Scientific and practical conference

“First steps into science-2015” on the basis of the Petropavlovsk Secondary School named after the Hero of the Soviet Union D.A. Zhukov.

Subject:

“Folklore motives in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin" (project)

10th grade student,

MBOU "Solovyikhinskaya Secondary School"

Scientific adviser:

Nechaeva Irina Nikolaevna,

teacher of Russian language and literature

Petropavlovskoe, 2015

Content

Plan research work………………………………………………...2

Epigraph………………………………………………………………………2 Relevance…………………………………………………………… ……………………...3

Objectives of the work………………………………………………………………………………….5

Hypothesis………………………………………………………………………………4

Objectives of the work………………………………………………………………………………..5

Research methods……………………………………………………………………………….5

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..6

Main part…………………………………………………………..7-16

Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………......17

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………….18

Results…………………………………………………………………………………18

Literature………………………………………………………………………………19

Appendix…………………………………………………………....20-22

Research plan :

Stage I.Organizational and preparatory.

Determining the research topic; formulation of problematic research questions; research planning (goals, hypothesis, methods); familiarization with the criteria for assessing public defense of work.

Stage II.Research.

Conducting research: collecting information; solving intermediate problems; documenting research results; information analysis; drawing conclusions

III.Final. Public protection of educational and research work.

Oral report with demonstration of materials, written report.

Epigraph

“Saltykov has... this serious and malicious humor, this realism, sober and clear amid the most unbridled play of the imagination...”

I.S. Turgenev

Relevance

A striking sign of the creativity of many writers of the 19th century century was their ability to continue folklore traditions in their works. Pushkin, Nekrasov, Gogol, and Tolstoy were famous for this. But this series would be incomplete if we did not add one more name to it - Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The fairy tale is one of the most popular folklore genres. This type of oral storytelling with fantastic fiction has a long history. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are associated not only with folklore tradition, but also with satirical literary fairy tales of the 18th-19th centuries. Already in his declining years, the author turned to the fairy tale genre and created the collection “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age.” They, according to the writer, are called upon to “educate” these very “children”, to open their eyes to the world around them.

In “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age,” the writer castigates the unrest that hinders the development of Russia. And the main evil that the author condemns is serfdom.

I explore the connection of tales from Saltykov-Shchedrin with the traditions of oral folk art, their thematic diversity, as well as artistic features. In his work on fairy tales, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on the satirical fables of I. A. Krylov, on the traditions of Western European fairy tales. He created new genre a political fairy tale that combines fantasy with real, topical political reality.

Saltykov-Shchedrin’s faith in his people and in his history remained unchanged. Thus, in the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, satire on various aspects of life is clearly visible.

The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore.Saltykov-Shchedrin introduced topical political themes into the world of folk art and, with the help of familiar characters, revealed complex problems of our time.

Relying on folk wisdom, using the riches of folk speech, Russian folklore, imbued with purely folk humor, the writer created works whose purpose was to awaken in the people their great spirit, their will and strength. With all his creativity, Saltykov-Shchedrin sought to ensure that “children of a fair age” matured and ceased to be children.

Hypothesis: disclosure of complex problems of our time by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin through an introduction to the world of folk art, through folklore motifs.

Goal of the work: Find out the distinctive features and characteristics of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales.

Tasks:

draw attention to the study of the work of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin as prophetic;

collect material about artistic features and folklore motifs;

Research methods:

1. Questioning of students on the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

2. Selection and analysis of information from various sources.

3.Testing based on the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Object of study: works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, critical literature on this topic.

Duration of the study: November 2014 – May 2015

Introduction.

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote more than 30 fairy tales. Turning to this genre was natural for the writer. Fairy-tale elements (fantasy, hyperbole, convention, etc.) permeate all of his work.

