Introductory part. The term "folklore" history of the genre, the concept of ritual folklore.
Main part.
List of used literature.
Introductory part:
Folklore (eng. folklore) - folk art, most often oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses (legends, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epics), folk music(songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theatre), dance, architecture, fine and decorative arts. The term “folklore” was first introduced into scientific use in 1846 by the English scientist William Toms, as a set of structures integrated by word and speech, regardless of what non-verbal elements they are associated with. It would probably be more accurate and definite to use the old one from the 20-30s. terminology that has fallen out of use. the phrase “oral literature” or not very specific sociological. limitation “oral folk literature”.
This use of the term is determined by different concepts and interpretations of the connections between the subject of folkloristics and other forms and layers of culture, the unequal structure of culture in different countries of Europe and America in those decades of the last century when ethnography and folkloristics arose, different rates of subsequent development, different composition of the main fund of texts, which science used in each country.
Thus, folklore is oral folk art - epics and songs, proverbs and sayings, fairy tales and conspiracies, ritual and other poetry - reflected the idea of Russian people about their past and the world around them. The epics about Vasily Buslaevich and Sadko glorify Novgorod with its bustling city life and trade caravans sailing to overseas countries. The Russian people created a huge oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics, heroic, magical, everyday and funny tales. It is vain to think that this literature was only the fruit of popular leisure. She is the dignity and intelligence of the people. She established and strengthened his moral character, was his historical memory, the festive clothes of his soul and filled with deep content his entire measured life, flowing according to the customs and rituals associated with his work, nature and the veneration of his fathers and grandfathers.
Folk musical art originated long before the emergence of professional music Orthodox church. In the social life of ancient Rus', folklore played a much greater role than in subsequent times. Unlike medieval Europe, Ancient Rus' had no secular professional art. In its musical culture, only two main areas developed - temple singing and folk art of the oral tradition, including various, including “semi-professional” genres (the art of storytellers, buffoons, etc.).
By the time of Russian Orthodox hymnography, folklore had a centuries-old history, an established system of genres and means of musical expression. Folk music has firmly entered into people's lives, reflecting the most diverse facets of social, family, and personal life. Researchers believe that the pre-state period (that is, before Kievan Rus was formed) Eastern Slavs had a fairly developed calendar and family ritual folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
Songs, epics, riddles, and proverbs have reached us through many centuries, and it is often difficult to separate the early basis of a folklore work from later layers. Researchers of folk art identify “ritual folklore” as a separate group, associated with the agricultural calendar and rooted in ancient pagan beliefs. These are the songs and dances performed on Maslenitsa, on the day of Ivan Kupala, and Christmas carols. Ritual folklore also includes wedding songs and fortune telling.
In order to perceive the richness of ancient Russian ritual poetry, you need to know what rituals we are talking about, when and why they were performed, and what role the song played in this. The ritual, as a certain process, was a normative, strictly regulated religious act, subordinate to the canon that had developed over the centuries. He was born in the depths of the pagan 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 peasant farmers. They were part of winter, spring, and summer rituals that correspond to turning points in the change of seasons. When performing the ritual, people believed that their spells would be heard by the mighty gods, the forces of the Sun, Water, and Mother Earth and would send them a good harvest, offspring of livestock, and a comfortable life. Ritual songs were considered the same obligatory component of the ritual as the main ritual actions. It was even believed that if all ritual actions were not performed and the songs accompanying them were not performed, then the desired result would not be achieved. They accompanied the first plowing and harvesting of the last sheaf in the field, youth celebrations and Christmas or Trinity holidays, christenings and weddings.
Calendar-ritual songs belong to the oldest type of folk art, and they got their name due to their connection with the folk agricultural calendar - the schedule of work according to the seasons.
Calendar-ritual songs, as a rule, are small in volume and simple in poetic structure. They contain anxiety and jubilation, uncertainty and hope. One of the common features is the personification of the main image associated with the meaning of the ritual. Thus, in Christmas songs, Kolyada is depicted walking around the courtyards, looking for the owner, giving him all sorts of blessings. We encounter similar images - Maslenitsa, Spring, Trinity - in many calendar songs. The songs beg, call for goodness from these strange creatures, and sometimes reproach them for deceit and frivolity.
In their form, these songs are short poems, which in one stroke, two or three lines, indicate a mood, a lyrical situation.
Russian folk ritual poetry is closely connected with the old traditional way of life and at the same time conceals an amazing wealth of poetry that has stood the test of time for centuries.
Let's consider some types of calendar-ritual songs:
Caroling began on Christmas Eve, December 24th. This was the name of the festive rounds of houses with the singing of carols, in which the owners of the house were glorified and contained wishes for wealth, harvest, etc.
Carols were sung by children or youth who carried a star on a pole. This star symbolized the Star of Bethlehem, which appeared in the sky at the moment of the birth of Christ.
The owners presented the carolers with sweets, cookies, and money. If the owners were stingy, the carolers sang mischievous carols with comic threats, for example:
Won't you give me the pie?
We take the cow by the horns.
You won't give me guts -
We are a pig by the whisky.
Won't you give me a blink -
We are the host in the kick.
The beginning of the year was given special significance. How you spend the New Year will be the same for the whole coming year. Therefore, we tried to keep the table plentiful, people cheerful, wishing each other happiness and good luck.
Cheerful short carols were the song form of such wishes.
One of the types of New Year's songs were sub-bread songs. They accompanied New Year's fortune telling. V. A. Zhukovsky in the poem “Svetlana” retells one of the most popular sub-bowl songs:
…Blacksmith,
Forge me gold and a new crown,
Forge a gold ring.
I should be crowned with that crown,
Get engaged with that ring
At the holy levy.
You can compare it with the folklore version:
The blacksmith is coming from the forge, glory!
The blacksmith carries three hammers, glory!
Skuy, blacksmith, a golden crown for me, glory!
From the samples I have a gold ring, glory!
From the leftovers, a pin for me, thank you!
To be crowned with this crown, glory!
Get engaged with that ring, glory!
And I’ll use that pin to pin the lining, thank you!
To whom we sing a song, goodness, glory to him!
It will come true, it will not fail, glory!
The famous underwater song is quoted in the 5th chapter of “Eugene Onegin” by A. S. Pushkin.
Characterizing Maslenitsa songs, it can be noted that in them, Maslenitsa is scolded, ridiculed, called upon to return, called by comic human names: Avdotyushka, Izotyevna, Akulina Savvishna, etc.
V.I. Dal wrote that each day of Maslenitsa had its own name: Monday - meeting, Tuesday - flirting, Wednesday - gourmet, Thursday - wide Thursday, Friday - mother-in-law's evening, Saturday - sister-in-law's gatherings, Sunday - farewell. This same week it was customary to go sledding down the mountains.
