The formation of new countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European block necessarily brings about an increased awareness of national identity and has given rise to more urgent attempts to define national literary and cultural facts. Among the facts to be determined are the circulation of similar cultural motifs, situations, symbols, plots, genres, words, and rituals. Such a situation gives rise to questions concerning the relationship between things that were constructed over centuries and relatively new archetypal plots and situations created by different authors,...