The Centre for Typological and Semiotic Folklore Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities was founded in 2003. The Centre conducts research in theoretical folklore studies and offers MA and PhD programs in folklore studies. Core areas of research performed by the Centre are the following: Research upon traditional and contemporary folklore from the structural, functional and communicative perspective; Investigation of mythological worldview in texts of oral cultures and of poetics of narrative genres; Historical and typological analysis of various oral traditions, research upon historical semantics of folklore and mythological motifs / plots / ritual practices and their local variants; Research upon historical correlations between oral and literary culture; Description of contemporary folklore and ritual traditions; Systematization and classification of folklore texts, which includes that performed with digital technologies. The Centre performs folklore and ethnographic expedition trips, holds research conferences and workshops with the involvement of scholars from Russia and worldwide, Summer Schools for aspiring researchers in folklore studies, sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology, publishes the “Tradition - text - folklore: typology and semiotics” book series. The results of the Centre’s work can be viewed at the Internet portal “Folklore and postfolklore: structure, typology, semiotics” (http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore).

The paper dwells upon the lesser known facts of Eleazar M. Meletisnky’s life and work during his stay in Petrozavodsk (1946-1949), re-creating those from archived materials and press. This postwar period enabled E.M. Meletinsky to continue working upon his postdoctoral thesis and implement his skills of research team management while working as Chair of the Department of Literature of the Karelian-Finnish State University and Chair of the Department of Literature of the Karelian-Finnish Base of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The Karelian period in E.M. Meletinsky’s life proved to be brief and rather unhappy, since at that time in the country the fight against “rootless cosmopolitans” intensified and Eleazar Moiseevich, accused of “manifestations of cosmopolitism in the work of the Department of Literature”, was not only removed from office but arrested as well. The paper provides evidence for E.M. Meletinsky friendships in Petrozavodsk as well, namely, with the Dean of the Faculty of History and Philology I.I. Käiväräinen, L.Y. Ginzburg, K.V. Chistov and his wife, with V.M. Morozov. Those were the friendships he kept for the rest of his life.

This paper dwells upon analysis of E.M. Meletinsky’s legacy in Brazil. The authors attempt at tracing publication history and reception of the researcher’s works in Portuguese. It is important to note that when Meletinsky came to São Paulo with lecture courses, his works had already been known to Brazilian researchers via publications arranged by the University of São Paulo Professor B.S. Schneiderman. We believe it important to highlight that translation and study of Meletinsky’s works in Brazil were taking place in the context of perception of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and its structural-semiotic method. Publication of the “Structural-typological study of fairy tale” paper in 1984 as an appendix to “Morphology of fairy tale” by V. Propp, together with a paper by Lévi-Strauss, was the most critical step in promoting Meletinsky’s works in Portuguese. As remarkably significant, we consider the publication of “Poetics of myth” (1987) and “Literary archetypes” (1998), which led to a whole series of comparative research projects blending classical mythology studies and contemporary literature studies, especially the so called “new Latin Americal novel”.

The essay contains memories of collaboration with E.M. Meletinsky during the work of the author upon a thesis on the burial cult of Pre-Christian Scandinavia and editing the “Myths of the world” encyclopedia. An issue of relation between synchronous functioning of mythological systems and history of emergence of certain plots and beliefs concerning divine characters (Odin included) is considered relevant.

The author of the article analyses the main areas of Old Norse studies which were studied by Eleazar Meletinsky and shows the impact of his research on the development of Russian and European scholarship. The article is concentrated on the reception of Eleazar Meletinsky’s ideas in the works of contemporary scholars, e.g. his conception of Old Norse mythology as a system, of the folklore origin of Old Norse heroic and mythological lays and their inherent proximity to the archaic variants of myth and epic, and of the oral poetic tradition as a source of their composition, structure and language (loci communes, formulaic style, lexical repetitions, rhythmical-syntactic parallelism, ornamental epithets). The author of the article gives a critical account of contemporary research dedicated to subjects which were formulated and investigated for the first time in the works of Eleazar Meletinsky, i.e. the skaldisation of eddaic style, the function of formula in modelling epic situations (or type scenes), the dramatic and comedic nature inherent to the eddaic genre (e.g. flyting), the means of expressing feelings and emotional states in the Poetic Edda, the mythopoetic symbolism of colour, the genetic proximity of eddaic elegies to lamentations.