As for the Trinity cycle, it can be noted that it was the richest in calendar and ritual songs, games, and round dances. It is not without reason that the poetic images and melodies of these songs attracted the attention of many Russian writers, for example A. N. Ostrovsky: Lelya’s famous song “The cloud conspired with thunder” and the ritual song of the Trinity cycle:
The cloud conspired with thunder:
Dolya-lyoly-lyo-lyo!
“Let’s go, cloud, for a walk in the field,
To that field, to Zavodskoye!
You with the rain, and I with the mercy,
You water it, and I’ll grow it!”...
as well as composers (the song “There was a birch tree in the field...” in P. I. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, “The Snow Maiden” by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, etc.).
Spring rituals were performed during the main days of the year, Lent, so they had almost no festive playful character.
The main spring genre is stoneflies. They, in fact, were not sung, but clicked, climbing onto hillocks and roofs. They called for spring and said goodbye to winter.
Some stoneflies resemble the lines “Cockroaches” or “Cockroaches” or “Cockroaches” (“cockroaches to drums”), familiar from childhood.
Here is one of the stoneflies of this kind:
...Tits, tits,
Bring a knitting needle!
Canaries,
Canaries,
Bring some sewing!
Rosary beads, tap beads,
Bring me a brush!
Then, ducks,
Blow the pipes
Cockroaches -
To the drums!
With the adoption of Christianity, pagan beliefs gradually lose their meaning. The meaning of magical acts that gave rise to this or that type of folk music was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays turned out to be unusually stable, and ritual folklore continued to live as if out of connection with the 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. For example, the answers of the Kyiv Metropolitan John II to the 11th century writer are known. Yakov Chernorizets, which says about the priests: “Those persons of the priestly rank who go to worldly feasts and drink, the holy fathers command to observe decorum and accept what is offered with a blessing; when they come in with games, dances and music, then you must, as the fathers command, get up (from the table), so as not to defile your feelings with what you can see and hear, or completely abandon those feasts or leave at a time when there will be a great temptation.”
The negative reaction of the Orthodox Church was caused by a very specific area of folklore, born in the depths of the so-called “laughing” or “carnival” culture of Ancient Rus'. Noisy folk festivals with elements of theatrical performance and with the indispensable participation of music, the origins of which should be sought in ancient pagan rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays. “Laughter” culture has always been a “distorting mirror” of reality, an absurd “stupid” life, where everything was the other way around, everything changed places - good and evil, bottom and top, reality and fantasy. These holidays are characterized by turning clothes inside out and using matting, bast, straw, birch bark, bast and other carnival paraphernalia for dressing up.
I would like to draw special attention to the fact that such outstanding Russian writers, poets, and composers as A. S. Pushkin, N. A. Nekrasov, A. N. Ostrovsky, S. A. Yesenin, M. I. were interested in ritual poetry. Glinka, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, P.I. Tchaikovsky and others. Many episodes of “The Snow Maiden” by A.N. Ostrovsky are based on the motifs of stone flies.
Literature used:
Wedding ritual poetry
Abstract >> Culture and artAccording to the meaning of all weddings ritual actions. The intensity of the wedding... Genres of the wedding ceremony. Family composition ritual folklore complex. There are 4 main genres... themselves. Family composition ritual folklore complex. There are four main...
Folklore Australians
Article >> Religion and mythologyThe classical form appears in folklore Central Australian tribes. Wonderful Expert... totemic creatures and descriptions ritual actions (knocking out a tooth) are represented... by a mischievous trickster (stuntman) in folklore Northwest Coast Indians...
Folklore (5)
Abstract >> Culture and artStudying. Artistic and historical significance folklore was deeply revealed by A.M. ... The beginning of the art of words - in folklore. Collect yours folklore, learn from it, ... This is how the transition from ritual syncretism to isolated verbal...
Russian folk poetic creativity: Reader / Ed. A. M. Novikova. - M., 1978;
Russian folk poetry: Ritual poetry / Comp. K. Chistov, B. Chistova. - L., 1984;
Kruglov Yu. G. Russian ritual songs. - M., 1982;
Poetry of peasant holidays. - L., 1970; Nursery rhymes, counting rhymes, fables. - M., 1989.
Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture // Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture; In memoriam. St. Petersburg, 2003. P. 95.
Sedakova O.A. Poetics of ritual. Funeral rituals of the Eastern and Southern Slavs. M., 2004.
Folklore and ethnography of the Russian North. L., 1973. S. 3-4.
Bayburin A.K., Toporkov A.L. At the origins of etiquette. L., 1990. P. 5.
Tolstaya S.M. Ritual voting: semantics, vocabulary, pragmatics // The sounding and silent world. Semiotics of sound and speech in the traditional culture of the Slavs. M., 1999. P. 135.
Nevskaya L.G. Balto-Slavic lamentation. Reconstruction of semantic structure. M., 1993. P. 108.
Eremina V.I. Historical and ethnographic origins of common places of lamentation // Russian folklore: Poetics of folklore. L., 1981. T. 21. P. 84.
Chistov K.V. On the question of the magical function of funeral lamentations // Historical and ethnographic studies on folklore: Collection of articles in memory of Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev. M., 1994. P. 273.
…………………………………………………………4 1.1 The source of Russian musical originality……...4 1.2 Ritual folklore……………………………….….6 1.3 Musical... Russian ritual musical - poetic folklore. The subject of research in the work is ritual folklore ...(Poiché quanto sotto riportato è parte della mia tesi di laurea magistrale, se desiderate copiare il testo vi prego di citare sempre la fonte e l’autore (Margherita Sanguineti). Grazie.)
Folklore genres They also differ in the method of execution and the different combination of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing, singing and dancing, storytelling, acting, etc.).
With changes to social life societies, new genres also 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.
There are genres in folklore productive, in the depths of which new works may appear. Now these are ditties, sayings, city songs, jokes, and many types of children's folklore. There are genres 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.
Depending on the stage of development, folklore is usually divided into early traditional folklore, classical folklore and late traditional folklore. Each group belongs to special genres, typical for a given stage of development of folk art.
Early traditional folklore
1. Labor songs.
These songs are known among all nations, which were performed during labor processes (when lifting heavy objects, plowing fields, manually grinding grain, etc.).
Such songs could be performed when working alone, but they were especially important when working together, since they contained commands for simultaneous action.
Their main element was rhythm, which organized the labor process.
2. Fortune telling and conspiracies.
Fortune telling is a means of recognizing the future. To recognize the future, one had to turn to evil spirits , therefore, fortune telling was perceived as a sinful and dangerous activity.
For fortune-telling, places were chosen where, according to the people, it was possible to come into contact with the inhabitants of the “other world”, as well as the time of day at which this contact was most likely.
Fortune telling was based on the technique of interpreting “signs”: randomly heard words, reflections in water, animal behavior, etc. To obtain these “signs,” actions were taken in which objects, animals, and plants were used. Sometimes actions were accompanied by verbal formulas.
Classic folklore
1. Rituals and ritual folklore
Ritual folklore consisted of verbal, musical, dramatic, game and choreographic genres.
The ceremonies had ritual- magical meaning, contained rules of human behavior in everyday life and work. They are usually divided into work and family.
