quite accurately; the author divides fairy tales into type and complexity of the plot

Genesis-(Greek)origin, emergence, (be)birth.

"Historical past" - the study comes down to determining under what social system individual motives and the entire tale were created .

"Build" - the concept is very general.The study comes down to determining under what social system the individual motives and the entire fairy tale were created. Fairy tales can be compared not with the clan system, but with the institution of the clan system.

Exogamy- the prohibition of marriage relations between members of a kinship (clan, phratry) or local (for example, community) collective, which existed both in the era of the primitive communal system and at a later time. Numerous theories of the origin of exogamy are combined mainly into 3 main groups, which suggest that the transition to exogamy is due to:

1) the need to avoid harmful consequences from marriages between blood relatives (L. G. Morgan and others);

2) the desire to expand social contacts and establish relationships with other groups (E. Taylor, A. M. Zolotarev, C. Levi-Strauss);

3) the need to establish social peace in the team, since sexual relations and the conflicts accompanying them were taken outside its boundaries (S. P. Tolstov, Yu. I. Semenov).

"Rethinking»- convenient in the sense that it indicates the process of change that has taken place; the fact of rethinking proves that some changes have occurred in the life of the people, and these changes entail a change in motive. These changes must in any individual case be shown and explained.

« Prerequisites"-it is necessary to decipher the concept of the historical past, to determine what exactly from this past is necessary to explain the fairy tale.

"Motives of a fairy tale"- are explained by the fact that they reflect the institutions that once existed, but there are motives that are not directly related to any institutions, and so not everything is explained by the presence of certain institutions.

"Rite" - a set of conditional, traditional actions, devoid of immediate practical expediency, but serving as a symbol of certain social relations, a form of their visual expression and consolidation. Some religions use rituals to consolidate certain religious ideas in the minds of believers and strengthen faith in almighty forces.

"Folklore"- This is a type of collective verbal activity that is carried out orally. The main categories of folklore are collectivity, traditionality, formulaicity, variability, the presence of a performer, and syncretism. Folklore is divided into two groups - ritual and non-ritual.

"Myth"-( Greek) Myth here will be understood as a story about deities or divine beings in whose reality people believe. The point here is about faith not as a psychological factor, but as a historical one.

"Pedantry"-(from Italian pedare, to educate) is a phenomenon that occurs in various areas of life, but most often accompanies scholarship and pedagogical activity.

"Semantics"-(French and Greek. denoting) in the broad sense of the word, the analysis of the relationship between linguistic expressions and the world, real or imaginary.

"Genetics"-(Greek: coming from someone)study of the origin of phenomena.Genetics precedes history; it paves the way for history.

Chapter 2

"Absences" - a special mood, a mood of epic calm, this calm is only an artistic shell, contrasting with the internal passionate and tragic, comic-realistic dynamics.

"Frizer"-about the isolation of kings (a phenomenon of early statehood, the king or leader is credited with magical power over nature, the sky, rain, people, livestock, and the well-being of the people depends on his well-being).

"Insulation"- royal children in the fairy tale (in the fairy tale all types of prohibitions that once surrounded the royal family were preserved: the prohibition of light, sight, food, contact with the earth, communication with people).

"The Girl's Conclusion"-(this fear leads to the fact that menstruating girls are subjected to imprisonment in order to protect them from dangers, a ban on cutting hair, which was considered the seat of the soul and magical power, but the ban on cutting hair is not stated directly anywhere in the fairy tale, nevertheless, the long hair of the imprisoned princess - a frequently occurring feature that gives special attractiveness);

"Trouble and opposition" - the main form of the plot, from which a plot is created, the forms of which are varied, they cannot be considered together.

« Equipment for the hero on the road"(the movement is never outlined in detail, it is always mentioned in only two or three words, but first of all we must know where the hero ends up on his path);

Each researcher proceeds from some prerequisites that he has before he starts work.

The history of the study of the fairy tale has been outlined more than once, and we do not need to list the works. But if we ask ourselves why there are still no completely solid and universally accepted results, we will see that this often happens precisely because the authors proceed from false premises.

For us, this implies that we need to carefully check our premises before starting the study.

"Fairy tales" - Propp's first premise

In fairy tales, Propp identifies a special line of plots that underlies other fairy tales. The tale begins with damage and the desire to have something, then the hero is sent from home to meet an assistant who will help find the object of the search. What follows is a duel, a return and a chase; on the way home the hero is again tested. But later the hero again arrives in the kingdom and gets married. This scheme allows us to consider all fairy tales with the same plot; the variety of fairy tales is given by the many characters.

The first premise is that among fairy tales there is a special category of fairy tales, usually called fairy tales. These tales can be isolated from others and studied independently. The very fact of isolation may raise doubts. Isn't the principle of connection in which we must study phenomena violated here? However, in the end, all the phenomena of the world are interconnected, meanwhile, science always distinguishes the phenomena that are subject to its study from among other phenomena. It's all about where and how the border is drawn.

The emergence of a fairy tale is not connected with the production basis on which it began to be written down from the beginning of the 19th century. This leads us to the next premise, which for now is formulated in a very general form: the fairy tale must be compared with the historical reality of the past and its roots must be sought in it.This premise contains the concept of “historical past”. The concept of “historical past” leads us to the fact that the fairy tale has preserved traces of disappeared forms of social life. For example, the fairy tale contains different forms of marriage than now.

We, therefore, need to decipher the concept of the historical past, determine what exactly from this past is necessary to explain the fairy tale.

If a fairy tale is considered as a product that arose on a production basis, then it becomes clear what forms are reflected in it. But in the study of the sources of the tale there will be no advance from the object or technology. The study comes down to determining under what social system the individual motives and the entire fairy tale were created.The concept of "build" -the study comes down to determining under what social system individual motives and the entire tale were created. The premise is that the fairy tale has preserved traces of vanished forms of social life, that these remains need to be studied, and that such study will reveal the sources of many of the fairy tale's motifs.Many motifs in the tale, however, are explained by the fact that they reflect institutions that once existed, but there are motifs that are not directly related to any institutions. Therefore, this area is not enough as a material for comparison. Not everything is explained by the presence of certain institutions.

Description of work

PROPP, VLADIMIR YAKOVLEVICH (1895–1970), Russian folklorist, one of the founders of modern text theory. Born April 17 (29), 1895 in St. Petersburg. In 1914–1918 he studied Russian and German philology at Petrograd University, and subsequently taught German at universities in Leningrad. Since 1932 - teacher, since 1938 professor at Leningrad State University, successively in the departments of Romance-Germanic philology, folklore and, until 1969, Russian literature. Propp died in Leningrad on August 22, 1970.