>>Folklore and fiction
The appearance of fiction was preceded by a long period when, long before the invention,
In the shadow of writing, over the course of many centuries, ancient peoples created the true art of literary expression - folklore. “The beginning of the art of words is in folklore,” Alexey Maksimovich Gorky rightly asserted. Reflecting on the main features (signs) in the structure of life of ancient people and their understanding of the world around them, Gorky wrote:
“These signs have come to us in the form of fairy tales and myths, in which we heard echoes of work on the domestication of animals, on the discovery of medicinal herbs, and the invention of tools. Already in ancient times, people dreamed of the opportunity to fly through the air - the legends about Phaeton, Daedalus and his son Icarus, as well as fairy tales about the “flying carpet,” tell us about this. They dreamed of accelerating movement on the ground - the fairy tale about “fast boots”. They thought about the possibility of spinning and weaving a huge amount of matter in one night - they created a spinning wheel, one of the most ancient tools of labor, a primitive manual weaving loom and created the fairy tale about Vasilisa the Wise...”
In Ancient Rus', new types of oral poetic creativity were created: songs, traditions, legends, epics that explain the origin of cities, villages, tracts 1, mounds, telling about the heroic deeds of the defenders of their native land.
Many of them were already included in the first works of written literature - chronicles. Thus, the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years” (XI-XII centuries) contains folk legends about the founding of Kyiv by three brothers - Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv, who were known even in Constantinople, where they were given great honor. In the “Tale of Bygone Years” you can also find oral and poetic legends about the Russian princes - Oleg, Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav, etc. The legend about Oleg the Prophet, for example, tells about an outstanding ancient Russian commander who defeated the Greeks
not only by strength, but also by wise ingenuity.
Later, with the spread of writing and the appearance of the first books, oral folk art not only did not lose its role in the life of the people, but also had the most beneficial influence on the development of fiction.
In an effort to penetrate deeper into the essence of folk life, many writers drew from folklore not only information about everyday life, but also themes, plots, images, ideals 2 and learned the art of bright, expressive speech. Most of the world's literature has created works that were widespread in folklore: songs, ballads, romances8, fairy tales.
You know well that Alexander Pushkin wrote his wonderful ballad “Song of the Prophetic Oleg” in
based on the folk legend he heard about the death of Prince Oleg, allegedly predicted to him by the sorcerer (priest of the Slavic god Perun). In his fairy-tale poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” Pushkin widely used from childhood, according to his nanny Arina Rodionovna, fairy-tale episodes and images that he remembered.
The imagination of readers is struck by the very introduction to this poem (“By the Lukomorye there is a green oak tree...”), which surprisingly contains fairy-tale images of a mermaid, a hut on chicken legs, Baba Yaga with a mortar, Koshchei and other magic from Russian fairy tales, familiar to everyone from childhood. . The poet exclaims: “There is a Russian spirit there, it smells of Russia!”
tract- an area that differs from the surrounding area, for example a swamp, a forest in the middle of a field.
Ideal- that which constitutes the highest goal of activity and aspirations.
Romance- a small vocal work of a lyrical nature.
Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights" is a poetic adaptation of the Russian folk tale "The Self-Glancing Mirror."
The Dane Hans Christian Andersen (“Wild Swans”), the Frenchman Charles Perrault (“Cinderella”), the German brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (“The Town Musicians of Bremen”) and others wrote their wonderful fairy tales based on folk stories.
In the minds of people of many generations, fairy tales of writers merged with fairy tales of the people. And this is explained by the fact that every writer, no matter how original his own work may be, experiences a deep connection with the folklore of his people. It was in oral folk art that writers found vivid examples of fidelity to moral principles, an expression of the people’s dream of a fair, happy life.
A large place in Russian folklore is occupied by epic heroic songs telling about mighty Russian heroes, defenders of the Motherland. Glorifying the heroes, the epics called for heroic deeds for the glory of the Fatherland, raised the spirit of the people in difficult times, and instilled in young people a love for their native land and the desire to protect it from conquerors. Epics about invincible heroes inspired Russian writers and poets to create their own works about fearless and glorious warriors of the Russian land. Get acquainted with an excerpt from a poem by Nikolai Rylenkov, in which the poet told about his impressions of the epic about Ilya Muromets, told to him by his grandfather. This is how he imagined the hero as a child:
Winter and childhood. The evening is long
Under the canopy of cramped housing.
Rising above the grandfather's epic
Peasant Muromets Ilya.
Not having fun in an open field,
He is in a hurry to Kyiv without roads,
And the Nightingale the Robber whistles
Couldn't stop him.
Many writers, trying to show more deeply the life of the people, the national characteristics of the heroes, use folk songs, traditions, legends and other types of oral folk art in their works. Let us remember how Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol worked on his book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. In a letter to his mother, he asked to tell him everything that she knows about the morals and customs of her fellow countrymen: “I really, really need this... If there are, in addition, any brownies, then more about them with their names and affairs ; There are many superstitions, terrible tales, legends, various anecdotes, etc., etc., etc. floating around among the common people. All this will be extremely interesting for me...”
You know from literature lessons how unprecedented the success of the first book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” was. Pushkin wrote: “I just read “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” They amazed me. This is real gaiety, sincere, relaxed, without affectation 1, without stiffness. And in places what poetry! What sensitivity! All this is so unusual in our literature that I still haven’t come to my senses. Congratulations to the public on a truly funny book...”
In the future, your knowledge about the inextricable connection between folklore and works of fiction will expand and deepen, but you should always remember the main thing: for artists, the word folklore is an inexhaustible source of the people’s unshakable ideas about goodness, justice, true love and wisdom.
Let's talk
1. What types of oral poetic creativity were created by the people long before the advent of fiction? Name those of them that were included in the first chronicles.
2. Why do writers often turn to folklore in their work?
3. Name the works of oral folk art that formed the basis of the literary works known to you.
4. Among Russian folk tales there is a fairy tale called “The Golden Fish”, the plot of which completely coincides with Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish”. Why do you think this particular folk tale became the basis for the creation of one of the most beloved and popular fairy tales of the great poet?
5. If you know well the content of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” by Nikolai Gogol, remember what popular beliefs and legends the writer used in his stories “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “Terrible Revenge”.
6. In 1785, the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe published the book “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” which was a literary adaptation of the fantastic stories of Baron Munchausen, who actually lived in Germany. Over time, this book gained worldwide fame. Which of the adventures described in the book do you know? Why do you think this book appeals to readers around the world?
7. Why did A. M. Gorky claim that “the beginning of the art of words is in folklore”?
Simakova L. A. Literature: Handbook for 7th grade. behind-the-scenes initial deposits from my Russian beginning. - K.: Vezha, 2007. 288 pp.: ill. - Russian language.
Submitted by readers from the website
ST. PETERSBURG HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF TRADE UNIONS
TEST
discipline __
subject ___________________________________________________________________
_____ course student
correspondence faculty
speciality
_____________________________
_____________________________
FULL NAME.
_____________________________
Saint Petersburg
______________________________________________________________
signature surname clearly
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(cutting line)
Student(s) of _____ course________________________________________________________________
(FULL NAME.)
correspondence faculty specialty__________________________________________________________
discipline___________
subject________________
Registration No.__________________ "_______"_______________________200______
date of submission of work to the University
ASSESSMENT____________________ “_________”________________________200_____g.
TEACHER-REVIEWER___________________________/_________________________________
signature surname clearly
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….………………. 3
2. Main part…………………………………………………………………………………. 4
2.1 Genres of Russian folklore……………………………………………………………...4
2.2 The place of folklore in Russian literature………………………………………………………6
3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12
4. List of references……………………………………………………….13
Introduction
Folklore – [English] folklore] folk art, a set of folk actions.
The relationship between literature and oral folk art is an urgent problem of modern literary criticism in the context of the development of world culture.
In recent decades, a whole direction of creative use of folklore has been defined in Russian literature, which is represented by talented prose writers who reveal the problems of reality at the level of intersection of literature and folklore. Deep and organic mastery of various forms of oral folk art has always been an integral property of true talent
In the 1970-2000s, many Russian writers working in a variety of literary directions turned to oral folk art. What are the reasons for this literary phenomenon? Why did writers of various literary movements and styles turn to folklore at the turn of the century? It is necessary to take into account, first of all, two dominant factors: intraliterary patterns and the socio-historical situation. Undoubtedly, tradition plays a role: writers have turned to oral folk art throughout the development of literature. Another, no less important, reason is the turn of the century, when Russian society, summing up the results of the next century, again tries to find answers to important questions of existence, returning to the national spiritual and cultural roots, and the richest folklore heritage is the poetic memory and history of the people.
The problem of the role of folklore in Russian literature on the threshold of the 21st century is natural because it has now acquired a special philosophical and aesthetic value.
Folklore is an archaic, transpersonal, collective type of artistic memory that has become the cradle of literature.
Main part.
Genres of Russian folklore.
Russian folk poetry has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. Its genre composition is rich and varied. The genres of Russian folk poetry will appear before us in the following scheme: I. Ritual poetry: 1) calendar (winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles); 2) family and household (maternity, wedding, funeral); 3) conspiracies. II. Non-ritual poetry: 1) epic prose genres: * a) fairy tale, b) legend, c) legend (and bylichka as its type); 2) epic poetic genres: a) epics, b) historical songs (primarily older ones), c) ballad songs; 3) lyrical poetic genres: a) songs of social content, b) love songs, c) family songs, d) small lyrical genres (ditties, choruses, etc.); 4) small non-lyrical genres: a) proverbs; o) sayings; c) riddles; 5) dramatic texts and actions: a) mummers, games, round dances; b) scenes and plays. In scientific folklore literature one can find the question of mixed or intermediate generic and genre phenomena: lyric-epic songs, fairy tales, legends, etc.
However, it must be said that such phenomena are very rare in Russian folklore. In addition, the introduction of this type of work into the classification of genres is controversial because mixed or intermediate genres have never been stable; at no time in the development of Russian folklore were they the main ones and did not determine its overall picture and historical movement. The development of genera and genres does not consist in their mixing, but in the creation of new artistic forms and the death of old ones. The emergence of genres, as well as the formation of their entire system, is determined by many circumstances. Firstly, by the social need for them, and, consequently, by the tasks of a cognitive, ideological, educational and aesthetic nature that the diverse reality itself posed to folk art. Secondly, the originality of the reflected reality; for example, epics arose in connection with the struggle of the Russian people against the nomadic Pechenegs, Polovtsians and Mongol-Tatars. Thirdly, the level of development of the artistic thought of the people and their historical thinking; In the early stages, complex forms could not be created; the movement probably went from simple and small forms to complex and large ones, for example, from a proverb, a parable (short story) to a fairy tale and legend. Fourthly, the previous artistic heritage and traditions, previously established genres. Fifthly, the influence of literature (writing) and other forms of art. The emergence of genres is a natural process; it is determined both by external socio-historical factors and by the internal laws of the development of folklore.
The composition of folklore genres and their connection with each other are also determined by their common task of multilateral reproduction of reality, and the functions of the genres are distributed so that each genre has its own special task - the depiction of one of the aspects of life. The works of one group of genres have as their subject the history of the people (epics, historical songs, legends), another - the work and life of the people (calendar ritual songs, work songs), the third - personal relationships (family and love songs), the fourth - the moral views of the people and his life experience (proverbs). But all genres taken together widely cover everyday life, work, history, social and personal relationships of people. Genres are interconnected in the same way as different aspects and phenomena of reality itself are interconnected, and therefore form a single ideological and artistic system. The fact that the genres of folklore have a common ideological essence and a common task of multifaceted artistic reproduction of life also causes a certain commonality or similarity of their themes, plots and heroes. Folklore genres are characterized by a commonality of principles of folk aesthetics - simplicity, brevity, economy, plot, poeticization of nature, certainty of moral assessments of the characters (positive or negative). The genres of oral folk art are also interconnected by a common system of artistic means of folklore - the originality of the composition (leitmotif, unity of theme, chain connection, screensaver - a picture of nature, types of repetitions, commonplaces), symbolism, special types of epithets. This system, developing historically, has a pronounced national identity, determined by the peculiarities of the language, way of life, history and culture of the people. Relationships between genres. In the formation, development and coexistence of folklore genres, a process of complex interaction occurs: mutual influence, mutual enrichment, adaptation to each other. The interaction of genres takes many forms. It serves as one of the reasons for significant changes in oral folk art.
The place of folklore in Russian literature.
“The Russian people have created a huge amount of oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics - spoken in a chant, to the sound of strings - about the glorious exploits of heroes, defenders of the people’s land - heroic, magical, everyday and funny tales.
Folklore- This is folk art, very necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days. Folklore includes works that convey the basic, most important ideas of the people about the main values in life: work, family, love, social duty, homeland. Our children are still being brought up on these works. Knowledge of folklore can give a person knowledge about the Russian people, and ultimately about himself.
In folklore, the original text of a work is almost always unknown, since the author of the work is unknown. The text is passed down from mouth to mouth and survives to this day in the form in which the writers wrote it down. However, writers retell them in their own way to make the works easy to read and understand. Currently, many collections have been published that include one or several genres of Russian folklore. These are, for example, “Epics” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Russian folk poetry” by T. M. Akimova, “Russian folklore” edited by V. P. Anikin, “Russian ritual songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rumble: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “On Russian Folklore” by E. V. Pomerantseva, “Folk Russian Legends” and “People-Artists: myth, folklore, literature” by A. N. Afanasyev, “Slavic mythology” by N. I. Kostomarov, “Myths and legends” by K. A. Zurabov.
In all publications, the authors distinguish several genres of folklore - these are fortune telling, spells, ritual songs, epics, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings, riddles, tales, pestushki, chants, ditties, etc. Due to the fact that the material is very huge, and in a short time It is impossible to study it in time; I use in my work only four books given to me by the central library. These are “Russian Ritual Songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rokotahu: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “Russian Folk Poetry” by T. M. Akimova.
Modern writers often use folklore motifs in order to give the story an existential character, to combine the individual and the typical.
Oral folk poetry and book literature arose and developed on the basis of the national riches of the language; their themes were related to the historical and social life of the Russian people, their way of life and work. In folklore and literature, poetic and prose genres that were largely similar to each other were created, and types and types of poetic art arose and were improved. Therefore, creative connections between folklore and literature, their constant ideological and artistic mutual influence are quite natural and logical.
Oral folk poetry, having arisen in ancient times and reaching perfection by the time of the introduction of writing in Rus', became a natural threshold for Old Russian literature, a kind of “poetic cradle”. It was on the basis of the richest poetic treasury of folklore that the original Russian written literature arose to a large extent. It was folklore, according to many researchers, that introduced a strong ideological and artistic current into the works of ancient Russian literature.
Folklore and Russian literature represent two independent areas of Russian national art. At the same time, the history of their creative relationship should have become the subject of independent study by both folklore and literary studies. However, such targeted research did not appear in Russian science immediately. They were preceded by long stages of autonomous existence of folklore and literature without proper scientific understanding of the processes of their creative influence on each other.
Tolstoy's work, addressed to children, is vast in scope and polyphonic in sound. It reveals his artistic, philosophical, pedagogical views.
Everything Tolstoy wrote about children and for children marked a new era in the development of domestic and, in many ways, world literature for children. During the writer’s lifetime, his stories from “ABC” were translated into many languages of the peoples of Russia and became widespread in Europe.
The theme of childhood in Tolstoy's works acquired a philosophically deep, psychological meaning. The writer introduced new themes, a new layer of life, new heroes, and enriched the moral issues of the works addressed to young readers. The great merit of Tolstoy, a writer and teacher, is that he raised educational literature (the alphabet), which traditionally had an applied, functional nature, to the level of real art.
Leo Tolstoy is the glory and pride of Russian literature. 2 The beginning of Tolstoy’s teaching activity dates back to 1849. When he opened his first school for peasant children.
Tolstoy did not ignore the problems of education and upbringing until the last days of his life. In the 80s and 90s, he was engaged in publishing literature for the people, and dreamed of creating an encyclopedic dictionary and a series of textbooks for peasants.
Constant interest of L.N. Tolstoy to Russian folklore, to the folk poetry of other peoples (primarily Caucasian) is a well-known fact. He not only recorded and actively promoted fairy tales, legends, songs, and proverbs, but also used them in his artistic work and teaching activities. The 70s of the 19th century were especially fruitful in this regard - a time of intensive work on “The ABC” (1872), “The New ABC” and complementary books for reading (1875). Initially, in the first edition, “ABC” was a single set of educational books. Tolstoy summarized his teaching experience at the Yasnaya Polyana school and revised the stories for children published in the appendix to Yasnaya Polyana. First of all, I would like to note the serious, thoughtful attitude of L.N. Tolstoy to folklore material. The author of both “ABCs” strictly focused on the primary sources, avoided arbitrary changes and interpretations and allowed himself some adjustments only for the purpose of adapting folklore texts that were difficult to perceive. Tolstoy studied the experience of Ushinsky, spoke critically about the language of his predecessor’s educational books, which, from his point of view, was too conventional and artificial, and did not accept descriptiveness in stories for children. The positions of both teachers were close in assessing the role of oral folk art and the experience of spiritual culture in mastering the native language.
Proverbs, sayings, riddles in “ABC” alternate with short sketches, micro-scenes, small stories from folk life 3(“Katya went mushroom picking”, “Varya had a siskin”, “The children found a hedgehog”, “Bug was carrying a bone”). Everything about them is close to a peasant child. Read in the book, the scene is filled with special significance and sharpens observation: “They laid the stacks. It was hot, it was difficult, and everyone was singing.” “Grandfather was bored at home. My granddaughter came and sang a song.” The characters in Tolstoy's short stories are, as a rule, generalized - mother, daughter, sons, old man. In the traditions of folk pedagogy and Christian morality, Tolstoy pursues the idea: love work, respect your elders, do good. Other everyday sketches are executed so masterfully that they acquire a high generalized meaning and come close to a parable. For example:
“The grandmother had a granddaughter; Before, the granddaughter was small and kept sleeping, and the grandmother baked bread, chalked the hut, washed, sewed, spun and wove for her granddaughter; and then the grandmother became old and lay down on the stove and kept sleeping. And the granddaughter baked, washed, sewed, weaved and spun for her grandmother.”
A few lines of simple two-syllable words. The second part is almost a mirror image of the first. What's the depth? The wise course of life, the responsibility of generations, the transmission of traditions... Everything is contained in two sentences. Here every word seems to be weighed, emphasized in a special way. The parables about the old man planting apple trees, “The Old Grandfather and Granddaughter”, “Father and Sons” have become classic.
Children are the main characters of Tolstoy's stories. Among his characters are children, simple children, peasant children and noble children. Tolstoy does not focus on social difference, although in each story children are in their own environment. The village little Filipok, wearing his father’s big hat, overcoming fear and fighting off other people’s dogs, goes to school. It takes no less courage for the little hero of the story “How I Learned to Ride” to beg adults to take him into the playpen. And then, without being afraid of falling, sit on Chervonchik again.
“I’m poor, I immediately understood everything. “I’m so clever,” says Filipok about himself, beating his name. There are many such “poor and clever” heroes in Tolstoy’s stories. The boy Vasya selflessly protects a kitten from hunting dogs (“Kitten”). And eight-year-old Vanya, showing enviable ingenuity, saves the lives of his little brother, sister and old grandmother. The plots of many of Tolstoy's stories are dramatic. A hero - a child must overcome himself and decide to act. The tense dynamics of the story “The Jump” are characteristic in this regard. 4
Children are often disobedient and do wrong things, but the writer does not seek to give them a direct assessment. The reader must make the moral conclusion for himself. A conciliatory smile can be caused by Vanya’s misdeed, secretly eating a plum (“Pit”). Seryozha’s carelessness (“Bird”) cost Chizhu his life. And in the story “Cow” the hero is in an even more difficult situation: the fear of punishment for a broken glass led to dire consequences for a large peasant family - the death of the wet nurse Buryonushka.
Famous teacher D.D. Semyonov, a contemporary of Tolstoy, called his stories “the height of perfection, as in the psychological. So it is in an artistic sense... What expressiveness and figurativeness of language, what strength, conciseness, simplicity and at the same time elegance of speech... In every thought, in every storyteller there is a moral... moreover, it is not striking, does not bore children, but is hidden in the artistic image, and therefore it asks for a child’s soul and sinks deeply into it” 5 .
A writer's talent is determined by the significance of his literary discoveries. What is immortal is what is not repeated and unique. The nature of literature does not tolerate repetition.
The writer creates his own image of the real world, not being satisfied with someone else's idea of reality. The more this image reflects the essence and not the appearance of phenomena, the deeper the writer penetrates into the fundamental principles of existence, the more accurately their immanent conflict, which is the paradigm of a genuine literary “conflict,” is expressed in his work, the more durable the work turns out to be.
Among the forgotten works are things that reduce the idea of the world and man. This does not mean that the work is intended to reflect a holistic picture of reality. It’s just that the “private truth” of a work must be connected with a universal meaning.
Question about nationalities of this or that writer cannot be fully resolved without analyzing his connection with folklore. Folklore is an impersonal creativity, closely related to the archaic worldview.
Conclusion
Thus, Tolstoy’s creation of the cycle of “folk stories” of the 1880s - 1900s was due in combination to both external and internal reasons: socio-historical factors, the laws of the literary process of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the religious and aesthetic priorities of the late Tolstoy.
In the conditions of socio-political instability in Russia in the 1880-1890s, the tendency for a radical reorganization of society by violent methods, sowing discord and disunity among people, Tolstoy puts into practice the idea of “active Christianity” - a religious and philosophical doctrine of spiritual enlightenment based on Christian axiomatics, developed by him over a quarter of a century, and following which, in the writer’s opinion, should inevitably lead to the spiritual progress of society.
Objective reality, being unnatural, receives aesthetic condemnation by the writer. In order to contrast reality with the image of harmonious reality, Tolstoy develops a theory of religious art as the most appropriate to the needs of the day, and radically changes the nature of his own creative method. The method of “spiritual truth” chosen by Tolstoy, synthesizing the real and the ideal as a way of embodying harmonious reality, was most clearly realized in a cycle of works with a conventional genre definition of “folk stories”.
In the context of the growing interest of modern literary criticism in Christian issues in Russian classics, the study of “folk stories” in the context of spiritual prose of the late 19th - early 20th centuries seems promising, allowing us to present the spiritual literature of this period as an integral phenomenon.
Bibliography.
1. Akimova T. M., V. K. Arkhangelskaya, V. A. Bakhtina / Russian folk poetic creativity (a manual for seminar classes). – M.: Higher. School, 1983. – 208 p.
2. Gorky M. Collection. Op., vol. 27
3. Danilevsky I.N. Ancient Rus' through the eyes of contemporaries and their descendants (XI – XII centuries). – M., 1998. – P. 225.
5. Kruglov Yu. G. Russian ritual songs: Textbook. manual for teachers in-tovpospets "rus. language or T.". – 2nd ed., rev. and additional – M.: Higher. school 1989. – 320 p.
6. Semenov D.D. Favorite Ped. Op. – M., 1953
Signs, properties of folklore
Researchers have noticed many signs and properties that are characteristic of folklore and allow us to get closer to understanding its essence:
Bifunctionality (combination of practical and spiritual);
Polyelementity or syncretism.
Any folklore work is multi-elemental. Let's use the table:
Mimic element
Genres of oral prose
Verbal element
Pantomime, mimic dancing
Ritual performance, round dances, folk drama
Verbal and musical (song genres)
Dance element
Musical and choreographic genres
musical element
Collectivity;
Illiteration;
Variant multiplicity;
Traditionality.
For phenomena associated with the development of folklore in other types of culture, the name is folklorism (introduced at the end of the 19th century by the French researcher P. Sebillot), as well as “secondary life”, “secondary folklore”.
In connection with its wide distribution, the concept of folklore itself, its pure forms, arose: thus, the term authentic (from the Greek autenticus - genuine, reliable) was established.
Folk art is the basis of all national culture. The richness of its content and genre diversity - sayings, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales and more. Songs have a special place in the creativity of the people, accompanying human life from cradle to grave, reflecting it in the most diverse manifestations and generally representing enduring ethnographic, historical, aesthetic, moral and highly artistic value.
Features of folklore.
Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Toms. Literally translated, it means “folk wisdom”, “folk knowledge” and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.
Other terms have also become established in Russian science: folk poetry, folk poetry, folk literature. The name “oral creativity of the people” emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name “folk poetic creativity” indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1
Folklore is complex, synthetic art. Often his works combine elements of various types of arts - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnology (ethnography) 2. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a unique area of national studies 3 .
The science that studies folklore is called folkloristics. If literature is understood not only as written artistic creativity, but as verbal art in general, then folklore is a special branch of literature, and folkloristics is thus part of literary criticism.
Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of words. In this way he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.
The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. The ancient art of words was characterized utility– the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.
The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of unity, non-division. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity; it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity, along with other types of social consciousness, into an independent field of spiritual activity.
Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no “famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the internal and external life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. And he moves on the song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and then poems come out of the songs, of which only the people can call themselves the author." 4
Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work not only because information about him, if he existed, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, a storyteller, a storyteller, but there is no author or writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.
Traditional succession covers large historical periods - entire centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebny, folklore arises “from memorable sources, that is, it is passed down from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory allows, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of popular understanding” 5 . Each bearer of folklore creates within the boundaries of generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, and supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. “Works of folklore always bear the stamp of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or “existed.” For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It has no individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators who are perfect mastering generally accepted traditional techniques of saying and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in the thoughts and feelings expressed in it; Folklore is folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying the content. and the properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms." 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. Traditionality– the most important and basic specific property of folklore.
Any folklore work exists in large quantities options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile, variable nature.
A characteristic feature of a folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (Italian: improvvisazione - unforeseen, suddenly) - the creation of a folklore work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and crying. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic boundaries.
Taking into account all these signs of a folklore work, we present an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: “folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other visual arts, both to ancient creativity and to new ones created in modern times and created in our days.” 7
Folklore, like literature, is the art of words. This gives grounds to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are usually called childbirth. Each genus covers a group of works of a certain type. Genre– type of artistic form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, by genus we mean a way of depicting reality, by genre - a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of changes in its genres. They are more stable in folklore compared to literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore do not arise as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, and are replaced by others. So, for example, epics arise in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die out. As living conditions change, genres are destroyed and consigned to oblivion. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.
What is the relationship between reality and its reflection in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. “Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself; convention is allowed.” 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, and symbolism.
Russian folklore
Folklore, translated, means “folk wisdom, folk knowledge.” Folklore is folk art, artistic collective activity of the people, reflecting their life, views and ideals, i.e. folklore is the folk historical cultural heritage of any country in the world.
Works of Russian folklore (fairy tales, legends, epics, songs, ditties, dances, tales, applied art) help to recreate the characteristic features of the folk life of their time.
Creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. The art of words was closely connected with other types of art - music, dance, decorative art. In science this is called "syncretism".
Folklore was an art organically inherent in folk life. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and styles. In the ancient period, most peoples had tribal traditions, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore itself was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were based on dreams, wisdom, and ethical fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Russian epics and others). Legends and songs also arose reflecting various beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in people's memory.
Genres in folklore also differ in the method of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and different combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing and dancing, storytelling and acting).
With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The growth of industry and cities brought to life: romances, jokes, workers', and student folklore.
Now there are no new Russian folk tales appearing, but the old ones are still told and cartoons and feature films are made based on them. Many old songs are also sung. But epics and historical songs are practically no longer heard live.
For thousands of years, folklore was the only form of creativity among all peoples. The folklore of every nation is unique, just like its history, customs, and culture. And some genres (not just historical songs) reflect the history of a given people.
Russian folk musical culture
There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk artistic culture, as oral poetry and as a set of verbal, musical, gaming or artistic types of folk art. With all the diversity of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, everyday life, and the transmission of works from generation to generation in the oral tradition.
Folk musical art originated long before the emergence of professional music in the Orthodox church. In the social life of ancient Rus', folklore played a much greater role than in subsequent times. Unlike medieval Europe, Ancient Rus' did not have secular professional art. In its musical culture, folk art of the oral tradition developed, including various, including “semi-professional” genres (the art of storytellers, guslars, etc.).
By the time of Orthodox hymnography, Russian folklore already had a long history, an established system of genres and means of musical expression. Folk music and folk art have become firmly established in people's everyday lives, reflecting the most diverse facets of social, family and personal life.
Researchers believe that in the pre-state period (that is, before Ancient Rus' took shape), the Eastern Slavs already had a fairly developed calendar and family folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
With the adoption of Christianity, pagan (Vedic) knowledge began to be eradicated. The meaning of magical acts that gave rise to this or that type of folk activity was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays turned out to be unusually stable, and some ritual folklore continued to live as if out of connection with the ancient paganism that gave birth to it.
The Christian Church (not only in Rus', but also in Europe) had a very negative attitude towards traditional folk songs and dances, considering them a manifestation of sinfulness and devilish seduction. This assessment is recorded in many chronicles and in canonical church decrees.