The paper, for the first time in the history of Narts studies in Russia, attempts to describe the contribution made by the eminent scholar of the 20^th century E.M. Meletinsky into the research upon one of the archaic epic works - the Nart sagas, traditional for a number of peoples of North and western Caucasus and some peoples of Transcaucasia. Since the beginning of the 19^th to the middle of the 20^th century various national versions of the Nart sagas had been researched upon by V.F. Miller, G. Dumézil and V.I. Abaev, whose works have taken their rightful place in the history not only of Russian, but also of world Narts studies. The new stage in the history of Narts studies began with works of E.M. Meletinsky, based on a frontal study of all national versions of the Nart sagas available to scholars by that time. In his works, for the first time in the history of Narts studies, the place of the Nart sagas among world literary works, the time of their creation (first millennium BC), their creators (Alans, Sarmatian tribes and Sarmatized Sindi-Maeotae tribes) are defined, Ossetian and Abkhazo-Adyghean versions of the Nart sagas are described in a well-reasoned manner, with the latter substantiated by the scholar as the most archaic. The article highlights the fact that these fundamental conclusions by E.M. Meletinsky became so unanimously accepted by the new generation of the scholars of the Narts that the reader won’t always find a reference to works by E.M. Meletinsky in their writings.

This paper offers an analysis of E.M. Meletinsky’s research concepts that his first monography - “The Hero of the Tale” (1958; finished in 1948 but not published immediately due to the arrest and imprisonment of the author) - is based on. Analysis of the book 50 years after its first edition allows to evaluate the persisting topicality of the research dwelling upon the most general problem central to contemporary folklore studies: what is folklore and how is it related to the extra-textual reality, as well as upon possible perspectives concerning research areas outlined by Meletinsky’s work: typological and neo-evolutionist research.

In 2001 the documents from the file of E.M. Meletinsky, who was arrested in May 1949 during the campaign against cosmopolitism, were transferred to the library of Petrozavodsk University from the FSB. In this archive section we publish some of those documents, namely: a cover letter from the FSB; positive characteristics from E.M. Meletinsky’s mentors B.I. Purischev and V.M. Zhirmunsky, who also became victims of the campaign against “cosmopolitism” in MSU and LSU; the article “On some social motifes in fairy tales” (1949) which is an extract of the postdoctoral thesis written under influence of A.N. Veselovsky’s ideas; as well as the paper “Social motifs in Karelo-Finnish runes about Kullervo” (1949) written together with E.G. Karhu, who came from an Ingrian Finnish family, subjected to forced deportation in the beginning of the 1930s.

The paper dwells upon one of the peculiarities of Sub-Saharan African peoples’ folklore, which is the fact that, due to the unevenness of historical, social and cultural development of various regions, it is possible to trace the genesis and dynamics of a genre’s development in almost each and every genre category from the most archaic to its most developed examples. The author demonstrates this via an analysis of fairy tales, epics and legends, comparing African forms to classic European examples of the genres.

The article deals with the two ancient games of Native American people, which have come out of the tradition by the middle of the 20^th century. The game-reality of these is, in fact, a representation of mythological conceptualization. Acquisition of knowledge about the future from the game-leader by the community was the main goal of both games. The article is based on the field materials by Canadian ethnologists J. Helm and N. Lurie collected in 1962. The author performs a brief structural data analysis of the games, dwells upon the question of their social role, reveals a hypothetical relation between the games and hunting cult.

The article explains the “dark word” karotok, recorded in “ Russian fairy tales” by A.N. Afanasyev. The semantics of the word is expanded upon basing on the logic of fairytale tripling, while references to other variants of the tale allow to interpret the word as a form, distorted by folk etymology, of the word kamortok that was in use in the 18^th century (German Kammertuch, Dutch kamerdoek. Both of these are calques from the French toile de Cambrai ‘cloth of Cambrai’). In modern Russian another name for this fabric has prevailed - batist (from the French batiste).

The paper dwells upon literary activities in the Meiji era - the period of the most active cultural interaction between Japan and the West. When introducing Western literatures, Japanese translators and enlighteners have realized from the very start the necessity of translation of the basic world folklore works. Thus, first translations of “Cinderella” in its European versions appear in Japan. The paper tells about the history of such translations and adaptations, as well as - in the most laconic manner - about the Medieval backstory of the plot in Japan, which remains so far largely under-researched upon.