1.1 Labor rites: calendar rites
The observations of the ancient Slavs on the solstice and the changes in nature associated with it developed into a system of mythological beliefs and practical work skills, reinforced by rituals, signs, and proverbs.
Gradually, the rituals formed an annual cycle, and the most important holidays were timed to coincide with the winter and summer solstices.
There are winter, spring, summer and autumn rituals.
1.2. Family rituals
Unlike calendar rituals, the hero family rituals – real person. Rituals accompanied many events in his life, among which the most important were birth, marriage and death.
The wedding ceremony was the most developed; it had its own characteristics and laws, its own mythology and its own poetry.
1.3. Lamentations
This ancient genre folklore, genetically associated with funeral rites. The object of the lamentation image is the tragic in life, therefore the lyrical principle is strongly expressed in them, the melody is weakly expressed and in the content of the text one could find many exclamatory-interrogative constructions, synonymous repetitions, unity of beginning, etc.
2. Small genres of folklore. Proverbs.
Small folklore genres include works that differ in genre, but have a common external feature - a small volume.
Small genres of folklore prose, or proverbs, are very diverse: proverbs, sayings, signs, riddles, jokes, proverbs, tongue twisters, puns, well wishes, curses, etc.
3. Fairy tales(see § 2.)
3.1. Animal Tales
3.2. Fairy tales
3.3. Everyday tales
3.3.1. Anecdotal tales
3.3.2. Short story tales
4. Non-fairy prose
Non-fairy tale prose has a different modality than fairy tales: its works are confined to real time, real terrain, real persons. Non-fairy-tale prose is characterized by not being distinguished from the flow of everyday speech and the absence of special genre and style canons. In the very in a general sense we can say that her works are characterized by the stylistic form of an epic narrative about the authentic.
The most stable component is the character, around which all the rest of the material is united.
An important feature of non-fairy tale prose is the plot. Usually the plots have an embryonic form (single-motive), but can be conveyed both concisely and in detail.
Works of non-fairy tale prose are capable of contamination.
The following genres belong to non-fairy tale prose: tales, legends and demonological stories.
5. Epics
Bylinas are epic songs in which heroic events or individual episodes of ancient Russian history are sung.
As in fairy tales, mythological images of enemies appear in epics, characters are reincarnated, and animals help the heroes.
Epics have a heroic or novelistic character: idea heroic epics- glorification of the unity and independence of the Russian land, in novelistic epics marital fidelity and true friendship were glorified, personal vices (boasting, arrogance) were condemned.
6. Historical songs
Historical songs are folk epic, lyric epic and lyrical songs, the content of which is dedicated to specific events and real persons of Russian history and expresses the national interests and ideals of the people.
7. Ballads
Folk ballads are lyric-epic songs about a tragic event. Ballads are characterized by personal, family and everyday themes. At the center of the ballads are moral problems: love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal, crime and repentance.
8. Spiritual Poems
Spiritual poems are songs with religious content.
The main feature of spiritual verses is the contrast between everything Christian and the worldly.
Spiritual poems are heterogeneous. In oral existence they interacted with epics, historical songs, ballads, lyrical songs, and lamentations.
9. Lyrical non-ritual songs
In folk lyrics, word and melody are inseparable. The main purpose of songs is to reveal the worldview of the people by directly expressing their feelings, thoughts and moods.
These songs expressed the characteristic experiences of a Russian person in different life situations.
10. Folklore theatre.
Folklore theater – traditional dramatic creativity people.
Specific signs folklore theater– absence of a stage, separation of performers and audience, action as a form of reflection of reality, transformation of the performer into another objectified image, aesthetic orientation of the performance.
Plays were often distributed in written form and pre-rehearsed, which did not exclude improvisation.
Folklore theater includes: booths, traveling picture theater (rayok), folk puppet theater and folk dramas.
11. Children's folklore.
Children's folklore is a specific area of oral artistic creativity, which, unlike the folklore of adults, has its own poetics, its own forms of existence and its own carriers.
General, generic sign children's folklore – correlation of literary text with the game.
Works of children's folklore are performed by adults for children (mother folklore) and by the children themselves (actually children's folklore)
Late traditional folklore
Late traditional folklore is a collection of works of different genres and different directions, created in peasant, urban, soldier, worker and other environments since the beginning of the development of industry, the growth of cities, and the collapse of the feudal countryside.
Late traditional folklore is characterized by a smaller number of works and a generally lower artistic level compared to classical folklore.
1. Ditties
A chastushka is a short rhyming folk song that is sung at a fast tempo to a specific melody.
The themes of the ditties are varied. Most of them are devoted to love and family themes. But they often reflect modern life people, the changes that are taking place in the country contain sharp political hints. The ditty is characterized by a humorous attitude towards its characters, irony, and sometimes sharp satire.
2. Workers' folklore
Workers' folklore is oral folk works that were created in the working environment or assimilated by it and processed so much that they began to reflect the spiritual needs of this particular environment.
Unlike ditties, workers' folklore did not turn into a national, all-Russian phenomenon. His characteristic feature– locality, isolation within a particular industrial territory. For example, workers in factories, plants and mines in Petrozavodsk, Donbass, the Urals, Altai and Siberia knew almost no oral works of each other.
Song genres predominated in workers' folklore. The songs depicted the difficult working and living conditions of a simple worker, which were contrasted with the idle life of the oppressors - business owners and overseers.
In form, the songs are monologues-complaints.
3. Folklore of the Great Period Patriotic War.
Folklore of the period of the Great Patriotic War consists of works of various genres: songs, prose, aphoristic. They were created by the participants in events and battles, workers of factories, collective farm fields, partisans, etc.
These works reflect the life and struggle of the peoples of the USSR, the heroism of the country's defenders, faith in victory, the joy of victory, fidelity in love and love betrayals.
In our work we will dwell in more detail on folklore classical genre fairy tales
Late traditional folklore is a collection of works of different genres and different directions, created in peasant, urban, soldier, worker and other environments since the beginning of the development of industry, the growth of cities, and the collapse of the feudal countryside.
Late traditional folklore is characterized by a smaller number of works and a generally lower artistic level compared to classical folklore - a rich, developed, centuries-old culture, generated by feudal life and a patriarchal worldview.
Late traditional folklore is distinguished by a complex interweaving of the new and the old. In the village repertoire there was a transformation of classical genres, which began to be influenced by literary poetics. Proverbs and sayings, anecdotal tales, and folk songs have shown their viability literary origin, children's folklore. The ancient plangent song was greatly replaced by urban “cruel romances”, as well as by the quickly and widely spread ditty. At the same time, epics, old historical songs, old ballads and spiritual poems, and fairy tales were gradually forgotten. Folk rituals and the poetry that accompanied them over time lost their utilitarian-magical meaning, especially in urban areas.
