W. R. S. Ralston and the Russian Folktale
2009; Routledge; Volume: 120; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00155870902969210
ISSN1469-8315
Autores Tópico(s)European Cultural and National Identity
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] The actual number present at the foundation meeting is disputed, but Ralston's presence is not in question. Ralston, although largely forgotten now, has not been ignored by scholars. There are entries in the old and new versions of the Dictionary of National Biography and other works referred to elsewhere in this paper, especially those of Patrick Waddington. See also Werner Lauter (1962 Lauter, Werner. “Die Bedeutung von W. R. S. Ralston als Vermittler russischer Literatur nach England.” Doctoral thesis, Marburg, 1962. [Google Scholar]); M. P. Alekseev and Iu. D. Levin (1994), and W. F. Ryan (2005). There is some well-informed discussion of him by Richard M. Dorson (1968a Dorson, Richard M. 1968a. The British Folklorists: A History, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], 387–91) and Philip Tilney (1976 Tilney, Philip. 1976. Slavic Folklore Studies in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Canadian Slavonic Studies, 18: 312–326. (esp. 313–20)[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], 312–26). [2] He does appear to have known German fairly well—the Tibetan Tales of the Estonian Orientalist and member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences Franz Anton von Schiefner (1817–79), published in English in 1882 (Schiefner 1882 Schiefner, F. Anton von Schiefner. 1882. Tales derived from Indian Sources; Translated from the Tibetan of the Kah-gyur, London: Trubner. [Google Scholar]), was according the title page “done into English from the German, with an introduction, by W. R. S. Ralston.” The “introduction” was in fact sixty-five pages long, and heavily annotated. And in his own books Ralston refers frequently to the works of the brothers Grimm, and at one point to the Finnische Mythologie of the Finnish scholar Matthias Alexander Castrén (1853 Castrén, Matthias Alexander. 1853. M. Alexander Castrén's Vorlesungen über die finnische Mythologie St Petersburg Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, [Google Scholar]). This was published in St Petersburg and was not perhaps the most widely known of books, but it had been translated from Swedish into German by Castrén's friend, the same Orientalist von Schiefner, whose Tibetan Tales Ralston had translated and with whom he corresponded. [3] Written “from personal knowledge” by Professor Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas (1838–1913), sinologist of the British Museum and later Keeper of Oriental Books and Manuscripts. This article was replaced by an excellent article in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by Patrick Waddington (2004 Waddington, Patrick. 1980. A Bibliography of the Writings of W. R. S. Ralston, 1828–89. New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1: 1–15. [Google Scholar]); see also the 192 items in the bibliography by Waddington (1980 Waddington, Patrick. 1980. A Bibliography of the Writings of W. R. S. Ralston, 1828–89. New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1: 1–15. [Google Scholar]). [4] Ralston shared the vice-presidency of The Folklore Society for several years with Andrew Lang and Edward Tylor, later professor of anthropology at Oxford and author of Primitive Culture (Tylor 1871 Tylor, Edward. 1913. Primitive Culture, 5th edn, London: John Murray. Originally published 1871 [Google Scholar]/1913), a seminal work in its day. Tylor (5th Tylor, Edward. 1913. Primitive Culture, 5th edn, London: John Murray. Originally published 1871 [Google Scholar] edn, 1913, vol. 1, 342) quotes a lecture of Ralston to The Folklore Society on the “Tale of Vasilissa the Fair,” and 5th edn, 1913, vol. 2, 245] quotes Songs of the Russian People on the mythical island of Buian which appears in Russian folktales and magic charms (Ralston 1872 Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. 1872. Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life, London: Ellis & Green. [Google Scholar]). [5] Ralston corresponded for some twenty years with Academician Iakov Karlovich Grot (1812–93), an outstanding scholar of Russian language and literature, who also wrote on Scandinavian and Finnish folklore and mythology, studied Sanskrit and Greek and was interested in Oriental studies. Grot was instrumental in having Ralston elected to the Imperial Russian Academy (Alekseev and Levin 1994 Alekseev, M. P. and Levin, Iu. D. 1994. Vil'iam Rol'ston—propagandist russkoi literatury i fol'klora, St Petersburg: Nauka. [Google Scholar], 86). [6] For English accounts of Afanas'ev (1855 Afanas'ev, A. N. 1855–63. Narodnye russkie skazki Moscow Grachev [Google Scholar]–63), see Jack Haney's An Introduction to the Russian Folktale (1999, 29–33 and passim), and James Riordan's Riordan, James. 2003. “Russian Fairy Tales and their Collectors”. In A Companion to the Fairy Tale, Edited by: Davidson, Hilda Ellis and Chaudhri, Anna. 221–40. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. [Google Scholar] “Russian Fairy Tales and their Collectors” (2003, 217–25). [7] Published in January 1872 (Ralston 1872 Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. 1872. Songs of the Russian People as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life, London: Ellis & Green. [Google Scholar]), followed by a second edition in April, which included a second preface in which Ralston says that he has just read Bernhard Schmidt's (1871 Schmidt, Bernhard. 1871. Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Alterthum, Leipzig: B.G. Teuber. [Google Scholar]) Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Alterthum and was struck by the extreme similarity of modern Greek and Slavonic folklore, which he then outlines, and finally remarks that he would have quoted it extensively if only it had been published a little earlier. He also draws attention to the recent account by A. F. Gilferding of an expedition to collect byliny, a kind of oral historical folktale sometimes classified as epic fragments. The fact that Ralston indulged in a second edition of his book only three months after the first, simply to provide his readers with these two pieces of information in a new preface, not only suggests that he was probably paying for the publication himself, but also underlines the fact that Ralston was most perceptive in recognising the extreme importance of the discovery of the survival of byliny as a live tradition. His account of them may well have been the first in a West European language. Richard Dorson considered it sufficiently important to republish it in his Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists (Dorson 1968b Dorson, Richard M. 1968b. Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar], 599–607). [8] Letter from Turgenev to Pauline Viardot, 20 June 1870. Available from http://www.turgenev.org.ru/chronograph/iun.htm; INTERNET. [9] Unfortunately this has now become firmly established in English writing both in print and on the Internet—Sabine Baring-Gould's Baring-Gould, Sabine. 1865. Book of Werewolves, London: Smith, Elder. [Google Scholar] Book of Werewolves (1865, 117) was probably the earliest to pick it up and the most recent is Wikipedia, s.v. werewolf.
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