On January 28 at 4.15 pm Alina Oprelianska´s lecture “Customary Law and (Pre)Marriage: What Drives the Kind Girl’s Journey in Ukrainian Variants of ATU 480 Tale”

Alina Oprelianska will give a presentation “Customary Law and (Pre)Marriage: What Drives the Kind Girl’s Journey in Ukrainian Variants of ATU 480 Tale” at a meeting of the Academic Folklore Society.

Alina Oprelianska is a 2nd year doctoral student of folklore at the University of Tartu, whose fields of research are gender relations in Ukrainian fairytales and Ukrainian folk religion.
The meeting will take place on January 28 at 4.15 pm at the university (University 16, room 212) and can be followed online:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://ut-ee.zoom.us/j/93032414498?pwd=eUVJdTF6TFhManJCNHdsZGdSd0RPZz09

Meeting ID: 930 3241 4498
Passcode: 592506

Presentation theses:

Marriage and beauty are considered to be an integral part of female fairy tales. However, the concept of the beauty might be different from what we got used to consider as “beautiful”, as well as fairy tale tasks performance might be of another meaning than merely “patriarchal” point of view on femininity.
The current paper is going to elucidate some matters of Ukrainian customary law in a context of ATU 480 “The Kind and the Unkind Girls”, or how it titles in Ukraine – “The Mare’s Head”. Some problems of the right to own property, matrilineal inheritance and dowry are going to be discussed. The right to own property will be revealed in connection with the concept of beauty. It aims to delineate how local customs and customary low might influence the meaning of the reward and the motivation of the journey.

Information: Merili Metsvahi (merili.metsvahi@ut.ee)

Organizers: Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Academic Folklore Society