From the end of the 18th century. In Russia, the first state-owned factories and serf-owned manufactories appeared, employing civilian workers from impoverished peasants, convicts, undocumented vagabonds, etc. In this motley environment, works arose that laid the foundation for a new phenomenon - the folklore of workers. As capitalism developed and the proletariat grew, the themes expanded and the number of works increased oral creativity workers, which was characterized by the influence of book poetry.
Urban folklore became a new phenomenon - oral works of the “grassroots” population of cities (it grew along with the growth of the cities themselves, constantly flowing in from the impoverished countryside). Cultural contacts between city and village have a long history in Russia - just remember the role of Kyiv, Novgorod and other cities in the plots of Russian epics. However, only in the second half of the 19th century. cultural traditions of the urban population itself, cut off from the land, developed. Along with old forms and genres, such as square and fair folklore, cries of peddlers (small traders), the city developed its own song culture (romances), its own non-fairy tale prose, its own rituals; The long-standing tradition of handwritten collections (songbooks, albums with poems) received new development. All this in one form or another continues to live in our time.
As A. S. Kargin noted, urban folklore began to be seriously studied only in the 1980s. The researcher wrote: “Only in the last quarter of the 20th century, many folklorists intuitively felt and then recognized that a new layer of culture had loudly declared itself, which did not fit into the established schemes of traditional folkloristics. It became obvious that the city had formed a unique folk culture, very contradictory, different from the peasant tradition."
In the 20th century The process of extinction of traditional rituals and the dying out of old genres of folklore accelerated. This was partly facilitated by the fact that in the pre-October period the official attitude towards many folklore phenomena was negative: they were declared “outdated” and “reactionary”. This extended to agricultural holidays, ritual songs, spells, spiritual poems, some historical songs, etc. At the same time, new works of different genres arose that reflected new problems and realities of life. It is possible to single out food stages in the development of Russian folklore after 1917: civil war; interwar period; Great Patriotic War 1941-1945; post-war period; modern period.
The modern oral repertoire of the people and late traditional folklore are different concepts. The modern repertoire is all those works that people remember or perform, regardless of the time of their creation. The modern repertoire includes some works of classical folklore and even relict elements of early traditional folklore. Late traditional folklore - component modern repertoire, works created after the collapse of the feudal village.
Old national folklore performed important functions in later historical and socio-economic conditions. Its consolidating role is known during the fratricidal civil war, when all participants in the tragic events performed traditional works that condemned evil and violence. During the Great Patriotic War, epics and old soldiers' songs, to which agitators and artists turned, intensified the patriotic feeling of the people.
In folklore created in the 20th century, researchers note a mosaic pattern: different age, social orientation and different ideological orientation. It reflected the historical inconsistency of the worldview and aspirations of the country's population, rural and urban residents. A number of works supported the undertakings and achievements of the Soviet government: the elimination of illiteracy, collectivization, industrialization, the defeat of the Nazi invaders, the restoration of the national economy destroyed during the war, Komsomol construction projects, space exploration, etc. Along with them, works were created that condemned dispossession and other repressions. In the camps, Gulag folklore arose among prisoners (a scientific conference in St. Petersburg in 1992 was dedicated to it).
Modern folklore is the folklore of the intelligentsia, students, students, townspeople, rural residents, participants in regional wars, etc. Folklore of the last quarter of the 20th century. so modified from earlier forms that it is sometimes called post-folklore. Nevertheless, late traditional folklore has preserved the continuity of folk oral and poetic traditions. This was expressed in the creation of new works in the form of pre-existing genres, as well as in the partial use of old folk poetics and stylistics.
In the modern folklore process, the ratio of the collective and individual principles has changed, the role of the individual has increased creative personality. A striking sign of late-traditional folklore is the works of professional and semi-professional authors, adopted by the people.
Late traditional folklore is a complex, dynamic and not fully defined system, the development of which continues. Science has only just identified or begun to develop many phenomena of late-traditional folklore. Among them: urban folklore; Gulag folklore; folklore of participants in regional wars (in Afghanistan, Chechnya); folklore of different social groups (for example, student folklore); modern children's folklore; modern non-fairy tale prose; joke. Special topics are the relationship between Russian folklore and the folklore of those peoples of Russia among whom Russians are settled; folklore of Russian diasporas abroad.
It is necessary to critically evaluate the already accumulated experience in the study of late traditional folklore (for example, the folklore of the Civil War and in general of the 1920s - 1930s was covered one-sidedly and incompletely). When turning to published texts of late traditional folklore, one should take into account the possibility of falsifications.
Characterizing genres and genre systems classical folklore, we have already touched upon the problem of their later development, the question of book influences. This chapter will examine ditties, workers' folklore, and folklore of the Great Patriotic War period.
Zueva T.V., Kirdan B.P. Russian folklore - M., 2002
To answer the question: “Modern folklore and its forms”
Alekseevsky M.D.
On the question of defining modern folklore // Modern folklore. Reference publication. Materials for discussion. M., 2012
(Alekseevsky M.D., Ph.D. in Philology, Head of the Sector of Modern Folklore of the State Rep. Center of Russian Folklore).
First moment, which he stipulates in the article, is associated with a generalization of research practice: what is meant by modern folklore today? Trying to answer this question, researchers usually contrast traditional peasant folklore with modern urban folklore, noting it distinctive features. So, for example, N.I. Tolstoy believed that urban folklore is “a kind of anti-folklore, capable of having both oral and written form, but maintaining, as a rule, anonymity" (Tolstoy N.I. From A.N. Veselovsky to the present day // Living Antiquity. 1996. ...
No. 2. P.5).Wrote about the fundamental differences between classical folklore and modern neoplasms S.Yu.Neklyudov, who proposed using the term “ post-folklore"(Neklyudov S.Yu. Folklore of the modern city // Modern urban folklore. M., 2003. P. 5-24; aka. After folklore // Living Antiquity. 1995. No. 1. P. 2-4). V.P.Anikin sharply criticized the term “post-folklore”,<…>this concept “excludes the existence of folklore in general, in best case scenario involves its replacement with something else,” the scientist proposed the term to denote new phenomena in folklore "neo-folklore"(Anikin V.P. Not “post-folklore”, but folklore (to raise the question of its modern traditions) // Slavic traditional culture and the modern world: Collection of materials of the scientific and practical conference. Issue 2.M., 1997. P.224-240). Nihilistic criticism of all of these terms was made by A.A.Panchenko, who drew attention to the conventionality of the concept of “classical folklore”: “I believe that if a certain analytical distance is maintained peasant culture Modern times turns out to be little more “folklore” or “traditional” than popular culture modern city<…>"(Panchenko A.A. Panchenko A.A. Folklore as a science // First All-Russian Congress of Folklorists. Collection of reports. M., 2005. T.1. P.3-5).