“A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it!..” But A.S. Pushkin was right. Yes, a fairy tale is a lie, a fiction, but it is she who teaches us to recognize and hate hostile traits in the world, a fairy tale shows everything positive traits people and stigmatizes and ridicules domination. With the help of a fairy tale, it is easier for the author to communicate with the people, because its language is understandable to everyone. In order to verify this, I would like to analyze the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

What brings Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales closer to folk tales? Typical fairy tale openings (“Once upon a time there were two generals...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner...”); sayings (“at the command of a pike”, “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen”); phrases characteristic of folk speech (“thought-thought”, “said-done”); syntax and vocabulary close to the folk language; exaggeration, grotesque, hyperbole: one of the generals eats the other; " wild landowner“, like a cat, in an instant, climbs a tree, a man cooks a handful of soup. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets the plot in motion: two generals “suddenly found themselves on desert island"; By the grace of God, “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.” Saltykov-Shchedrin also follows the folk tradition in fairy tales about animals, when in an allegorical form he ridicules the shortcomings of society!

The difference between Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales and folk tales is that they intertwine the fantastic with the real and even historically reliable.

Main part

Among the many genres of folklore, we are most interested infairy tale, for "fairy tale is a very popular genre oral folk art, genre epic, prose, plot."

The traditions of Fonvizin, Krylov, Gogol, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and others, as well as folk art, were inherited and received further development V new era in the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, who, identifying the most painful places of autocratic Russia, enriched literary images, created by progressive writers before him. According to M. Gorky’s fair definition: “It is impossible to understand the history of Russia in the second half of the 19th century without the help of Shchedrin.”
“Allegories in Shchedrin’s works are enriched with folklore images and expressions, which made his language more colorful, bright and passionate.
It has been repeatedly noted that the satirist’s tales are organically connected with folklore. However, by borrowing folklore images, Shchedrin endows them with new features that differ from those inherent in them in folk tales.” If in folklore the traits of animals are transformed into the traits of people, then the writer satirically focuses the reader’s attention on individual traits of human character, bringing him closer to the animal.

The use of proverbs and sayings is, perhaps, another of the features of Shchedrin's fairy tales, which, naturally, indicates their nationality, their originality.

A distinctive feature of the allegory of Saltykov’s fairy tales is the author’s use of periphrasis (“Bear in the Voivodeship,” “Dried Roach,” “Patron Eagle”).

Another important feature of Shchedrin's fairy tales is the use of beginnings and sayings, which give the tales a special, some kind of fantastic flavor. But unlike folk tales, fantasy has a very real, vital basis.

The writer essentially created a new genre - a political fairy tale. The life of Russian society second half of the 19th century century has been imprinted in a rich gallery of characters. “Shchedrin showed the entire social anatomy, touched upon all the main classes and strata of society: the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia.”

Approximate plan for analyzing a fairy tale

The main theme of the tale (about what?).

The main idea of ​​the fairy tale (why?).

Features of the plot. How is the main idea of ​​the fairy tale revealed in the system of characters?

Features of fairy tale images:
a) images-symbols;
b) the uniqueness of animals;
c) closeness to folk tales.

Satirical techniques used by the author.

Features of the composition: inserted episodes, landscape, portrait, interior.

A combination of folklore, fantasy and reality.

“Even though they are animals, they are still kings...”

These words can be successfully attributed to the study of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales, which the writer himself called fairy tales “for children of a fair age.”

“Fairy tales” are a kind of result of the writer’s artistic activity, since they were created at the final stage of his life and creative path. Of the 32 tales, 28 were created within four years, from 1882 to 1886.

IN satirical images The writer not only laughs at how one can distort and disfigure one’s life and even one’s appearance, but also tears about how easily and imperceptibly a person is able to abandon his high destiny and irrevocably lose himself. (This is the hero of the fairy tale " The wise minnow" - from the word “squeak”, since the gudgeon fish, if you grab it with your hand, makes a sound similar to a squeak.)