Lively, cheerful folk festivals with elements of theatrical performance and with the indispensable participation of music, the origins of which should be sought in ancient Vedic rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays.
The most extensive area of folk musical creativity of Ancient Rus' is ritual folklore, testifying to the high artistic talent of the Russian people. He was born in the depths of the Vedic picture of the world, the deification of natural elements. Calendar-ritual songs are considered the most ancient. Their content is associated with ideas about the cycle of nature and the agricultural calendar. These songs reflect the different stages of life of the farmers. They were part of winter, spring, and summer rituals that correspond to turning points in the change of seasons. By performing this natural ritual (songs, dances), people believed that the mighty gods, the forces of Love, Family, Sun, Water, Mother Earth would hear them and healthy children would be born, a good harvest would be born, there would be offspring of livestock, life in love would develop and harmony.
In Rus', weddings have been played since ancient times. Each locality had its own custom of wedding actions, lamentations, songs, and sentences. But with all the endless variety, weddings were played according to the same laws. Poetic wedding reality transforms what is happening into a fantastic fairy-tale world. Just as in a fairy tale all the images are varied, so the ritual itself, poetically interpreted, appears as a kind of fairy tale. A wedding, being one of the most significant events of human life in Rus', required a festive and solemn frame. And if you feel all the rituals and songs, delving into this fantastic wedding world, you can feel the aching beauty of this ritual. What will remain behind the scenes are the colorful clothes, the wedding train rattling with bells, the polyphonic choir of “singers” and the mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of waxwings and buzzers, accordions and balalaikas - but the poetry of the wedding itself resurrects - the pain of leaving the parental home and the high joy of the festive state of mind - Love.
One of the most ancient Russian genres is round dance songs. In Rus', round dances were held throughout almost the entire year - on Kolovorot (New Year), Maslenitsa (farewell to winter and welcoming spring), Green Week (round dances of girls around birches), Yarilo (sacred bonfires), Ovsen (harvest festivals). Round dances-games and round dances-processions were common. Initially, round dance songs were part of agricultural rituals, but over the centuries they became independent, although images of labor were preserved in many of them:
And we sowed and sowed millet!
Oh, Did Lado, they sowed, they sowed!
Dance songs that have survived to this day accompanied men's and women's dances. Men's - personified strength, courage, courage, women's - tenderness, love, stateliness.
Over the centuries, the musical epic begins to be replenished with new themes and images. Epic epics are born telling about the struggle against the Horde, about travel to distant countries, about the emergence of the Cossacks, and popular uprisings.
People's memory has long preserved many beautiful ancient songs over the centuries. In the 18th century, during the period of the formation of professional secular genres (opera, instrumental music), folk art for the first time became the subject of study and creative implementation. The educational attitude towards folklore was vividly expressed by the remarkable writer, humanist A.N. Radishchev, in the heartfelt lines of his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Whoever knows the voices of Russian folk songs admits that there is something in them that means mental pain... In in them you will find the formation of the soul of our people.” In the 19th century, the assessment of folklore as the “education of the soul” of the Russian people became the basis of the aesthetics of the school of composers from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, to Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Kalinikov, and folk song itself was one of the sources of the formation of Russian national thinking.
Russian folk songs of the 16th-19th centuries - “like the golden mirror of the Russian people”
Folk songs recorded in various parts of Russia are a historical monument to the life of the people, but also a documentary source that captures the development of folk creative thought of their time.
The fight against the Tatars, peasant riots - all this left an imprint on folk song traditions in each specific area, starting with epics, historical songs and ballads. Like, for example, the ballad about Ilya Muromets, which is associated with the Nightingale River, which flows in the area of Yazykovo, there was a struggle between Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, who lived in these parts.
It is known that the conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible played a role in the development of oral folk art; Ivan the Terrible’s campaigns marked the beginning of the final victory over the Tatar-Mongol yoke, which freed many thousands of Russian prisoners from captivity. The songs of this time became the prototype for Lermontov’s epic “Song about Ivan Tsarevich” - a chronicle of people’s life, and A.S. Pushkin used oral folk art in his works - Russian songs and Russian fairy tales.
On the Volga, near the village of Undory, there is a cape called Stenka Razin; songs of that time were sung there: “On the steppe, Saratov steppe”, “We had it in holy Rus'”. Historical events of the late XVII - early XVIII centuries. captured in a compilation about the campaigns of Peter I and his Azov campaigns, about the execution of the archers: “It’s like walking on a blue sea,” “A young Cossack is walking along the Don.”
With the military reforms of the early 18th century, new historical songs appeared, these were no longer lyrical, but epic. Historical songs preserve the most ancient images of the historical epic, songs about the Russian-Turkish War, about recruitment and the war with Napoleon: “The French thief boasted of taking Russia,” “Don’t make noise, you green oak mother.”
At this time, epics about “Surovets Suzdalets”, about “Dobrynya and Alyosha” and a very rare fairy tale by Gorshen were preserved. Also in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Russian epic folk songs and tales were used. The ancient traditions of folk games, mummery and the special performing culture of Russian folklore have been preserved.
Russian folk theater art
Russian folk drama and folk theater art in general are the most interesting and significant phenomenon of Russian national culture.
Dramatic games and performances at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries formed an organic part of festive folk life, be it village gatherings, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.
The geography of distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have discovered unique theatrical “hearths” in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.
Folk drama, contrary to the opinion of some scientists, is a natural product of folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the broadest strata of the Russian people.
At city and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which performances on fairy-tale and national historical themes were performed. The performances seen at the fairs could not completely influence the aesthetic tastes of the people, but they expanded their fairy tale and song repertoire. Popular and theatrical borrowings largely determined the originality of the plots of folk drama. However, they “lay down” on the ancient gaming traditions of folk games, dressing up, i.e. on the special performing culture of Russian folklore.
Generations of creators and performers of folk dramas have developed certain methods of plotting, characterization and style. Developed folk dramas are characterized by strong passions and insoluble conflicts, continuity and speed of successive actions.
A special role in folk drama is played by songs performed by the heroes at different moments or sounded in chorus - as comments on ongoing events. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of original songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries that were popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbruk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn " and many others.
Late genres of Russian folk art - festivities
The heyday of the festivities occurred in the 17th-19th centuries, although certain types and genres of folk art, which were an indispensable part of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before these centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. This is the puppet theater, bear fun, partly the jokes of traders, many circus acts. Other genres were born out of the fairgrounds and died out when the festivities ended. These are comic monologues of booth barkers, barkers, performances of booth theaters, dialogues of parsley clowns.
Usually, during celebrations and fairs, entire entertainment towns with booths, carousels, swings, and tents were erected in traditional places, selling everything from popular prints to songbirds and sweets. In winter, ice mountains were added, access to which was completely free, and sledding from a height of 10-12 m brought incomparable pleasure.
With all the diversity and diversity, the city's folk festival was perceived as something integral. This integrity was created by the specific atmosphere of the festive square, with its free speech, familiarity, unbridled laughter, food and drinks; equality, fun, festive perception of the world.
The festive square itself amazed with its incredible combination of all kinds of details. Accordingly, outwardly it was a colorful, loud chaos. Bright, motley clothes of walkers, catchy, unusual costumes of “artists”, flashy signs of booths, swings, carousels, shops and taverns, handicrafts shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and the simultaneous sound of barrel organs, pipes, flutes, drums, exclamations, songs, cries of merchants , loud laughter from the jokes of “boothy grandfathers” and clowns - everything merged into a single fair fireworks display, which fascinated and amused.
The large, well-known festivities “under the mountains” and “under the swings” attracted many guest performers from Europe (many of them owners of booths, panoramas) and even southern countries (magicians, animal tamers, strongmen, acrobats and others). Foreign speech and overseas curiosities were commonplace at metropolitan festivities and large fairs. It is clear why the city’s spectacular folklore often appeared as a kind of mixture of “Nizhny Novgorod and French.”
The basis, heart and soul of Russian national culture is Russian folklore, this is the treasure, this is what has filled Russian people from the inside since ancient times, and this internal Russian folk culture ultimately gave birth to a whole galaxy of great Russian writers, composers, artists, scientists in the 17th-19th centuries , military men, philosophers, whom the whole world knows and respects:
Zhukovsky V.A., Ryleev K.F., Tyutchev F.I., Pushkin A.S., Lermontov M.Yu., Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E., Bulgakov M.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S., Fonvizin D.I., Chekhov A.P., Gogol N.V., Goncharov I.A., Bunin I.A., Griboedov A.S., Karamzin N.M., Dostoevsky F. M., Kuprin A.I., Glinka M.I., Glazunov A.K., Mussorgsky M.P., Rimsky-Korsakov N.A., Tchaikovsky P.I., Borodin A.P., Balakirev M. A.A., Rachmaninov S.V., Stravinsky I.F., Prokofiev S.S., Kramskoy I.N., Vereshchagin V.V., Surikov V.I., Polenov V.D., Serov V.A. ., Aivazovsky I.K., Shishkin I.I., Vasnetsov V.N., Repin I.E., Roerich N.K., Vernadsky V.I., Lomonosov M.V., Sklifosovsky N.V., Mendeleev D.I., Sechenov I.M., Pavlov I.P., Tsiolkovsky K.E., Popov A.S., Bagration P.R., Nakhimov P.S., Suvorov A.V., Kutuzov M. I., Ushakov F.F., Kolchak A.V., Solovyov V.S., Berdyaev N.A., Chernyshevsky N.G., Dobrolyubov N.A., Pisarev D.I., Chaadaev P.E. ., there are thousands of them, which, one way or another, the whole earthly world knows. These are world pillars that grew up on Russian folk culture.
But in 1917, a second attempt was made in Russia to break the connection of times, to interrupt the Russian cultural heritage of ancient generations. The first attempt was made back in the years of the baptism of Rus'. But it was not a complete success, since the power of Russian folklore was based on the life of the people, on their Vedic natural worldview. But already somewhere in the sixties of the twentieth century, Russian folklore began to be gradually replaced by the popular pop genres of pop, disco and, as they say now, chanson (prison-thieve folklore) and other types of Soviet-style arts. But a special blow was dealt in the 90s. The word “Russian” was secretly forbidden even to be uttered, supposedly this word meant inciting national hatred. This situation continues to this day.
And there was no longer a single Russian people, they scattered them, they made them drunk, and they began to destroy them at the genetic level. Now in Rus' there is a non-Russian spirit of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and all other inhabitants of Asia and the Middle East, and in the Far East there are Chinese, Koreans, etc., and active, global Ukrainization of Russia is taking place everywhere.
Immense oral folk art. It has been created for centuries, there are many varieties of it. Translated from English, “folklore” is “folk meaning, wisdom.” That is, oral folk art is everything that is created by the spiritual culture of the population over the centuries of its historical life.
Features of Russian folklore
If you carefully read the works of Russian folklore, you will notice that it actually reflects a lot: the play of the imagination of the people, the history of the country, laughter, and serious thoughts about human life. Listening to the songs and tales of their ancestors, people thought about many difficult issues of their family, social and work life, thought about how to fight for happiness, improve their lives, what a person should be, what should be ridiculed and condemned.
Varieties of folklore
Varieties of folklore include fairy tales, epics, songs, proverbs, riddles, calendar refrains, magnification, sayings - everything that was repeated passed from generation to generation. At the same time, the performers often introduced something of their own into the text they liked, changing individual details, images, expressions, imperceptibly improving and honing the work.
Oral folk art for the most part exists in a poetic (verse) form, since it was this that made it possible to memorize and pass on these works from mouth to mouth for centuries.
Songs
A song is a special verbal and musical genre. It is a small lyrical-narrative or lyrical work that was created specifically for singing. Their types are as follows: lyrical, dance, ritual, historical. Folk songs express the feelings of one person, but at the same time of many people. They reflected love experiences, events of social and family life, reflections on difficult fate. In folk songs, the so-called parallelism technique is often used, when the mood of a given lyrical character is transferred to nature.
Historical songs are dedicated to various famous personalities and events: the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, the uprising of Stepan Razin, the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev, the battle of Poltava with the Swedes, etc. The narration in historical folk songs about some events is combined with the emotional sound of these works.
Epics
The term "epic" was introduced by I.P. Sakharov in the 19th century. It represents oral folk art in the form of a song of a heroic, epic nature. The epic arose in the 9th century; it was an expression of the historical consciousness of the people of our country. Bogatyrs are the main characters of this type of folklore. They embody the people's ideal of courage, strength, and patriotism. Examples of heroes who were depicted in works of oral folk art: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Mikula Selyaninovich, Alyosha Popovich, as well as the merchant Sadko, the giant Svyatogor, Vasily Buslaev and others. The basis of life, at the same time enriched with some fantastic fiction, constitutes the plot of these works. In them, heroes single-handedly defeat entire hordes of enemies, fight monsters, and instantly overcome vast distances. This oral folk art is very interesting.
Fairy tales
Epics must be distinguished from fairy tales. These works of oral folk art are based on invented events. Fairy tales can be magical (in which fantastic forces are involved), as well as everyday ones, where people are depicted - soldiers, peasants, kings, workers, princesses and princes - in everyday settings. This type of folklore differs from other works in its optimistic plot: in it, good always triumphs over evil, and the latter either suffers defeat or is ridiculed.
Legends
We continue to describe the genres of oral folk art. A legend, unlike a fairy tale, is a folk oral story. Its basis is an incredible event, a fantastic image, a miracle, which is perceived by the listener or storyteller as reliable. There are legends about the origin of peoples, countries, seas, about the sufferings and exploits of fictional or real heroes.
Puzzles
Oral folk art is represented by many riddles. They are an allegorical image of a certain object, usually based on a metaphorical rapprochement with it. The riddles are very small in volume and have a certain rhythmic structure, often emphasized by the presence of rhyme. They are created in order to develop intelligence and ingenuity. The riddles are varied in content and theme. There may be several versions of them about the same phenomenon, animal, object, each of which characterizes it from a certain aspect.
Proverbs and sayings
Genres of oral folk art also include sayings and proverbs. A proverb is a rhythmically organized, short, figurative saying, an aphoristic folk saying. It usually has a two-part structure, which is supported by rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and assonance.
A proverb is a figurative expression that evaluates some phenomenon of life. It, unlike a proverb, is not a whole sentence, but only a part of a statement included in oral folk art.
Proverbs, sayings and riddles are included in the so-called small genres of folklore. What is it? In addition to the above types, these include other oral folk art. The types of small genres are complemented by the following: lullabies, nurseries, nursery rhymes, jokes, game choruses, chants, sentences, riddles. Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Lullabies
Small genres of oral folk art include lullabies. People call them bikes. This name comes from the verb "bait" ("bayat") - "to speak." This word has the following ancient meaning: “to speak, to whisper.” It is no coincidence that lullabies received this name: the oldest of them are directly related to spell poetry. Struggling with sleep, for example, the peasants said: “Dreamushka, get away from me.”
Pestushki and nursery rhymes
Russian oral folk art is also represented by pestushki and nursery rhymes. At their center is the image of a growing child. The name “pestushki” comes from the word “to nurture”, that is, “to follow someone, raise, nurse, carry in one’s arms, educate.” They are short sentences with which in the first months of a baby’s life they comment on his movements.
Imperceptibly, the pestles turn into nursery rhymes - songs that accompany the baby's games with his toes and hands. This oral folk art is very diverse. Examples of nursery rhymes: “Magpie”, “Ladushki”. They often already contain a “lesson”, an instruction. For example, in “Soroka” the white-sided woman fed everyone porridge, except for one lazy person, although he was the smallest one (his little finger corresponds to him).
Jokes
In the first years of children's lives, nannies and mothers sang songs of more complex content to them, not related to play. All of them can be designated by the single term “jokes.” Their content is reminiscent of short fairy tales in verse. For example, about a cockerel - a golden comb, flying to the Kulikovo field for oats; about the rowan hen, which “winnowed peas” and “sowed millet.”
A joke, as a rule, gives a picture of some bright event, or it depicts some rapid action that corresponds to the active nature of the baby. They are characterized by a plot, but the child is not capable of long-term attention, so they are limited to only one episode.
Sentences, calls
We continue to consider oral folk art. Its types are complemented by slogans and sentences. Children on the street very early learn from their peers a variety of calls, which represent an appeal to birds, rain, rainbows, and the sun. Children, on occasion, shout out words in chorus. In addition to nicknames, in a peasant family any child knew the sentences. They are most often pronounced one by one. Sentences - appeal to a mouse, small bugs, a snail. This may be imitation of various bird voices. Verbal sentences and song chants are filled with faith in the powers of water, sky, earth (sometimes beneficial, sometimes destructive). Their utterance introduced adult peasant children to the work and life. Sentences and chants are combined into a special section called “calendar children's folklore”. This term emphasizes the existing connection between them and the time of year, holiday, weather, the whole way of life and the way of life of the village.
Game sentences and refrains
Genres of oral folk art include playful sentences and refrains. They are no less ancient than calls and sentences. They either connect parts of a game or start it. They can also serve as endings and determine the consequences that exist when conditions are violated.
The games are striking in their similarity to serious peasant activities: reaping, hunting, sowing flax. Reproducing these cases in strict sequence with the help of repeated repetition made it possible to instill in the child from an early age respect for customs and the existing order, to teach the rules of behavior accepted in society. The names of the games - "Bear in the Forest", "Wolf and Geese", "Kite", "Wolf and Sheep" - speak of a connection with the life and way of life of the rural population.
Conclusion
Folk epics, fairy tales, legends, and songs contain no less exciting colorful images than in the works of art of classical authors. Original and surprisingly accurate rhymes and sounds, bizarre, beautiful poetic rhythms - like lace are woven into the texts of ditties, nursery rhymes, jokes, riddles. And what vivid poetic comparisons we can find in lyrical songs! All this could only be created by the people - the great master of words.
The concept of folklore genre. The set of principles that makes it possible in a given situation to construct a statement of a certain type is called a folklore genre (for a similar thing, see B.N. Putilov). The units of formation of a folklore genre, if the genre is a set of folklore works, are complete utterances, as units of speech communication. Unlike units of speech (words and sentences), an utterance has an addressee, expression and author. The composition and style of the statement depend on these features.
Folklore texts are analyzed in the following aspects:
-social situation that provoked the statement
-speaker's intention
-basic social characteristics of the speaker
-ideological/mental attitudes
-the goal pursued by the speaker
-characterization of the relationship between the fact of the message and the fact itself
-response reaction
-linguistic means for creating utterances(Adonyeva S.B. “Pragmatics..”)
Genre is a set of works united by a common poetic system, everyday use of performance forms and musical structure. Propp we limit ourselves to narrative and lyrical poetry. Dramatic poetry, as well as ditties, proverbs, sayings, riddles and conspiracies, may be the subject of another work.
Propp divides narration into poetry
Prosaic and
Poetic
Folk prose is one of the areas of folk art
Identifies the trace genera and species
fairy tale - neither the performer nor the listener believes in what is being told (Belinsky) this is very important because in other cases there are attempts to convey reality, but here it is deliberate fiction
Fairy tales
According to Propp's definition, they are distinguished by a completely clear composition, by their structural features, by their, so to speak, syntax, which is established scientifically with absolute precision, which is discussed in more detail in the Morphology of Fairy Tales and in the ticket about fairy tales.
Cumulative ones are built on multiple repetitions of everything, creating piles and references. They have a special composition, style, rich colorful language, gravitate towards rhythm and rhyme
For other types of fairy tales, except for magical and cumulative ones, the composition has not been studied, and it is not yet possible to determine and divide them on this basis. They probably do not have unity of composition. If this is so, then some other principle must be chosen as the basis for further systematization. Such a principle, which has scientific and cognitive significance, can be determined by the character of the characters.
We immediately recall the debate at the beginning of Morphology of a Fairy Tale, where the story is about Afanasyev and his classification according to which no one classifies, but it exists. From this we get 1 digit
fairy tales about animals
Tales about inanimate nature (all sorts of forces, the wind of the world)
Tales about objects (bubble, bast shoes, straws)
By type of animal (domestic wild)
Tales of Plants (War of the Mushrooms)
2) tales about people (they are also everyday people) actions, men, women, etc.
This essentially includes the turnip, which is cumulative
Propp divides them into character types in terms of their actions
About dexterous and smart guessers
Wise advisors
Unfaithful/faithful wives
Robbers
Evil and good... and so on
The same division according to the types of s.zhetov, because here the plot is determined by the character of the character, which divides his actions...
In folklore there is no particular difference between everyday tales about people and anektodati (propp)
3) fables - stories about unrealistic events in life (for example, Münchhausen is based on this genre)
4) boring fairy tales - short jokes/rhymes for children when they require fairy tales
From the point of view of propinquity, a fairy tale is not yet a genre; these are the types of fairy tales that we have identified; these are genres; they can be divided into rubrics. Genre is only one of the links in classification.
Lyrical epic and dramatic poetry are types of epic: epic prose\epic poetry
A fairy tale is a type of epic prose, it is divided into the above genres, some into types, and those into versions and variants. Therefore there is a trace diagram
Next area
2) stories that people believe in
Here we have
A) ethnological about the origin of the earth and everything that is on it (creation myths)
B) about animals they are why: why does an elephant have a long nose
C) epics - in most cases these are horror stories about goblin, mermaids and other evil spirits (there were also other things)
D) legends - stories related to Orthodoxy, with characters from the First and New Testaments, since a legend is etymologically what monks read at meals, but with historical figures this is not the case. In addition, the question of the relationship of legends to folklore is controversial. Sokolov considered them legendary fairy tales of Aarne, Andreev and Afanasyev considered them separate and published them in separate collections
D) legends - this is where historical persons and events belong
E) tales - oral memoirs of individuals that convey events that took place and preserve facts
Verse epic poetry
It is distinguished by the inextricable connection of the musical component with the text, that is, the genre does not matter - they will always sing. RHYTHM. The plot, the verse, the tune are one artistic whole. (remembering Lord’s description of how a storyteller learns to sing an epic) melodiousness expresses a lyrical attitude towards the person portrayed. Although each epic individually does not have its own tune (different epics can be sung with the same tune and vice versa), the style of epic musical performance is, within certain limits, integral and inapplicable to other types of epic creativity.
An epic is one of the types of epic song poetry. The epic itself is not a genre, like a fairy tale, but it includes those same genres. Epics are distinguished by a wild variety of plots, so they are more difficult to classify than fairy tales.
By plot groups, by style and character of the narration, epics are divided into
heroic epics
- “classical” (the plot is the exploits of national Russian heroes, as a prologue, how the hero received power) for example, when after Ilya and Svyatogor the battle between Ilya and the idol begins. Or when, after healing Elijah, he travels to Kyiv, defeating the robber nightingale along the way
Military (in any idea they talk about a battle with a group of enemies, hordes of Tatars for example. ADD TO THE PLOT!!! You can track the history and evolution of ‘b[the epic believes propp)
Martial arts (Muromets and Turkish Khan, Alyosha in battle with Tararin)
When 2 heroes meet in the field, they don’t recognize each other and fight (EXAMPLE!!)
Epics about the battle with a monster (can we include an IDOL here?? Or a nightingale?) They are more ancient and from them you will develop something about battles
Epics about the hero's rebellion (one of the signs is actions in the interests of the state)
These are epics about Ilya's rebellion against Vladimir, about Ilya and the tavern goals, about Buyan the Bogatyr, about Vasily Buslaevich and the Novgorodians and about the death of Vasily Buslaevich. One of the signs of heroic epics is that the hero in them acts in the interests of the state. From this point of view, the epic about the Danube and his trip to get a wife for Vladimir undoubtedly belongs to the heroic epics.
What is more correct: to consider that each of these groups constitutes a special genre, or to believe that, despite the difference in plots, heroic epics constitute one of the genres of epic creativity? The latter position is more correct, because the genre is determined not so much by plots as by the unity of poetics - style and ideological orientation, and this unity is evident here.
Fairy-tale epics
The antagonist of the hero in these cases is a woman. Unlike fairy tales, in which a woman is most often a helpless creature whom he saves, for example, from a snake and whom he marries, or a wise wife or assistant to the hero, women in epics are most often treacherous and demonic creatures; they embody some kind of evil, and the hero destroys them. Such epics include “Potyk”, “Luka Danilovich”, “Ivan Godinovich”, “Dobrynya and Marinka”, “Gleb Volodyevich”, “Solomon and Vasily Okulovich” and some others. These are epics, not fairy tales. What gives them a fabulous character is the presence of witchcraft, werewolf, and various miracles; These plots are specific to epics and do not correspond to the poetics of the fairy tale plots. Along with this, fairy tales sung in epic verse are also used in the epic epic. Such works do not belong to epic works. Their plots appear in fairy tale indexes (“The Untold Dream”, “Stavr Godinovich”, “Vanka
Udovkin’s son”, “Sunflower Kingdom”, etc.). Such tales should be studied both in the study of fairy tales and in the study of epic creativity, but they cannot be attributed to the genre of epics only on the basis of the use of epic verse. Such epics usually have no options. A special case is the epic about Sadko, in which there is no antagonist of the hero like the insidious women of other epics. Nevertheless, its belonging to fairy-tale epics is quite obvious.
Can we consider that fairy-tale epics constitute the same genre as heroic epics? It seems to us that it is impossible. Although the issue still needs to be studied specifically, it is still quite obvious that, for example, the epic about Dobrynya and Marinka is a phenomenon of a completely different nature than the epic about the Lithuanian raid, and that they belong to different genres, despite the commonality of the epic verse.
Novellistic epics are a number of realistically colored narratives, the plots of which differ from those discussed above, with great variety
– matchmaking with obstacles
On the one hand, the style of a short story and the style of a monumental, heroic or fairy-tale epic are incompatible. On the other hand, the epics contain a number of realistically colored narratives, the plots of which are of a significantly different nature than those discussed above. CONDITIONALLY, such epics can be called novelistic. Their number is small, but they are very diverse. Some of them tell about matchmaking, which, after overcoming some obstacles, ends happily (“Nightingale Budimirovich”, “Khoten Slu-dovich”, “Alyosha and the Petrovich’s sister”). An intermediate position between fairy tale and novelistic epics is occupied by the epic about Dobrynya's departure and Alyosha's unsuccessful marriage. The epic about Alyosha and the Petrovich sister occupies an intermediate position between the epic genre and the ballad genre. The same can be said about “Kozarina”. The epic about Danil Lovchanin also has a ballad character, which we will talk about below when studying ballads. We would classify other stories that usually belong to epics as ballads (“Churilo and Bermyata’s unfaithful wife”).
The plots of novelistic epics can be divided into groups, but we will not do this here. The woman plays a big role in these epics, but there are novelistic epics of a different nature, such as the epic about Duke’s competition with Churila or about Vladimir’s visit to Churila’s father.
songs about saints and their deeds (about Alexei the man of God.)
I express certain religious ideas of the people, but the worldview expressed in them often does not coincide with the dogma of the church, has historical details and has special beauties.
In contrast to them there are buffoons
there are many types of songs about funny events (or about not funny but humorously interpreted ones)
–parodies
-fables
– with sharp social satire
They are not always of a narrative nature; sometimes the subject matter is funny and the essence does not result in much development. Commonality of genres =, first of all, commonality of style.
Significantly different from Western European, the sphere is the world of human passions, interpreted tragically
love (family content)
The female sufferer in the leading role. Medieval Russian reality. The actors mostly belong to the middle or upper classes, and are depicted through the eyes of peasants. They tend to depict terrible events; the murder of an innocent woman is a frequent outcome and the killer is often a member of the family. Prince Roman, Fyodor and Marfa, slandered wife.
The long absence of one of the family members during an unexpected chance meeting, they do not recognize each other and the tragic events (the robber brother and the ssetsra) song recorded by Pushkin?
2) historical ballads
Real historical heroes, such as Tatars, may act in them, but they do not attack with an army, but kidnap a woman. Concentration of attention around personal history, a characteristic sign of the presence of some intrigue of love or family content
Epics are less focused on personality than ballads; however, there are many transitional cases (EXAMPLES!!)
It is not always possible to draw an exact line between the ballad and other genres. In this case, we can talk about an epic of a ballad nature or a ballad of an epic type. A number of such transitional or related cases between a ballad and an epic, a ballad and a historical song, or a ballad and a lyrical song can be found, although not a very large number. It is impractical to draw artificial edges. An epic and a ballad can also be distinguished from a musical perspective. The epic has a certain meter and melodies of a semi-recitative nature. The poetic dimensions of the ballad are very diverse, as well as naive. From a musical point of view, ballads do not exist as a folk music genre.
All of the above shows that ballads have such a specific character that we can talk about them as a genre. Those sharp differences that exist in the repertoire of epics or fairy tales are not here. The difference between family ballads, about unrecognized meetings, and so-called historical ballads is a difference of types, not genres.
Historical songs
The question of the genre nature of historical songs is very complex. The very name “historical songs” indicates that these songs are determined by their content and that the subject of historical songs are historical persons or events that took place in Russian history or at least have a historical character. Meanwhile, as soon as we begin to consider what is called historical song, we immediately discover the extreme diversity and variegation of poetic forms.
