E-mail: sorokinasp@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (495) 690-50-30
25а, Povarskaya, Moscow, 121069, Russian Federation
DSc in Philology, Senior Researcher, the Department of Folklore, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences
This article considers a special type of folklore publication — an artistic book, distinguished by first-class printing and intended for a wide range of readers. Books of this kind, labeled as “luxurious,” existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the vast majority of them were not editions of folklore. The development of artistic folklore publications is traced by examining three examples: the Album of Russian Folk Tales and Epics published in 1875 by the publishing house of G.D. Hoppe; the works of E.D. Polenova in the second half of the 1880s; and a series of Russian fairy tales in booklets designed by I. Ya. Bilibin and printed by the “Expedition Preparing Government Papers” (1901–1903). The article describes the creation of these books and characterizes their main features. Polenova developed innovative principles of design for folklore publications but they were not embodied in a high-quality printed product. About twenty years later, the combined efforts of I. Bilibin, who created a style for works of folklore that many generations of readers considered the most adequate for such texts, and B.B. Golitsyn, who produced the booklets with a unique printing facility, made a significant step toward securing the status of symbol of national culture for folklore tales. In conclusion, the author argues that the artistic publication of folklore performs a specific function in society and culture, turning folk art from the heritage of the past into an aesthetic phenomenon of the present
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