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Dr. Peter Gilet takes Vladimir Propp's 31-part structure of the European folktale and suggests a reduction to five moves. This allows Propp's structure to be applied successfully to stories from Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas, thus providing a widespread tale type, perhaps the main tale type in oral literature. Dr. Gilet also suggests that this type has strong meaningful similarities with shamanic and puberty initiation rituals in pre-industrial societies. Just how meaningful will be the object of future research. ... Read more

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board book ... Read more

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Since Erasmus published his proverbial locutions from Latin authors, attempts have been made in several countries to compile comparative collections of proverbs of various nations. Not only useful but also interesting reading, this present collection comprises a fascinating collection of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian proverbs.Forty-eight topical sections contain 1,100 proverbs and proverbial phrases, and a Latin appendix is also provided. Where there are two or more variants to a certain proverb in one or more of the other languages, only one variant in each language is included, the closest equivalent having been selected. In some cases, however, two variants are given in some languages. Where there are variants in all six languages they are given as separate entries. Proverbs from the Bible and entries taken from Shakespeare's works are marked as such.

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A retelling of a Russian fairy tale in which an archer assigned many dangerous quests by the greedy, cruel czar wins a crown and the woman of his dreams. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Read Aloud Treat from Russia
Eric A. Kimmel retells this classic Russian fairy tale with such lively language that you are immediately drawn in to the story of a noble archer and his adventures with a magical dove. He faces all kinds of perils including a jealous and treacherous czar. He is given some help along the way by Baba Yaga and Grandmother Frog. In the Land of Nine Times Nine he faces Kot Buyan, a huge and monstrous black cat. He solves difficult puzzles and fights impossible battles with his wits and the magical help of I-Know-Not-What. This rich story is told in chapter format and is accented with the wonderfully evocative illustrations of Robert Sauber. The colorful images are filled with folksy charm and the one of Baba Yaga in her house set on chicken feet captures this traditional Russian witch with delightful humor and a pleasant sense of thrill. This is a fun book to read aloud over a period of several nights, taking time to go over the costumes and details of the pictures and to talk about czars and enchantments and magical spells. It is a super book for cultivating a child's imagination.

Wonderful
This is a really good book. The illistrations are beautiful and I keep on re reading this book. It is one of the few books that doesn't bore me if someone reads it out loud. ... Read more

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A collection of myths, legends and folklore from around the world.Includes the stories of Prometheus, Hercules, Beowulf, Siegfried, Frithiof the Bold, Ilia Muromec, Roland, El Cid, and others. ... Read more

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For the major poets of Osip Mandelstam's generation, poetry represented a calling in the most tangible sense. To respond to it meant to fashion from the available cultural and personal material a mythic self, one that could serve both as the organizing subject for poetry and as an object of worshipful adoration. A successful poet like Mandelstam thus became the focal point of a complex cultural phenomenon-perhaps a charismatic cult-that shaped his writings, gesture, and reception.
Gregory Freidin examines Mandelstam's legacy in this broader context and lays the groundwork for approaching modernist Russian poetry as a charismatic institution. He traces the interplay of poetic tradition, personal background, historical events, religious culture, and political developments as they entered the symbolic order of Mandelstam's art and helped determine its outlines in the reader's imagination. Many important aspects of the Mandelstam phenomenon, including the Jewish theme, the meaning of the poet's Christianity, his political stand, and, in particular, his conflict with Stalin and Stalinism, receive here a new interpretation.
A case study in the emergence of a literary cult, A Coat of Many Colors reveals how Russian poetry of the early twentieth century functioned as a charismatic institution of a distinctly modern kind. Those who belonged to it combined knowledge of the recent studies in myth, magic, and religion with the cultivation of verbal magic, mythic consciousness, and unorthodox religious beliefs. Following Mandelstam's career over its entire span (1908-1938), Freidin shows how the poet benefited from literary scholarship, comparative mythology, the history and sociology of religion at the same time he was emulating in his poetry the very subject of these academic disciplines. To account for this duality in interpreting Mandelstam's writings, Freidin draws on explanatory paradigms of contemporary human sciences, from Saussure and the Formalists to Weber, Durkheim, Freud, and Marcel Mauss. ... Read more