This diversity is so great that historical songs do not in any way constitute a genre, if the genre is defined on the basis of some unity of poetics. Here the same thing happens as with fairy tales and epics, which we also could not recognize as a genre. True, the researcher has the right to specify his terminology and conditionally call historical songs a genre. But such terminology would not have educational significance, and therefore B. N. Putilov was right when he called his book dedicated to historical songs “Russian historical song folklore of the 13th-16th centuries” (M.-L., 1960). Nevertheless, historical song exists, if not as a genre, then as the sum of several different genres from different eras and different forms, united by the historicity of their content. A complete and accurate definition of all genres of historical song cannot be our task. But even with a superficial glance, without special and in-depth study, it is possible to establish at least some types of historical songs. The nature of historical songs depends on two factors: the era in which they are created and the environment that creates them. This makes it possible to at least outline the main categories of historical songs.
Songs of the buffoon warehouse
They open a list of rhetorical songs because the first historical song was identified precisely in this genre. About Schelkan Dudentievich, the earliest dates back to the 14th century, songs composed later were of a different nature
songs about Ivan the Terrible, composed in the 16th century, are terrible
Songs created in the Moscow urban environment - gunners (free artillerymen) and songs were created using the means of epics and the people called them antiquities (the wrath of the terrible on his son, the capture of Kazan) in further development they lost connection with the epic
3) songs about internal events in the 16th and early 18th centuries
Also created in Moscow by ordinary people, these are songs of a certain environment and a certain era. Despite the diversity of poetics, they have a single epic (about the Zemsky Sobor, about the siege of the Osolovetsky monastery)
St. Petersburg songs
With the transfer of the capital to St. Petersburg, this type of urban songs about internal events of Russian history ceases to be productive. In St. Petersburg, individual songs were created about the Decembrist uprising, about Arakcheev and some others, but this genre was in decline in the 19th century. The songs of this group are created by the urban environment, from where they later penetrate into the peasantry.
Songs of the Cossacks 16-17 centuries
Choral performance of lengthy lyrical songs about freemen, about peasant wars. Here the songs about Pugachev are more real than the songs about Razin, since the St. Petersburg songs were influenced by the soldiers
Military soldiers' songs 18-20
With the advent of the regular army, soldiers created the dominant type of fighting from the Battle of Poltava to World War II
Lyrical songs
Forms of existence and use
Round dance games
Performed without movement
2) household use
Labor gatherings, Christmas weddings, etc.
They sing about love, family, separation - human life
Psenia express a different attitude towards the world
Satirical reproaches
Majestic lamenters
3) by execution
Lengthy, intermediate, semi-extended
4)Songs by social groups
Workers, peasants, barge haulers, soldiers
Female, male, young, old, etc., gender
To divide into genres, we start from the following positions
Unity of form and content. It is assumed that the first is the content since it creates the form
Since the creators are representatives of different social groups, their songs are different
A social group of farm laborers will create a song with a certain content and accordingly the song will take a certain form
Songs of peasants uprooted from the land
Workers' songs
Division of songs by social affiliation
Songs of peasants doing agricultural work
Are divided into
Ritual
F) agricultural
Divided according to the holidays on which they were performed
For example, Christmas time = Christmastide, New Year's Eve = sub-tables for guessing
Songs for every holiday = a separate genre
I) family
Propp considers lamentations, they happen
+) funeral
For each moment of the ritual, different for a different performer
+_) wedding
Other lamentations performed by the bride or mourner, as well as sentences of the groomsmen and honorable parents are the main genres of wedding songs
Non-ritual
Here the propp again focused on the lamentations, they are named
A) Recruit songs, as well as those related to some kind of disaster in life, here are the rest of the songs not considered by the propr
According to the form of performance, songs can be divided into those that are performed with body movements and those that are performed without
A) Round dances, games, dances
Round dance, game and dance songs have a special style. Usually they have a verse structure (which is not the case in vocal songs). Such songs have special laws of composition. For example, the last lines of each verse may be repeated with one or two words changed.
Round dance songs are distributed according to the figures that make up the round dance (Balakirev distinguishes “circular” round dance songs, when the round dance moves in a circle, and “walking” songs, when the singers stand or walk one after another.)
Game songs are usually associated with the game but can also be performed alone as a reminder of past games; they differ in the place of performance and allow one to determine what the game consisted of.
Games and game songs also differ in whether they are performed outdoors or in a hut. Games in the hut in winter and in the field or on the street in summer are different. Game songs are closely related to games, and very often from the lyrics of the song you can determine what the game consisted of. The game song can be recognized whether it is designated as such by the collector or not. The boundaries between round dance and game songs cannot always be established precisely, since the very conduct of a round dance is a kind of game
In dance songs, the content of the song is less closely connected with the dance itself than the content of play songs with the game. Any frequent song can be used as a dance song; you can dance to any frequent song. However, not every frequent song is necessarily danced to. If a game song can be recognized regardless of whether it is designated as such or not, then a dance song cannot be recognized by its text. It follows from this that dance songs do not actually represent a genre. However, the use of song for dancing is an important feature of a number of frequent songs.
Performed by a choir or alone, just sitting or while working
Pronounced lingering
Elegiac, lyrical, expressing deep feelings of singers usually singing sadness
Frequent songs
Have a cheerful, humorous character and are more likely to express collective feelings
For 1.2 the tempo of the song = the nature of the song, for 3 it does not matter
Semi-long
To differentiate the genre of a song, it is important
An indication of a humorous nature, since this is a feature of frequent
Attention to the theme and content of the song
Non-ritual songs include different genres, but they themselves do not constitute a genre
Songs of peasants torn from the land
Songs of the street servants constitute an undoubted, and, moreover, very specific genre. On the one hand, they reflect all the horror, all the humiliation of the peasant, wholly dependent on the tyranny of the master and subjected to severe flogging for the slightest offense. On the other hand, they contain elements of some kind of frivolous or cheeky tone, which is completely alien to peasant songs and which testifies to the corruption of the peasant psyche under the influence of the “civilized” lordly environment.
Lackey city songs we are faced with songs with a social focus
Labor songs created to accompany work, for example, burlatsky ones when a song replaces a command and the like
Delete songs - dedicated to the robbers who broke free and became ruby hoods (but songs about tragic fate are drawn-out)
Soldiers' songs - about the hardships of service and courage for the fatherland, etc.
It’s very important to look at who sings the song; if it’s a girl, then it’s more like some kind of drawn-out or love song, and if it’s a guy, then it’s deleting, etc.
Prison songs – 2 types: those suffering and asking for freedom, and seasoned prisoners flaunting their past
Folklore of the urban bourgeois environment - genre of cruel romance about the tragic ending of unhappy love
Workers' songs - traditions come from literature, although there are peasant images and appeals and laments too, but the theme is bitter life and the composition of words and images is different. Early labor poetry – 4 st. trochee = ditty. Poems by poets that suit their meaning are transformed into songs. Work songs combine folklore and literature, 3 categories stand out among them
Songs created by the workers themselves
Satirical songs related to class consciousness
Hymn songs and funeral marches were performed collectively
Thus, within the composition of working-class poetry, several groups can be identified that have the character of genres: these are lingering songs of the folklore type, lyric-epic poetic songs with increasing revolutionary content, satirical works, also with increasing revolutionary consciousness, and hymn poetry, already going beyond the boundaries of folklore .
Children's song folklore
Adults sing for children
Lullabies (smooth melody, words from everywhere)
Game tunes, fables
Nursery rhymes for little ones
Children sing themselves
Game songs that are incomprehensible without games + conventional rhymes
Songs of teasing, ridicule
Children's songs about the life around them (particularly discordant, sometimes a set of words)
The composition and style of the statement depend on these features.
Specifics of folklore: collective and individual principles, stability and variability, the concept of traditionality, way of being.
According to Jacobson and Bogatyrev, folklore gravitates more towards language than towards speech from Saussure’s theory. Speech uses language, and each speaker does so individually. Likewise, in folklore, a certain set of traditions, a body of foundations, beliefs, and creativity is used by the performers of the works and the creators. Tradition acts as a framework, a work is created on its basis, it undergoes collective censorship and after some time turns into a tradition for subsequent works. the existence of a folklore work presupposes a group that assimilates and sanctions it. In folklore, interpretation is the source of the work.
Collective and individual beginnings. In folklore we are faced with the phenomenon of collective creativity. collective creativity is not given to us in any visual experience, and therefore we must assume the existence of some kind of individual creator, initiator. A typical young grammarian in both linguistics and folkloristics, Vsevolod Miller considered the collective creativity of the masses to be a fiction, because, he believed, human experience had never observed such creativity. This is where the influence of our daily environment undoubtedly comes into play. Not oral creativity, but written literature is for us the familiar and most famous form of creativity, and thus, habitual ideas are egocentrically projected into the sphere of folklore. Thus, the moment of birth of a literary work is considered the moment of its fixation on paper by the author, and by analogy, the moment when an oral work is first objectified, that is, performed by the author, is interpreted as the moment of its birth, whereas in reality the work becomes a folklore fact only from the moment of its acceptance by the collective .
Supporters of the thesis about the individual nature of folklore creativity tend to substitute anonymous instead of collective. So, for example, in one well-known guide to Russian oral creativity the following is said: “Thus, it is clear that in a ritual song, if we do not know who was the creator of the ritual, who was the creator of the first song, then this does not contradict individual creativity, but only says that the ritual is so ancient that we cannot indicate either the author or the conditions for the origin of the oldest song, closely connected with the ritual, and that it was created in an environment where the personality of the author was of no interest, why the memory of her and not preserved. Thus, the idea of “collective” creativity has nothing to do with it” (102, p. 163). It is not taken into account here that there cannot be a ritual without the sanction of the collective, that this is a contradictio in adjecto and that, even if the source of this or that ritual lay an individual manifestation, the path from it to the ritual is as far as the path from an individual deviation in speech before changes in language.
In folklore, the relationship between a work of art, on the one hand, and its objectification, that is! the so-called variations of this work when performed by different people, on the other hand, are completely analogous to the relationship between langue and parole. Like langue, a folklore work is impersonal and exists only potentially; it is only a complex of known norms and impulses, the outline of an actual tradition, which performers color with patterns of individual creativity, just as parole producers do in relation to langue 2. To what extent are these individual new formations in the language (respectively in folklore) meet the requirements of the collective and anticipate the natural evolution of langue (respectively folklore), so they are socialized and become facts of langue (respectively elements of a folklore work).
The role of the performer of a folklore work should in no way be identified with either the role of the reader or reciter of a literary work, or with the role of the author. From the point of view of the performer of a folklore work, these works are a fact of langue, that is, impersonal, existing independently of the performer, although allowing for deformation and the introduction of new creative and topical material.
An individual beginning is possible in folklore only in theory, that is, if Ch spells a hernia better than Sh, only after the collective of those who know Ch’s method has adopted its version of the spell will become a folklore work, and not just a local feature of a well-known conspiracy (?)
Stability and variability
Folklore text as an oral text shares some features of ordinary oral speech, although it is much more regulated. As in everyday speech, in folklore there is a division into small structural units (in songs these links may coincide with a line), which must be linked by certain syntactic means, much less strict than in written speech. But at the same time, folklore texts are traditional and reproducible in the act of performance. This act is ritualized to one degree or another, includes a close relationship between the singer and the audience (its specific and permanent society involved in the knowledge of tradition and ritual restrictions) and, what is especially important, is for the most part not a recitation by heart, but a more or less creative reproduction of the plot , genre and stylistic models. Let us emphasize once again: all kinds of repetitions and verbal formulas, as the most important building blocks, help to store the text in the singer’s memory between acts of playing it in front of an audience. Singers and storytellers are capable of memorizing thousands and thousands of lines by heart, but the mechanism of creative transmission is far from being reduced to simply reciting what has been memorized.
As already mentioned, the greatest degree of memorization and rigor in reproduction occurs in relation to ritual songs, first of all, spells (due to the sacredness of the magic word), as well as proverbs and choral songs (the choral principle itself goes back to the ritual, which A. especially insisted on. N. Veselovsky), although within these limits there is a certain minimum of variation. Of course, the variability is minimal in sacred poetry (oral, but professional) such as the Vedic poetry in India or the ancient Irish poetry of the Philids (and previously the Druids), etc. In songs and fairy tales that are no longer ideologically connected with the ritual, the scale of variation is much greater, even when repeated performances by the same singer or storyteller.
In principle, variation is an original feature of folklore, and the search for a single prototype of the original text, as a rule, is a scientific utopia .
In general, archaic folklore, which almost entirely remains within the ritual framework, varies to a much lesser extent than the “classical” folklore that exists alongside literature.
Depending on the audience and other circumstances, the singer-storyteller can shorten his text or expand it through parallelisms, additional episodes, etc. All kinds of repetition, which constitutes the element of folklore and the element of archaic literature with its hegemony of the ritual principle, is the main and most powerful means of structuring archaic and folklore works and the most important feature of the archaic and folklore style. Having arisen on the basis of ritual and orality, repetition of forms, phraseological units, phonic and syntactic elements are perceived at the same time as a decorative device. Constant epithets, comparisons, contrasting juxtapositions, metaphors, play with synonyms, anaphoric and epiphoric repetitions, internal rhymes, alliteration and assonance increasingly begin to feel like decoration.
As already noted, folklore continues to function even after the advent of book literature, but this traditional or “classical” folklore in some respects differs from strictly archaic, as if primitive, folklore. If such “primitive” folklore is based on the ancient mythology and religious system of the shaman type, if it is, as it were, immersed in the atmosphere of primitive syncretism with its hegemony of ritual forms, then traditional folklore develops in the conditions of the collapse of clan relations and the replacement of tribal unions by early state associations, in the conditions the transition from clan to family, the emergence of state consciousness (which was decisive for the creation of classical forms of epic), the development of more complex religious and mythological systems, up to “world religions” and the beginnings of historical or at least quasi-historical ideas, which leads to partial deritualization and desacralization of the most ancient plot fund. A very fundamental factor in the difference between earlier and later forms of folklore is the very fact of the existence of book literature and its influence on oral tradition.
Developed folklore experiences the multifaceted influence of literature where the authority and weight of the written word is immeasurably higher both in religious-magical and aesthetic terms. Sometimes the spoken word disguises itself as a book, reproducing the norms of the written language, especially often in solemn, rhythmic speech. On the other hand, folklorization of book sources occurs, which often leads to their archaization. Along with the literary influence itself, it is necessary to take into account the influence of more developed folklore (often already influenced by bookishness) on the creativity of neighboring peoples standing at a more archaic stage of cultural development (for example, the influence of Russian folklore on the oral literature of some other peoples of the USSR).
(Meltinsky, Novik and others.. status of the word and the concept of genre)
From the fact that each performance is a source of production for the trace of the performer (Jacobson), the variability of the folklore work as such grows. However, all of them together are based on a stable tradition = lounge. Variation is observed within genres,...
The method of existence is oral. Ritual, non-ritual. Traditionality is an orientation towards tradition, a way out of tradition, a close relationship. TOO COMMON QUESTION!!!
>>Folklore and fiction
The appearance of fiction was preceded by a long period when, long before the invention,
In the shadow of writing, over the course of many centuries, ancient peoples created the true art of literary expression - folklore. “The beginning of the art of words is in folklore,” Alexey Maksimovich Gorky rightly asserted. Reflecting on the main features (signs) in the structure of life of ancient people and their understanding of the world around them, Gorky wrote:
“These signs have come to us in the form of fairy tales and myths, in which we heard echoes of work on the domestication of animals, on the discovery of medicinal herbs, and the invention of tools. Already in ancient times, people dreamed of the opportunity to fly through the air - the legends about Phaeton, Daedalus and his son Icarus, as well as fairy tales about the “flying carpet,” tell us about this. They dreamed of accelerating movement on the ground - the fairy tale about “fast boots”. They thought about the possibility of spinning and weaving a huge amount of matter in one night - they created a spinning wheel, one of the most ancient tools of labor, a primitive manual weaving loom and created the fairy tale about Vasilisa the Wise...”
In Ancient Rus', new types of oral poetic creativity were created: songs, traditions, legends, epics that explain the origin of cities, villages, tracts 1, mounds, telling about the heroic deeds of the defenders of their native land.
Many of them were already included in the first works of written literature - chronicles. Thus, the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years” (XI-XII centuries) contains folk legends about the founding of Kyiv by three brothers - Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv, who were known even in Constantinople, where they were given great honor. In the “Tale of Bygone Years” you can also find oral and poetic legends about the Russian princes - Oleg, Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav, etc. The legend about Oleg the Prophet, for example, tells about an outstanding ancient Russian commander who defeated the Greeks
not only by strength, but also by wise ingenuity.
Later, with the spread of writing and the appearance of the first books, oral folk art not only did not lose its role in the life of the people, but also had the most beneficial influence on the development of fiction.
In an effort to penetrate deeper into the essence of folk life, many writers drew from folklore not only information about everyday life, but also themes, plots, images, ideals 2 and learned the art of bright, expressive speech. Most of the world's literature has created works that were widespread in folklore: songs, ballads, romances8, fairy tales.
You know well that Alexander Pushkin wrote his wonderful ballad “Song of the Prophetic Oleg” in
based on the folk legend he heard about the death of Prince Oleg, allegedly predicted to him by the sorcerer (priest of the Slavic god Perun). In his fairy-tale poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” Pushkin widely used from childhood, according to his nanny Arina Rodionovna, fairy-tale episodes and images that he remembered.
The imagination of readers is struck by the very introduction to this poem (“By the Lukomorye there is a green oak tree...”), which surprisingly contains fairy-tale images of a mermaid, a hut on chicken legs, Baba Yaga with a mortar, Koshchei and other magic from Russian fairy tales, familiar to everyone from childhood. . The poet exclaims: “There is a Russian spirit there, it smells of Russia!”
tract- an area that differs from the surrounding area, for example a swamp, a forest in the middle of a field.
Ideal- that which constitutes the highest goal of activity and aspirations.
Romance- a small vocal work of a lyrical nature.
Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights" is a poetic adaptation of the Russian folk tale "The Self-Glancing Mirror."
The Dane Hans Christian Andersen (“Wild Swans”), the Frenchman Charles Perrault (“Cinderella”), the German brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (“The Town Musicians of Bremen”) and others wrote their wonderful fairy tales based on folk stories.
In the minds of people of many generations, fairy tales of writers merged with fairy tales of the people. And this is explained by the fact that every writer, no matter how original his own work may be, experiences a deep connection with the folklore of his people. It was in oral folk art that writers found vivid examples of fidelity to moral principles, an expression of the people’s dream of a fair, happy life.
A large place in Russian folklore is occupied by epic heroic songs telling about mighty Russian heroes, defenders of the Motherland. Glorifying the heroes, the epics called for heroic deeds for the glory of the Fatherland, raised the spirit of the people in difficult times, and instilled in young people a love for their native land and the desire to protect it from conquerors. Epics about invincible heroes inspired Russian writers and poets to create their own works about fearless and glorious warriors of the Russian land. Get acquainted with an excerpt from a poem by Nikolai Rylenkov, in which the poet told about his impressions of the epic about Ilya Muromets, told to him by his grandfather. This is how he imagined the hero as a child:
Winter and childhood. The evening is long
Under the canopy of cramped housing.
Rising above the grandfather's epic
Peasant Muromets Ilya.
Not having fun in an open field,
He is in a hurry to Kyiv without roads,
And the Nightingale the Robber whistles
Couldn't stop him.
Many writers, trying to show more deeply the life of the people, the national characteristics of the heroes, use folk songs, traditions, legends and other types of oral folk art in their works. Let us remember how Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol worked on his book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. In a letter to his mother, he asked to tell him everything that she knows about the morals and customs of her fellow countrymen: “I really, really need this... If there are, in addition, any brownies, then more about them with their names and affairs ; There are many superstitions, terrible tales, legends, various anecdotes, etc., etc., etc. floating around among the common people. All this will be extremely interesting for me...”
You know from literature lessons how unprecedented the success of the first book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” was. Pushkin wrote: “I just read “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” They amazed me. This is real gaiety, sincere, relaxed, without affectation 1, without stiffness. And in places what poetry! What sensitivity! All this is so unusual in our literature that I still haven’t come to my senses. Congratulations to the public on a truly funny book...”
In the future, your knowledge about the inextricable connection between folklore and works of fiction will expand and deepen, but you should always remember the main thing: for artists, the word folklore is an inexhaustible source of the people’s unshakable ideas about goodness, justice, true love and wisdom.
Let's talk
1. What types of oral poetic creativity were created by the people long before the advent of fiction? Name those of them that were included in the first chronicles.
2. Why do writers often turn to folklore in their work?
3. Name the works of oral folk art that formed the basis of the literary works known to you.
4. Among Russian folk tales there is a fairy tale called “The Golden Fish”, the plot of which completely coincides with Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish”. Why do you think this particular folk tale became the basis for the creation of one of the most beloved and popular fairy tales of the great poet?
5. If you know well the content of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” by Nikolai Gogol, remember what popular beliefs and legends the writer used in his stories “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “Terrible Revenge”.
6. In 1785, the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe published the book “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” which was a literary adaptation of the fantastic stories of Baron Munchausen, who actually lived in Germany. Over time, this book gained worldwide fame. Which of the adventures described in the book do you know? Why do you think this book appeals to readers around the world?
7. Why did A. M. Gorky claim that “the beginning of the art of words is in folklore”?
Simakova L. A. Literature: Handbook for 7th grade. behind-the-scenes initial deposits from my Russian beginning. - K.: Vezha, 2007. 288 pp.: ill. - Russian language.
Submitted by readers from the website
Genres of folklore are varied. There are major genres, such as epics and fairy tales. And there are small genres: proverbs, sayings, chants. Small genres were very often intended for children, teaching them the wisdom of life. Proverbs and sayings allowed people to preserve and pass on folk wisdom from generation to generation.
The artistic feature of all small genres is that they are small in volume and easy to remember. They are often created in poetic form, which also helped them to be remembered better. Proverbs consist of one sentence. But this sentence is very deep and capacious in its content. “Chickens are counted in the fall,” our ancestors said, and we say today. The proverb is based on worldly wisdom. It doesn't matter how many chickens you have in the spring. It is important how many of them have grown before autumn. Over time, these words began to have a generalized meaning: don’t think about how much you can get from this or that business, look at the result of what you did.
Small genres of folklore intended for children have their own characteristics and value. They entered the child’s life from birth and accompanied him for many years until he grew up. Lullabies were intended primarily to protect the baby from the terrible things that surround him. Therefore, the gray wolf and other monsters often appear in songs. Gradually, lullabies ceased to play the role of a talisman. Their purpose was to put the child to sleep.
Another genre of folklore is associated with the period of infancy. These are pestushki (from the word “to nurture”). The mother sang them to her child, confident that they were helping him grow smart, strong, and healthy. Growing up, the child himself learned to use various genres in his speech and games. Children performed chants in the spring or autumn. This is how adults taught them to take care of the natural world and carry out various agricultural work in a timely manner.
Parents used tongue twisters to develop their children's speech. The artistic feature of the tongue twister is not that it has a poetic form. Its value lies elsewhere. A tongue twister was compiled in such a way that it included words with sounds that were difficult for a child. By pronouncing the tongue twister, the children developed correct speech and achieved clarity in pronunciation.
The riddle occupies a special place among the small genres of folklore. Its artistic feature lies in its metaphorical nature. The riddles were based on the principle of similarity or difference between objects. By solving the riddle, the child learned observation skills and logical thinking. Often the children began to come up with riddles themselves. They also came up with teasers, making fun of a person's shortcomings.
Thus, the small genres of folklore, with all their diversity, served one purpose - to figuratively, accurately and accurately convey folk wisdom, to teach a growing person about life.
Folklore- artistic origin
Mythological beginning
Folkloristics
folk literature
Main features of folklore:
Epic storytellers (they were sung)
3) Variability
· Student folklore
· Army folklore
· Blatnoy folklore
· Soldier's folklore
· Burlatsky
· Political prisoners
Lamentations (text lamented)
9) Functionality
10) Inclusiveness
Ticket 2. System of genres of Russian folklore from antiquity to modernity.
The genre composition of Russian folk poetry is rich and diverse, since it has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. When classifying, it is necessary to take into account that in folklore, as in literature, two forms of speech are used - poetic and prosaic, therefore, in the epic genus it is necessary to distinguish poetic types (epic, historical song, ballad) and prose (fairy tale, legend, tradition). The lyrical genre of works uses only poetic form. All poetic works are distinguished by the combination of words and melody. Prose works are told, not sung.
In order to present a general picture of the classification (distribution) of types of works of Russian folk poetry, a number of other circumstances should be taken into account, namely: firstly, the relationship of genres to the so-called rituals (special cult actions), secondly, the relationship of the verbal text to singing and acting, which is typical for some types of folklore works. Works may be associated with ritual and singing and may not be associated with them.
I Ritual poetry:
1) Calendar (winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles)
2) Family and household (maternity, wedding, funeral)
3) Conspiracy
II Non-ritual poetry:
1) Epic prose genres
A) fairy tale
B) legend
C) legend (and bylichka as its type)
2) Epic poetic genres:
A) epics
B) historical songs (primarily older ones)
B) ballad songs
3) Lyrical poetic genres
A) songs with social content
B) love songs
B) family songs
D) small lyrical genres (ditties, choruses, etc.)
4) Small non-lyrical genres
A) proverbs
B) riddles
5) Dramatic texts and actions
A) mummers, games, round dances
B) scenes and plays.
Ticket 3. Ancient (archaic) genres of folklore (work songs, spells, fairy tales, etc.).
Folklore as a special form of art originates in ancient times. The process of its origin is difficult to reconstruct due to the lack of materials from that time. The most ancient (archaic) period in the history of human society is the period of its pre-class structure (primitive system). The folklore of the pre-class, primitive communal system among many peoples had common features due to the fact that the peoples of the world generally went through similar stages of historical development. The folklore of this social formation is distinguished by the following features:
· It still clearly retains connections with labor processes
· Traces of thinking of the ancient era appear - animism, magical views, totemism, mythology;
· Real phenomena are intertwined with fictional and fantastic ones;
· Some features of realism are developing: concrete depiction of nature and man; fidelity to reality in content and forms (the conventionality of the image appears later);
· Genus, types and genres are gradually emerging, of which the most ancient are proverbs, fairy tales, riddles, conspiracies, legends; at the last stage of formation, heroic epics and legends are born;
· The collective, choral beginning of creativity dominates, but the singer or lead singer begins to stand out;
· The works do not yet exist in a stable traditional form, as in the later stages of the development of folklore, but have the form of improvisation, i.e. text created during performance;
· The plots, imagery, means of expression, and artistic forms are gradually enriched and become more and more traditional.
Animism manifested itself in the spiritualization of forces and natural phenomena, for example the sun and the month, in songs about their marriage, in the spiritualization of the earth (“the mother of the earth is cheese”), water, plants, in the images of the waterman and the goblin, in the personification of Frost, Spring, Maslenitsa, Kolyada . In conspiracies, there is usually an appeal to the dawn. Fairy tales feature the Sea King, the Moon, the Wind, and the Frost. Magic was reflected in spells and incantations, in fortune-telling about the weather and harvest, in stories about sorcerers, in the transformation of a comb into a forest, and a towel into a river, in such wonderful objects as a self-assembled tablecloth and a flying carpet. Totemism was expressed in the cult of the bear and in the image of the helper bear. In fairy tales and epics there are stories about the miraculous origin of heroes from animals, from a serpent. Ballad-type songs contain stories about talking plants growing on people's graves. In fairy tales (especially in fairy tales about animals, but not only in them) there are often images of animals speaking and acting like people. The mythology of ancient Russian tribes has already taken the form of a certain system of ideas. It included two types of beings: gods and spirits. For example, Svarog is the god of the sun, Dazhdbog is the god of life, Perun is the god of thunder, Stribog is the god of wind, Yarilo is the god of light and heat, Veles is the patron god of livestock. The spiritualizations of the forces and phenomena of nature were the water goblin, the goblin, and the field weed. Among the ancient Russian tribes, the cult of ancestors was widely developed, associated with the clan system. It was reflected in the personification of the clan and the women in labor to whom sacrifices were made, in funeral rites and remembrances of ancestors (radnitsa, rusalia, semik).
Slavic mythology was not as complete a system as the Greek. This is explained by the fact that the Slavs in their historical development bypassed the slave system, the reasons for which were the earlier development of agriculture and settled life, as well as frequent clashes with southern nomads, which required the creation of a feudal-type state. Therefore, in the mythology of the Slavs there are only the beginnings of the division of gods into elders and younger ones, according to the social system of the state. It is clear that in ancient Russian folklore there were not only genres that reflected animism, totemism, magic and mythology, but also genres of a family and everyday nature, since there were personal relationships within the clan, paired marriage. Finally, work and life experience accumulated, which was imprinted in proverbs.
Classification
I By result
1) White - aimed at getting rid of illnesses and troubles and containing elements of prayer (witchcraft)
2) Black - aimed at causing damage, harm, used without prayer words (witchcraft associated with evil spirits)
II By topic
1) Medical (from illness and painful condition of people and domestic animals, as well as from damage.)
