Problems of publishing and commenting on Russian magical folklore

In fact, verbal charms represent two different genres and bodies of texts, one of which functions in the oral, folklore tradition, and the other in the “grassroots” handwritten tradition. Accordingly, researchers and publishers of verbal charms are quite clearly divided into two groups: oral verbal charms are mostly dealt with by folklorists, and handwritten verbal charms are dealt with by historians, literary scholars and archaeographers. If the former find their sources in folklore expeditions and in archives that store records of similar expeditions of past years, then the latter study in archives mostly with materials from the 17th – 19th centuries.

Verbal charms, on the one hand, include a number of varieties (ritual formulers, apotropaic, verbal charms-prayers, etc.), and on the other hand, texts of other genres are recorded in some manuscripts with them. In this regard, the commentator is faced with the task of identifying the genre nature of the text, which may relate to one of the types of verbal charms or even relate not to the verbal charms themselves, but, for example, to apocryphal prayers.

The commentator deals, on the one hand, with individual verbal charms, and on the other, with those hypertext structures in which these verbal charms are included. In the case of oral spells, these are, firstly, other spells that are included in the repertoire of a given performer or local tradition, and secondly, the ritual setting in which the spell is performed. In the case of handwritten verbal charms, the commentator considers the text as part of a specific manuscript and in the context of the available information about its origin and content.

One of the challenges facing spell researchers and publishers is to develop a certain standard of scholarly publications that would meet academic requirements in the field of textual criticism and source criticism. To implement the tasks facing publishers of magical folklore extracted from manuscripts of the early modern period, it is necessary to train specialists who could competently engage in field, archaeographic, and publishing work.

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