Second point article is related to the consideration of the actual criteria« modernity" in relation to folklore. M.D. Alekseevsky believes that there can be no sharp transition from “old” folklore to “new”: many phenomena and traditions that are archaic in their origin actively exist and develop today, and some modern folklore new formations, upon closer examination, turn out to be not so new. Without setting a strict time frame, as a basic point of reference we should focus on “modernity” in the most literal sense of the word, as on what is happening here and now. If this or that folklore phenomenon actively exists and develops today before our eyes, then it is right to classify it as “modern folklore”, regardless of when it arose. A typical example is conspiracies: although the conspiracy tradition and the texts of many conspiracies are very archaic in origin, currently the popularity of the practice of using conspiracies is extremely high in both rural and urban environments. At the same time, the focus on “here and now” should not be absolute; it is just a guideline. Let’s say, jokes about M.S. Gorbachev from the time of Perestroika practically do not exist at present and certainly do not develop, so in the strict sense of the word they cannot be called “modern folklore”. At the same time, they are one of the stages in the evolution of the political joke, a folklore genre that currently continues to be a relevant and “living” genre, so if we consider jokes about Gorbachev in this context, they can be attributed to modern folklore, albeit with certain reservations.
Third point in the article correlated with criterion "folklore". When working with peasant folklore, researchers identified its basic characteristics: traditionality, collectivity, anonymity, variability, orality, and the presence of creativity. However, in reality, as practice shows, folklorists do not require strict adherence to all these characteristics in order to call a certain cultural phenomenon “folklore” and begin to study it. For example, the same conspiracies also exist in written form, that is, they do not meet the criterion of orality, but folklorists continue to study them. At the same time, it is obvious that what more The phenomenon corresponds to the listed parameters, the more effective the folkloristics methodology turns out to be for its analysis. Thus, by modern folklore we will mean existing in modern times cultural phenomena, for which the indicated characteristics of “classical folklore” are more or less typical: traditionality, collectivity, anonymity, variability, orality, the presence of creativity.
Main areas of modern folklore:
1.Ritual culture. Lyrics:
— Maternity rituals
— Wedding rituals (bride ransom, visiting wedding attractions)
telnosti, wedding toastmaster). Wedding script
— Calendar rituals (Christmas and Christmastide, Maslenitsa, Easter, Trinity).
Fortune telling. Conspiracies
— Funeral and memorial rites (veneration of places of death)
— Rites of passage and initiation (children, teenagers, students,
army, professional, subcultural)
2.Religious ritual practices. Spiritual poems. Legends. Prayers.
Saints/circular letters
3. Holiday culture:
- March 8th
— June twelfth
- day of the city, town, village
- Peter and Fevronia day
- Victory Day and Remembrance Days
- birthday
- Valentine's Day
— New Year
— April 1st
- May Day
— Fourth of November
— corporate holiday
- professional holiday
- children's party
equator/meridian
— skit
— halloween
4. Genres/texts of “classical folklore” and new formations:
— anecdote and its varieties (children’s, political, subcultural, etc.)
- little story
- tease
- mystery
- game (calendar, children's, yard, salon)
- legend and its varieties (urban, family, about miracles, toponymic
- children's decoys
- proverbs
- songs and their varieties (bardic, urban, student, adaptations)
- legends and their varieties (historical, toponymic)
— signs and their varieties (calendar, professional, student)
- poems (sadistic, “pies”, etc.)
- children's horror stories
- ditty
Freebie/ball
5. Written folklore:
— albums and their varieties (girl’s, demobilization, prison, etc.)
- naive literature
- modern standard
- handwritten songbook
— warning letters
- chain letters
- clichéd congratulations
- lists
Videolor
SMS-lor
8. Internet folklore:
- demotivators
- fanfiction
8. Street and other actions:
- demonstrations
— flash mobs
Folklore how special kind art is a qualitatively unique component of fiction. It integrates the culture of a society of a certain ethnicity on a special level historical development society.
Folklore is ambiguous: it also reveals limitless folk wisdom, and popular conservatism, inertia. In any case, folklore embodies the highest spiritual powers of the people and reflects elements of national artistic consciousness.
The term “folklore” itself (from English word folklore - folk wisdom) is a common name for folk art in international scientific terminology. The term was first coined in 1846 by the English archaeologist W. J. Thomson. It was first adopted as an official scientific concept by the English Folklore Society, founded in 1878. In the years 1800-1990, the term came into scientific use in many countries of the world.
Folklore (English folklore - “folk wisdom”) - folk art, most often oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses (legends, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epics), folk music (songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theater), dance, architecture, fine and arts and crafts.
Folklore is creativity for which no material is required and where the means of embodiment artistic design is the man himself. Folklore has a clearly expressed didactic orientation. Much of it was created specifically for children and was dictated by the great national concern for young people - their future. “Folklore” serves the child from his very birth.
Folk poetry reveals the most essential connections and patterns of life, leaving aside the individual and special. Folklore gives them the most important and simple concepts about life and people. It reflects what is generally interesting and vital, what affects everyone: human work, his relationship with nature, life in a team.
The importance of folklore as an important part in education and development in the modern world is well known and generally accepted. Folklore always responds sensitively to people's needs, being a reflection of the collective mind and accumulated life experience.
Main features and properties of folklore:
1. Bifunctionality. Each folklore work is an organic part of human life and is determined by practical purpose. It is focused on a specific moment folk life. For example, a lullaby - it is sung to calm and put a child to sleep. When the child falls asleep, the song stops - it is no longer necessary. This is how the aesthetic, spiritual and practical function of a lullaby is manifested. Everything is interconnected in a work; beauty cannot be separated from benefit, benefit from beauty.
2. Polyelement. Folklore is multi-elemental, since its internal diversity and numerous relationships of an artistic, cultural-historical and socio-cultural nature are obvious.
Not every folklore work includes all artistic and figurative elements. There are also genres in which they minimum quantity. The performance of a folklore work is the integrity of the creative act. Among the many artistic and figurative elements of folklore, the main ones are verbal, musical, dance and facial expressions. Polyelementity manifests itself during an event, for example, “Burn, burn clearly so that it doesn’t go out!” or when studying a round dance - the game “Boyars”, where movements take place row by row. In this game all the main artistic and figurative elements interact. Verbal and musical are manifested in the musical and poetic genre of the song, performed simultaneously with choreographic movement (dance element). This reveals the polyelement nature of folklore, its original synthesis, called syncretism. Syncretism characterizes the relationship, integrity of the internal components and properties of folklore.
3.Collectivity. Absence of author. Collectivity is manifested both in the process of creating a work and in the nature of the content, which always objectively reflects the psychology of many people. Asking who composed a folk song is like asking who composed the language we speak. Collectivity is determined in the performance of folklore works. Some components of their forms, for example, the chorus, require the mandatory inclusion of all participants in the action in the performance.
4. Illiteracy. The orality of the transmission of folklore material is manifested in the unwritten forms of transmission of folklore information. Artistic images and skills are transferred from the performer, the artist, to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student. Folklore is oral creativity. It lives only in the memory of people and is transmitted in live performance “from mouth to mouth.” Artistic images and skills are transferred from the performer, the artist, to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student.