2) Household. (Agricultural, pastoral, commercial - from drought, weeds, for taming domestic animals, hunting, fishing.)
3) Love spells: a) love spells (dry spells); b) lapels (drying)
4) Social (with the goal of regulating social and relationships between people; to attract honor or favor, to go to a judge, for example)
III According to form
1) Epic
Expanded, large
1.1 epic picture
1.2 a conspiracy based on colloquial formulas
1.3 setting (Amen = “so be it”)
2) formulaic
short conspiracies consisting of 1-2 sentences; they do not contain vivid images - an order or a request
3) conspiracies-dialogues
4) abracadabra
This is 99 percent a female tradition (because no normal man would do this). The conspiracy mafia is a secretive business.
Characters:
1) human world
1.1 neutral (red maiden)
1.2 Christian: a) real (Jesus, Mother of God), b) fictional (Virgin's daughters, Herod's sons), c) historical characters (Nicholas the Pleasant), d) Christian evil spirits (devils)
1.3 fictional
2) animal world
2.1 recognizable
2.2 fantastic
Typical artistic techniques of conspiracy:
1) at the lexical, morphological and even sound levels (????????)
2) an abundance of epithets
3) comparison
4) stepwise narrowing of images or unfolding (gradation)
Classic legends.
1.1. Cosmogonic
For example, about a duck that sank to the bottom of a reservoir, grabbed some water in its beak - spat it out - the earth appeared (or mountains - I can’t figure it out)
1.2. Etiological
Legends about the creation of the animal world. For example, there was a legend about the appearance of lice. God often acts as a punitive force
Legends have always been believed.
A legend is an independent view of the world around you. Most likely they used to be myths. Indian myths also have ideas about the origin of animals (for example, the kangaroo's pouch), but there are no religious motives, as in our legends.
1.3. Anthropological myths.
Here is some example of a legend about a sick person, but with God’s soul (???). and about a dog that guarded a person and for this God gave her a fur coat or not
1.4. Hagiographical legends
Hagiographical legends
Hagiographic legends (about saints); for example, Nicholas of Myra (Wonder Worker)
· Pan-Orthodox saints
· Locally revered saints
· General Christian
· Orthodox
Saint Yegoriy (George the Victorious)
Warrior/Saint
Patron of livestock and wolves
1.5. Eschatology.
One of the sections of church philosophy. Legends about the end of the world.
Features of Classic Legends:
1. The artistic time of classical legends is a time of the distant, uncertain, abstract past.
2. Artistic space is also abstract
3. These legends talk about global changes (the emergence of the sea, mountains, animals)
4. All stories are told from the 3rd person. The narrator is not the hero of the legend.
Legend about the local region.
Heroes: local sacred (holy) natural objects. For example, holy springs, trees, stones, groves, or local icons, as well as locally revered elders and blessed ones.
! partly reminiscent of legends, but have a religious character.
For example, about Dunechka, who was shot by the Red Army. She is a fortune teller.
I sent a man to work in Arzamas, and not in Samara (he made money, but those who went to Samara did not), that is, the predictions are mostly everyday
Pigeons hovered over the carriage in which Dounia was being led to execution, protecting her from lashes.
Halo above your head during execution
Afterwards, houses in that village started burning - they decided to hold funeral services twice a year - but they stopped burning
Holy fools.
Blessed = holy fool who figuratively communicates with people.
Pasha Sarovskaya gave a piece of red fabric to Nicholas I and said “for my son’s pants”
about the time of glorification (Venerable Seraphim - comp.) She lived in Diveyevo, famous throughout Russia. The Emperor with all the Grand Dukes and three metropolitans proceeded from Sarov to Diveevo. She predicted his death (9 soldiers, jacket potatoes). She took a piece of red material from the bed and said: “This is for your little son’s pants.” - predicted the appearance of a son.
Legend about a man.
The legend of man is based on a man's encounter with miraculous power. A typical example: a saint tells a man how to find his way in the forest.
The saint appears to people in a dream “the call of the saint”
Pilgrims and immigrants - the saint appears and invites them to his monastery.
Ticket 8. Artistic space and time in a fairy tale. Types of heroes and composition.
Artistic space and time in fairy tales are conditional, as if another world is shown there. The real world and the world of fairy tales can be compared with paintings, for example, by Vasnetsov and Bilibin.
In a fairy tale, there are 7 types of characters (Propp):
1 . the hero is the one who performs all the actions and gets married at the end.
2 . antagonist, or antipode - the one with whom the hero fights and defeats.
3 . a wonderful helper.
4 . a wonderful giver is one who gives the hero a wonderful helper or a wonderful object.
5. princess - the one whom the hero usually marries and who lives, as a rule, in another country, very far away.
6 . king - appears at the end of the fairy tale, the hero marries his daughter or at the beginning of the fairy tale, as a rule, he sends his son somewhere.
7. false hero - appropriates the merits of the real hero.
You can try to classify it differently, but the essence will remain the same. First of all, there are two groups of characters: negative and positive. The central place is the positive heroes, as it were, “characters of the first row.” They can be divided into 2 groups: heroic heroes and “ironic” ones, who are favored by luck. Examples: Ivan the Tsarevich and Ivan the Fool. “Second-row characters” are the hero’s assistants, animate and not (magic horse, magic sword). "Third row" is the antagonist. An important place is occupied by female heroines, the ideals of beauty, wisdom, kindness - Vasilisa the Beautiful or the Wise, Elena the Beautiful or the Wise. Antagonists often include Baba Yaga, the snake and Koschey the immortal. The hero's victory over them is a triumph of justice.
Composition – structure, construction of a fairy tale.
1.) Some fairy tales begin with sayings - humorous jokes that are not related to the plot. They are usually rhythmic and rhyming.
2.) The opening, which seems to transport the listener into a fairy-tale world, shows the time, place of action, and setting. Represents an exposition. A popular opening is “Once upon a time” (hereinafter – who, and what circumstances) or “In a certain kingdom, a certain state.”
3.) Action. Some fairy tales begin immediately with action, for example, “The prince decided to marry...”
4.) A fairy tale has an ending, but not always; sometimes with the completion of the action the fairy tale ends. The ending switches attention from the fairy-tale world to the real one.
5.) In addition to the ending, there may also be a saying, which is sometimes connected to the ending - “They played a wedding, they feasted for a long time, and I was there, I drank honey, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth.”
The narrative in fairy tales develops sequentially, the action is dynamic, situations are tense, terrible events can occur, and three-fold repetition is common (three brothers go to catch the Firebird three times). The unreliability of the story is emphasized.
Connection with the initiation rite.
Hood space is abstract; there is a border/transitional space; spatial movements are not shown. Hud time is also abstract, closed, and has no outlet into reality; develops from episode to episode, retardation.
The fairy tale is the most archaic - it was not originally intended for children, and in its origin goes back to rituals. Rite of initiation. You can see superstitious ideas about the next world. For example, Baba Yaga: “the nose has grown into the ceiling”, “the knee has rested against the wall”, a bone leg – i.e. without meat - she lies on the stove as if in a coffin
Those. she is a borderline character between the world of the dead and the living - between the world and the distant kingdom.
Spring cycle.
Maslenitsa and Maslenitsa rituals. At the center of the Maslenitsa holiday is the symbolic image of Maslenitsa.
The holiday itself consists of three parts: a meeting on Monday, a revelry or turning point on the so-called Broad Thursday, and farewell.
Songs for Maslenitsa can be divided into two groups. The first - meeting and honoring, has the appearance of grandeur. They glorify the wide, honest Maslenitsa, its dishes, and entertainment. She is called in full - Avdotya Izotyevna. The character of the songs is cheerful and playful. The songs accompanying the farewell are somewhat different - they talk about the upcoming fast. The singers regret the ending of the holiday. Here Maslenitsa is already a dethroned idol, she is no longer magnified, but is called disrespectfully “a deceiver.” Maslenitsa was usually interpreted primarily as a celebration of the victory of spring over winter, life over death.
Spring Lent - Clean Monday - the beginning of the spring calendar ritual. We washed ourselves in the bathhouse, washed the house, washed all the dishes, played funny games with pancakes - hung them on a tree, gave them to the cattle.
The week of the cross/middle of the cross is the fourth after Lent; the fasting breaks - they baked Lenten cookies; fortune telling - a coin - a coin in a cookie, several crosses - a coin, a sliver, a ring, they gave crosses to the cattle.
March 30 is the day of the forty martyrs (lark-shaped cookies); meeting of spring, arrival of the first birds; On March 17, the day of Gregory Grachevnik, rooks were baked. Signs: many birds - good luck, snowdrifts - harvest, icicles - flax harvest. The first spring holiday - welcoming spring - falls in March. These days, in the villages they baked figurines of birds from dough and distributed them to girls or children. Vesnyankas are ritual lyrical songs of the incantatory genre. The ritual of “spell” spring was imbued with the desire to influence nature in order to obtain a good harvest. Imitating the flight of birds (throwing larks from dough) was supposed to cause the arrival of real birds, the friendly onset of spring. Stoneflies are characterized by a form of dialogue or address in the imperative mood. Unlike a conspiracy, stoneflies are like carols. performed collectively.
Annunciation - April 7: “birds don’t curl their nests, girls don’t braid their hair”; you cannot turn on the light or work with the birthday soil; The sledge was broken - they removed the sleigh and took out the cart.
Palm Sunday (the last Sunday before Easter) is the “entry of the Lord into Jerusalem.” They brought willow into the house and kept it near the icons all year, and blessed children; they put willow and icons on the water.
Holy Week is the week before Easter. Maundy Thursday (in religion - Friday) is the most terrible day; whitewashing the hut, ridding the hut of cockroaches by freezing, clipping the wings of poultry, all water is holy.
Easter - dyeing eggs (no Easter cake, no Easter); do not go to the cemetery, only on the next red/Fomina week - Tuesday and Saturday-Rainbow); The first egg was kept near the icon for a year.
Vyunishnye songs are songs that congratulated the newlyweds on Saturday or Sunday of the first week after Easter. Contents of the songs: wishing the newlyweds a happy family life.
May 6 - St. George's Day (St. George the Victorious); Yegory is a bestial god; took the cattle out into the field for the first time
Ascension (40 days after Easter)
Semitsky ritual songs - the 7th week after Easter was called Semitsky. Thursday of this week was called Semik, and its last day (Sunday) was called Trinity. Special rituals were performed, which were accompanied by songs. The main ritual is “curling” the wreath. Having dressed in festive outfits, the girls went into the forest, looked for a young birch tree, bent the birch branches and wove them with grass, after a few days they cut down the birch tree, carried it around the village, then drowned it in the river or threw it into the rye. The girls wove an arch from the tops of two birch trees and walked under it. Then there was a fortune-telling ritual with a wreath. The theme of marriage and family relationships occupies an increasing place in Semitic songs.
Spiritual day - you can’t work with the earth.
Summer cycle.
Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs.
Trinity-Semitic Week: Semik - the seventh Thursday after Easter, Trinity - the seventh Sunday. The girls, dressed smartly and taking treats with them, went to “curl” the birch trees - weaving them with grass. The girl's holiday was also accompanied by fortune telling. The girls wove wreaths and threw them into the river. Fortune telling by wreaths was widely reflected in songs performed both during fortune telling and without regard to it.
Feast of Ivan Kupala (John the Baptist/Baptist) - the night of June 23-24. During the Kupala holidays they do not help the earth, but, on the contrary, they try to take everything from it. On this night, medicinal herbs are collected. Whoever finds the fern, it was believed, will be able to find the treasure. The girls put handkerchiefs on the dew and then washed themselves with them; they broke birch brooms for the bath; young people swam at night, purified themselves, jumped over fires.
Trinity - 7th Sunday after Easter. Cult of the birch tree. Formation of a new wedding cycle. Formation of a layer of brides. Songs, round dances (choice of the bride and groom), singing songs only on Trinity. The meaning is duplicated on several levels - in action, in words, in music, in an object. The following Sunday after Toitsa we celebrated the farewell to winter.
Autumn cycle. ( just in case )
Autumn rituals among the Russian people were not as rich as winter and spring-summer ones. They accompany the harvest. Zazhinki (the beginning of the harvest), dozhinki or obzhinki (the end of the harvest) were accompanied by songs. But these songs do not have a magical character. They are directly related to the labor process. Dozhin songs are more diverse in theme and artistic techniques. They tell about the harvest and the custom of refreshments. In pre-harvest songs there are elements of glorification of rich hosts who have treated the reapers well.
It was believed that the harvest should be protected, because... evil spirits can take him away. They placed sheaves in the form of a cross, made of wormwood and nettles. Striga/Perezhinakha - the spirit of the field who took the harvest.
Celebrating the first sheaf, they cooked the first new porridge and sprinkled it on the cattle and chickens. The last sheaf/last ears of corn were left on the field, not reaped, tied into a bundle and called a beard. Having finished the harvest, the women rolled on the ground: “Reaper, reaper, give up your snare.”
Afterwards, many calendar rituals turned into holidays, which, in addition to the ritual function, also have a very important social function - uniting people, the rhythm of life.
Ticket 14. Epics of the ancient period. (Volkh Vseslavsky, Sadko, Danube, Svyatogor, Volga and Mikola)
Among Russian epics there is a group of works that almost all folklorists classify as more ancient. The main difference between these epics is that they contain significant features of mythological ideas.
1.) “Volkh Vseslavyevich.” The epic about Volkh consists of 2 parts. In the first, he is depicted as a wonderful hunter with the ability to transform into an animal, bird, or fish. While hunting, he obtains food for the squad. In the second, Volkh is the leader of a campaign in the Indian kingdom, which he conquers and destroys. The second part almost went out of existence, since its theme did not correspond to the ideological essence of the Russian epic. But the first part was popular among the people for a long time. Researchers attribute the image of a wonderful hunter to ancient times, but this image was layered with historical features, linking the epic with the Kyiv cycle, which is why Likhachev and other scientists compared Volkh, for example, with Oleg the Prophet. The image of India is fabulous, not historical.
2.) Epics about Sadko. The epics are based on 3 plots: Sadko receives wealth, Sadko competes with Novgorod, Sadko visits the sea king. These three plots exist separately and in combination. The first plot has 2 different versions. First: Sadko walked along the Volga for 12 years; having decided to go to Novgorod, he thanks the Volga, lowering bread and salt into it; The Volga gave him orders to boast about the “glorious Lake Ilmen”; Ilmen, in turn, rewarded him with wealth, advising him to fish, and the caught fish turned into coins. Another version: Sadko, a poor guslar, goes to the shore of Ilmen, plays, and the sea king comes out to him and rewards him with wealth. This expresses the popular opinion about the value of art; utopianism: the poor man became rich. The second plot: having received wealth, Sadko became proud and decided to measure his wealth with Novgorod itself, but was defeated. In a rare version there is a plot with Sadko's victory. Third plot: Sadko found himself in the underwater kingdom, the seaman fell in love with playing the harp, and the king decided to keep him with him and marry the girl Chernava; but Sadko deceived the tsar with the help of St. Nicholas of Mozhaisk, and saved himself, built a church in honor of the saint and stopped traveling on the blue sea. The epics about Sadko are distinguished by the completeness of each of the three parts and the dramatic intensity of the action. Propp classified “Epics about Sadko” as epics about matchmaking, and considered the main plot to be “Sadko at the Sea King”. Belinsky saw the main social conflict between Sadko and Novgorod. Fabulousness is characteristic of the first and third epics.
3.) Epics about Svyatogor have a special form - prosaic. Some scientists consider this proof of their antiquity, others – of their novelty. They contain a number of episodes: about the meeting of Ilya Muromets and Svyatogor, about Svyatogor’s unfaithful wife, about a bag with earthly cravings. These epics are ancient, as is the type of hero Svyatogor itself, which contains many mythical traces. Scientists view this image as the embodiment of the old order, which must disappear, because the death of Svyatogore is inevitable. In the epic about Svyatogor and the coffin, first Ilya tries on the coffin, but it is too big for him, and Svyatogor is just the right size. When Ilya covered the coffin with a lid, it was no longer possible to remove it, and he received part of Svyatogor’s power. Propp said that there is a change of two eras here, and the epic hero Svyatogor was replaced by Ilya Muromets. Svyatogor is a hero of unprecedented strength, but in the episode with the earthly pull that Svyatogor cannot lift, the existence of an even more powerful force is shown.
The epic “Volga and Mikula” is the most significant of the group of social epics. Its main idea is to contrast the peasant plowman and the prince. The social antithesis made it possible for some scientists to attribute the composition of the epic to later times, when social conflicts intensified; in addition, it was attributed to the Novgorod epics. But ridicule of the prince is not very typical for Novgorod epics, and the conflict is placed in the setting of early feudal times. Volga goes to collect tribute, he has a brave squad; Mikula is not a warrior, but a hero, he is powerful and superior to the entire Volga squad, which cannot pull his bipod out of the furrow; The prince and his squad cannot catch up with Mikula. But Mikula is opposed to Volga not only as a mighty hero, but also as a man of labor; he lives not by exactions from the peasants, but by his own labor. Everything comes easy to Mikula, he reaps a rich harvest. The scientist Sokolov saw in this the dream of the peasantry, tired of backbreaking physical labor. The epic poetizes peasant labor, the image of Mikula is the embodiment of the strength of the working people.
Ticket 1. Main features of folklore.
Folklore- artistic origin
Mythological beginning
Folkloristics
Folklore was called folk poetry, but this is not so (not everything is poetry)
At the end of the 19th century the term appeared folk literature(emphasis on the word - again not the correct definition, for example, the ritual of making rain - killing a frog - without words)
In the 20th century - Russian folk art.
Main features of folklore:
1) Orality (oral system, culture, phenomenon) only in oral form
2) Sacred letters do not have a written record - an exception
Written conspiracies, questionnaires, diaries (girl's album) demobilization album
Epic storytellers (they were sung)
3) Variability
Those. modification of one text
The downside is that we don't know which option came before
4) Locality (all texts and genres of folklore are local)
Thus, Russian folklore is a set of genres and each locality has its own.
5) Folklore - folk culture; people are the lower strata of the population (peasants)
· Student folklore
· Army folklore
· Youth/informal groups
· Blatnoy folklore
· Soldier's folklore
· Burlatsky
· Political prisoners
6) Folklore is a collective creativity. The creator of folklore is not one person.
7) Typification; Most works and genres of folklore contain typical motifs, plots, verbal forms, types of heroes
For example, the number 3, a beautiful maiden, heroes: all strong, beautiful, winners
8) Syncretism - (“combining”) the combination of different arts in one art.
For example, a wedding ceremony (songs, lamentations, wearing a Christmas tree (they decorated a small Christmas tree and carried it around the village - kind of like a bride wearing a Christmas tree))
Round dance (dance, song, costume + game)
People's Theatre: Petrushka Theater
Lamentations (text lamented)
9) Functionality
Each genre performs a specific function. For example, a lullaby served to rhythmize movements while rocking a child; lamentations - to mourn.
10) Inclusiveness
· Folklore includes the historical, family, labor, sound memory of the people
· Folklore itself is organically included in the working and economic life of the people.
Signs, properties of folklore
Researchers have noticed many signs and properties that are characteristic of folklore and allow us to get closer to understanding its essence:
Bifunctionality (combination of practical and spiritual);
Polyelementity or syncretism.
Any folklore work is multi-elemental. Let's use the table:
Mimic element
Genres of oral prose
Verbal element
Pantomime, mimic dancing
Ritual performance, round dances, folk drama
Verbal and musical (song genres)
Dance element
Musical and choreographic genres
musical element
Collectivity;
Illiteration;
Variant multiplicity;
Traditionality.
For phenomena associated with the development of folklore in other types of culture, the name is folklorism (introduced at the end of the 19th century by the French researcher P. Sebillot), as well as “secondary life”, “secondary folklore”.
In connection with its wide distribution, the concept of folklore itself, its pure forms, arose: thus, the term authentic (from the Greek autenticus - genuine, reliable) was established.
Folk art is the basis of all national culture. The richness of its content and genre diversity - sayings, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales and more. Songs have a special place in the creativity of the people, accompanying human life from cradle to grave, reflecting it in the most diverse manifestations and generally representing enduring ethnographic, historical, aesthetic, moral and highly artistic value.
Features of folklore.
Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Toms. Literally translated, it means “folk wisdom”, “folk knowledge” and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.
Other terms have also become established in Russian science: folk poetry, folk poetry, folk literature. The name “oral creativity of the people” emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name “folk poetic creativity” indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1
Folklore is complex, synthetic art. Often his works combine elements of various types of arts - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnology (ethnography) 2. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a unique area of national studies 3 .
The science that studies folklore is called folkloristics. If literature is understood not only as written artistic creativity, but as verbal art in general, then folklore is a special branch of literature, and folkloristics is thus part of literary criticism.
Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of words. In this way he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.
The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. The ancient art of words was characterized utility– the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.
The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of unity, non-division. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity; it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity, along with other types of social consciousness, into an independent field of spiritual activity.
Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no “famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the internal and external life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. And he moves on the song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and then poems come out of the songs, of which only the people can call themselves the author." 4
Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work not only because information about him, if he existed, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, a storyteller, a storyteller, but there is no author or writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.
Traditional succession covers large historical periods - entire centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebny, folklore arises “from memorable sources, that is, it is passed down from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory allows, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of popular understanding” 5 . Each bearer of folklore creates within the boundaries of generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, and supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. “Works of folklore always bear the stamp of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or “existed.” For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It has no individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators who are perfect mastering generally accepted traditional techniques of saying and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in the thoughts and feelings expressed in it; Folklore is folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying the content. and the properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms." 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. Traditionality– the most important and basic specific property of folklore.
Any folklore work exists in large quantities options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile, variable nature.
A characteristic feature of a folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (Italian: improvvisazione - unforeseen, suddenly) - the creation of a folklore work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and crying. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic boundaries.
Taking into account all these signs of a folklore work, we present an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: “folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other visual arts, both to ancient creativity and to new ones created in modern times and created in our days.” 7
Folklore, like literature, is the art of words. This gives grounds to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are usually called childbirth. Each genus covers a group of works of a certain type. Genre– type of artistic form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, by genus we mean a way of depicting reality, by genre - a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of changes in its genres. They are more stable in folklore compared to literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore do not arise as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, and are replaced by others. So, for example, epics arise in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die out. As living conditions change, genres are destroyed and consigned to oblivion. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.
What is the relationship between reality and its reflection in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. “Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself; convention is allowed.” 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, and symbolism.
Nekrasov’s work, without a doubt, is closely connected with Russia and the Russian people. His works carry deeply moral ideas.
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is one of the author’s best works. He worked on it for fifteen years, but never completed it. In the poem, Nekrasov turned to post-reform Russia and showed the changes that took place in the country during this period.
The peculiarity of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is that the author depicts people’s life as it is. He does not embellish or exaggerate when talking about the life difficulties of peasants.
The plot of the poem is in many ways similar to the folk tale about the search for truth and happiness. In my opinion, Nekrasov turns to such a plot because he senses changes in society, the awakening of peasant consciousness.
The similarity with works of oral folk art can be traced already at the very beginning of the poem. It begins with a peculiar beginning:
In what year - calculate
Guess what land?
On the sidewalk
Seven men came together...
It is important to note that similar principles were characteristic of Russian folk tales and epics. But there are also folk signs in the poem, which, in my opinion, help to better imagine the peasant world, the worldview of the peasants, their attitude to the surrounding reality:
Kukui! Cuckoo, cuckoo!
The bread will begin to spike,
You'll choke on an ear of corn -
You won't cuckoo!
We can say that oral folk art is closely connected with the life of the people. In the happiest moments of their lives and in the most severe times, peasants turn to folk tales, proverbs, sayings, and signs:
Mother-in-law
It served as a sign.
She told the neighbors
That I was inviting trouble.
With what? A clean shirt
Wore it on Christmas Day.
Riddles are also often found in the poem. Speaking mysteriously, in riddles, has been common among ordinary people since ancient times, as it was a kind of attribute of a magic spell. Of course, later the riddles lost this purpose, but the love for them and the need for them was so strong that it has survived to this day:
Nobody saw him
And everyone has heard,
Without a body, but it lives,
Without a tongue, he screams.
In “Who Lives Well in Rus'” there are a lot of words with diminutive suffixes:
Like a fish in a blue sea
You'll scurry away! Like a nightingale
You'll fly out of the nest!
This work is also characterized by constant epithets and comparisons:
Nose beak like a hawk's
The mustache is gray and long.
And - different eyes:
One healthy one glows,
And the left one is cloudy, cloudy,
Like a tin penny!
Thus, the author resorts to portraiture, but at the same time creates an image similar to a fairy-tale character, since fantastic features predominate here.
The form of short participles also gives the poem its national character:
Fields are unfinished,
The crops are unsown,
There is no trace of order.
The portrait characteristics are constructed in the poem in such a way that it is easy for the reader to divide all the characters in the poem into positive and negative. For example, Nekrasov compares peasants to Russian land. And the landowners are shown from a satirical perspective and are associated with evil fairy tale characters.
The characters' personalities are also revealed through their speech. So, the peasants speak a simple, truly folk language. Their words are sincere and emotional. This is, for example, the speech of Matryona Timofeevna:
The keys to women's happiness,
From our free will,
Abandoned, lost...
The speech of the landowners is less emotional, but very self-confident:
The law is my desire!
The fist is my police!
The blow is sparkling,
The blow is tooth-breaking,
Hit the cheekbone!
Nekrasov believes that better times will come for the Russian people. Without a doubt, the significance of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is difficult to overestimate.
Folk art is original, multifaceted and by its nature is closely connected with the musical principle. Hence the incredible diversity and diversity of forms in which the genres of musical folklore are expressed.
What is folklore?
Folklore is called folk art. This is music, poetry, theater, dance, which were created by the people and are closely related to traditions, religious beliefs, and history.
The word “folklore” itself has English roots and is translated as “folk wisdom”. By its nature, folklore is diverse and includes fairy tales, traditions, legends, myths, proverbs, sayings, conspiracies, omens, various methods of fortune telling, all kinds of rituals, dances and much more. Surprisingly, folklore also includes poems, counting rhymes and jokes. And the genres of musical folklore are only one part of folk art.
Is it a genre?
We have already mentioned several times (in connection with the concept of folklore) the word “genre”, but what is meant by it? A genre is a type of work characterized by certain features of form and content. Each genre has its own purpose, way of existence (for example, oral or written) and performance (singing, recitation, theatrical performance, etc.). As an example, we can cite the following genres: symphony, song, ballad, story, short story, novel, etc.
What is called musical folklore?
Ditties
A chastushka is a small rhyming song consisting of 4-6 lines. It is usually performed at a fast pace and describes one event in a person’s life. Chastushkas were popular among both rural residents and the working class. The roots of this genre go back to the 18th century, but it achieved its greatest popularity in the 20th century.
The theme of the ditties is a reflection of life itself, the most pressing and topical problems and bright events. The main focus of these short songs is social, everyday or love.
Studying folklore at school
All school general education programs are designed to enable children to study genres of musical folklore. The 5th grade begins to get acquainted with the genre diversity of folk art, but students begin to study its samples in elementary school.
The main emphasis in the secondary school level is on the connection between literature and history, so epic melodies are mainly studied. In addition, students are introduced to the main song genres. At the same time, the teacher talks about the parallels and connections between folk art and literature, about the main traditions and continuity.
Conclusion
Thus, the genres of musical folklore, the list of which we tried to compile, are inextricably linked with the life of the people. Any change in the life of ordinary people or the entire country was immediately reflected in song creativity. Therefore, it is impossible to list all the genres of folklore created throughout the existence of mankind. Moreover, today folk art continues its development, evolves, adapts to new conditions and lives. And it will live as long as humanity exists.
All of the above determines only one side of the matter: this determines the social nature of folklore, but this still does not say anything about all its other features.
The above characteristics are clearly not enough to distinguish folklore as a special type of creativity, and folklore studies as a special science. But they define a number of other features, already specifically folklore in essence.
First of all, let us establish that folklore is a product of a special type of poetic creativity. But literature is also poetic creativity. Indeed, there is a very close connection between folklore and literature, between folklore studies and literary studies.
Literature and folklore, first of all, partially coincide in their poetic types and genres. There are, however, genres that are specific only to literature and impossible in folklore (for example, a novel) and, conversely, there are genres that are specific to folklore and impossible in literature (for example, a conspiracy).
Nevertheless, the very fact of the existence of genres, the possibility of classification here and there according to genres, is a fact that belongs to the field of poetics. Hence the commonality of some tasks and methods of studying literary studies and folkloristics.
One of the tasks of folkloristics is the task of isolating and studying the category of genre and each genre separately, and this task is a literary one.
One of the most important and difficult tasks of folkloristics is the study of the internal structure of works, in short, the study of composition and structure. Fairy tales, epics, riddles, songs, spells - all of this has little studied laws of addition and structure. In the field of epic genres, this includes the study of the plot, the course of action, the denouement, or, in other words, the laws of plot structure. The study shows that folklore and literary works are structured differently, that folklore has its own specific structural laws.
