Article

Name: “Povest’ o tsare i ego docheri” in the context of Russian fiction of the 17th – 18th centuries: parallels and possible sources

Authors: Lyubov A. Kurysheva

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract:

Recently, the handwritten “Povest’ o tsare i ego docheri” (“The Tale of the Tsar and his Daughter”) was discovered. Since this tale was found to be based on the Snow White plot, the discovery has led researchers to revise the accepted dating of the “complete assembly” of the international fairy tale plot ATU 709. Until now, the Snow White plot has been considered to have appeared at the end of the 18th century. The Russian manuscript was identified to date to the late 1710s–1730s, shifting the fixation of the entire plot by at least a century. The question of the origin of the monument remains open. The article traces the connections between “Povest’ o tsare i ego docheri” and the plot-motive fund of the 17th – 18th-centuries Russian handwritten fiction. The most remarkable structural and plot-motif similarity of the literary monument concerned was revealed with The Tale of the Princess Persika (the turn of the 17th–18th centuries) and some episodes of The Apollonius of Tire’s Tale (until the 1670s). Several textual similarities have also been found. Moreover, some seemingly unmotivated episodes of new-found tale can be explained only through these monuments. The brevity of the narrative in “Povest’ o tsare i ego docheri” compared to its sources is similar to how “Povest’ o tsaritse i l’vitse” (The Tale of the Tsarina and the Lioness) correlates with its source “Istoriya o tsesare Otone” (The Story of Caesar Oton). The above fact raises the question of whether these Russian treatments of popular stories belong to one scribe or one creative school.

Keywords: Russian literature of 17th – 18th centuries, handwritten fiction, folklore and literature, fairy-tale, ATU 709 (Snow-White)

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