5.Traditionality. The variety of creative manifestations in folklore only outwardly seems spontaneous. Over the course of a long time, objective ideals of creativity were formed. These ideals became those practical and aesthetic standards, deviations from which would be inappropriate.
6.Variability. Variation network is one of the stimuli of constant movement, the “breathing” of a folklore work, and each folklore work is always like a version of itself. The folklore text turns out to be unfinished, open to each subsequent performer. For example, in the round dance game “Boyars”, children move “row by row”, and the step may be different. In some places this is a regular step with an accent on the last syllable of the line, in others it is a step with a stamp on the last two syllables, in others it is a variable step. It is important to convey the idea that in a folklore work creation - performance and performance - creation coexist. Variability can be thought of as changeability works of art, their uniqueness during performance or other form of reproduction. Each author or performer complemented traditional images or works with his own reading or vision.
7. Improvisation is a feature folklore creativity. Each new performance of the work is enriched with new elements (textual, methodological, rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic). Which the performer brings. Any performer constantly introduces his own material into a well-known work, which contributes to the constant development and change of the work, during which the standard crystallizes artistic image. Thus, the folklore performance becomes the result of many years of collective creativity.
IN modern literature A broad interpretation of folklore as a set of folk traditions, customs, views, beliefs, and arts is widespread.
In particular, the famous folklorist V.E. Gusev in his book “Aesthetics of Folklore” examines this concept as an artistic reflection of reality, carried out in verbal, musical, choreographic and dramatic forms of collective folk art, expressing the worldview of the working masses and inextricably linked with life and everyday life. Folklore is a complex, synthetic art. His works often combine elements of various types of art - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnography. 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.
To the main aspects of the content folk culture can be attributed: the worldview of the people, people's experience, housing, costume, labor activity, leisure, crafts, family relationships, folk holidays and rituals, knowledge and skills, artistic creativity. It should be noted that like any other social phenomenon, folk culture has specific features, among which we should highlight: an inextricable connection with nature, with the habitat; openness, the educational nature of Russian folk culture, the ability to contact with the culture of other peoples, dialogicality, originality, integrity, situationality, the presence of a targeted emotional charge, preservation of elements of pagan and Orthodox culture.
Traditions and folklore are a wealth developed by generations and transmitted in an emotional and figurative form historical experience, cultural heritage. In the cultural and creative conscious activity of the broad masses, folk traditions, folklore and artistic modernity merge into a single channel.
The main functions of folklore include religious - mythological, ceremonial, ritual, artistic - aesthetic, pedagogical, communicative - informational, social - psychological.
Folklore is very diverse. There is traditional, modern, peasant and urban folklore.
Traditional folklore- these are the forms and mechanisms artistic culture, which are preserved, recorded and passed on from generation to generation. They capture universal aesthetic values that retain their significance outside of specific historical social changes.
Traditional folklore is divided into two groups – ritual and non-ritual.
Ritual folklore includes:
· calendar folklore (carols, Maslenitsa songs, freckles);
· family folklore (wedding, maternity, funeral rites, lullabies, etc.),
· occasional folklore (spells, chants, spells).
Non-ritual folklore is divided into four groups:
· folklore of speech situations (proverbs, sayings, riddles, teasers, nicknames, curses);
Poetry (ditties, songs);
· folklore drama (Petrushka Theater, nativity scene drama);
· prose.
Folklore poetry includes: epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs (poetic parodies), sadistic rhymes. Folklore prose is again divided into two groups: fairy-tale and non-fairytale. Fairy-tale prose includes: a fairy tale (which, in turn, comes in four types: a fairy tale, a fairy tale about animals, an everyday tale, a cumulative fairy tale) and an anecdote. Non-fairy tale prose includes: tradition, legend, tale, mythological story, story about a dream. The folklore of speech situations includes: proverbs, sayings, well wishes, curses, nicknames, teasers, dialogue graffiti, riddles, tongue twisters and some others. There are also written forms of folklore, such as chain letters, graffiti, albums (for example, songbooks).
Ritual folklore is folklore genres performed as part of various rituals. Most successfully, in my opinion, the definition of the ritual was given by D.M. Ugrinovich: “Rite is a certain way of transmitting certain ideas, norms of behavior, values and feelings to new generations. The ritual is distinguished from other methods of such transmission by its symbolic nature. This is its specificity. Ritual actions always act as symbols that embody certain social ideas, perceptions, images and evoke corresponding feelings.” Works calendar folklore timed to coincide with annual folk holidays that were of an agricultural nature.
Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs: carols, Maslenitsa songs, vesnyankas, Semitic songs, etc.
Vesnyanka (spring calls) are ritual songs of an incantatory nature that accompany the Slavic ritual of calling out spring.
Carols are New Year's songs. They were performed during Christmas time (from December 24 to January 6), when caroling was going on. Caroling - walking around the courtyards singing carols. For these songs, carolers were rewarded with gifts - a festive treat. The main meaning of the carol is glorification. Carolers give perfect description the house of the magnified one. It turns out that before us is not an ordinary peasant hut, but a tower, around which “stands an iron tyn”, “on each stamen there is a crown”, and on each crown “a golden crown”. The people living in it are a match for this tower. Pictures of wealth are not reality, but a wish: carols perform, to some extent, the functions of a magic spell.
Maslenitsa is a folk holiday cycle that has been preserved by the Slavs since pagan times. The ritual is associated with seeing off winter and welcoming spring, lasting a whole week. The celebration was carried out according to a strict schedule, which was reflected in the name of the days of Maslenitsa week: Monday - “meeting”, Tuesday - “flirt”, Wednesday - “gourmet”, Thursday - “revelry”, Friday - “mother-in-law’s evening”, Saturday - “mother-in-law’s gatherings” ", resurrection - "seeing off", the end of Maslenitsa fun.
Few Maslenitsa songs have arrived. According to theme and purpose, they are divided into two groups: one is associated with the rite of meeting, the other with the rite of seeing off (“funeral”) Maslenitsa. The songs of the first group are distinguished by a major, cheerful character. This is, first of all, a majestic song in honor of Maslenitsa. The songs accompanying the farewell to Maslenitsa are in a minor key. The “funeral” of Maslenitsa meant farewell to winter and a spell, welcoming the coming spring.
Family and household rituals predetermined by the cycle human life. They are divided into maternity, wedding, recruiting and funeral.
Maternity rites sought to protect the newborn from hostile mystical powers, and also assumed the well-being of the infant in life. A ritual bath of the newborn was performed, and health was charmed with various sentences.
Wedding ceremony. It is a kind of folk performance, where all the roles are written and there are even directors - a matchmaker or a matchmaker. The particular scale and significance of this ritual should show the significance of the event, play out the meaning of the ongoing change in a person’s life.
The ritual educates the behavior of the bride in her future married life and educates all participants in the ritual. It shows the patriarchal nature of family life, its way of life.
Funeral rites. During the funeral, various rituals were performed, which were accompanied by special funeral lamentations. Funeral lamentations truthfully reflected the life, everyday consciousness of the peasant, love for the deceased and fear of the future, the tragic situation of the family in harsh conditions.