Literary criticism is unable to explain this specific pattern, but it can only be established using methods of literary analysis. This area also includes the study of poetic language and style. Studying the means of poetic language is a purely literary task.
Here again it turns out that folklore has means specific to it (parallelisms, repetitions, etc.) or that the usual means of poetic language (comparisons, metaphors, epithets) are filled with a completely different content than in literature. This can only be established through literary analysis.
In short, folklore has a completely special, specific poetics, different from the poetics of literary works. The study of this poetics will reveal the extraordinary artistic beauties inherent in folklore.
Thus, we see that not only is there a close connection between folklore and literature, but that folklore as such is a phenomenon of a literary order. It is one of the types of poetic creativity.
Folklore studies in the study of this side of folklore, in its descriptive elements, is a literary science. The connection between these sciences is so close that we often equate folklore and literature with the corresponding sciences; the method of studying literature is transferred entirely to the study of folklore, and that is all there is to it.
However, literary analysis can, as we see, only establish the phenomenon and pattern of folk poetics, but it is unable to explain them. To protect ourselves from such a mistake, we must establish not only the similarities between literature and folklore, their kinship and to some extent consubstantial, but also establish the specific difference between them, determine their differences.
Indeed, folklore has a number of specific features that distinguish it so much from literature that literary research methods are not enough to resolve all problems related to folklore.
One of the most important differences is that literary works always and certainly have an author. Folklore works may not have an author, and this is one of the specific features of folklore.
The question must be posed with all possible clarity and precision. Either we recognize the existence of folk art as such, as a phenomenon of the social and cultural historical life of peoples, or we do not recognize it, we assert that it is a poetic or scientific fiction and that there is only the creativity of individual individuals or groups.
We stand on the point of view that folk art is not a fiction, but exists precisely as such, and that studying it is the main task of folkloristics as a science. In this regard, we identify ourselves with our old scientists, like F. Buslaev or O. Miller. What the old science felt instinctively, expressed naively, ineptly, and not so much scientifically as emotionally, must now be cleared of romantic errors and raised to the proper height of modern science with its thoughtful methods and precise techniques.
Brought up in the school of literary traditions, we often still cannot imagine that a poetic work could arise differently from the way a literary work arises during individual creativity. We all think that someone must have composed it or put it together first.
Meanwhile, completely different ways of the emergence of poetic works are possible, and the study of them is one of the main and very complex problems of folkloristics. It is not possible here to enter into the full breadth of this problem. It is enough to point out here that folklore should be genetically related not to literature, but to a language that was also not invented by anyone and has neither an author nor authors.
It arises and changes completely naturally and independently of the will of people, wherever appropriate conditions have been created for this in the historical development of peoples. The phenomenon of worldwide similarity does not pose a problem for us. The absence of such similarities would be inexplicable to us.
Similarity indicates a pattern, and the similarity of folklore works is only a special case of a historical pattern, leading from the same forms of production of material culture to the same or similar social institutions, to similar tools of production, and in the field of ideology - to the similarity of forms and categories of thinking, religious ideas, ritual life, languages and folklore All this lives, is interdependent, changes, grows and dies.
Returning to the question of how to empirically imagine the emergence of folklore works, here it will be enough to at least point out that folklore can initially constitute an integrating part of the ritual.
With the degeneration or fall of the ritual, folklore becomes detached from it and begins to live an independent life. This is only an illustration of the general situation. Proof can only be given through specific research. But the ritual origin of folklore was clear, for example, already to A. N. Veselovsky in the last years of his life.
The difference presented here is so fundamental that it alone forces us to distinguish folklore as a special type of creativity, and folklore studies as a special science. A literary historian, wanting to study the origins of a work, looks for its author.
V.Ya. Propp. Poetics of folklore - M., 1998
ST. PETERSBURG HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF TRADE UNIONS
TEST
discipline __
subject ___________________________________________________________________
_____ course student
correspondence faculty
speciality
_____________________________
_____________________________
FULL NAME.
_____________________________
Saint Petersburg
______________________________________________________________
signature surname clearly
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(cutting line)
Student(s) of _____ course________________________________________________________________
(FULL NAME.)
correspondence faculty specialty__________________________________________________________
discipline___________
subject________________
Registration No.__________________ "_______"_______________________200______
date of submission of work to the University
ASSESSMENT____________________ “_________”________________________200_____g.
TEACHER-REVIEWER___________________________/_________________________________
signature surname clearly
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….………………. 3
2. Main part…………………………………………………………………………………. 4
2.1 Genres of Russian folklore……………………………………………………………...4
2.2 The place of folklore in Russian literature………………………………………………………6
3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12
4. List of references……………………………………………………….13
Introduction
Folklore – [English] folklore] folk art, a set of folk actions.
The relationship between literature and oral folk art is an urgent problem of modern literary criticism in the context of the development of world culture.
In recent decades, a whole direction of creative use of folklore has been defined in Russian literature, which is represented by talented prose writers who reveal the problems of reality at the level of intersection of literature and folklore. Deep and organic mastery of various forms of oral folk art has always been an integral property of true talent
In the 1970-2000s, many Russian writers working in a variety of literary directions turned to oral folk art. What are the reasons for this literary phenomenon? Why did writers of various literary movements and styles turn to folklore at the turn of the century? It is necessary to take into account, first of all, two dominant factors: intraliterary patterns and the socio-historical situation. Undoubtedly, tradition plays a role: writers have turned to oral folk art throughout the development of literature. Another, no less important, reason is the turn of the century, when Russian society, summing up the results of the next century, again tries to find answers to important questions of existence, returning to the national spiritual and cultural roots, and the richest folklore heritage is the poetic memory and history of the people.
The problem of the role of folklore in Russian literature on the threshold of the 21st century is natural because it has now acquired a special philosophical and aesthetic value.
Folklore is an archaic, transpersonal, collective type of artistic memory that has become the cradle of literature.
Main part.
Genres of Russian folklore.
Russian folk poetry has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. Its genre composition is rich and varied. The genres of Russian folk poetry will appear before us in the following scheme: I. Ritual poetry: 1) calendar (winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles); 2) family and household (maternity, wedding, funeral); 3) conspiracies. II. Non-ritual poetry: 1) epic prose genres: * a) fairy tale, b) legend, c) legend (and bylichka as its type); 2) epic poetic genres: a) epics, b) historical songs (primarily older ones), c) ballad songs; 3) lyrical poetic genres: a) songs of social content, b) love songs, c) family songs, d) small lyrical genres (ditties, choruses, etc.); 4) small non-lyrical genres: a) proverbs; o) sayings; c) riddles; 5) dramatic texts and actions: a) mummers, games, round dances; b) scenes and plays. In scientific folklore literature one can find the question of mixed or intermediate generic and genre phenomena: lyric-epic songs, fairy tales, legends, etc.
However, it must be said that such phenomena are very rare in Russian folklore. In addition, the introduction of this type of work into the classification of genres is controversial because mixed or intermediate genres have never been stable; at no time in the development of Russian folklore were they the main ones and did not determine its overall picture and historical movement. The development of genera and genres does not consist in their mixing, but in the creation of new artistic forms and the death of old ones. The emergence of genres, as well as the formation of their entire system, is determined by many circumstances. Firstly, by the social need for them, and, consequently, by the tasks of a cognitive, ideological, educational and aesthetic nature that the diverse reality itself posed to folk art. Secondly, the originality of the reflected reality; for example, epics arose in connection with the struggle of the Russian people against the nomadic Pechenegs, Polovtsians and Mongol-Tatars. Thirdly, the level of development of the artistic thought of the people and their historical thinking; In the early stages, complex forms could not be created; the movement probably went from simple and small forms to complex and large ones, for example, from a proverb, a parable (short story) to a fairy tale and legend. Fourthly, the previous artistic heritage and traditions, previously established genres. Fifthly, the influence of literature (writing) and other forms of art. The emergence of genres is a natural process; it is determined both by external socio-historical factors and by the internal laws of the development of folklore.
The composition of folklore genres and their connection with each other are also determined by their common task of multilateral reproduction of reality, and the functions of the genres are distributed so that each genre has its own special task - the depiction of one of the aspects of life. The works of one group of genres have as their subject the history of the people (epics, historical songs, legends), another - the work and life of the people (calendar ritual songs, work songs), the third - personal relationships (family and love songs), the fourth - the moral views of the people and his life experience (proverbs). But all genres taken together widely cover everyday life, work, history, social and personal relationships of people. Genres are interconnected in the same way as different aspects and phenomena of reality itself are interconnected, and therefore form a single ideological and artistic system. The fact that the genres of folklore have a common ideological essence and a common task of multifaceted artistic reproduction of life also causes a certain commonality or similarity of their themes, plots and heroes. Folklore genres are characterized by a commonality of principles of folk aesthetics - simplicity, brevity, economy, plot, poeticization of nature, certainty of moral assessments of the characters (positive or negative). The genres of oral folk art are also interconnected by a common system of artistic means of folklore - the originality of the composition (leitmotif, unity of theme, chain connection, screensaver - a picture of nature, types of repetitions, commonplaces), symbolism, special types of epithets. This system, developing historically, has a pronounced national identity, determined by the peculiarities of the language, way of life, history and culture of the people. Relationships between genres. In the formation, development and coexistence of folklore genres, a process of complex interaction occurs: mutual influence, mutual enrichment, adaptation to each other. The interaction of genres takes many forms. It serves as one of the reasons for significant changes in oral folk art.
The place of folklore in Russian literature.
“The Russian people have created a huge amount of oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics - spoken in a chant, to the sound of strings - about the glorious exploits of heroes, defenders of the people’s land - heroic, magical, everyday and funny tales.
Folklore- This is folk art, very necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days. Folklore includes works that convey the basic, most important ideas of the people about the main values in life: work, family, love, social duty, homeland. Our children are still being brought up on these works. Knowledge of folklore can give a person knowledge about the Russian people, and ultimately about himself.
In folklore, the original text of a work is almost always unknown, since the author of the work is unknown. The text is passed down from mouth to mouth and survives to this day in the form in which the writers wrote it down. However, writers retell them in their own way to make the works easy to read and understand. Currently, many collections have been published that include one or several genres of Russian folklore. These are, for example, “Epics” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Russian folk poetry” by T. M. Akimova, “Russian folklore” edited by V. P. Anikin, “Russian ritual songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rumble: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “On Russian Folklore” by E. V. Pomerantseva, “Folk Russian Legends” and “People-Artists: myth, folklore, literature” by A. N. Afanasyev, “Slavic mythology” by N. I. Kostomarov, “Myths and legends” by K. A. Zurabov.
In all publications, the authors distinguish several genres of folklore - these are fortune telling, spells, ritual songs, epics, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings, riddles, tales, pestushki, chants, ditties, etc. Due to the fact that the material is very huge, and in a short time It is impossible to study it in time; I use in my work only four books given to me by the central library. These are “Russian Ritual Songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rokotahu: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “Russian Folk Poetry” by T. M. Akimova.
Modern writers often use folklore motifs in order to give the story an existential character, to combine the individual and the typical.
Oral folk poetry and book literature arose and developed on the basis of the national riches of the language; their themes were related to the historical and social life of the Russian people, their way of life and work. In folklore and literature, poetic and prose genres that were largely similar to each other were created, and types and types of poetic art arose and were improved. Therefore, creative connections between folklore and literature, their constant ideological and artistic mutual influence are quite natural and logical.
Oral folk poetry, having arisen in ancient times and reaching perfection by the time of the introduction of writing in Rus', became a natural threshold for Old Russian literature, a kind of “poetic cradle”. It was on the basis of the richest poetic treasury of folklore that the original Russian written literature arose to a large extent. It was folklore, according to many researchers, that introduced a strong ideological and artistic current into the works of ancient Russian literature.
Folklore and Russian literature represent two independent areas of Russian national art. At the same time, the history of their creative relationship should have become the subject of independent study by both folklore and literary studies. However, such targeted research did not appear in Russian science immediately. They were preceded by long stages of autonomous existence of folklore and literature without proper scientific understanding of the processes of their creative influence on each other.
Tolstoy's work, addressed to children, is vast in scope and polyphonic in sound. It reveals his artistic, philosophical, pedagogical views.
Everything Tolstoy wrote about children and for children marked a new era in the development of domestic and, in many ways, world literature for children. During the writer’s lifetime, his stories from “ABC” were translated into many languages of the peoples of Russia and became widespread in Europe.
The theme of childhood in Tolstoy's works acquired a philosophically deep, psychological meaning. The writer introduced new themes, a new layer of life, new heroes, and enriched the moral issues of the works addressed to young readers. The great merit of Tolstoy, a writer and teacher, is that he raised educational literature (the alphabet), which traditionally had an applied, functional nature, to the level of real art.
Leo Tolstoy is the glory and pride of Russian literature. 2 The beginning of Tolstoy’s teaching activity dates back to 1849. When he opened his first school for peasant children.
Tolstoy did not ignore the problems of education and upbringing until the last days of his life. In the 80s and 90s, he was engaged in publishing literature for the people, and dreamed of creating an encyclopedic dictionary and a series of textbooks for peasants.
Constant interest of L.N. Tolstoy to Russian folklore, to the folk poetry of other peoples (primarily Caucasian) is a well-known fact. He not only recorded and actively promoted fairy tales, legends, songs, and proverbs, but also used them in his artistic work and teaching activities. The 70s of the 19th century were especially fruitful in this regard - a time of intensive work on “The ABC” (1872), “The New ABC” and complementary books for reading (1875). Initially, in the first edition, “ABC” was a single set of educational books. Tolstoy summarized his teaching experience at the Yasnaya Polyana school and revised the stories for children published in the appendix to Yasnaya Polyana. First of all, I would like to note the serious, thoughtful attitude of L.N. Tolstoy to folklore material. The author of both “ABCs” strictly focused on the primary sources, avoided arbitrary changes and interpretations and allowed himself some adjustments only for the purpose of adapting folklore texts that were difficult to perceive. Tolstoy studied the experience of Ushinsky, spoke critically about the language of his predecessor’s educational books, which, from his point of view, was too conventional and artificial, and did not accept descriptiveness in stories for children. The positions of both teachers were close in assessing the role of oral folk art and the experience of spiritual culture in mastering the native language.
Proverbs, sayings, riddles in “ABC” alternate with short sketches, micro-scenes, small stories from folk life 3(“Katya went mushroom picking”, “Varya had a siskin”, “The children found a hedgehog”, “Bug was carrying a bone”). Everything about them is close to a peasant child. Read in the book, the scene is filled with special significance and sharpens observation: “They laid the stacks. It was hot, it was difficult, and everyone was singing.” “Grandfather was bored at home. My granddaughter came and sang a song.” The characters in Tolstoy's short stories are, as a rule, generalized - mother, daughter, sons, old man. In the traditions of folk pedagogy and Christian morality, Tolstoy pursues the idea: love work, respect your elders, do good. Other everyday sketches are executed so masterfully that they acquire a high generalized meaning and come close to a parable. For example:
“The grandmother had a granddaughter; Before, the granddaughter was small and kept sleeping, and the grandmother baked bread, chalked the hut, washed, sewed, spun and wove for her granddaughter; and then the grandmother became old and lay down on the stove and kept sleeping. And the granddaughter baked, washed, sewed, weaved and spun for her grandmother.”
A few lines of simple two-syllable words. The second part is almost a mirror image of the first. What's the depth? The wise course of life, the responsibility of generations, the transmission of traditions... Everything is contained in two sentences. Here every word seems to be weighed, emphasized in a special way. The parables about the old man planting apple trees, “The Old Grandfather and Granddaughter”, “Father and Sons” have become classic.
Children are the main characters of Tolstoy's stories. Among his characters are children, simple children, peasant children and noble children. Tolstoy does not focus on social difference, although in each story children are in their own environment. The village little Filipok, wearing his father’s big hat, overcoming fear and fighting off other people’s dogs, goes to school. It takes no less courage for the little hero of the story “How I Learned to Ride” to beg adults to take him into the playpen. And then, without being afraid of falling, sit on Chervonchik again.
“I’m poor, I immediately understood everything. “I’m so clever,” says Filipok about himself, beating his name. There are many such “poor and clever” heroes in Tolstoy’s stories. The boy Vasya selflessly protects a kitten from hunting dogs (“Kitten”). And eight-year-old Vanya, showing enviable ingenuity, saves the lives of his little brother, sister and old grandmother. The plots of many of Tolstoy's stories are dramatic. A hero - a child must overcome himself and decide to act. The tense dynamics of the story “The Jump” are characteristic in this regard. 4
Children are often disobedient and do wrong things, but the writer does not seek to give them a direct assessment. The reader must make the moral conclusion for himself. A conciliatory smile can be caused by Vanya’s misdeed, secretly eating a plum (“Pit”). Seryozha’s carelessness (“Bird”) cost Chizhu his life. And in the story “Cow” the hero is in an even more difficult situation: the fear of punishment for a broken glass led to dire consequences for a large peasant family - the death of the wet nurse Buryonushka.
Famous teacher D.D. Semyonov, a contemporary of Tolstoy, called his stories “the height of perfection, as in the psychological. So it is in an artistic sense... What expressiveness and figurativeness of language, what strength, conciseness, simplicity and at the same time elegance of speech... In every thought, in every storyteller there is a moral... moreover, it is not striking, does not bore children, but is hidden in the artistic image, and therefore it asks for a child’s soul and sinks deeply into it” 5 .
A writer's talent is determined by the significance of his literary discoveries. What is immortal is what is not repeated and unique. The nature of literature does not tolerate repetition.
The writer creates his own image of the real world, not being satisfied with someone else's idea of reality. The more this image reflects the essence and not the appearance of phenomena, the deeper the writer penetrates into the fundamental principles of existence, the more accurately their immanent conflict, which is the paradigm of a genuine literary “conflict,” is expressed in his work, the more durable the work turns out to be.
Among the forgotten works are things that reduce the idea of the world and man. This does not mean that the work is intended to reflect a holistic picture of reality. It’s just that the “private truth” of a work must be connected with a universal meaning.
Question about nationalities of this or that writer cannot be fully resolved without analyzing his connection with folklore. Folklore is an impersonal creativity, closely related to the archaic worldview.
Conclusion
Thus, Tolstoy’s creation of the cycle of “folk stories” of the 1880s - 1900s was due in combination to both external and internal reasons: socio-historical factors, the laws of the literary process of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the religious and aesthetic priorities of the late Tolstoy.
In the conditions of socio-political instability in Russia in the 1880-1890s, the tendency for a radical reorganization of society by violent methods, sowing discord and disunity among people, Tolstoy puts into practice the idea of “active Christianity” - a religious and philosophical doctrine of spiritual enlightenment based on Christian axiomatics, developed by him over a quarter of a century, and following which, in the writer’s opinion, should inevitably lead to the spiritual progress of society.
Objective reality, being unnatural, receives aesthetic condemnation by the writer. In order to contrast reality with the image of harmonious reality, Tolstoy develops a theory of religious art as the most appropriate to the needs of the day, and radically changes the nature of his own creative method. The method of “spiritual truth” chosen by Tolstoy, synthesizing the real and the ideal as a way of embodying harmonious reality, was most clearly realized in a cycle of works with a conventional genre definition of “folk stories”.
In the context of the growing interest of modern literary criticism in Christian issues in Russian classics, the study of “folk stories” in the context of spiritual prose of the late 19th - early 20th centuries seems promising, allowing us to present the spiritual literature of this period as an integral phenomenon.
Bibliography.
1. Akimova T. M., V. K. Arkhangelskaya, V. A. Bakhtina / Russian folk poetic creativity (a manual for seminar classes). – M.: Higher. School, 1983. – 208 p.
2. Gorky M. Collection. Op., vol. 27
3. Danilevsky I.N. Ancient Rus' through the eyes of contemporaries and their descendants (XI – XII centuries). – M., 1998. – P. 225.
5. Kruglov Yu. G. Russian ritual songs: Textbook. manual for teachers in-tovpospets "rus. language or T.". – 2nd ed., rev. and additional – M.: Higher. school 1989. – 320 p.
6. Semenov D.D. Favorite Ped. Op. – M., 1953
Folklore is the basis on which individual creativity develops. Outstanding figures in various fields of art of the past and present were clearly aware of the importance of folklore. M.I. Glinka said: “We do not create, it is the people who create; we just record and arrange” \ A. S. Pushkin back in the early 19th century. wrote: “The study of ancient songs, fairy tales, etc. is necessary for perfect knowledge of the properties of the Russian language. Our critics have no reason to despise them.” Addressing writers, he pointed out: “Read folk tales, young writers, to see the properties of the Russian language.”
The legacy of turning to folk art was and is being followed by the creators of classical and modern literature, music, and fine arts. There is not a single prominent writer, artist, composer who would not turn to the springs of folk art, because they reflect the life of the people. The list of musical works that creatively develop the art of the people is enormous. Operas such as “Sadko”, “Kashchei” and others were created based on folk stories. Images and stories of folk art were included in the fine arts. Paintings by Vasnetsov “Bogatyrs”, “Alyonushka”, Vrubel “Mikula”, “Ilya Muromets”, Repin “Sadko”, etc. were included in the treasury of world art. A. M. Gorky pointed out that the basis of generalizations created by an individual genius is the creativity of the people: “Zeus was created by the people, Phidias embodied him in marble.” It is argued here that the art of a writer, artist, or sculptor only reaches its peak when it arises as an expression of the ideas, feelings, and views of the people. Gorky did not belittle the role of the individual artist, but emphasized that his strength of talent and skill give special expressiveness and perfection to the form of creating collective creativity of the masses.
The connection between literature and folklore is not limited to the use by writers of the content and form of individual works of folk art. This connection expresses an incomparably broader and more general phenomenon: the organic unity of the artist with the people, and of art with the creative people's experience.
Consequently, both individual and collective creativity only acquire enormous ideological and aesthetic significance in the life of society when they are connected with the life of the people and truthfully and artistically reflect it completely. But it is necessary to take into account that, firstly, the nature and correlation of collective and individual creativity at different stages of the development of human society are different and, secondly, the fact that collective and individual creativity are unique historically emerged ways of creating a work of art.
A. M. Gorky rightly said that the collective creativity of the masses was the mother’s womb for individual creativity, that the beginning of the art of words and literature was in folklore. In the early periods of history, the closeness of literature and folk art was so great that it was impossible to clearly distinguish between them. “The Iliad” and “Odyssey” are rightfully considered works of ancient literature and, at the same time, the most beautiful creations of collective folk art, dating back to the “infancy period of human society.” The same lack of differentiation between individual and collective creativity is noted in a number of works by many peoples.
In the initial period of its existence, literature had not yet completely separated from collective folk art. With the development of class society, the division of individual and collective creativity gradually deepens. But, of course, the very concepts of collective and individual creativity cannot be interpreted abstractly, equally and unchangeably for all times and peoples. Individual and collective art have features determined by historical reality.
In pre-class society, collective creativity was an artistic and figurative reflection of the reality of that time, a generalization of the views and ideas of a tribe, a primitive community from which an individual had not yet emerged. In conditions when the tribe remained the border of a person both in relation to a stranger from another tribe, and in relation to himself, when an individual was unconditionally subordinated in his feelings, thoughts and actions to the tribe, the clan\collective creativity was the only possible form of artistic activity of individual individualities. The participation of the entire mass of the tribe in generalizing life experience, the common desire to understand and change reality were the basis of the pre-class epic, which has come down to us mainly in later revisions. An example of such epic tales, which originated in the conditions of a pre-class society, can be at least the Kalevala runes, Yakut oloikho, Georgian and Ossetian tales about Amiran, North Caucasian and Abkhaz tales about the Narts, etc.
In pre-class society, the collectivity of creativity not only merged with individuality, but subordinated it. Here even the most outstanding personality was perceived as the embodiment of the strength and experience of the entire tribe; This is how the image of the masses of the people through the image of a hero, characteristic of the epic and early literary creativity, was born (Weinemeinen, Prometheus, Balder, and later Russian heroes and other images of heroic legends).
The development of class relations could not but change collective creativity. With the advent of class society, the ideology of antagonistic classes is clearly reflected in different interpretations of images, plots of legends and songs. Examples from the epic of the peoples of the USSR confirm this. Discussion of the ideological essence of the Kyrgyz legends about Manas, the Buryat and Mongolian epic “Geser”, discussions on the problems of the epic revealed the facts of anti-national distortions by feudal circles of the creativity of the working masses.
There is a constant interaction between literature and folklore. Folklore and literature, collective and individual artistic creativity accompany each other in a class society. Thus, Russian folk art of the 11th-17th centuries. had a huge impact on the works of ancient Russian literature, as eloquently evidenced by “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, “Zadonshchina”. At the same time, images of fiction increasingly entered the everyday life of oral poetic creativity. Subsequently, this process became even more intense. Lermontov, Gogol, JI. Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Gorky believed that folklore enriches the individual creativity of a professional artist. At the same time, all the outstanding masters of Russian literature emphasized that a writer should not copy folklore and should not take the path of stylization. A true artist boldly invades the oral and poetic creativity of the people, selects the best in it and creatively develops it. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall the fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin. “He decorated folk songs and fairy tales with the brilliance of his talent, but left their meaning and power unchanged,” wrote A. M. Gorky
The interaction between folklore and literature takes place in different forms. For example, a professional artist often uses and enriches themes, plots, and images of folklore, but he can use folklore without directly reproducing its plots and images. A true artist never confines himself to reproducing the form of folklore works, but enriches and develops the traditions of oral poetic creativity, revealing the life of the people, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. It is known that the best, most progressive representatives of the ruling classes, denouncing social injustice and truthfully depicting life, rose above class limitations and created works that met the interests and needs of the people.
The living connection between literature and folklore is confirmed by the work of the best writers of all nations. But no matter how tangible the connection between the works of writers and folk poetry is in the conditions of a class society, collective and individual creativity are always differentiated by the method of creating works of art.
In class society, differences have developed in the creative process of creating works of literature and mass folk poetry. They consist primarily in the following: a literary work is created by a writer - it makes no difference whether he is a writer by profession or not - individually or in collaboration with another writer; While the writer is working on it, the work is not the property of the masses; the masses become familiar with it only after it receives the final edition, enshrined in the letter. This means that in literature the process of creating the canonical text of a work is separated from the direct creative activity of the masses and is associated with it only genetically.
Works of collective folk art are a different matter; here the personal and collective principles are united in the creative process so closely that individual creative individuals dissolve in the collective. Works of folk art do not have a final edition. Each performer of a work creates, develops, polishes the text, acts as a co-author of a song, a legend that belongs to the people.
Genres of folklore are varied. There are major genres, such as epics and fairy tales. And there are small genres: proverbs, sayings, chants. Small genres were very often intended for children, teaching them the wisdom of life. Proverbs and sayings allowed people to preserve and pass on folk wisdom from generation to generation.
The artistic feature of all small genres is that they are small in volume and easy to remember. They are often created in poetic form, which also helped them to be remembered better. Proverbs consist of one sentence. But this sentence is very deep and capacious in its content. “Chickens are counted in the fall,” our ancestors said, and we say today. The proverb is based on worldly wisdom. It doesn't matter how many chickens you have in the spring. It is important how many of them have grown before autumn. Over time, these words began to have a generalized meaning: don’t think about how much you can get from this or that business, look at the result of what you did.
Small genres of folklore intended for children have their own characteristics and value. They entered the child’s life from birth and accompanied him for many years until he grew up. Lullabies were intended primarily to protect the baby from the terrible things that surround him. Therefore, the gray wolf and other monsters often appear in songs. Gradually, lullabies ceased to play the role of a talisman. Their purpose was to put the child to sleep.
Another genre of folklore is associated with the period of infancy. These are pestushki (from the word “to nurture”). The mother sang them to her child, confident that they were helping him grow smart, strong, and healthy. Growing up, the child himself learned to use various genres in his speech and games. Children performed chants in the spring or autumn. This is how adults taught them to take care of the natural world and carry out various agricultural work in a timely manner.
Parents used tongue twisters to develop their children's speech. The artistic feature of the tongue twister is not that it has a poetic form. Its value lies elsewhere. A tongue twister was compiled in such a way that it included words with sounds that were difficult for a child. By pronouncing the tongue twister, the children developed correct speech and achieved clarity in pronunciation.
The riddle occupies a special place among the small genres of folklore. Its artistic feature lies in its metaphorical nature. The riddles were based on the principle of similarity or difference between objects. By solving the riddle, the child learned observation skills and logical thinking. Often the children began to come up with riddles themselves. They also came up with teasers, making fun of a person's shortcomings.
Thus, the small genres of folklore, with all their diversity, served one purpose - to figuratively, accurately and accurately convey folk wisdom, to teach a growing person about life.
Russian folklore
Folklore, translated, means “folk wisdom, folk knowledge.” Folklore is folk art, artistic collective activity of the people, reflecting their life, views and ideals, i.e. folklore is the folk historical cultural heritage of any country in the world.
