Алтайские народные сказки. - 2002. (Т. 21.)

in each given situation. In its own turn, the inclusion of song elements into the tales is conditioned by the influence of ritual songs such as magical chants, laments, and wedding songs. Of great interest is the poetic system of Altai folktales, which embodies the diversity of traditional poetic formulas. In large part this is conditioned not only by the particularities of the folktale genre itself, but also by certain diffusions in the poetic-stylistic fabric due to inter­ action between genres. One should note in particular the interactions between the folktale and the epos, which manifest themselves in the style and poetics of the folktale. Under the influence of epos the text of the folktale becomes rhythmical. This occurs for several reasons. Thus, through analogy with epos, some storytellers perform their tales in verse, by virtue of their own individual performer’s talent. Or, by virtue of their complicated plots, the tales resemble epos through the breadth of their telling. Also, there are the so called bogatyr’ tales, which entered the repertoire of tales on the basis of the decomposition of the plots of epos. The Appendix gives the broad context of each published tale. While the corpus of texts was being prepared, a systematization was conducted of the Altai folktailes in the manuscript collection of the Institute of Humanities Research of the Altai Republic though consultation with the folktale specialist B.P. Kerbelite. Each text in this volume was correlated with the Aarne — Thompson and Eberhard — Boratav international folk­ tale indexes. From the whole collection of Altai tales represented in the volume, ten texts directly correspond to those indexed by Aarne — Thompson; thirteen texts are unique, lacking analog in the indexes of world folktale collections; the remaining texts represent various contami­ nations of international and local plots. Further, the text is compared with all extant variants, and identical or differing motives are identified among the variants; the plot is compared to that of other Turkic folktales. In addition to information about Altai folktales, the volume contains a number of indexes and glossaries. Translated by Edward Vaida