Skaz Narrative

The term skaz comes from the Russian verb skazat' (to tell) and such words as rasskaz (short story) and skazka (fairy tale). It is also a word used of (traditional or “folk”) oral narratives, and has occasionally been used of works to suggest their origin in terms of such an oral context (as in the full title of Leskov's Levsha, or “Tale of the squint-eyed, left-handed man from Tula and the steel flea”, 1881). The word has therefore essentially to do with “telling”.

The designation skaz was subsequently adopted by the Formalist school of Russian c