Works of Russian folklore (fairy tales, legends, epics, songs, ditties, dances, tales, applied art) help to recreate the characteristic features of the folk life of their time.
Creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. The art of words was closely connected with other types of art - music, dance, decorative art. In science this is called "syncretism".
Folklore was an art organically inherent in folk life. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and styles. In the ancient period, most peoples had tribal traditions, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore itself was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were based on dreams, wisdom, and ethical fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Russian epics and others). Legends and songs also arose reflecting various beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in people's memory.
Genres in folklore also differ in the method of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and different combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing and dancing, storytelling and acting).
With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The growth of industry and cities brought to life: romances, jokes, workers', and student folklore.
Now there are no new Russian folk tales appearing, but the old ones are still told and cartoons and feature films are made based on them. Many old songs are also sung. But epics and historical songs are practically no longer heard live.
For thousands of years, folklore was the only form of creativity among all peoples. The folklore of every nation is unique, just like its history, customs, and culture. And some genres (not just historical songs) reflect the history of a given people.
Russian folk musical culture
There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk artistic culture, as oral poetry and as a set of verbal, musical, gaming or artistic types of folk art. With all the diversity of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, everyday life, and the transmission of works from generation to generation in the oral tradition.
Folk musical art originated long before the emergence of professional music in the Orthodox church. In the social life of ancient Rus', folklore played a much greater role than in subsequent times. Unlike medieval Europe, Ancient Rus' did not have secular professional art. In its musical culture, folk art of the oral tradition developed, including various, including “semi-professional” genres (the art of storytellers, guslars, etc.).
By the time of Orthodox hymnography, Russian folklore already had a long history, an established system of genres and means of musical expression. Folk music and folk art have become firmly established in people's everyday lives, reflecting the most diverse facets of social, family and personal life.
Researchers believe that in the pre-state period (that is, before Ancient Rus' took shape), the Eastern Slavs already had a fairly developed calendar and family folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
With the adoption of Christianity, pagan (Vedic) knowledge began to be eradicated. The meaning of magical acts that gave rise to this or that type of folk activity was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays turned out to be unusually stable, and some ritual folklore continued to live as if out of connection with the ancient paganism that gave birth to it.
The Christian Church (not only in Rus', but also in Europe) had a very negative attitude towards traditional folk songs and dances, considering them a manifestation of sinfulness and devilish seduction. This assessment is recorded in many chronicles and in canonical church decrees.
Lively, cheerful folk festivals with elements of theatrical performance and with the indispensable participation of music, the origins of which should be sought in ancient Vedic rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays.
The most extensive area of folk musical creativity of Ancient Rus' is ritual folklore, testifying to the high artistic talent of the Russian people. He was born in the depths of the Vedic picture of the world, the deification of natural elements. Calendar-ritual songs are considered the most ancient. Their content is associated with ideas about the cycle of nature and the agricultural calendar. These songs reflect the different stages of life of the farmers. They were part of winter, spring, and summer rituals that correspond to turning points in the change of seasons. By performing this natural ritual (songs, dances), people believed that the mighty gods, the forces of Love, Family, Sun, Water, Mother Earth would hear them and healthy children would be born, a good harvest would be born, there would be offspring of livestock, life in love would develop and harmony.
In Rus', weddings have been played since ancient times. Each locality had its own custom of wedding actions, lamentations, songs, and sentences. But with all the endless variety, weddings were played according to the same laws. Poetic wedding reality transforms what is happening into a fantastic fairy-tale world. Just as in a fairy tale all the images are varied, so the ritual itself, poetically interpreted, appears as a kind of fairy tale. A wedding, being one of the most significant events of human life in Rus', required a festive and solemn frame. And if you feel all the rituals and songs, delving into this fantastic wedding world, you can feel the aching beauty of this ritual. What will remain behind the scenes are the colorful clothes, the wedding train rattling with bells, the polyphonic choir of “singers” and the mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of waxwings and buzzers, accordions and balalaikas - but the poetry of the wedding itself resurrects - the pain of leaving the parental home and the high joy of the festive state of mind - Love.
One of the most ancient Russian genres is round dance songs. In Rus', round dances were held throughout almost the entire year - on Kolovorot (New Year), Maslenitsa (farewell to winter and welcoming spring), Green Week (round dances of girls around birches), Yarilo (sacred bonfires), Ovsen (harvest festivals). Round dances-games and round dances-processions were common. Initially, round dance songs were part of agricultural rituals, but over the centuries they became independent, although images of labor were preserved in many of them:
And we sowed and sowed millet!
Oh, Did Lado, they sowed, they sowed!
Dance songs that have survived to this day accompanied men's and women's dances. Men's - personified strength, courage, courage, women's - tenderness, love, stateliness.
Over the centuries, the musical epic begins to be replenished with new themes and images. Epic epics are born telling about the struggle against the Horde, about travel to distant countries, about the emergence of the Cossacks, and popular uprisings.
People's memory has long preserved many beautiful ancient songs over the centuries. In the 18th century, during the period of the formation of professional secular genres (opera, instrumental music), folk art for the first time became the subject of study and creative implementation. The educational attitude towards folklore was vividly expressed by the remarkable writer, humanist A.N. Radishchev, in the heartfelt lines of his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Whoever knows the voices of Russian folk songs admits that there is something in them that means mental pain... In in them you will find the formation of the soul of our people.” In the 19th century, the assessment of folklore as the “education of the soul” of the Russian people became the basis of the aesthetics of the school of composers from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, to Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Kalinikov, and folk song itself was one of the sources of the formation of Russian national thinking.
Russian folk songs of the 16th-19th centuries - “like the golden mirror of the Russian people”
Folk songs recorded in various parts of Russia are a historical monument to the life of the people, but also a documentary source that captures the development of folk creative thought of their time.
The fight against the Tatars, peasant riots - all this left an imprint on folk song traditions in each specific area, starting with epics, historical songs and ballads. Like, for example, the ballad about Ilya Muromets, which is associated with the Nightingale River, which flows in the area of Yazykovo, there was a struggle between Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, who lived in these parts.
It is known that the conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible played a role in the development of oral folk art; Ivan the Terrible’s campaigns marked the beginning of the final victory over the Tatar-Mongol yoke, which freed many thousands of Russian prisoners from captivity. The songs of this time became the prototype for Lermontov’s epic “Song about Ivan Tsarevich” - a chronicle of people’s life, and A.S. Pushkin used oral folk art in his works - Russian songs and Russian fairy tales.
On the Volga, near the village of Undory, there is a cape called Stenka Razin; songs of that time were sung there: “On the steppe, Saratov steppe”, “We had it in holy Rus'”. Historical events of the late XVII - early XVIII centuries. captured in a compilation about the campaigns of Peter I and his Azov campaigns, about the execution of the archers: “It’s like walking on a blue sea,” “A young Cossack is walking along the Don.”
With the military reforms of the early 18th century, new historical songs appeared, these were no longer lyrical, but epic. Historical songs preserve the most ancient images of the historical epic, songs about the Russian-Turkish War, about recruitment and the war with Napoleon: “The French thief boasted of taking Russia,” “Don’t make noise, you green oak mother.”
At this time, epics about “Surovets Suzdalets”, about “Dobrynya and Alyosha” and a very rare fairy tale by Gorshen were preserved. Also in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Russian epic folk songs and tales were used. The ancient traditions of folk games, mummery and the special performing culture of Russian folklore have been preserved.
Russian folk theater art
Russian folk drama and folk theater art in general are the most interesting and significant phenomenon of Russian national culture.
Dramatic games and performances at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries formed an organic part of festive folk life, be it village gatherings, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.
The geography of distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have discovered unique theatrical “hearths” in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.
Folk drama, contrary to the opinion of some scientists, is a natural product of folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the broadest strata of the Russian people.
At city and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which performances on fairy-tale and national historical themes were performed. The performances seen at the fairs could not completely influence the aesthetic tastes of the people, but they expanded their fairy tale and song repertoire. Popular and theatrical borrowings largely determined the originality of the plots of folk drama. However, they “lay down” on the ancient gaming traditions of folk games, dressing up, i.e. on the special performing culture of Russian folklore.
Generations of creators and performers of folk dramas have developed certain methods of plotting, characterization and style. Developed folk dramas are characterized by strong passions and insoluble conflicts, continuity and speed of successive actions.
A special role in folk drama is played by songs performed by the heroes at different moments or sounded in chorus - as comments on ongoing events. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of original songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries that were popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbruk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn " and many others.
Late genres of Russian folk art - festivities
The heyday of the festivities occurred in the 17th-19th centuries, although certain types and genres of folk art, which were an indispensable part of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before these centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. This is the puppet theater, bear fun, partly the jokes of traders, many circus acts. Other genres were born out of the fairgrounds and died out when the festivities ended. These are comic monologues of booth barkers, barkers, performances of booth theaters, dialogues of parsley clowns.
Usually, during celebrations and fairs, entire entertainment towns with booths, carousels, swings, and tents were erected in traditional places, selling everything from popular prints to songbirds and sweets. In winter, ice mountains were added, access to which was completely free, and sledding from a height of 10-12 m brought incomparable pleasure.
With all the diversity and diversity, the city's folk festival was perceived as something integral. This integrity was created by the specific atmosphere of the festive square, with its free speech, familiarity, unbridled laughter, food and drinks; equality, fun, festive perception of the world.
The festive square itself amazed with its incredible combination of all kinds of details. Accordingly, outwardly it was a colorful, loud chaos. Bright, motley clothes of walkers, catchy, unusual costumes of “artists”, flashy signs of booths, swings, carousels, shops and taverns, handicrafts shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and the simultaneous sound of barrel organs, pipes, flutes, drums, exclamations, songs, cries of merchants , loud laughter from the jokes of “boothy grandfathers” and clowns - everything merged into a single fair fireworks display, which fascinated and amused.
The large, well-known festivities “under the mountains” and “under the swings” attracted many guest performers from Europe (many of them owners of booths, panoramas) and even southern countries (magicians, animal tamers, strongmen, acrobats and others). Foreign speech and overseas curiosities were commonplace at metropolitan festivities and large fairs. It is clear why the city’s spectacular folklore often appeared as a kind of mixture of “Nizhny Novgorod and French.”
The basis, heart and soul of Russian national culture is Russian folklore, this is the treasure, this is what has filled Russian people from the inside since ancient times, and this internal Russian folk culture ultimately gave birth to a whole galaxy of great Russian writers, composers, artists, scientists in the 17th-19th centuries , military men, philosophers, whom the whole world knows and respects:
Zhukovsky V.A., Ryleev K.F., Tyutchev F.I., Pushkin A.S., Lermontov M.Yu., Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E., Bulgakov M.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S., Fonvizin D.I., Chekhov A.P., Gogol N.V., Goncharov I.A., Bunin I.A., Griboedov A.S., Karamzin N.M., Dostoevsky F. M., Kuprin A.I., Glinka M.I., Glazunov A.K., Mussorgsky M.P., Rimsky-Korsakov N.A., Tchaikovsky P.I., Borodin A.P., Balakirev M. A.A., Rachmaninov S.V., Stravinsky I.F., Prokofiev S.S., Kramskoy I.N., Vereshchagin V.V., Surikov V.I., Polenov V.D., Serov V.A. ., Aivazovsky I.K., Shishkin I.I., Vasnetsov V.N., Repin I.E., Roerich N.K., Vernadsky V.I., Lomonosov M.V., Sklifosovsky N.V., Mendeleev D.I., Sechenov I.M., Pavlov I.P., Tsiolkovsky K.E., Popov A.S., Bagration P.R., Nakhimov P.S., Suvorov A.V., Kutuzov M. I., Ushakov F.F., Kolchak A.V., Solovyov V.S., Berdyaev N.A., Chernyshevsky N.G., Dobrolyubov N.A., Pisarev D.I., Chaadaev P.E. ., there are thousands of them, which, one way or another, the whole earthly world knows. These are world pillars that grew up on Russian folk culture.
But in 1917, a second attempt was made in Russia to break the connection of times, to interrupt the Russian cultural heritage of ancient generations. The first attempt was made back in the years of the baptism of Rus'. But it was not a complete success, since the power of Russian folklore was based on the life of the people, on their Vedic natural worldview. But already somewhere in the sixties of the twentieth century, Russian folklore began to be gradually replaced by the popular pop genres of pop, disco and, as they say now, chanson (prison-thieve folklore) and other types of Soviet-style arts. But a special blow was dealt in the 90s. The word “Russian” was secretly forbidden even to be uttered, supposedly this word meant inciting national hatred. This situation continues to this day.
And there was no longer a single Russian people, they scattered them, they made them drunk, and they began to destroy them at the genetic level. Now in Rus' there is a non-Russian spirit of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and all other inhabitants of Asia and the Middle East, and in the Far East there are Chinese, Koreans, etc., and active, global Ukrainization of Russia is taking place everywhere.
Immense oral folk art. It has been created for centuries, there are many varieties of it. Translated from English, “folklore” is “folk meaning, wisdom.” That is, oral folk art is everything that is created by the spiritual culture of the population over the centuries of its historical life.
Features of Russian folklore
If you carefully read the works of Russian folklore, you will notice that it actually reflects a lot: the play of the imagination of the people, the history of the country, laughter, and serious thoughts about human life. Listening to the songs and tales of their ancestors, people thought about many difficult issues of their family, social and work life, thought about how to fight for happiness, improve their lives, what a person should be, what should be ridiculed and condemned.
Varieties of folklore
Varieties of folklore include fairy tales, epics, songs, proverbs, riddles, calendar refrains, magnification, sayings - everything that was repeated passed from generation to generation. At the same time, the performers often introduced something of their own into the text they liked, changing individual details, images, expressions, imperceptibly improving and honing the work.
Oral folk art for the most part exists in a poetic (verse) form, since it was this that made it possible to memorize and pass on these works from mouth to mouth for centuries.
Songs
A song is a special verbal and musical genre. It is a small lyrical-narrative or lyrical work that was created specifically for singing. Their types are as follows: lyrical, dance, ritual, historical. Folk songs express the feelings of one person, but at the same time of many people. They reflected love experiences, events of social and family life, reflections on difficult fate. In folk songs, the so-called parallelism technique is often used, when the mood of a given lyrical character is transferred to nature.
Historical songs are dedicated to various famous personalities and events: the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, the uprising of Stepan Razin, the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev, the battle of Poltava with the Swedes, etc. The narration in historical folk songs about some events is combined with the emotional sound of these works.
Epics
The term "epic" was introduced by I.P. Sakharov in the 19th century. It represents oral folk art in the form of a song of a heroic, epic nature. The epic arose in the 9th century; it was an expression of the historical consciousness of the people of our country. Bogatyrs are the main characters of this type of folklore. They embody the people's ideal of courage, strength, and patriotism. Examples of heroes who were depicted in works of oral folk art: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Mikula Selyaninovich, Alyosha Popovich, as well as the merchant Sadko, the giant Svyatogor, Vasily Buslaev and others. The basis of life, at the same time enriched with some fantastic fiction, constitutes the plot of these works. In them, heroes single-handedly defeat entire hordes of enemies, fight monsters, and instantly overcome vast distances. This oral folk art is very interesting.
Fairy tales
Epics must be distinguished from fairy tales. These works of oral folk art are based on invented events. Fairy tales can be magical (in which fantastic forces are involved), as well as everyday ones, where people are depicted - soldiers, peasants, kings, workers, princesses and princes - in everyday settings. This type of folklore differs from other works in its optimistic plot: in it, good always triumphs over evil, and the latter either suffers defeat or is ridiculed.
Legends
We continue to describe the genres of oral folk art. A legend, unlike a fairy tale, is a folk oral story. Its basis is an incredible event, a fantastic image, a miracle, which is perceived by the listener or storyteller as reliable. There are legends about the origin of peoples, countries, seas, about the sufferings and exploits of fictional or real heroes.
Puzzles
Oral folk art is represented by many riddles. They are an allegorical image of a certain object, usually based on a metaphorical rapprochement with it. The riddles are very small in volume and have a certain rhythmic structure, often emphasized by the presence of rhyme. They are created in order to develop intelligence and ingenuity. The riddles are varied in content and theme. There may be several versions of them about the same phenomenon, animal, object, each of which characterizes it from a certain aspect.
Proverbs and sayings
Genres of oral folk art also include sayings and proverbs. A proverb is a rhythmically organized, short, figurative saying, an aphoristic folk saying. It usually has a two-part structure, which is supported by rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and assonance.
A proverb is a figurative expression that evaluates some phenomenon of life. It, unlike a proverb, is not a whole sentence, but only a part of a statement included in oral folk art.
Proverbs, sayings and riddles are included in the so-called small genres of folklore. What is it? In addition to the above types, these include other oral folk art. The types of small genres are complemented by the following: lullabies, nurseries, nursery rhymes, jokes, game choruses, chants, sentences, riddles. Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Lullabies
Small genres of oral folk art include lullabies. People call them bikes. This name comes from the verb "bait" ("bayat") - "to speak." This word has the following ancient meaning: “to speak, to whisper.” It is no coincidence that lullabies received this name: the oldest of them are directly related to spell poetry. Struggling with sleep, for example, the peasants said: “Dreamushka, get away from me.”
Pestushki and nursery rhymes
Russian oral folk art is also represented by pestushki and nursery rhymes. At their center is the image of a growing child. The name “pestushki” comes from the word “to nurture”, that is, “to follow someone, raise, nurse, carry in one’s arms, educate.” They are short sentences with which in the first months of a baby’s life they comment on his movements.
Imperceptibly, the pestles turn into nursery rhymes - songs that accompany the baby's games with his toes and hands. This oral folk art is very diverse. Examples of nursery rhymes: “Magpie”, “Ladushki”. They often already contain a “lesson”, an instruction. For example, in “Soroka” the white-sided woman fed everyone porridge, except for one lazy person, although he was the smallest one (his little finger corresponds to him).
Jokes
In the first years of children's lives, nannies and mothers sang songs of more complex content to them, not related to play. All of them can be designated by the single term “jokes.” Their content is reminiscent of short fairy tales in verse. For example, about a cockerel - a golden comb, flying to the Kulikovo field for oats; about the rowan hen, which “winnowed peas” and “sowed millet.”
A joke, as a rule, gives a picture of some bright event, or it depicts some rapid action that corresponds to the active nature of the baby. They are characterized by a plot, but the child is not capable of long-term attention, so they are limited to only one episode.
Sentences, calls
We continue to consider oral folk art. Its types are complemented by slogans and sentences. Children on the street very early learn from their peers a variety of calls, which represent an appeal to birds, rain, rainbows, and the sun. Children, on occasion, shout out words in chorus. In addition to nicknames, in a peasant family any child knew the sentences. They are most often pronounced one by one. Sentences - appeal to a mouse, small bugs, a snail. This may be imitation of various bird voices. Verbal sentences and song chants are filled with faith in the powers of water, sky, earth (sometimes beneficial, sometimes destructive). Their utterance introduced adult peasant children to the work and life. Sentences and chants are combined into a special section called “calendar children's folklore”. This term emphasizes the existing connection between them and the time of year, holiday, weather, the whole way of life and the way of life of the village.
Game sentences and refrains
Genres of oral folk art include playful sentences and refrains. They are no less ancient than calls and sentences. They either connect parts of a game or start it. They can also serve as endings and determine the consequences that exist when conditions are violated.
The games are striking in their similarity to serious peasant activities: reaping, hunting, sowing flax. Reproducing these cases in strict sequence with the help of repeated repetition made it possible to instill in the child from an early age respect for customs and the existing order, to teach the rules of behavior accepted in society. The names of the games - "Bear in the Forest", "Wolf and Geese", "Kite", "Wolf and Sheep" - speak of a connection with the life and way of life of the rural population.
Conclusion
Folk epics, fairy tales, legends, and songs contain no less exciting colorful images than in the works of art of classical authors. Original and surprisingly accurate rhymes and sounds, bizarre, beautiful poetic rhythms - like lace are woven into the texts of ditties, nursery rhymes, jokes, riddles. And what vivid poetic comparisons we can find in lyrical songs! All this could only be created by the people - the great master of words.
Folklore- artistic origin
Mythological beginning
Folkloristics
folk literature
Main features of folklore:
Epic storytellers (they were sung)
3) Variability
· Student folklore
· Army folklore
· Blatnoy folklore
· Soldier's folklore
· Burlatsky
· Political prisoners
Lamentations (text lamented)
9) Functionality
10) Inclusiveness
Ticket 2. System of genres of Russian folklore from antiquity to modernity.
The genre composition of Russian folk poetry is rich and diverse, since it has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. When classifying, it is necessary to take into account that in folklore, as in literature, two forms of speech are used - poetic and prosaic, therefore, in the epic genus it is necessary to distinguish poetic types (epic, historical song, ballad) and prose (fairy tale, legend, tradition). The lyrical genre of works uses only poetic form. All poetic works are distinguished by the combination of words and melody. Prose works are told, not sung.
In order to present a general picture of the classification (distribution) of types of works of Russian folk poetry, a number of other circumstances should be taken into account, namely: firstly, the relationship of genres to the so-called rituals (special cult actions), secondly, the relationship of the verbal text to singing and acting, which is typical for some types of folklore works. Works may be associated with ritual and singing and may not be associated with them.
I Ritual poetry:
1) Calendar (winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles)
2) Family and household (maternity, wedding, funeral)
3) Conspiracy
II Non-ritual poetry:
1) Epic prose genres
A) fairy tale
B) legend
C) legend (and bylichka as its type)
2) Epic poetic genres:
A) epics
B) historical songs (primarily older ones)
B) ballad songs
3) Lyrical poetic genres
A) songs with social content
B) love songs
B) family songs
D) small lyrical genres (ditties, choruses, etc.)
4) Small non-lyrical genres
A) proverbs
B) riddles
5) Dramatic texts and actions
A) mummers, games, round dances
B) scenes and plays.
Ticket 3. Ancient (archaic) genres of folklore (work songs, spells, fairy tales, etc.).
Folklore as a special form of art originates in ancient times. The process of its origin is difficult to reconstruct due to the lack of materials from that time. The most ancient (archaic) period in the history of human society is the period of its pre-class structure (primitive system). The folklore of the pre-class, primitive communal system among many peoples had common features due to the fact that the peoples of the world generally went through similar stages of historical development. The folklore of this social formation is distinguished by the following features:
· It still clearly retains connections with labor processes
· Traces of thinking of the ancient era appear - animism, magical views, totemism, mythology;
· Real phenomena are intertwined with fictional and fantastic ones;
· Some features of realism are developing: concrete depiction of nature and man; fidelity to reality in content and forms (the conventionality of the image appears later);
· Genus, types and genres are gradually emerging, of which the most ancient are proverbs, fairy tales, riddles, conspiracies, legends; at the last stage of formation, heroic epics and legends are born;
· The collective, choral beginning of creativity dominates, but the singer or lead singer begins to stand out;
· The works do not yet exist in a stable traditional form, as in the later stages of the development of folklore, but have the form of improvisation, i.e. text created during performance;
· The plots, imagery, means of expression, and artistic forms are gradually enriched and become more and more traditional.
Animism manifested itself in the spiritualization of forces and natural phenomena, for example the sun and the month, in songs about their marriage, in the spiritualization of the earth (“the mother of the earth is cheese”), water, plants, in the images of the waterman and the goblin, in the personification of Frost, Spring, Maslenitsa, Kolyada . In conspiracies, there is usually an appeal to the dawn. Fairy tales feature the Sea King, the Moon, the Wind, and the Frost. Magic was reflected in spells and incantations, in fortune-telling about the weather and harvest, in stories about sorcerers, in the transformation of a comb into a forest, and a towel into a river, in such wonderful objects as a self-assembled tablecloth and a flying carpet. Totemism was expressed in the cult of the bear and in the image of the helper bear. In fairy tales and epics there are stories about the miraculous origin of heroes from animals, from a serpent. Ballad-type songs contain stories about talking plants growing on people's graves. In fairy tales (especially in fairy tales about animals, but not only in them) there are often images of animals speaking and acting like people. The mythology of ancient Russian tribes has already taken the form of a certain system of ideas. It included two types of beings: gods and spirits. For example, Svarog is the god of the sun, Dazhdbog is the god of life, Perun is the god of thunder, Stribog is the god of wind, Yarilo is the god of light and heat, Veles is the patron god of livestock. The spiritualizations of the forces and phenomena of nature were the water goblin, the goblin, and the field weed. Among the ancient Russian tribes, the cult of ancestors was widely developed, associated with the clan system. It was reflected in the personification of the clan and the women in labor to whom sacrifices were made, in funeral rites and remembrances of ancestors (radnitsa, rusalia, semik).
Slavic mythology was not as complete a system as the Greek. This is explained by the fact that the Slavs in their historical development bypassed the slave system, the reasons for which were the earlier development of agriculture and settled life, as well as frequent clashes with southern nomads, which required the creation of a feudal-type state. Therefore, in the mythology of the Slavs there are only the beginnings of the division of gods into elders and younger ones, according to the social system of the state. It is clear that in ancient Russian folklore there were not only genres that reflected animism, totemism, magic and mythology, but also genres of a family and everyday nature, since there were personal relationships within the clan, paired marriage. Finally, work and life experience accumulated, which was imprinted in proverbs.
Classification
I By result
1) White - aimed at getting rid of illnesses and troubles and containing elements of prayer (witchcraft)
2) Black - aimed at causing damage, harm, used without prayer words (witchcraft associated with evil spirits)
II By topic
1) Medical (from illness and painful condition of people and domestic animals, as well as from damage.)
2) Household. (Agricultural, pastoral, commercial - from drought, weeds, for taming domestic animals, hunting, fishing.)
3) Love spells: a) love spells (dry spells); b) lapels (drying)
4) Social (with the goal of regulating social and relationships between people; to attract honor or favor, to go to a judge, for example)
III According to form
1) Epic
Expanded, large
1.1 epic picture
1.2 a conspiracy based on colloquial formulas
1.3 setting (Amen = “so be it”)
2) formulaic
short conspiracies consisting of 1-2 sentences; they do not contain vivid images - an order or a request
3) conspiracies-dialogues
4) abracadabra
This is 99 percent a female tradition (because no normal man would do this). The conspiracy mafia is a secretive business.
Characters:
1) human world
1.1 neutral (red maiden)
1.2 Christian: a) real (Jesus, Mother of God), b) fictional (Virgin's daughters, Herod's sons), c) historical characters (Nicholas the Pleasant), d) Christian evil spirits (devils)
1.3 fictional
2) animal world
2.1 recognizable
2.2 fantastic
Typical artistic techniques of conspiracy:
1) at the lexical, morphological and even sound levels (????????)
2) an abundance of epithets
3) comparison
4) stepwise narrowing of images or unfolding (gradation)
Classic legends.
1.1. Cosmogonic
For example, about a duck that sank to the bottom of a reservoir, grabbed some water in its beak - spat it out - the earth appeared (or mountains - I can’t figure it out)
1.2. Etiological
Legends about the creation of the animal world. For example, there was a legend about the appearance of lice. God often acts as a punitive force
Legends have always been believed.
A legend is an independent view of the world around you. Most likely they used to be myths. Indian myths also have ideas about the origin of animals (for example, the kangaroo's pouch), but there are no religious motives, as in our legends.
1.3. Anthropological myths.
Here is some example of a legend about a sick person, but with God’s soul (???). and about a dog that guarded a person and for this God gave her a fur coat or not
1.4. Hagiographical legends
Hagiographical legends
Hagiographic legends (about saints); for example, Nicholas of Myra (Wonder Worker)
· Pan-Orthodox saints
· Locally revered saints
· General Christian
· Orthodox
Saint Yegoriy (George the Victorious)
Warrior/Saint
Patron of livestock and wolves
1.5. Eschatology.
One of the sections of church philosophy. Legends about the end of the world.
Features of Classic Legends:
1. The artistic time of classical legends is a time of the distant, uncertain, abstract past.
2. Artistic space is also abstract
3. These legends talk about global changes (the emergence of the sea, mountains, animals)
4. All stories are told from the 3rd person. The narrator is not the hero of the legend.
Legend about the local region.
Heroes: local sacred (holy) natural objects. For example, holy springs, trees, stones, groves, or local icons, as well as locally revered elders and blessed ones.
! partly reminiscent of legends, but have a religious character.
For example, about Dunechka, who was shot by the Red Army. She is a fortune teller.
I sent a man to work in Arzamas, and not in Samara (he made money, but those who went to Samara did not), that is, the predictions are mostly everyday
Pigeons hovered over the carriage in which Dounia was being led to execution, protecting her from lashes.
Halo above your head during execution
Afterwards, houses in that village started burning - they decided to hold funeral services twice a year - but they stopped burning
Holy fools.
Blessed = holy fool who figuratively communicates with people.
Pasha Sarovskaya gave a piece of red fabric to Nicholas I and said “for my son’s pants”
about the time of glorification (Venerable Seraphim - comp.) She lived in Diveyevo, famous throughout Russia. The Emperor with all the Grand Dukes and three metropolitans proceeded from Sarov to Diveevo. She predicted his death (9 soldiers, jacket potatoes). She took a piece of red material from the bed and said: “This is for your little son’s pants.” - predicted the appearance of a son.