Occasional folklore (from the Latin occasionalis - random) - does not correspond to generally accepted use, and is of an individual nature.
A type of occasional folklore are conspiracies.
CONSPIRACIES - a folk-poetic incantatory verbal formula to which magical power is attributed.
CALLS - an appeal to the sun and other natural phenomena, as well as to animals and especially often to birds, which were considered the harbingers of spring. Moreover, the forces of nature were revered as living: they make requests for spring, wish for its speedy arrival, and complain about winter.
COUNTERS are a type of children's creativity, small poetic texts with a clear rhyme-rhythm structure in a humorous form.
The genres of non-ritual folklore developed under the influence of syncretism.
It includes folklore of speech situations: proverbs, fables, signs and sayings. They contain a person’s judgments about the way of life, about work, about higher natural forces, and statements about human affairs. This is a vast area of moral assessments and judgments, how to live, how to raise children, how to honor ancestors, thoughts about the need to follow precepts and examples, these are everyday rules of behavior. In a word, their functionality covers almost all worldview areas.
RIDDLE - works with hidden meaning. They contain rich invention, wit, poetry, figurative structure colloquial speech. The people themselves aptly defined the riddle: “Without a face in a mask.” The object that is hidden, the “face,” is hidden under a “mask” - an allegory or allusion, a roundabout speech, a circumlocution. Whatever riddles you can come up with to test your attention, ingenuity, and intelligence. Some consist of simple question, others are similar to puzzles. Riddles are easily solved by those who have a good idea of the objects and phenomena in question, and also know how to solve them in words. hidden meaning. If a child looks at the world around him with attentive, keen eyes, noticing its beauty and richness, then every tricky question and any allegory in the riddle will be solved.
PROVERB - as a genre, unlike a riddle, is not an allegory. In it, a specific action or deed is given an expanded meaning. In their form, folk riddles are close to proverbs: the same measured, coherent speech, the same frequent use of rhyme and consonance of words. But a proverb and a riddle differ in that a riddle needs to be guessed, and a proverb is a lesson.
Unlike a proverb, a PROVERB is not a complete judgment. This is a figurative expression used in an expanded sense.
Sayings, like proverbs, remain living folklore genres: they are constantly found in our everyday speech. The proverbs contain a capacious humorous definition of the inhabitants of a locality, city, living nearby or somewhere far away.
Folklore poetry is an epic, a historical song, a spiritual verse, a lyrical song, a ballad, a cruel romance, a ditty, and children's poetic songs.
EPIC is a folk epic song, a genre characteristic of the Russian tradition. Such epics are known as “Sadko”, “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber”, “Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich” and others. The term “epic” was introduced into scientific use in the 40s of the 19th century. folklorist I.P. Sakharov. The basis of the plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - “old man”, “old woman”, implying that the action in question took place in the past).
FOLK SONGS are very diverse in composition. In addition to songs that are part of the calendar, wedding and funeral rites. These are round dances. Game and dance songs. A large group of songs are lyrical non-ritual songs (love, family, Cossack, soldier, coachman, bandit and others).
Special genre song creativity – historical songs. Such songs tell about famous events in Russian history. The heroes of historical songs are real personalities.
Round dance songs, like ritual songs, had a magical meaning. Round dance and game songs depicted scenes from wedding ceremonies and family life.
LYRICAL SONGS are folk songs that express the personal feelings and moods of the singers. Lyrical songs are unique both in content and in artistic form. Their originality is determined by their genre nature and specific conditions of origin and development. Here we are dealing with a lyrical kind of poetry, different from epic in the principles of reflecting reality. N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that folk lyrical songs “express inner feeling, excited by the phenomena of ordinary life,” and N.A. Radishchev saw in them a reflection of the people’s soul, spiritual sorrow.
Lyrical songs are a vivid example of the artistic creativity of the people. They contributed to national culture special artistic language and examples of high poetry, reflected the spiritual beauty, ideals and aspirations of the people, the moral foundations of peasant life.
CHASTUSHKA is one of the youngest folklore genres. These are small poetic texts of rhymed verses. The first ditties were excerpts from songs large size. Chatushka is a comic genre. It contains a sharp thought, an apt observation. The topics are very diverse. The ditties often ridiculed what seemed wild, absurd, and disgusting.
CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE is usually called both works that are performed by adults for children, and those composed by the children themselves. Children's folklore includes lullabies, pesters, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters and chants, teasers, counting rhymes, nonsense, etc. Modern children's folklore has been enriched with new genres. These are horror stories, mischievous poems and songs (funny adaptations of famous songs and poems), jokes.
There are different connections folklore and literature. First of all, literature traces its origins to folklore. The main genres of dramaturgy that have developed in Ancient Greece, - tragedies and comedies - go back to religious rituals. Medieval romances of chivalry, telling of travels through imaginary lands, fights with monsters and the love of brave warriors, are based on the motifs of fairy tales. Literary songs originate from folk lyrical songs. lyrical works. The genre of small action-packed narratives - short stories - goes back to folk tales.
Very often writers deliberately turned to folklore traditions. Interest in oral folk art and passion for folklore awoke in the pre-romantic and romantic eras.
The tales of A.S. Pushkin go back to the plots of Russian fairy tales. Imitation of Russian folk historical songs - “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich...” by M.Yu. Lermontov. N.A. Nekrasov recreated the stylistic features of folk songs in his poems about the difficult lot of peasants.
Folklore not only influences literature, but also experiences the opposite effect. Many of the author's poems became folk songs. The most famous example is the poem by I.Z. Surikov “Steppe and steppe all around..”
Folklore drama. These include: Parsley Theater, religious drama, nativity scene drama.
VERTEP DRAMA got its name from the nativity scene - a portable puppet theater in the shape of a two-story wooden box, whose architecture resembles a stage for performing medieval mysteries. In turn, the name, which came from the plot of the main play, in which the action developed in a cave - nativity scene. This type of theater was widespread in Western Europe, and he came to Russia with traveling puppeteers from Ukraine and Belarus. The repertoire consisted of plays with religious themes and satirical scenes - interludes that were improvisational in nature. The most popular play is "King Herod".
PETRUSHKA THEATER – glove puppet theater. The main character of the play is the cheerful Petrushka with a large nose, a protruding chin, a cap on his head, with the participation of which a number of scenes are played out with various characters. The number of characters reached fifty, these are characters such as a soldier, a gentleman, a gypsy, a bride, a doctor and others. Such performances used techniques of folk comic speech, lively dialogues with play on words and contrasts, with elements of self-praise, using action and gestures.
The Petrushki Theater was created not only under the influence of Russian, Slavic, and Western European puppet traditions. It was a type of folk theater culture, part of the extremely developed entertainment folklore in Russia. Therefore, a lot of things unite it with folk drama, with speeches by farce barkers, with the verdicts of the groomsmen at the wedding, with amusing popular prints, with the jokes of the raeshniks, etc.
