Description | Veronica Muskheli will be giving a talk on Friday, April 26th at 2:30pm in Padelford A216 in preparation for the REECAS conference. The talk is entitled "(Re)reading relationships: The Primacy of Mother-Daughter Theme in Russian Cinderella-Type Folktales". Since 1989, relationships between mothers and daughters constitute a significant theme in works by such prominent Russian writers as Lyudmila Petrushevskaia, Tatyana Tolstaya, Elena Chizhova, and many others. This is in great contrast to either classical Russian literature or the Soviet literature when this theme was not considered to be worthy of exploration. Obviously, the contemporary writers hold a dissenting opinion on this matter as they have been developing a rich tradition of mother-daughter depiction. I argue that because of the lack of classical literary patterns of mother-daughter representation to follow, the contemporary writers create narratives that frequently rely on East Slavic folktales with their many mother and daughter characters, read in a female-centered way. As an example of such a source, I offer a (re)reading of the Russian folktale “The Golden Slipper” first published in Aleksandr Afanas’ev’s 1873 collection together with other oral narratives of the Cinderella type (Aarne-Thompson-Uther 510A). Within the patriarchal tradition, this is a type of story about the heroine finding a husband. However, when I approach the text within the framework of feminist narratology, I identify a self-referential public voice narrating the tale in the communal mode. This voice tells a story of a conflict between mother and daughter, and its resolution. |
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