East Slavic Etiological Tales and Legends. Encyclopedic Dictionary

The Dictionary of plots and motifs of East Slavic etiological tales and legends is a collection of materials related to folk etiologies - an area of folklore-mythological knowledge about the creation of the world, the creation of natural and cultural... objects, and the formation of social institutions. An important aspect of folk etiologies is the representation not only of the possibility of changes and transformations of all elements of existence but also beliefs about the transformation of one object into another.
The materials collected in the dictionary allow for the analysis of plots, motifs, and sets of characters characteristic of the entire East Slavic area, for individual national traditions (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian), or for regional traditions, as well as to highlight universals and rarities, archaic and innovative elements in the system of folk etiologies.
In addition to the dictionary, the publication contains a bibliography that presents the main collections of East Slavic etiological texts and studies devoted to individual plots and folk etiologies as a whole.
The book is addressed to folklorists and a wide audience of readers interested in Slavic folklore and traditional folk culture