The special atmosphere of the city's festive square explains, for example, Petrushka's familiarity, his unbridled gaiety and indiscriminateness in the object of ridicule and shame. After all, Petrushka beats not only class enemies, but everyone in a row - from his own fiancée to the policeman, often beats him for nothing (a blackamoor, an old beggar woman, a German clown, etc.), in the end he gets hit too: the dog mercilessly tugs at his nose. The puppeteer, like other participants in the fair, square fun, is attracted by the very opportunity to ridicule, parody, beat, and the more, louder, more unexpected, sharper, the better. Elements of social protest and satire were very successfully and naturally superimposed on this ancient basis of laughter.
Like all folklore entertainments, “Petrushka” is filled with obscenities and curses. The original meaning of these elements has been studied quite fully, and how deeply they penetrated into the folk culture of laughter and what place swearing, verbal obscenity and demeaning, cynical gestures occupied in it, is fully shown by M.M. Bakhtin.
Performances were shown several times a day in different conditions (at fairs, in front of booths, on city streets, in the suburbs). "Walking" Parsley was the most common use of the doll.
For the mobile folk theater, a light screen, dolls, miniature backstage and a curtain were specially made. Petrushka ran around the stage, his gestures and movements creating the appearance of a living person.
The comic effect of the episodes was achieved using techniques characteristic of folk culture of laughter: fights, beatings, obscenities, the imaginary deafness of a partner, funny movements and gestures, mimicking, funny funerals, etc.
There are conflicting opinions about the reasons for the extraordinary popularity of the theater: topicality, satirical and social orientation, comic character, simple play that is understandable to all segments of the population, the charm of the main character, acting improvisation, freedom of choice of material, the sharp tongue of the puppet.
Parsley is a folk holiday joy.
Parsley is a manifestation of popular optimism, a mockery of the poor at the powerful and rich.
Folklore prose. It is divided into two groups: fairy tale (fairy tale, anecdote) and non-fairy tale (legend, tradition, tale).
TALE - the most famous genre folklore This is a type of folklore prose, distinctive feature which is fiction. Plots, events and characters in fairy tales are fictitious. The modern reader of folklore works also discovers fiction in other genres of oral folk art. Folk storytellers and listeners believed in the truth of tales (the name comes from the word “byl” - “truth”); the word “epic” was invented by folklorists; Popular epics were called “old times.” Russian peasants who told and listened to epics, believing in their truth, believed that the events depicted in them took place a long time ago - in the time of mighty heroes and fire-breathing snakes. They did not believe fairy tales, knowing that they told about something that did not happen, does not happen and cannot be.
It is customary to distinguish four types of fairy tales: magical, everyday (otherwise known as novelistic), cumulative (otherwise known as “chain-like”) and fairy tales about animals.
MAGIC TALES differ from other fairy tales in their complex, detailed plot, which consists of a number of unchanging motifs that necessarily follow each other in a certain order. These are fantastic creatures (for example, Koschey the Immortal or Baba Yaga), and an animated, human-like character denoting winter (Morozko), and wonderful objects (a self-assembled tablecloth, walking boots, a flying carpet, etc.).
Fairy tales preserve the memory of ideas and rituals that existed in ancient times. They reflect ancient relationships between people in a family or clan.
EVERYDAY TALES tell about people, about their family life, about the relationship between the owner and the farmhand, the gentleman and the peasant, the peasant and the priest, the soldier and the priest. A commoner - a farm laborer, a peasant, a soldier returning from service - is always more savvy than a priest or a landowner, from whom, thanks to cunning, he takes money, things, and sometimes his wife. Usually, the plots of everyday fairy tales are centered around some unexpected event, an unforeseen turning point that occurs thanks to the hero’s cunning.
Everyday tales are often satirical. They ridicule the greed and stupidity of those in power. They do not talk about wonderful things and travels to the distant kingdom, but talk about things from peasant everyday life. But everyday fairy tales are no more believable than magical ones. Therefore, the description of wild, immoral, terrible actions in everyday fairy tales does not cause disgust or indignation, but cheerful laughter. After all, this is not life, but a fable.
Everyday fairy tales are a much younger genre than other types of fairy tales. In modern folklore, the heir to this genre was the anecdote (from gr.anekdotos - “unpublished”
CUMULATIVE TALES built on repeated repetition of the same actions or events. In cumulative (from Latin Cumulatio - accumulation) fairy tales, several plot principles are distinguished: accumulation of characters in order to achieve the necessary goal; a heap of actions ending in disaster; a chain of human or animal bodies; escalation of episodes, causing unjustified experiences of the characters.
The accumulation of heroes helping in some important action is obvious in the fairy tale “Turnip”.
Cumulative tales are a very ancient type of fairy tale. They have not been studied enough.
TALES ABOUT ANIMALS preserve the memory of ancient ideas, according to which people descended from ancestors - animals. Animals in these fairy tales behave like people. Cunning and cunning animals deceive others - the gullible and the stupid, and this trickery is never condemned. The plots of fairy tales about animals are reminiscent of mythological stories about heroes - rogues and their tricks.
Non-fairy tale prose is stories and incidents from life that tell about a person’s meeting with characters of Russian demonology - sorcerers, witches, mermaids, etc. This also includes stories about saints, shrines and miracles - about the communication of a person who has accepted the Christian faith with forces of a higher order.
BYLICHKA is a folklore genre, a story about a miraculous event that supposedly happened in reality - mainly about a meeting with spirits, “evil spirits”.
LEGEND (from Latin legenda “reading”, “readable”) is one of the varieties of non-fairy tale prose folklore. Written legend about some historical events or personalities. Legend is an approximate synonym for the concept of myth; an epic story about what happened in time immemorial; The main characters of the story are usually heroes in the full sense of the word, often gods and other supernatural forces are directly involved in the events. Events in the legend are often exaggerated, and a lot of fiction is added. Therefore, scientists do not consider legends to be completely reliable historical evidence, without denying, however, that most legends are based on real events. In a figurative sense, legends refer to the events of the past, covered in glory and arousing admiration, depicted in fairy tales, stories, etc. As a rule, they contain additional religious or social pathos.
Legends contain memories of ancient events, an explanation of some phenomenon, name or custom.
The words of Odoevsky V.F. sound surprisingly relevant. remarkable Russian, thinker, musician: “We must not forget that from an unnatural life, that is, one where human needs are not satisfied, a painful state occurs... in the same way, idiocy can occur from inaction of thought..., a muscle is paralyzed from an abnormal state of the nerve, - in the same way, a lack of thinking distorts artistic feeling, and the lack of artistic feeling paralyzes thought." In Odoevsky V.F. you can find thoughts about aesthetic education children based on folklore, consonant with what we would like to bring to life today in the field of children's education and upbringing: “... in the field of human spiritual activity, I will limit myself to the following remark: the soul expresses itself either through body movements, shapes, colors, or through a series sounds that make up singing or playing a musical instrument"