Call for papers 2026

Monographic issue 2026. Fairy tales and fables in the Slavic countries. Production – Reception – Circulation. Guest edited by Emilio Mari and Monika Wozniak

Fairy tales and fables in the Slavic countries. Production – Reception – Circulation (PDF).

A century has passed since Vladimir Propp realised the Veselovskian project of a “morphology of the fairy tale” and opened the way to the poetic-narratological study of the folkloric text, removing it from the domain of romantic idealisation and positivist classification. Yet, despite the appearance of some studies dedicated to the presence of fairy tale motifs in the work of individual authors and the growing interest in the question of the “authorship” (and “falsification”) of the oral text, there is still a lack of wide-ranging research that aims to reconsider the genre of the fairy tale not only as langue, that is, a collective and universal expression of the "people", but also as parole, that is, a historically determined artistic work and the result of individual choices of poetics and stylistics.

If the studies of Propp (Morphology of the Folktale, 1928, Italian translation 1966, and Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale, 1946, Italian translation 1949) have encouraged international interest in Russian folk tales, they have also contributed to the tendency to perceive them primarily as a manifestation of folk creativity, a perspective that still seems to prevail in various fields today. Moreover, the “traditionalist” filter through which Slavic fairy tales have often been interpreted has delayed the development of a solid tradition of studies on contemporary transformations (reinterpretations, transcreations, postmodern fairy tales, etc.).

In Italy, in particular, after an initial enthusiasm during the structuralist period, the scientific interest in Slavic fairy tales and fables has almost wholly faded: the few studies available are limited to considering the Russian tradition or are placed in a more general framework, such as that of children’s literature. Translations are also scarce, except the Old Russian Fairy Tales collected by Afanas'ev and a few others.
This monographic issue of “Slavic Research” aims to encourage reflection on the literary, historical and cultural importance of this expressive genre in the context of Slavic countries while at the same time opening up to its analysis in a comparative and transnational perspective.

We invite authors to propose contributions related to (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • Reception and translations of Slavic fairy tales in Italy
  • Historical development of interest in fairy tales and folk tales in Slavic countries
  • Critical-methodological reflection on Slavic fairy tales and its Italian reception
  • Folklorisation, re-folklorisation, evolution and hybridisation of fairy tale motifs
  • Cultural appropriation of the folk tale through literary variants
  • Forms of mixed authorship (the figure of the collector, the storyteller, etc.)
  • Intermediate and borderline genres (written fairy tales, literary fairy tales, fairy tales in
    verse, fairy tales-lubok, novelistic fairy tales and short stories with fairy tales, etc.)
  • The role of fairy tales and fables in the development of children's literature
  • Circulation of fairy tales, their translations, versions and adaptations in the Slavic
    countries
  • Falsification and ideological manipulation of fairy tales in Slavic countries
  • The role of fairy tales in the development of national identity and cultural memory
  • Fairy tales and folk tales today: rewritings, transpositions and reinterpretations

Abstracts, which must not exceed 500 words, can be written in Italian or English and must be received by May 1, 2025, at the following email addresses: emilio.mari@uniroma1.it and
monika.wozniak@uniroma1.it.
The authors of accepted contributions will be notified by 1 June 2025. The complete articles,
which must not exceed 50,000 characters (including spaces), can be written in both Italian and English and must be sent by the deadline of 31 December 2025. If not written by native speakers, texts must be linguistically reviewed by an expert before delivery.
The editorial staff also invite contributions to other sections of the journal: Studies and
Research, Portraits, Discussions, and Reviews. Texts published in these sections can be written in Italian, English, or any Slavic language. Proposals for these sections must be submitted to ricercheslavistiche.seai@uniroma1.it or monika.wozniak@uniroma1.it by 1
December 2025.