The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are not the speech of a folk storyteller. These are philosophical and satirical tales. They are about life, about what the writer saw and observed in reality. To verify this, you can compare the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin with Russian folk tales and note the common and distinctive features in them.

Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

Tales of the Russian people

Common features

Initiation
Fairytale plot
Folklore expressions
Folk vocabulary
Fairy tale characters
Ending

Distinctive features

Satire
Sarcasm
Mixing the categories of good and evil
There is no positive hero
Likening man to animal

Humor
Hyperbola
Victory of good over evil
Positive hero
Humanization of animals

What did Saltykov-Shchedrin teach “children of a fair age” to think about? - “Children of a fair age” must mature and stop being children. What are the objects of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire?

Government circles and the ruling class;

philistine-minded (liberal) intelligentsia;

the powerless position of the people in Russia, their passivity and humility,

lack of spirituality.

Satirical techniques used by the writer in fairy tales. Different ways laughter:

a) irony - ridicule that has a double meaning, where the true statement is not the direct statement, but the opposite;

sarcasm is caustic and poisonous irony, sharply exposing phenomena that are especially dangerous for humans and society;

grotesque - an extremely sharp exaggeration, a combination of the real and the fantastic, a violation of the boundaries of plausibility;

b) allegory, allegory - another meaning hidden behind the external form. Aesopian language is artistic speech based on forced allegory;

c) hyperbole - excessive exaggeration.

How did you find out? literary critics, a striking feature of the creativity of many writers of the 19th century was their ability to continue folklore traditions in their works. Pushkin, Nekrasov, Gogol, and Tolstoy were famous for this. “But this series would be incomplete if we did not add one more name to it - Saltykov-Shchedrin. Among the enormous heritage of this writer, his fairy tales are very popular. It is in them that the traditions of Russian folklore can be most clearly traced.”

Saltykov-Shchedrin turned to fairy tales not only because it was necessary to bypass censorship, which forced the writer to turn to Aesopian language, but also in order to educate the people in a form familiar and accessible to them.

a) In my own way literary form and style, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are associated with folklore traditions. In them we meet traditional fairy tale characters: talking animals, fish, Ivan the Fool and many others. The writer uses characteristic folk tale beginnings, sayings, proverbs, linguistic and compositional triple repetitions, vernacular and everyday peasant vocabulary, constant epithets, words with diminutive suffixes. As in folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not have a clear temporal and spatial framework.

b) But using traditional techniques, the author quite deliberately deviates from tradition. He introduces socio-political vocabulary, clerical phrases, and French words into the narrative. The pages of his fairy tales include episodes of modern public life. This is how styles mix, creating comic effect, and connecting the plot with the problems of our time.

Thus, enriching the tale with new satirical techniques, Saltykov-Shchedrin turned it into a tool of socio-political satire.

The satirical fantasy of Shchedrin's final book is based on folk tales about animals. The writer uses ready-made content, honed by age-old folk wisdom, freeing the satirist from the need for detailed motivations and characteristics.

In fairy tales, each animal is endowed with stable character traits: the wolf is greedy and cruel, the fox is treacherous and cunning, the hare is cowardly, the pike is predatory and voracious, the donkey is hopelessly stupid, and the bear is stupid and clumsy. This plays into the hands of satire, which by its nature shuns details and depicts life in its most dramatic manifestations, exaggerated and enlarged. That's why fairy tale type thinking organically corresponds to the very essence of satirical typification. It is no coincidence that among folk tales about animals there are satirical tales: “About Ruff Ershovich, son of Shchetinnikov” - a bright folk satire on court and legal proceedings, “About the toothy pike” - a tale that anticipates the motifs of “The Wise Minnow” and “The Idealist Crucian Carp”.

Borrowing ready-made fairy-tale plots and images from the people, Shchedrin develops the satirical content inherent in them. And the fantastic form is for him a reliable way of “Aesopian” language, at the same time understandable and accessible to the widest, democratic strata of Russian society. “With the advent of fairy tales, the addressee of Shchedrin’s satire changes significantly; the writer now addresses the people. It is no coincidence that the revolutionary intelligentsia of the 80-90s used Shchedrin’s tales for propaganda among the people.”