Legend about a man.
The legend of man is based on a man's encounter with miraculous power. A typical example: a saint tells a man how to find his way in the forest.
The saint appears to people in a dream “the call of the saint”
Pilgrims and immigrants - the saint appears and invites them to his monastery.
Ticket 8. Artistic space and time in a fairy tale. Types of heroes and composition.
Artistic space and time in fairy tales are conditional, as if another world is shown there. The real world and the world of fairy tales can be compared with paintings, for example, by Vasnetsov and Bilibin.
In a fairy tale, there are 7 types of characters (Propp):
1 . the hero is the one who performs all the actions and gets married at the end.
2 . antagonist, or antipode - the one with whom the hero fights and defeats.
3 . a wonderful helper.
4 . a wonderful giver is one who gives the hero a wonderful helper or a wonderful object.
5. princess - the one whom the hero usually marries and who lives, as a rule, in another country, very far away.
6 . king - appears at the end of the fairy tale, the hero marries his daughter or at the beginning of the fairy tale, as a rule, he sends his son somewhere.
7. false hero - appropriates the merits of the real hero.
You can try to classify it differently, but the essence will remain the same. First of all, there are two groups of characters: negative and positive. The central place is the positive heroes, as it were, “characters of the first row.” They can be divided into 2 groups: heroic heroes and “ironic” ones, who are favored by luck. Examples: Ivan the Tsarevich and Ivan the Fool. “Second-row characters” are the hero’s assistants, animate and not (magic horse, magic sword). "Third row" is the antagonist. An important place is occupied by female heroines, the ideals of beauty, wisdom, kindness - Vasilisa the Beautiful or the Wise, Elena the Beautiful or the Wise. Antagonists often include Baba Yaga, the snake and Koschey the immortal. The hero's victory over them is a triumph of justice.
Composition – structure, construction of a fairy tale.
1.) Some fairy tales begin with sayings - humorous jokes that are not related to the plot. They are usually rhythmic and rhyming.
2.) The opening, which seems to transport the listener into a fairy-tale world, shows the time, place of action, and setting. Represents an exposition. A popular opening is “Once upon a time” (hereinafter – who, and what circumstances) or “In a certain kingdom, a certain state.”
3.) Action. Some fairy tales begin immediately with action, for example, “The prince decided to marry...”
4.) A fairy tale has an ending, but not always; sometimes with the completion of the action the fairy tale ends. The ending switches attention from the fairy-tale world to the real one.
5.) In addition to the ending, there may also be a saying, which is sometimes connected to the ending - “They played a wedding, they feasted for a long time, and I was there, I drank honey, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth.”
The narrative in fairy tales develops sequentially, the action is dynamic, situations are tense, terrible events can occur, and three-fold repetition is common (three brothers go to catch the Firebird three times). The unreliability of the story is emphasized.
Connection with the initiation rite.
Hood space is abstract; there is a border/transitional space; spatial movements are not shown. Hud time is also abstract, closed, and has no outlet into reality; develops from episode to episode, retardation.
The fairy tale is the most archaic - it was not originally intended for children, and in its origin goes back to rituals. Rite of initiation. You can see superstitious ideas about the next world. For example, Baba Yaga: “the nose has grown into the ceiling”, “the knee has rested against the wall”, a bone leg – i.e. without meat - she lies on the stove as if in a coffin
Those. she is a borderline character between the world of the dead and the living - between the world and the distant kingdom.
Spring cycle.
Maslenitsa and Maslenitsa rituals. At the center of the Maslenitsa holiday is the symbolic image of Maslenitsa.
The holiday itself consists of three parts: a meeting on Monday, a revelry or turning point on the so-called Broad Thursday, and farewell.
Songs for Maslenitsa can be divided into two groups. The first - meeting and honoring, has the appearance of grandeur. They glorify the wide, honest Maslenitsa, its dishes, and entertainment. She is called in full - Avdotya Izotyevna. The character of the songs is cheerful and playful. The songs accompanying the farewell are somewhat different - they talk about the upcoming fast. The singers regret the ending of the holiday. Here Maslenitsa is already a dethroned idol, she is no longer magnified, but is called disrespectfully “a deceiver.” Maslenitsa was usually interpreted primarily as a celebration of the victory of spring over winter, life over death.
Spring Lent - Clean Monday - the beginning of the spring calendar ritual. We washed ourselves in the bathhouse, washed the house, washed all the dishes, played funny games with pancakes - hung them on a tree, gave them to the cattle.
The week of the cross/middle of the cross is the fourth after Lent; the fasting breaks - they baked Lenten cookies; fortune telling - a coin - a coin in a cookie, several crosses - a coin, a sliver, a ring, they gave crosses to the cattle.
March 30 is the day of the forty martyrs (lark-shaped cookies); meeting of spring, arrival of the first birds; On March 17, the day of Gregory Grachevnik, rooks were baked. Signs: many birds - good luck, snowdrifts - harvest, icicles - flax harvest. The first spring holiday - welcoming spring - falls in March. These days, in the villages they baked figurines of birds from dough and distributed them to girls or children. Vesnyankas are ritual lyrical songs of the incantatory genre. The ritual of “spell” spring was imbued with the desire to influence nature in order to obtain a good harvest. Imitating the flight of birds (throwing larks from dough) was supposed to cause the arrival of real birds, the friendly onset of spring. Stoneflies are characterized by a form of dialogue or address in the imperative mood. Unlike a conspiracy, stoneflies are like carols. performed collectively.
Annunciation - April 7: “birds don’t curl their nests, girls don’t braid their hair”; you cannot turn on the light or work with the birthday soil; The sledge was broken - they removed the sleigh and took out the cart.
Palm Sunday (the last Sunday before Easter) is the “entry of the Lord into Jerusalem.” They brought willow into the house and kept it near the icons all year, and blessed children; they put willow and icons on the water.
Holy Week is the week before Easter. Maundy Thursday (in religion - Friday) is the most terrible day; whitewashing the hut, ridding the hut of cockroaches by freezing, clipping the wings of poultry, all water is holy.
Easter - dyeing eggs (no Easter cake, no Easter); do not go to the cemetery, only on the next red/Fomina week - Tuesday and Saturday-Rainbow); The first egg was kept near the icon for a year.
Vyunishnye songs are songs that congratulated the newlyweds on Saturday or Sunday of the first week after Easter. Contents of the songs: wishing the newlyweds a happy family life.
May 6 - St. George's Day (St. George the Victorious); Yegory is a bestial god; took the cattle out into the field for the first time
Ascension (40 days after Easter)
Semitsky ritual songs - the 7th week after Easter was called Semitsky. Thursday of this week was called Semik, and its last day (Sunday) was called Trinity. Special rituals were performed, which were accompanied by songs. The main ritual is “curling” the wreath. Having dressed in festive outfits, the girls went into the forest, looked for a young birch tree, bent the birch branches and wove them with grass, after a few days they cut down the birch tree, carried it around the village, then drowned it in the river or threw it into the rye. The girls wove an arch from the tops of two birch trees and walked under it. Then there was a fortune-telling ritual with a wreath. The theme of marriage and family relationships occupies an increasing place in Semitic songs.
Spiritual day - you can’t work with the earth.
Summer cycle.
Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs.
Trinity-Semitic Week: Semik - the seventh Thursday after Easter, Trinity - the seventh Sunday. The girls, dressed smartly and taking treats with them, went to “curl” the birch trees - weaving them with grass. The girl's holiday was also accompanied by fortune telling. The girls wove wreaths and threw them into the river. Fortune telling by wreaths was widely reflected in songs performed both during fortune telling and without regard to it.
Feast of Ivan Kupala (John the Baptist/Baptist) - the night of June 23-24. During the Kupala holidays they do not help the earth, but, on the contrary, they try to take everything from it. On this night, medicinal herbs are collected. Whoever finds the fern, it was believed, will be able to find the treasure. The girls put handkerchiefs on the dew and then washed themselves with them; they broke birch brooms for the bath; young people swam at night, purified themselves, jumped over fires.
Trinity - 7th Sunday after Easter. Cult of the birch tree. Formation of a new wedding cycle. Formation of a layer of brides. Songs, round dances (choice of the bride and groom), singing songs only on Trinity. The meaning is duplicated on several levels - in action, in words, in music, in an object. The following Sunday after Toitsa we celebrated the farewell to winter.
Autumn cycle. ( just in case )
Autumn rituals among the Russian people were not as rich as winter and spring-summer ones. They accompany the harvest. Zazhinki (the beginning of the harvest), dozhinki or obzhinki (the end of the harvest) were accompanied by songs. But these songs do not have a magical character. They are directly related to the labor process. Dozhin songs are more diverse in theme and artistic techniques. They tell about the harvest and the custom of refreshments. In pre-harvest songs there are elements of glorification of rich hosts who have treated the reapers well.
It was believed that the harvest should be protected, because... evil spirits can take him away. They placed sheaves in the form of a cross, made of wormwood and nettles. Striga/Perezhinakha - the spirit of the field who took the harvest.
Celebrating the first sheaf, they cooked the first new porridge and sprinkled it on the cattle and chickens. The last sheaf/last ears of corn were left on the field, not reaped, tied into a bundle and called a beard. Having finished the harvest, the women rolled on the ground: “Reaper, reaper, give up your snare.”
Afterwards, many calendar rituals turned into holidays, which, in addition to the ritual function, also have a very important social function - uniting people, the rhythm of life.
Ticket 14. Epics of the ancient period. (Volkh Vseslavsky, Sadko, Danube, Svyatogor, Volga and Mikola)
Among Russian epics there is a group of works that almost all folklorists classify as more ancient. The main difference between these epics is that they contain significant features of mythological ideas.
1.) “Volkh Vseslavyevich.” The epic about Volkh consists of 2 parts. In the first, he is depicted as a wonderful hunter with the ability to transform into an animal, bird, or fish. While hunting, he obtains food for the squad. In the second, Volkh is the leader of a campaign in the Indian kingdom, which he conquers and destroys. The second part almost went out of existence, since its theme did not correspond to the ideological essence of the Russian epic. But the first part was popular among the people for a long time. Researchers attribute the image of a wonderful hunter to ancient times, but this image was layered with historical features, linking the epic with the Kyiv cycle, which is why Likhachev and other scientists compared Volkh, for example, with Oleg the Prophet. The image of India is fabulous, not historical.
2.) Epics about Sadko. The epics are based on 3 plots: Sadko receives wealth, Sadko competes with Novgorod, Sadko visits the sea king. These three plots exist separately and in combination. The first plot has 2 different versions. First: Sadko walked along the Volga for 12 years; having decided to go to Novgorod, he thanks the Volga, lowering bread and salt into it; The Volga gave him orders to boast about the “glorious Lake Ilmen”; Ilmen, in turn, rewarded him with wealth, advising him to fish, and the caught fish turned into coins. Another version: Sadko, a poor guslar, goes to the shore of Ilmen, plays, and the sea king comes out to him and rewards him with wealth. This expresses the popular opinion about the value of art; utopianism: the poor man became rich. The second plot: having received wealth, Sadko became proud and decided to measure his wealth with Novgorod itself, but was defeated. In a rare version there is a plot with Sadko's victory. Third plot: Sadko found himself in the underwater kingdom, the seaman fell in love with playing the harp, and the king decided to keep him with him and marry the girl Chernava; but Sadko deceived the tsar with the help of St. Nicholas of Mozhaisk, and saved himself, built a church in honor of the saint and stopped traveling on the blue sea. The epics about Sadko are distinguished by the completeness of each of the three parts and the dramatic intensity of the action. Propp classified “Epics about Sadko” as epics about matchmaking, and considered the main plot to be “Sadko at the Sea King”. Belinsky saw the main social conflict between Sadko and Novgorod. Fabulousness is characteristic of the first and third epics.
3.) Epics about Svyatogor have a special form - prosaic. Some scientists consider this proof of their antiquity, others – of their novelty. They contain a number of episodes: about the meeting of Ilya Muromets and Svyatogor, about Svyatogor’s unfaithful wife, about a bag with earthly cravings. These epics are ancient, as is the type of hero Svyatogor itself, which contains many mythical traces. Scientists view this image as the embodiment of the old order, which must disappear, because the death of Svyatogore is inevitable. In the epic about Svyatogor and the coffin, first Ilya tries on the coffin, but it is too big for him, and Svyatogor is just the right size. When Ilya covered the coffin with a lid, it was no longer possible to remove it, and he received part of Svyatogor’s power. Propp said that there is a change of two eras here, and the epic hero Svyatogor was replaced by Ilya Muromets. Svyatogor is a hero of unprecedented strength, but in the episode with the earthly pull that Svyatogor cannot lift, the existence of an even more powerful force is shown.
The epic “Volga and Mikula” is the most significant of the group of social epics. Its main idea is to contrast the peasant plowman and the prince. The social antithesis made it possible for some scientists to attribute the composition of the epic to later times, when social conflicts intensified; in addition, it was attributed to the Novgorod epics. But ridicule of the prince is not very typical for Novgorod epics, and the conflict is placed in the setting of early feudal times. Volga goes to collect tribute, he has a brave squad; Mikula is not a warrior, but a hero, he is powerful and superior to the entire Volga squad, which cannot pull his bipod out of the furrow; The prince and his squad cannot catch up with Mikula. But Mikula is opposed to Volga not only as a mighty hero, but also as a man of labor; he lives not by exactions from the peasants, but by his own labor. Everything comes easy to Mikula, he reaps a rich harvest. The scientist Sokolov saw in this the dream of the peasantry, tired of backbreaking physical labor. The epic poetizes peasant labor, the image of Mikula is the embodiment of the strength of the working people.
Ticket 1. Main features of folklore.
Folklore- artistic origin
Mythological beginning
Folkloristics
Folklore was called folk poetry, but this is not so (not everything is poetry)
At the end of the 19th century the term appeared folk literature(emphasis on the word - again not the correct definition, for example, the ritual of making rain - killing a frog - without words)
In the 20th century - Russian folk art.
Main features of folklore:
1) Orality (oral system, culture, phenomenon) only in oral form
2) Sacred letters do not have a written record - an exception
Written conspiracies, questionnaires, diaries (girl's album) demobilization album
Epic storytellers (they were sung)
3) Variability
Those. modification of one text
The downside is that we don't know which option came before
4) Locality (all texts and genres of folklore are local)
Thus, Russian folklore is a set of genres and each locality has its own.
5) Folklore - folk culture; people are the lower strata of the population (peasants)
· Student folklore
· Army folklore
· Youth/informal groups
· Blatnoy folklore
· Soldier's folklore
· Burlatsky
· Political prisoners
6) Folklore is a collective creativity. The creator of folklore is not one person.
7) Typification; Most works and genres of folklore contain typical motifs, plots, verbal forms, types of heroes
For example, the number 3, a beautiful maiden, heroes: all strong, beautiful, winners
8) Syncretism - (“combining”) the combination of different arts in one art.
For example, a wedding ceremony (songs, lamentations, wearing a Christmas tree (they decorated a small Christmas tree and carried it around the village - kind of like a bride wearing a Christmas tree))
Round dance (dance, song, costume + game)
People's Theatre: Petrushka Theater
Lamentations (text lamented)
9) Functionality
Each genre performs a specific function. For example, a lullaby served to rhythmize movements while rocking a child; lamentations - to mourn.
10) Inclusiveness
· Folklore includes the historical, family, labor, sound memory of the people
· Folklore itself is organically included in the working and economic life of the people.
The term “folklore” (translated as “folk wisdom”) was first introduced by the English scientist W.J. Toms in 1846. At first, this term covered the entire spiritual (beliefs, dances, music, wood carving, etc.), and sometimes the material (housing, clothing) culture of the people. In modern science there is no unity in the interpretation of the concept of “folklore”. Sometimes it is used in its original meaning: an integral part of folk life, closely intertwined with its other elements. Since the beginning of the 20th century. the term is also used in a narrower, more specific meaning: verbal folk art.
The most ancient types of verbal art arose in the process of the formation of human speech in the Upper Paleolithic era. Verbal creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected religious, mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. Ritual actions, through which primitive man sought to influence the forces of nature, fate, were accompanied by words: spells and conspiracies were pronounced, and various requests or threats were addressed to the forces of nature. The art of words was closely connected with other types of primitive art - music, dance, and decorative art. In science this is called “primitive syncretism.” Traces of it are still visible in folklore.
The Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky believed that the origins of poetry lie in folk ritual. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a choir song accompanied by dancing and pantomime. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythm and facial expressions. The text was improvised according to the performance until it acquired a traditional character.
As humanity accumulated more and more significant life experience that needed to be passed on to subsequent generations, the role of verbal information increased. The separation of verbal creativity into an independent art form is the most important step in the prehistory of folklore.
Folklore was a verbal art organically inherent in folk life. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and styles. In the ancient period, most peoples had tribal traditions, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore itself was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were perceived as fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Kyrgyz Manas, Russian epics, etc.). Legends and songs reflecting religious beliefs also arose (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in people's memory. If ritual lyrics (rites accompanying the calendar and agricultural cycles, family rituals associated with birth, wedding, death) originated in ancient times, then non-ritual lyrics, with its interest in the ordinary person, appeared much later. However, over time, the boundary between ritual and non-ritual poetry is erased. Thus, ditties are sung at a wedding, while at the same time some of the wedding songs become part of the non-ritual repertoire.
Genres in folklore also differ in the method of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and various combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing, singing and dancing, storytelling, acting, etc.)
With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The growth of industry and cities gave rise to romances, jokes, worker, school and student folklore.
In folklore there are productive genres, in the depths of which new works can appear. Now these are ditties, sayings, city songs, jokes, and many types of children's folklore. There are genres that are unproductive, but continue to exist. Thus, no new folk tales appear, but old ones are still told. Many old songs are also sung. But epics and historical songs are practically no longer heard live.
The science of folklore folkloristics classifies all works of folk verbal creativity, including literary ones, into one of three genera: epic, lyric, and drama.
For thousands of years, folklore was the only form of poetic creativity among all peoples. But with the advent of writing for many centuries, right up to the period of late feudalism, oral poetry was widespread not only among the working people, but also among the upper strata of society: the nobility, the clergy. Having arisen in a certain social environment, a work could become a national property.
Collective author. Folklore is a collective art. Each piece of oral folk art not only expresses the thoughts and feelings of specific groups, but is also collectively created and disseminated. However, the collectivity of the creative process in folklore does not mean that individuals did not play any role. Talented masters not only improved or adapted existing texts to new conditions, but sometimes also created songs, ditties, and fairy tales, which, in accordance with the laws of oral folk art, were distributed without the name of the author. With the social division of labor, unique professions arose related to the creation and performance of poetic and musical works (ancient Greek rhapsodes, Russian guslars, Ukrainian kobzars, Kyrgyz akyns, Azerbaijani ashugs, French chansonniers, etc.).
In Russian folklore in the 18th-19th centuries. there was no developed professionalization of singers. Storytellers, singers, storytellers remained peasants and artisans. Some genres of folk poetry were widespread. Performing others required certain training, a special musical or acting gift.
The folklore of every nation is unique, just like its history, customs, and culture. Thus, epics and ditties are inherent only in Russian folklore, dumas in Ukrainian, etc. Some genres (not just historical songs) reflect the history of a given people. The composition and form of ritual songs are different; they can be timed to coincide with periods of the agricultural, pastoral, hunting or fishing calendar, and enter into various relationships with the rituals of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or other religions. For example, the ballad among the Scots has acquired clear genre differences, while among the Russians it is close to a lyrical or historical song. Among some peoples (for example, Serbs), poetic ritual lamentations are common, while among others (including Ukrainians), they existed in the form of simple prosaic exclamations. Each nation has its own arsenal of metaphors, epithets, comparisons. Thus, the Russian proverb “Silence is gold” corresponds to the Japanese “Silence is flowers”.
Despite the bright national coloring of folklore texts, many motifs, images and even plots are similar among different peoples. Thus, a comparative study of the plots of European folklore has led scientists to the conclusion that about two-thirds of the plots of fairy tales of each nation have parallels in the tales of other nationalities. Veselovsky called such plots “wandering”, creating the “theory of wandering plots,” which was repeatedly criticized by Marxist literary criticism.
For peoples with a common historical past and speaking related languages (for example, the Indo-European group), such similarities can be explained by a common origin. This similarity is genetic. Similar features in the folklore of peoples belonging to different language families, but who have been in contact with each other for a long time (for example, Russians and Finns) are explained by borrowing. But even in the folklore of peoples living on different continents and probably never communicating, there are similar themes, plots, and characters. Thus, one Russian fairy tale talks about a clever poor man who, for all his tricks, was put in a sack and is about to be drowned, but he, having deceived the master or the priest (they say, huge schools of beautiful horses are grazing under the water), puts him in the sack instead of himself. The same plot is found in the fairy tales of Muslim peoples (stories about Hajja Nasreddin), and among the peoples of Guinea, and among the inhabitants of the island of Mauritius. These works arose independently. This similarity is called typological. At the same stage of development, similar beliefs and rituals, forms of family and social life develop. And therefore, both ideals and conflicts coincide - the opposition between poverty and wealth, intelligence and stupidity, hard work and laziness, etc.
Word of mouth. Folklore is stored in the memory of the people and reproduced orally. The author of a literary text does not have to directly communicate with the reader, but a work of folklore is performed in the presence of listeners.
Even the same narrator, voluntarily or involuntarily, changes something with each performance. Moreover, the next performer conveys the content differently. And fairy tales, songs, epics, etc. pass through thousands of lips. Listeners not only influence the performer in a certain way (in science this is called feedback), but sometimes they themselves become involved in the performance. Therefore, every piece of oral folk art has many variants. For example, in one version of the fairy tale Princess Frog The prince obeys his father and marries the frog without any further discussion. And in another wants to leave her. In different fairy tales, the frog helps the betrothed to complete the king’s tasks, which are also not the same everywhere. Even such genres as epics, songs, ditties, where there is an important restraining principle - rhythm, melody, have excellent options. Here, for example, is a song recorded in the 19th century. in Arkhangelsk province:
Dear nightingale,
You can fly everywhere:
Fly to happy countries,
Fly to the glorious city of Yaroslavl...
Around the same years in Siberia they sang to the same tune:
You are my little darling,
You can fly everywhere
Fly to foreign countries,
To the glorious city of Yeruslan...
Not only in different territories, but also in different historical eras, the same song could be performed in variations. Thus, songs about Ivan the Terrible were remade into songs about Peter I.
In order to remember and retell or sing some piece of work (sometimes quite voluminous), people have developed techniques that have been polished over centuries. They create a special style that distinguishes folklore from literary texts. Many folklore genres have a common origin. So, the folk storyteller knew in advance how to start the tale In some kingdom, in some state.... or Lived once…. The epic often began with the words Like in the glorious city of Kyiv.... In some genres, endings are also repeated. For example, epics often end like this: Here they sing his glory.... A fairy tale almost always ends with a wedding and a feast with a saying I was there, I drank honey-beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth. or And they began to live and live and make good.
There are also other, most varied repetitions found in folklore. Individual words may be repeated: Past the house, past the stone one, // Past the garden, the green garden, or the beginning of lines: At dawn it was dawn, // At dawn it was morning.
Entire lines are repeated, and sometimes several lines:
Walking along the Don, walking along the Don,
A young Cossack is walking along the Don,
A young Cossack is walking along the Don,
And the maiden weeps, and the maiden weeps,
And the maiden weeps over the fast river,
And the maiden weeps over the fast river.
In works of oral folk art, not only words and phrases are repeated, but also entire episodes. Epics, fairy tales, and songs are built on the threefold repetition of identical episodes. So, when the Kaliki (wandering singers) heal Ilya Muromets, they give him a “honey drink” to drink three times: after the first time he feels a lack of strength, after the second he feels an excess, and only after drinking the third time does he receive as much strength as he needs it.
In all genres of folklore there are so-called common, or typical, passages. In fairy tales fast movement of a horse: The horse runs the earth trembles. The “courtesy” (politeness, good manners) of the epic hero is always expressed by the formula: He laid the cross in a written way, but he bowed in a learned way. There are beauty formulas Neither can I say it in a fairy tale, nor describe it with a pen. The command formulas are repeated: Stand before me like a leaf before the grass!
Definitions are repeated, so-called constant epithets, which are inextricably linked with the word being defined. So, in Russian folklore the field is always clean, the month is clear, the maiden is red (krasna), etc.
Other artistic techniques also help with listening comprehension. For example, the so-called technique of stepwise narrowing of images. Here is the beginning of the folk song:
It was a glorious city in Cherkassk,
New stone tents were built there,
In the tents the tables are all oak,
A young widow is sitting at the table.
A hero can also stand out through contrast. At a feast at Prince Vladimir:
And how everyone sits here, drinks, eats and brags,
But only one sits, does not drink, does not eat, does not eat...
In the fairy tale, two brothers are smart, and the third (the main character, the winner) is a fool for the time being.
Certain folklore characters have stable qualities assigned to them. So, the fox is always cunning, the hare is cowardly, and the wolf is evil. There are certain symbols in folk poetry: nightingale joy, happiness; cuckoo grief, misfortune, etc.
According to researchers, from twenty to eighty percent of the text consists of ready-made material that does not need to be memorized.
Folklore, literature, science. Literature appeared much later than folklore, and has always, to one degree or another, used its experience: themes, genres, techniques - different in different eras. Thus, the plots of ancient literature are based on myths. Author's fairy tales, songs, and ballads appear in European and Russian literature. The literary language is constantly enriched by folklore. Indeed, in the works of oral folk art there are many ancient and dialect words. With the help of endearing suffixes and freely used prefixes, new expressive words are created. The girl is sad: You are my parents, my destroyers, my slaughterers.... The guy complains: You, my darling cool wheel, have spun my head!. Gradually, some words enter colloquial and then literary speech. It is no coincidence that Pushkin urged: “Read folk tales, young writers, in order to see the properties of the Russian language.”
Folklore techniques were especially widely used in works about the people and for the people. For example, in Nekrasov’s poem Who can live well in Rus'? numerous and varied repetitions (situations, phrases, words); diminutive suffixes.
At the same time, literary works penetrated folklore and influenced its development. The rubai of Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, some Russian stories of the 17th century, and some Russian stories of the 17th century were distributed as works of oral folk art (without the name of the author and in various versions). Prisoner And Black shawl Pushkin, beginning Korobeinikov Nekrasova ( Oh, the box is full, full, // There are chintz and brocade. // Have pity, my sweetheart, // Well done shoulder...) and much more. Including the beginning of Ershov's fairy tale The Little Humpbacked Horse, which became the origin of many folk tales:
Behind the mountains, behind the forests,
Beyond the wide seas
Against heaven on earth
There lived an old man in a village.
Poet M. Isakovsky and composer M. Blanter wrote a song Katyusha (Apple and pear trees were blooming...). The people sang it, and about a hundred different Katyusha. So, during the Great Patriotic War they sang: Apple and pear trees don’t bloom here..., The Nazis burned apple and pear trees.... The girl Katyusha became a nurse in one song, a partisan in another, and a communications operator in a third.
In the late 1940s, three students A. Okhrimenko, S. Christie and V. Shreiberg composed a comic song:
In an old and noble family
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy lived
He ate neither fish nor meat,
I walked along the alleys barefoot.
It was impossible to print such poems at that time, and they were distributed orally. More and more new versions of this song began to be created:
Great Soviet writer
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy,
He didn't eat fish or meat
I walked along the alleys barefoot.
Under the influence of literature, rhyme appeared in folklore (all ditties are rhymed, there is rhyme in later folk songs), division into stanzas. Under the direct influence of romantic poetry ( see also ROMANTICISM), in particular ballads, a new genre of urban romance arose.
Oral folk poetry is studied not only by literary scholars, but also by historians, ethnographers, and cultural experts. For ancient, pre-literate times, folklore is often the only source that has conveyed certain information to the present day (in a veiled form). So, in a fairy tale, the groom receives a wife for some merits and exploits, and most often he marries not in the kingdom where he was born, but in the one where his future wife is from. This detail of a fairy tale, born in ancient times, suggests that in those days a wife was taken (or kidnapped) from another family. The fairy tale also contains echoes of the ancient rite of initiation - the initiation of boys into men. This ritual usually took place in the forest, in a “men’s” house. Fairy tales often mention a house in the forest inhabited by men.
Folklore of late times is the most important source for studying the psychology, worldview, and aesthetics of a particular people.
In Russia at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. Interest in the folklore of the 20th century has increased, and those aspects of it that not so long ago remained outside the boundaries of official science. (political joke, some ditties, Gulag folklore). Without studying this folklore, the idea of the life of the people in the era of totalitarianism will inevitably be incomplete and distorted.
