Jack V. Haney9 The Complete Russian Folktale 

James O. Bailey 

The first two volumes of Jack V. Haney's The 
Complete Russian Folktale will be published this 
spring. Haney, a professor of old Russian literature 
and folklore at the University of Washington, has 
been working on this project for a number of years. 
Volume I, The Russian Folktale, is intended as an 
introduction to the tales of Russia originally told in 
the Russian language. Various chapters in the book 
deal with the basics: definitions, kinds of tales, 
structures, classifications, narrators, and the 
language of the tales; recordings and collections. It 
also includes extended discussion of the relationship 
between tales and social customs as derived from 
myths and rituals of an ancient past. In this section 
particular emphasis is placed on aspects of the tales 
that link them specifically to Russian tradition and 
culture. A survey of all the kinds of Russian tales 
concludes the volume. 

Each of the succeeding four volumes is devoted 
to a different kind of tale, viz., the animal tale (to 
appear in June), the wonder or fairy tales, the 
legends, the tales of everyday life and the anecdotes. 
Each volume contains a lengthy introduction, 
followed by an example of every tale type known in 
the Russian corpus. This is the first time that an 
example of every tale type has appeared in any 
language, including Russian. The Russian revision of 
|he Aarne-Thompson index of tale types, Sravni-

1еГпу) ukazatel' siuzhetov. Vostochnoslavianskaia 
jfcazka. has been used throughout the entire work. 

The tales are drawn from a variety of sources, 

Шпе of which have never been published before, 
ose taken from the collection of A. N. Afanasiev 

SEEFA Journal 1998, Vol. III No. 1



are all newly translated. The appendices contain 
information about the narrator and source of each 
tale, to the extent those are known, its classification 
number, and the frequency of the recording, 
especially if it is unique. 

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