Saltykov-Shchedrin willingly used traditional techniques of folk art. His fairy tales often begin, like folk tales, with the words “once upon a time,” “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state.” There are often proverbs and sayings: “The horse runs - the earth trembles”, “Two deaths cannot happen, but one cannot be avoided.” What makes Shchedrin’s fairy tales very similar to folk tales is the traditional method of repetition: “everything trembled, everything trembled...”, substitutions: “Once upon a time there were two generals... at the behest of a pike, at my will, they found themselves on a desert island...”.

The author deliberately emphasizes one particular trait in each character, which is also characteristic of folklore. There are often sayings (“at the command of a pike”, “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen”); phrases characteristic of folk speech (“thought-thought”, “said-done”); syntax and vocabulary close to the folk language; exaggeration, grotesque, hyperbole: one of the generals eats the other; The “wild landowner,” like a cat, climbs a tree in an instant, a man cooks a handful of soup. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets the plot in motion: two generals “suddenly found themselves on a desert island”; by the grace of God, “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.”

In the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow,” Saltykov-Shchedrin also widely uses expressions similar to proverbs and sayings (“no matter where he turns, he’s cursed,” “living life is not like licking a whorl,” “it’s better not to eat, not to drink, rather than lose my life with a full stomach”, “I’ll swim like a gogol all over the river”, “how the water tolerates such idols”).

The satirist does not parody folklore expressions and contemporary living, popular speech, but adapts them to solve his own artistic problems, which has become a characteristic feature of the author's style.

In his work on fairy tales, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on the satirical fables of I. A. Krylov, on the traditions of Western European fairy tales. He created a new genre of political fairy tale, in which fantasy is combined with real, topical political reality.

Saltykov-Shchedrin did not copy the structure of a folk tale, but introduced something new into it. First of all, this is the appearance of the author’s image. Behind the mask of a naive joker is hidden the sarcastic grin of a merciless satirist. The image of a man is drawn completely differently than in a folk tale. In folklore, a man has intelligence, dexterity, and invariably defeats the master. In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the attitude towards the peasant is ambiguous.

Often it is he who remains the fool, despite his cleverness, as in the fairy tale “How one man fed two generals.” “The comedy and parody of the figure of the wonderful man are obvious. On the one hand, Saltykov-Shchedrin parodicly reinterprets the motif of the hero finding a wonderful helper, characteristic of folk fairy tales. Shchedrinsky’s “man” is endowed with the same supernatural gift as some Gray Wolf or Baba Yaga.”[5.70] But unlike the hero of folk tales, to whom the assistant owes something (for example, the wolf owes his life), the peasant does not have the slightest reason to be grateful to the generals.

“In world literature, the mutual influence of fairy tale plots is clearly visible. different countries and peoples; In addition, we constantly come across some images that are firmly entrenched in world folklore. This can primarily be said about the image of the wolf, which appears in both Aesop’s fables and ancient Eastern tales (in particular, Arabic ones). Russian folk tales, proverbs and sayings give the wolf its colorful characteristics. The wolf is not forgotten by Saltykov-Shchedrin (“Poor Wolf”, “Candidate for the Pillars”).”

Conclusion

His tales are a magnificent satirical monument of a bygone era. Not only the types created by Saltykov-Shchedrin, but also the catchwords and expressions of the master of Aesopian speeches are still found in our everyday life. Word-images of his works, such as “pompadour”, “idealist crucian carp”, “bungler”, “foam-skimmer”, have firmly entered the life of his contemporaries.

“I love Russia to the point of heartache,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin. He distinguished the dark phenomena of her life because he believed that moments of insight were not only possible, but constituted an inevitable page in the history of the Russian people. And he waited for these minutes and with all his creative activity tried to bring them closer, in particular, with the help of such artistic medium, like Aesopian language.