Lyudmila Polikovskaya
Azadovsky M.K. History of Russian folklore. vol., 12. M., 19581963
Azadovsky M.K. Articles about literature about folklore. M., 1960
Meletinsky E.M. Origin of the heroic epic(early forms and historical monuments). M., 1963
Bogatyrev P.G. Issues in the theory of folk art. M., 1971
Propp V.Ya. Folklore and reality. M., 1976
Bakhtin V.S. From epics to counting rhymes. Stories about folklore. L., 1988
Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989
Buslaev F.I. Folk epic and mythology. M., 2003
Zhirmunsky V.M. Folklore of the West and East: Comparative and historical essays. M., 2004
Find "FOLKLORE" on
Folklore is the basis on which individual creativity develops. Outstanding figures in various fields of art of the past and present were clearly aware of the importance of folklore. M.I. Glinka said: “We do not create, it is the people who create; we just record and arrange” \ A. S. Pushkin back in the early 19th century. wrote: “The study of ancient songs, fairy tales, etc. is necessary for perfect knowledge of the properties of the Russian language. Our critics have no reason to despise them.” Addressing writers, he pointed out: “Read folk tales, young writers, to see the properties of the Russian language.”
The legacy of turning to folk art was and is being followed by the creators of classical and modern literature, music, and fine arts. There is not a single prominent writer, artist, composer who would not turn to the springs of folk art, because they reflect the life of the people. The list of musical works that creatively develop the art of the people is enormous. Operas such as “Sadko”, “Kashchei” and others were created based on folk stories. Images and stories of folk art were included in the fine arts. Paintings by Vasnetsov “Bogatyrs”, “Alyonushka”, Vrubel “Mikula”, “Ilya Muromets”, Repin “Sadko”, etc. were included in the treasury of world art. A. M. Gorky pointed out that the basis of generalizations created by an individual genius is the creativity of the people: “Zeus was created by the people, Phidias embodied him in marble.” It is argued here that the art of a writer, artist, or sculptor only reaches its peak when it arises as an expression of the ideas, feelings, and views of the people. Gorky did not belittle the role of the individual artist, but emphasized that his strength of talent and skill give special expressiveness and perfection to the form of creating collective creativity of the masses.
The connection between literature and folklore is not limited to the use by writers of the content and form of individual works of folk art. This connection expresses an incomparably broader and more general phenomenon: the organic unity of the artist with the people, and of art with the creative people's experience.
Consequently, both individual and collective creativity only acquire enormous ideological and aesthetic significance in the life of society when they are connected with the life of the people and truthfully and artistically reflect it completely. But it is necessary to take into account that, firstly, the nature and correlation of collective and individual creativity at different stages of the development of human society are different and, secondly, the fact that collective and individual creativity are unique historically emerged ways of creating a work of art.
A. M. Gorky rightly said that the collective creativity of the masses was the mother’s womb for individual creativity, that the beginning of the art of words and literature was in folklore. In the early periods of history, the closeness of literature and folk art was so great that it was impossible to clearly distinguish between them. “The Iliad” and “Odyssey” are rightfully considered works of ancient literature and, at the same time, the most beautiful creations of collective folk art, dating back to the “infancy period of human society.” The same lack of differentiation between individual and collective creativity is noted in a number of works by many peoples.
In the initial period of its existence, literature had not yet completely separated from collective folk art. With the development of class society, the division of individual and collective creativity gradually deepens. But, of course, the very concepts of collective and individual creativity cannot be interpreted abstractly, equally and unchangeably for all times and peoples. Individual and collective art have features determined by historical reality.
In pre-class society, collective creativity was an artistic and figurative reflection of the reality of that time, a generalization of the views and ideas of a tribe, a primitive community from which an individual had not yet emerged. In conditions when the tribe remained the border of a person both in relation to a stranger from another tribe, and in relation to himself, when an individual was unconditionally subordinated in his feelings, thoughts and actions to the tribe, the clan\collective creativity was the only possible form of artistic activity of individual individualities. The participation of the entire mass of the tribe in generalizing life experience, the common desire to understand and change reality were the basis of the pre-class epic, which has come down to us mainly in later revisions. An example of such epic tales, which originated in the conditions of a pre-class society, can be at least the Kalevala runes, Yakut oloikho, Georgian and Ossetian tales about Amiran, North Caucasian and Abkhaz tales about the Narts, etc.
In pre-class society, the collectivity of creativity not only merged with individuality, but subordinated it. Here even the most outstanding personality was perceived as the embodiment of the strength and experience of the entire tribe; This is how the image of the masses of the people through the image of a hero, characteristic of the epic and early literary creativity, was born (Weinemeinen, Prometheus, Balder, and later Russian heroes and other images of heroic legends).
The development of class relations could not but change collective creativity. With the advent of class society, the ideology of antagonistic classes is clearly reflected in different interpretations of images, plots of legends and songs. Examples from the epic of the peoples of the USSR confirm this. Discussion of the ideological essence of the Kyrgyz legends about Manas, the Buryat and Mongolian epic “Geser”, discussions on the problems of the epic revealed the facts of anti-national distortions by feudal circles of the creativity of the working masses.
There is a constant interaction between literature and folklore. Folklore and literature, collective and individual artistic creativity accompany each other in a class society. Thus, Russian folk art of the 11th-17th centuries. had a huge impact on the works of ancient Russian literature, as eloquently evidenced by “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, “Zadonshchina”. At the same time, images of fiction increasingly entered the everyday life of oral poetic creativity. Subsequently, this process became even more intense. Lermontov, Gogol, JI. Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Gorky believed that folklore enriches the individual creativity of a professional artist. At the same time, all the outstanding masters of Russian literature emphasized that a writer should not copy folklore and should not take the path of stylization. A true artist boldly invades the oral and poetic creativity of the people, selects the best in it and creatively develops it. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall the fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin. “He decorated folk songs and fairy tales with the brilliance of his talent, but left their meaning and power unchanged,” wrote A. M. Gorky
The interaction between folklore and literature takes place in different forms. For example, a professional artist often uses and enriches themes, plots, and images of folklore, but he can use folklore without directly reproducing its plots and images. A true artist never confines himself to reproducing the form of folklore works, but enriches and develops the traditions of oral poetic creativity, revealing the life of the people, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. It is known that the best, most progressive representatives of the ruling classes, denouncing social injustice and truthfully depicting life, rose above class limitations and created works that met the interests and needs of the people.
The living connection between literature and folklore is confirmed by the work of the best writers of all nations. But no matter how tangible the connection between the works of writers and folk poetry is in the conditions of a class society, collective and individual creativity are always differentiated by the method of creating works of art.
In class society, differences have developed in the creative process of creating works of literature and mass folk poetry. They consist primarily in the following: a literary work is created by a writer - it makes no difference whether he is a writer by profession or not - individually or in collaboration with another writer; While the writer is working on it, the work is not the property of the masses; the masses become familiar with it only after it receives the final edition, enshrined in the letter. This means that in literature the process of creating the canonical text of a work is separated from the direct creative activity of the masses and is associated with it only genetically.
Works of collective folk art are a different matter; here the personal and collective principles are united in the creative process so closely that individual creative individuals dissolve in the collective. Works of folk art do not have a final edition. Each performer of a work creates, develops, polishes the text, acts as a co-author of a song, a legend that belongs to the people.
Signs, properties of folklore
Researchers have noticed many signs and properties that are characteristic of folklore and allow us to get closer to understanding its essence:
Bifunctionality (combination of practical and spiritual);
Polyelementity or syncretism.
Any folklore work is multi-elemental. Let's use the table:
Mimic element
Genres of oral prose
Verbal element
Pantomime, mimic dancing
Ritual performance, round dances, folk drama
Verbal and musical (song genres)
Dance element
Musical and choreographic genres
musical element
Collectivity;
Illiteration;
Variant multiplicity;
Traditionality.
For phenomena associated with the development of folklore in other types of culture, the name is folklorism (introduced at the end of the 19th century by the French researcher P. Sebillot), as well as “secondary life”, “secondary folklore”.
In connection with its wide distribution, the concept of folklore itself, its pure forms, arose: thus, the term authentic (from the Greek autenticus - genuine, reliable) was established.
Folk art is the basis of all national culture. The richness of its content and genre diversity - sayings, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales and more. Songs have a special place in the creativity of the people, accompanying human life from cradle to grave, reflecting it in the most diverse manifestations and generally representing enduring ethnographic, historical, aesthetic, moral and highly artistic value.
Features of folklore.
Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Toms. Literally translated, it means “folk wisdom”, “folk knowledge” and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.
Other terms have also become established in Russian science: folk poetry, folk poetry, folk literature. The name “oral creativity of the people” emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name “folk poetic creativity” indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1
Folklore is complex, synthetic art. Often his works combine elements of various types of arts - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnology (ethnography) 2. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a unique area of national studies 3 .
The science that studies folklore is called folkloristics. If literature is understood not only as written artistic creativity, but as verbal art in general, then folklore is a special branch of literature, and folkloristics is thus part of literary criticism.
Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of words. In this way he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.
The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. The ancient art of words was characterized utility– the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.
The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of unity, non-division. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity; it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity, along with other types of social consciousness, into an independent field of spiritual activity.
Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no “famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the internal and external life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. And he moves on the song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and then poems come out of the songs, of which only the people can call themselves the author." 4
Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work not only because information about him, if he existed, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, a storyteller, a storyteller, but there is no author or writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.
Traditional succession covers large historical periods - entire centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebny, folklore arises “from memorable sources, that is, it is passed down from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory allows, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of popular understanding” 5 . Each bearer of folklore creates within the boundaries of generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, and supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. “Works of folklore always bear the stamp of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or “existed.” For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It has no individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators who are perfect mastering generally accepted traditional techniques of saying and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in the thoughts and feelings expressed in it; Folklore is folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying the content. and the properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms." 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. Traditionality– the most important and basic specific property of folklore.
Any folklore work exists in large quantities options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile, variable nature.
A characteristic feature of a folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (Italian: improvvisazione - unforeseen, suddenly) - the creation of a folklore work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and crying. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic boundaries.
Taking into account all these signs of a folklore work, we present an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: “folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other visual arts, both to ancient creativity and to new ones created in modern times and created in our days.” 7
Folklore, like literature, is the art of words. This gives grounds to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are usually called childbirth. Each genus covers a group of works of a certain type. Genre– type of artistic form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, by genus we mean a way of depicting reality, by genre - a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of changes in its genres. They are more stable in folklore compared to literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore do not arise as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, and are replaced by others. So, for example, epics arise in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die out. As living conditions change, genres are destroyed and consigned to oblivion. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.
What is the relationship between reality and its reflection in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. “Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself; convention is allowed.” 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, and symbolism.
Genres of folklore are varied. There are major genres, such as epics and fairy tales. And there are small genres: proverbs, sayings, chants. Small genres were very often intended for children, teaching them the wisdom of life. Proverbs and sayings allowed people to preserve and pass on folk wisdom from generation to generation.
The artistic feature of all small genres is that they are small in volume and easy to remember. They are often created in poetic form, which also helped them to be remembered better. Proverbs consist of one sentence. But this sentence is very deep and capacious in its content. “Chickens are counted in the fall,” our ancestors said, and we say today. The proverb is based on worldly wisdom. It doesn't matter how many chickens you have in the spring. It is important how many of them have grown before autumn. Over time, these words began to have a generalized meaning: don’t think about how much you can get from this or that business, look at the result of what you did.
Small genres of folklore intended for children have their own characteristics and value. They entered the child’s life from birth and accompanied him for many years until he grew up. Lullabies were intended primarily to protect the baby from the terrible things that surround him. Therefore, the gray wolf and other monsters often appear in songs. Gradually, lullabies ceased to play the role of a talisman. Their purpose was to put the child to sleep.
Another genre of folklore is associated with the period of infancy. These are pestushki (from the word “to nurture”). The mother sang them to her child, confident that they were helping him grow smart, strong, and healthy. Growing up, the child himself learned to use various genres in his speech and games. Children performed chants in the spring or autumn. This is how adults taught them to take care of the natural world and carry out various agricultural work in a timely manner.
Parents used tongue twisters to develop their children's speech. The artistic feature of the tongue twister is not that it has a poetic form. Its value lies elsewhere. A tongue twister was compiled in such a way that it included words with sounds that were difficult for a child. By pronouncing the tongue twister, the children developed correct speech and achieved clarity in pronunciation.
The riddle occupies a special place among the small genres of folklore. Its artistic feature lies in its metaphorical nature. The riddles were based on the principle of similarity or difference between objects. By solving the riddle, the child learned observation skills and logical thinking. Often the children began to come up with riddles themselves. They also came up with teasers, making fun of a person's shortcomings.
Thus, the small genres of folklore, with all their diversity, served one purpose - to figuratively, accurately and accurately convey folk wisdom, to teach a growing person about life.
ST. PETERSBURG HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF TRADE UNIONS
TEST
discipline __
subject ___________________________________________________________________
_____ course student
correspondence faculty
speciality
_____________________________
_____________________________
FULL NAME.
_____________________________
Saint Petersburg
______________________________________________________________
signature surname clearly
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(cutting line)
Student(s) of _____ course________________________________________________________________
(FULL NAME.)
correspondence faculty specialty__________________________________________________________
discipline___________
subject________________
Registration No.__________________ "_______"_______________________200______
date of submission of work to the University
ASSESSMENT____________________ “_________”________________________200_____g.
TEACHER-REVIEWER___________________________/_________________________________
signature surname clearly
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….………………. 3
2. Main part…………………………………………………………………………………. 4
2.1 Genres of Russian folklore……………………………………………………………...4
2.2 The place of folklore in Russian literature………………………………………………………6
3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12
4. List of references……………………………………………………….13
Introduction
Folklore – [English] folklore] folk art, a set of folk actions.
The relationship between literature and oral folk art is an urgent problem of modern literary criticism in the context of the development of world culture.
In recent decades, a whole direction of creative use of folklore has been defined in Russian literature, which is represented by talented prose writers who reveal the problems of reality at the level of intersection of literature and folklore. Deep and organic mastery of various forms of oral folk art has always been an integral property of true talent
In the 1970-2000s, many Russian writers working in a variety of literary directions turned to oral folk art. What are the reasons for this literary phenomenon? Why did writers of various literary movements and styles turn to folklore at the turn of the century? It is necessary to take into account, first of all, two dominant factors: intraliterary patterns and the socio-historical situation. Undoubtedly, tradition plays a role: writers have turned to oral folk art throughout the development of literature. Another, no less important, reason is the turn of the century, when Russian society, summing up the results of the next century, again tries to find answers to important questions of existence, returning to the national spiritual and cultural roots, and the richest folklore heritage is the poetic memory and history of the people.
The problem of the role of folklore in Russian literature on the threshold of the 21st century is natural because it has now acquired a special philosophical and aesthetic value.
Folklore is an archaic, transpersonal, collective type of artistic memory that has become the cradle of literature.
Main part.
Genres of Russian folklore.
Russian folk poetry has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. Its genre composition is rich and varied. The genres of Russian folk poetry will appear before us in the following scheme: I. Ritual poetry: 1) calendar (winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles); 2) family and household (maternity, wedding, funeral); 3) conspiracies. II. Non-ritual poetry: 1) epic prose genres: * a) fairy tale, b) legend, c) legend (and bylichka as its type); 2) epic poetic genres: a) epics, b) historical songs (primarily older ones), c) ballad songs; 3) lyrical poetic genres: a) songs of social content, b) love songs, c) family songs, d) small lyrical genres (ditties, choruses, etc.); 4) small non-lyrical genres: a) proverbs; o) sayings; c) riddles; 5) dramatic texts and actions: a) mummers, games, round dances; b) scenes and plays. In scientific folklore literature one can find the question of mixed or intermediate generic and genre phenomena: lyric-epic songs, fairy tales, legends, etc.
However, it must be said that such phenomena are very rare in Russian folklore. In addition, the introduction of this type of work into the classification of genres is controversial because mixed or intermediate genres have never been stable; at no time in the development of Russian folklore were they the main ones and did not determine its overall picture and historical movement. The development of genera and genres does not consist in their mixing, but in the creation of new artistic forms and the death of old ones. The emergence of genres, as well as the formation of their entire system, is determined by many circumstances. Firstly, by the social need for them, and, consequently, by the tasks of a cognitive, ideological, educational and aesthetic nature that the diverse reality itself posed to folk art. Secondly, the originality of the reflected reality; for example, epics arose in connection with the struggle of the Russian people against the nomadic Pechenegs, Polovtsians and Mongol-Tatars. Thirdly, the level of development of the artistic thought of the people and their historical thinking; In the early stages, complex forms could not be created; the movement probably went from simple and small forms to complex and large ones, for example, from a proverb, a parable (short story) to a fairy tale and legend. Fourthly, the previous artistic heritage and traditions, previously established genres. Fifthly, the influence of literature (writing) and other forms of art. The emergence of genres is a natural process; it is determined both by external socio-historical factors and by the internal laws of the development of folklore.
The composition of folklore genres and their connection with each other are also determined by their common task of multilateral reproduction of reality, and the functions of the genres are distributed so that each genre has its own special task - the depiction of one of the aspects of life. The works of one group of genres have as their subject the history of the people (epics, historical songs, legends), another - the work and life of the people (calendar ritual songs, work songs), the third - personal relationships (family and love songs), the fourth - the moral views of the people and his life experience (proverbs). But all genres taken together widely cover everyday life, work, history, social and personal relationships of people. Genres are interconnected in the same way as different aspects and phenomena of reality itself are interconnected, and therefore form a single ideological and artistic system. The fact that the genres of folklore have a common ideological essence and a common task of multifaceted artistic reproduction of life also causes a certain commonality or similarity of their themes, plots and heroes. Folklore genres are characterized by a commonality of principles of folk aesthetics - simplicity, brevity, economy, plot, poeticization of nature, certainty of moral assessments of the characters (positive or negative). The genres of oral folk art are also interconnected by a common system of artistic means of folklore - the originality of the composition (leitmotif, unity of theme, chain connection, screensaver - a picture of nature, types of repetitions, commonplaces), symbolism, special types of epithets. This system, developing historically, has a pronounced national identity, determined by the peculiarities of the language, way of life, history and culture of the people. Relationships between genres. In the formation, development and coexistence of folklore genres, a process of complex interaction occurs: mutual influence, mutual enrichment, adaptation to each other. The interaction of genres takes many forms. It serves as one of the reasons for significant changes in oral folk art.
The place of folklore in Russian literature.
“The Russian people have created a huge amount of oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics - spoken in a chant, to the sound of strings - about the glorious exploits of heroes, defenders of the people’s land - heroic, magical, everyday and funny tales.
Folklore- This is folk art, very necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days. Folklore includes works that convey the basic, most important ideas of the people about the main values in life: work, family, love, social duty, homeland. Our children are still being brought up on these works. Knowledge of folklore can give a person knowledge about the Russian people, and ultimately about himself.
In folklore, the original text of a work is almost always unknown, since the author of the work is unknown. The text is passed down from mouth to mouth and survives to this day in the form in which the writers wrote it down. However, writers retell them in their own way to make the works easy to read and understand. Currently, many collections have been published that include one or several genres of Russian folklore. These are, for example, “Epics” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Russian folk poetry” by T. M. Akimova, “Russian folklore” edited by V. P. Anikin, “Russian ritual songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rumble: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “On Russian Folklore” by E. V. Pomerantseva, “Folk Russian Legends” and “People-Artists: myth, folklore, literature” by A. N. Afanasyev, “Slavic mythology” by N. I. Kostomarov, “Myths and legends” by K. A. Zurabov.
In all publications, the authors distinguish several genres of folklore - these are fortune telling, spells, ritual songs, epics, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings, riddles, tales, pestushki, chants, ditties, etc. Due to the fact that the material is very huge, and in a short time It is impossible to study it in time; I use in my work only four books given to me by the central library. These are “Russian Ritual Songs” by Yu. G. Kruglov, “Strings of Rokotahu: Essays on Russian Folklore” by V. I. Kalugin, “Russian Soviet Folklore” edited by K. N. Femenkov, “Russian Folk Poetry” by T. M. Akimova.
Modern writers often use folklore motifs in order to give the story an existential character, to combine the individual and the typical.
Oral folk poetry and book literature arose and developed on the basis of the national riches of the language; their themes were related to the historical and social life of the Russian people, their way of life and work. In folklore and literature, poetic and prose genres that were largely similar to each other were created, and types and types of poetic art arose and were improved. Therefore, creative connections between folklore and literature, their constant ideological and artistic mutual influence are quite natural and logical.
Oral folk poetry, having arisen in ancient times and reaching perfection by the time of the introduction of writing in Rus', became a natural threshold for Old Russian literature, a kind of “poetic cradle”. It was on the basis of the richest poetic treasury of folklore that the original Russian written literature arose to a large extent. It was folklore, according to many researchers, that introduced a strong ideological and artistic current into the works of ancient Russian literature.
Folklore and Russian literature represent two independent areas of Russian national art. At the same time, the history of their creative relationship should have become the subject of independent study by both folklore and literary studies. However, such targeted research did not appear in Russian science immediately. They were preceded by long stages of autonomous existence of folklore and literature without proper scientific understanding of the processes of their creative influence on each other.
Tolstoy's work, addressed to children, is vast in scope and polyphonic in sound. It reveals his artistic, philosophical, pedagogical views.
Everything Tolstoy wrote about children and for children marked a new era in the development of domestic and, in many ways, world literature for children. During the writer’s lifetime, his stories from “ABC” were translated into many languages of the peoples of Russia and became widespread in Europe.
The theme of childhood in Tolstoy's works acquired a philosophically deep, psychological meaning. The writer introduced new themes, a new layer of life, new heroes, and enriched the moral issues of the works addressed to young readers. The great merit of Tolstoy, a writer and teacher, is that he raised educational literature (the alphabet), which traditionally had an applied, functional nature, to the level of real art.
Leo Tolstoy is the glory and pride of Russian literature. 2 The beginning of Tolstoy’s teaching activity dates back to 1849. When he opened his first school for peasant children.
Tolstoy did not ignore the problems of education and upbringing until the last days of his life. In the 80s and 90s, he was engaged in publishing literature for the people, and dreamed of creating an encyclopedic dictionary and a series of textbooks for peasants.
Constant interest of L.N. Tolstoy to Russian folklore, to the folk poetry of other peoples (primarily Caucasian) is a well-known fact. He not only recorded and actively promoted fairy tales, legends, songs, and proverbs, but also used them in his artistic work and teaching activities. The 70s of the 19th century were especially fruitful in this regard - a time of intensive work on “The ABC” (1872), “The New ABC” and complementary books for reading (1875). Initially, in the first edition, “ABC” was a single set of educational books. Tolstoy summarized his teaching experience at the Yasnaya Polyana school and revised the stories for children published in the appendix to Yasnaya Polyana. First of all, I would like to note the serious, thoughtful attitude of L.N. Tolstoy to folklore material. The author of both “ABCs” strictly focused on the primary sources, avoided arbitrary changes and interpretations and allowed himself some adjustments only for the purpose of adapting folklore texts that were difficult to perceive. Tolstoy studied the experience of Ushinsky, spoke critically about the language of his predecessor’s educational books, which, from his point of view, was too conventional and artificial, and did not accept descriptiveness in stories for children. The positions of both teachers were close in assessing the role of oral folk art and the experience of spiritual culture in mastering the native language.
Proverbs, sayings, riddles in “ABC” alternate with short sketches, micro-scenes, small stories from folk life 3(“Katya went mushroom picking”, “Varya had a siskin”, “The children found a hedgehog”, “Bug was carrying a bone”). Everything about them is close to a peasant child. Read in the book, the scene is filled with special significance and sharpens observation: “They laid the stacks. It was hot, it was difficult, and everyone was singing.” “Grandfather was bored at home. My granddaughter came and sang a song.” The characters in Tolstoy's short stories are, as a rule, generalized - mother, daughter, sons, old man. In the traditions of folk pedagogy and Christian morality, Tolstoy pursues the idea: love work, respect your elders, do good. Other everyday sketches are executed so masterfully that they acquire a high generalized meaning and come close to a parable. For example:
“The grandmother had a granddaughter; Before, the granddaughter was small and kept sleeping, and the grandmother baked bread, chalked the hut, washed, sewed, spun and wove for her granddaughter; and then the grandmother became old and lay down on the stove and kept sleeping. And the granddaughter baked, washed, sewed, weaved and spun for her grandmother.”
A few lines of simple two-syllable words. The second part is almost a mirror image of the first. What's the depth? The wise course of life, the responsibility of generations, the transmission of traditions... Everything is contained in two sentences. Here every word seems to be weighed, emphasized in a special way. The parables about the old man planting apple trees, “The Old Grandfather and Granddaughter”, “Father and Sons” have become classic.
Children are the main characters of Tolstoy's stories. Among his characters are children, simple children, peasant children and noble children. Tolstoy does not focus on social difference, although in each story children are in their own environment. The village little Filipok, wearing his father’s big hat, overcoming fear and fighting off other people’s dogs, goes to school. It takes no less courage for the little hero of the story “How I Learned to Ride” to beg adults to take him into the playpen. And then, without being afraid of falling, sit on Chervonchik again.
“I’m poor, I immediately understood everything. “I’m so clever,” says Filipok about himself, beating his name. There are many such “poor and clever” heroes in Tolstoy’s stories. The boy Vasya selflessly protects a kitten from hunting dogs (“Kitten”). And eight-year-old Vanya, showing enviable ingenuity, saves the lives of his little brother, sister and old grandmother. The plots of many of Tolstoy's stories are dramatic. A hero - a child must overcome himself and decide to act. The tense dynamics of the story “The Jump” are characteristic in this regard. 4
Children are often disobedient and do wrong things, but the writer does not seek to give them a direct assessment. The reader must make the moral conclusion for himself. A conciliatory smile can be caused by Vanya’s misdeed, secretly eating a plum (“Pit”). Seryozha’s carelessness (“Bird”) cost Chizhu his life. And in the story “Cow” the hero is in an even more difficult situation: the fear of punishment for a broken glass led to dire consequences for a large peasant family - the death of the wet nurse Buryonushka.
Famous teacher D.D. Semyonov, a contemporary of Tolstoy, called his stories “the height of perfection, as in the psychological. So it is in an artistic sense... What expressiveness and figurativeness of language, what strength, conciseness, simplicity and at the same time elegance of speech... In every thought, in every storyteller there is a moral... moreover, it is not striking, does not bore children, but is hidden in the artistic image, and therefore it asks for a child’s soul and sinks deeply into it” 5 .
A writer's talent is determined by the significance of his literary discoveries. What is immortal is what is not repeated and unique. The nature of literature does not tolerate repetition.
The writer creates his own image of the real world, not being satisfied with someone else's idea of reality. The more this image reflects the essence and not the appearance of phenomena, the deeper the writer penetrates into the fundamental principles of existence, the more accurately their immanent conflict, which is the paradigm of a genuine literary “conflict,” is expressed in his work, the more durable the work turns out to be.
Among the forgotten works are things that reduce the idea of the world and man. This does not mean that the work is intended to reflect a holistic picture of reality. It’s just that the “private truth” of a work must be connected with a universal meaning.
Question about nationalities of this or that writer cannot be fully resolved without analyzing his connection with folklore. Folklore is an impersonal creativity, closely related to the archaic worldview.
Conclusion
Thus, Tolstoy’s creation of the cycle of “folk stories” of the 1880s - 1900s was due in combination to both external and internal reasons: socio-historical factors, the laws of the literary process of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the religious and aesthetic priorities of the late Tolstoy.
In the conditions of socio-political instability in Russia in the 1880-1890s, the tendency for a radical reorganization of society by violent methods, sowing discord and disunity among people, Tolstoy puts into practice the idea of “active Christianity” - a religious and philosophical doctrine of spiritual enlightenment based on Christian axiomatics, developed by him over a quarter of a century, and following which, in the writer’s opinion, should inevitably lead to the spiritual progress of society.
Objective reality, being unnatural, receives aesthetic condemnation by the writer. In order to contrast reality with the image of harmonious reality, Tolstoy develops a theory of religious art as the most appropriate to the needs of the day, and radically changes the nature of his own creative method. The method of “spiritual truth” chosen by Tolstoy, synthesizing the real and the ideal as a way of embodying harmonious reality, was most clearly realized in a cycle of works with a conventional genre definition of “folk stories”.
In the context of the growing interest of modern literary criticism in Christian issues in Russian classics, the study of “folk stories” in the context of spiritual prose of the late 19th - early 20th centuries seems promising, allowing us to present the spiritual literature of this period as an integral phenomenon.
Bibliography.
1. Akimova T. M., V. K. Arkhangelskaya, V. A. Bakhtina / Russian folk poetic creativity (a manual for seminar classes). – M.: Higher. School, 1983. – 208 p.
2. Gorky M. Collection. Op., vol. 27
3. Danilevsky I.N. Ancient Rus' through the eyes of contemporaries and their descendants (XI – XII centuries). – M., 1998. – P. 225.
5. Kruglov Yu. G. Russian ritual songs: Textbook. manual for teachers in-tovpospets "rus. language or T.". – 2nd ed., rev. and additional – M.: Higher. school 1989. – 320 p.
6. Semenov D.D. Favorite Ped. Op. – M., 1953