Russian popular fiction, songbooks, and folklore

[jeff brooks]

Dear Seelangers:



I have at last succeeded in putting together a representative collection of
titles of *lubochnaia literatura*, which Brill has published online and as
fiche. When I first discovered these materials (as I was writing When Russia
Learned to Read) I realized how useful they would be to scholars and
students working on a wide variety of topics. It is a pleasure let you know
that a selection is finally available. A description follows.



Popular Literature, Fiction and Songs in Russia: 19-20th centuries

The colorful cheap stories and songbooks that flooded Russia in the 19-20th
centuries exemplify the richness of the Russian popular imagination. The
literature of the lubok, named for the prints that circulated in the same
milieu, was a ubiquitous expression of popular taste.



Virtually unknown to readers in the Soviet era, these crude texts are now
recognized as the precursors of post-Soviet mass-market fiction. In Imperial
Russia as today popular authors played on readers' hopes and dreams, as well
as their animosities and fears. Then as now commercial authors created
outlandish plots that saw a second life in the medium of film.



The collection of ca. 200 titles illustrates the chief genres of Russian
popular literature originating in the early nineteenth century and including
chivalric tales, historical fiction and updated fairy tales, as well as
stories of adventure, banditry, detectives, success, war and empire, women
and gender, and sex and the occult.



The collection features popular versions of well-known folktales such as The
Story of Ivan the Tsar's Son, the Grey Wolf, and the Firebird, made famous
by Stravinsky. Songbooks, with titles such as The Stoker (1915), Marusia
Loved Her Friend (1910), and Marusia Poisoned Herself (1915) typify the
changing oral culture in which printed texts became the standard for popular
songs.

>From popular songs to fairy tales and war stories, the collection follows
the evolution of the Russian language in its popular commercial print form,
an evolution that the Bolsheviks interrupted, but one that has now resumed.



Prof. Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University



(available online and on microfiche)

(www.idc.nl/background556_1_1.html)

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