In general, all of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales can be conditionally divided into three main groups: tales castigating the autocracy and the exploiting classes; fairy tales exposing cowardice contemporary writer liberal intelligentsia and, of course, fairy tales about the people.

The images of fairy tales have come into use, become household names and live on for many decades. That's whyII think that it was not in vain that Pushkin said the words “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it!..”. After all, thanks to the fairy tale, we, I mean our generation, learned, are learning and will learn to live.

Relying on folk wisdom, using the riches of folk speech, Russian folklore, imbued with purely folk humor, the writer created works whose purpose was to awaken in the people their great spirit, their will and strength.

Conclusion

Having analyzed the work of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in accordance with the purpose of our work, I came to the following conclusions:

1. The writer’s language is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. In fairy tales, Shchedrin widely uses proverbs, sayings, sayings: “Two deaths cannot happen, one cannot be avoided,” “My hut is on the edge,” “Once upon a time...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state...” .

2. “Fairy tales” by Saltykov-Shchedrin awakened the political consciousness of the people, calling for struggle and protest.

3. The survey showed:

Most students became interested in the work of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Results:

Scientificthe significance of our work is related to the study large quantity factual material.

Practical application : the results of our research can be found when preparing history and literature lessons using the genre of political fairy tales.

The results of our research allow us to use the main conclusions of the work when developing lessons and extracurricular activities on literature and moral education of students.

Literature:

Bazanov V. G. From folklore to folk books. – L., 1973.

Bushmin A. S. The evolution of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire. - M., 1984.

History of Russian literature of the 19th century (second half). / Ed. S. M. Petrova. – M., 1974.

Kachurin M. G., Motolskaya D. K. Russian literature. – M., 1981.

Criticism about M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin //Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. The story of one city. Mr. Golovlev. Fairy tales. - M., 1997.

Lebedev Yu. V. Tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin / M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Fairy tales. - M., 1999.

Prozorov V.V. Saltykov-Shchedrin. - M., 1988.

Russian literature XIX century. Second half. Issue 1. / Ed. L. G. Maksidonova. – M., 2002.

Russian writers. Biobibliographical dictionary. / Ed. P. A. Nikolaeva. – M., 1990.

Informational resources:

Application:

1. Test.

1. What explains M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s choice of the fairy tale genre?

a) the desire to escape life’s verisimilitude.

b)desire to overcome censorship barriers

c) a passion for allegory! writing style

d) the popularity of fairy tales as a favorite genre
propaganda literature

2. What do the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin have in common with folk tales?

a) fairy tale plot

b)based on real life

V)popular ideas about good and evil

d) traditional fairy tale techniques

d) socially sensitive issues

f) images of animals typical of folk tales

3. How does the “Shchedrin” tale differ from the folk tale?

a) evil is not always punished in the finale

b)use of sarcasm and satire

V)interpretation of characters

d) introduction of images atypical for folk tales

4. Distribute the names of fairy tales by topic.

"The Wise Minnow"; "Bear in the Voivodeship"; "Eagle Patron"; “The story of how one man fed two generals”; "Horse"; "Crucian idealist"; "Bogatyr"; "The Raven Petitioner"; "Dried roach"; "Wild landowner."

a) the theme of the people

b)theme of power

V)condemnation of philistinism

5. Distribute comic means in ascending order.

Sarcasm; humor; hyperbola; irony; grotesque; satire.

6. Match the example from the fairy tale text with the name of the artistic device used in it.

a) “Men see: even though he’s stupid 1) irony
They are a landowner, and he was given a great mind...”

b)“Flying through the provincial town from - 2) speech alogism
a swarming swarm of men..."

V)“He was an enlightened minnow, 3) a grotesque
moderately liberal and very firmly
I understood that living life is not

what to lick the whorl..."

