Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale

The world of fairy tales is rich and unpredictable. Do we know why each tale is structured the way it is, rather than another? What is the Kingdom of Thirty? Who is Baba Yaga really? Why does the hut on... chicken legs constantly turn around? How are the actions of the heroes connected to ancient rituals and beliefs? Who was the prototype of Ivanushka the Fool, and is Vasilisa the Beautiful really as kind as we like to think? All our questions about fairy tales will be answered by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp — an outstanding domestic philologist, one of the founders of the structuralist approach in folklore studies, which later gained wide application in literary studies. The book "Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale" became one of the most popular and influential studies in folklore and humanitarian thought of the 20th century.