Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2005 number

The objective of the paper is to study the origin of cumulative fairy tales. An assumption on the archaic nature of cumulation is made. The problems of the origin of cumulative fairy tales and the relations of cumulation to other composition techniques are touched upon. The origin of cumulative fairy tales is traced back to ancient ritual song games based on debate of the parties. This syncretic source is validated by a amoeba-like composition of fairy tales, their formula nature, laconic character, and rhythmic contour. Cumulation and "rhythmic and syntactic parallelism" are treated as the development stages of oral poetic tradition which is characterized by logical decomposition along with chain-like structure and cumulativeness.