7. Which heroes of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales are atypical even for folk tales?

A)Bear

b)Donkey

V)Vobla

d) Hare

d) Piskar

e)a lion

g) Crucian carp

h) Chizhik

8. Who is ridiculed in the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow”?

A)government

b)revolutionary democrats
c) ordinary people

d) liberals

Answers to the test “M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN. FAIRY TALES"

1. c, d

2. b, d

3. a, b

4. a) “The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”, “The Horse”, “The Petitioner Crow”, “The Wild Landowner”

b) “Bear in the Voivodeship”, “Eagle-Patron”, “Bogatyr”

c) “The Wise Minnow”, “Crucian Crucian Idealist”, “Dried Roach”

5. irony, humor, hyperbole, satire, sarcasm, grotesque

6. a – 3, b – 1, c – 2

7. c, d, f, g

8. c.

2. Survey questions (based on the work of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin)

1. Where and in what family were you born?

2. When did you start your literary career?

3. Why do we study his work?

4. List the basic life principles of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Was he a strong personality?

5. What was the style of his works?

6. What is the phenomenon of Shchedrin’s fairy tales?

Tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin are written in real folk language - simple, concise and expressive.

The satirist overheard the words and images for his wonderful tales in folk tales and legends, in proverbs and sayings, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language. The connection between Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore is also evident in:

Traditional beginnings using the form of a long past tense (“Once upon a time there were”; “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state”; “Once upon a time there was a newspaperman, and there was a reader”);

The satirist’s frequent appeal to folk sayings - proverbs, sayings and sayings (“neither to describe with a pen, nor to tell in a fairy tale”, “at the behest of a pike”, “soon the tale will tell”, “how long, how short?”);

The use of numerals with non-numerical meaning (“far away kingdom”, “because of distant lands”);

The use of constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions (“fed honey”, “fierce millet”, “rolling snores”, “fierce animals”);

Borrowing proper names from folklore (Militrisa Kirbitevna, Ivanushka the Fool, Tsar Gorokh, Mikhailo Ivanovich);

Using the inherent folk poetry synonymous combinations (“on the road”, “judged and dressed”) and phraseological units dating back to folklore (“to breed on beans”, “you can’t lead with your ears”, “grandmother said in two”).

The closeness of Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire and works of folklore can also be seen in the use of colloquial folk speech or vernacular.

Vernacular - words, expressions, phrases, forms of inflection that are not included in the norm literary speech; often allowed in literary works and colloquial speech to create a certain color.

The vernacular made Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales more intelligible and understandable for the people, and helped the satirist express his attitude towards him or his oppressors. The speech of the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales, who personify the working people, is simple, natural, intelligent and colorful. It is unusually individualized and depicts a specific social type.

However, there is no dialogue as such, much less a noticeable confrontation between characters in fairy tales. In essence, this is one common peasant, nationwide speech, divided into replicas distributed to two heroes. They do not argue, they think out loud, correcting and supplementing each other, looking for more convincing explanations for incomprehensible, confusing issues, and come to a common ending.

And yet, despite the abundance of folklore elements, Shchedrin's tale, taken as a whole, is not similar to folk tales. It does not repeat traditional folklore schemes either in composition or in plot. The satirist not only freely created on the basis and in the spirit of folklore samples, revealing and developing their deep meaning, but also brought something new, his own. For example, in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of the author appears, helping the satirist to express his personal attitude towards acting persons and current events.

Relying on the rich imagery of a satirical folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin interpreted complex social phenomena using unsurpassed examples of brevity. Every word, epithet, metaphor, comparison, every artistic image in his fairy tales has a high ideological and artistic meaning and concentrates enormous satirical power. In this regard, especially noteworthy are those tales in which representatives of the animal world act.

Images of the animal kingdom have long been inherent in fables and satirical tales about animals. Under the guise of a story about animals, the people acquired some freedom to attack their oppressors and the opportunity to speak in an intelligible, funny, witty manner about serious things. This form of artistic storytelling, beloved by the people, was widely used in Shchedrin’s fairy tales.

