Storytellers of Zaonezhye about Other Storytellers and Themselves: On the Issue of Tradition’s Self-Reflection

A B S T R A C T. Interactions with folklore collectors and researchers, as well as their growing interest in popular beliefs and traditional culture, catalyzed a process of self-reflection among local performers on their traditions.Following the discovery of a living epic tradition in the Russian North, storytellers became active participants in this dynamic, serving both as sources and as symbolic representatives of national cultural memory.Their narratives came to embody the concept of lieu de mmoire.This article draws on interviews with storytellers from the Zaonezhye region, recorded in the summer of 1931 by N. G. Kotlyarova, a student at the Leningrad State Historical and Linguistic Institute.These interviews reveal key mechanisms and characteristics of tradition's self-reflection.The materials include storytellers' and fellow villagers' insights into the role of epic tales within local culture, the acquisition and transmission of epic repertoires, the experience of performing, historical sources and imagery of the epics, as well as evaluations of storytelling talent and conformity to established canons.The study applies George M. Foster's theory of the "Image of Limited Good" to analyze the social dynamics between storytellers and their communities, concluding that epic storytelling in the 1920s-1930s was perceived as both a social and material form of capital.By this time, local intellectuals and storytellers had internalized and reproduced the narrative of a fading epic tradition, a view that was subsequently passed on to collectors.Researchers' ensuing efforts often focused on emphasizing the temporal and cultural distance of the tradition, ultimately contributing to its transformation: from a living practice into a lieu de mmoire, and from performance into an act of cultural commemoration.