Skaz

Lore & Background

The word skaz comes from skazátʹ, 'to tell,' and is related to rasskaz ('short story') and skazka ('fairy tale'). Boris Eikhenbaum first described skaz in the late 1910s, applying it specifically to Nikolai Gogol's short story The Overcoat in a 1919 essay titled How Gogol's 'Overcoat' Is Made. Eikhenbaum saw skaz as a form of unmediated or improvisational speech and believed a national literature could not develop without strong attachment to oral traditions.

Reader's Guide

Skaz holds significance as a distinctive Russian narrative technique that bridges oral tradition and literary form. Its theoretical foundation was laid by Boris Eikhenbaum in the late 1910s, who argued that skaz—characterized by unmediated, improvisational speech using dialect and slang—was central to Russian culture and necessary for national literature. The concept was further developed by major critics in the 1920s, including Yury Tynyanov, Viktor Vinogradov, and Mikhail Bakhtin, the latter of whom refined the understanding of skaz by distinguishing between simple objectified discourse and double-voiced forms carrying parodistic intent. Skaz was prominently used in the nineteenth century by Nikolai Leskov, Pavel Melnikov, and Nikolai Gogol, and in the twentieth century by writers such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and Isaac Babel. The term has also been applied beyond Russian literature, popularised by David Lodge and identified by John Mullan in works like The Catcher in the Rye and Vernon God Little. Skaz thus represents a lasting contribution to narrative theory and practice, demonstrating how oral speech patterns can be woven into written storytelling.

Did You Know?

• Mikhail Bakhtin distinguished between simple objectified skaz and double-voiced skaz with parodistic intention.
• Examples of skaz have been identified in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little.