“The Menagerie,” presented in Shchedrin’s tales, testifies to the satirist’s great skill in the field of allegory and artistic allegory. The choice of representatives of the animal kingdom for allegories in Shchedrin's tales is always subtly motivated and based on the folklore, fairy tale and literary fable tradition.

For his socio-political allegories, depicting class enmity and despotism of the authorities, Saltykov-Shchedrin used images fixed in the fairy-tale and fable tradition (lion, bear, donkey, wolf, fox, hare, pike, eagle, etc.), as well as , starting from this tradition, he extremely successfully created other images (crucian carp, gudgeon, roach, hyena, etc.).

The hidden meaning of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy-tale allegories is easily comprehended by the reader from the very figurative pictures of folk tales and fables and, due to the fact that the satirist often accompanies his allegorical images with direct hints of the hidden meaning.

The special poetic charm and irresistible artistic persuasiveness of Shchedrin’s fairy tales lies in the fact that no matter how the satirist “humanizes” his zoological pictures, no matter what complex roles he assigns to the “tailed” heroes, the latter always retain their basic natural properties.

Another typical Saltykov-Shchedrin technique in fairy tales is the interweaving of the real with the fantastic, the reliable with fiction. The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is fundamentally real, inextricably linked with concrete political reality, and carries an extremely deep revolutionary content in an encrypted form. An example of this is Shchedrin’s political fairy tales “The Eagle Patron” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship”. The satirist, describing the activities of the heroes of these fairy tales, makes it clear that we are not talking about bird and bear affairs and actions.

In the images of these predators, the satirist emphasizes their main, leading features. The beginnings and endings of fairy tales, fairy-tale images taken by Saltykov-Shchedrin from folklore in no way detract from the comic effect when describing reality. With the help of the discrepancy between the magical setting and the pronounced real political content, Saltykov-Shchedrin emphasizes the meaning of such fairy tales as “The Sleepless Eye” and “The Bogatyr”, and further exposes the political essence of any type or circumstance.

Also, Saltykov-Shchedrin, as the narrative progresses, adds some more elements of reality to the fairy tales: the hares study “statistical tables published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs...”, write correspondence to newspapers, and newspapers publish articles about them; bears go on business trips and receive travel money; the birds are talking about the capitalist railway worker Guboshlepov; fish talk about the constitution, debate about socialism; a landowner living “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state” reads the real newspaper “Vest” and much more.

The striking originality of Shchedrin as a satirist writer also lies in the power of his humor, because laughter is the main weapon of satire. “This weapon is very strong,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin, “for nothing discourages vice more than the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it” XIII, 270. Shchedrin’s laughter is revealing and castigating, ennobling and educating, causes hatred and confusion among enemies and joy among champions of truth, goodness and justice. Saltykov-Shchedrin considered the main purpose of laughter to arouse feelings of indignation and active protest against social inequality and political despotism.

In Shchedrin's laughter, mostly menacing and indignant, other emotional tones and shades are not excluded, due to the diversity of ideological ideas and objects of depiction. "Fairy Tales" painting pictures of everyone social strata society, can also serve as a textbook of examples of Shchedrin’s humor in all the richness of its artistic manifestation. Here there is contemptuous sarcasm, branding kings and royal nobles (“Eagle Patron”, “Bear in the Voivodeship”), and cheerful mockery of the nobility (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”, “Wild Landowner”), and a disdainful mockery of the shameful cowardice of the liberal intelligentsia (“The Wise Minnow,” “Liberal”).

In "Fairy Tales" Shchedrin's irony shines with all its colors. The satirist admires the clever hares and, together with the generals, is indignant at the behavior of the parasitic peasant, as if he agrees with the need for a pacifying bear to come to the forest slum.

All the techniques that Saltykov-Shchedrin used in his fairy tales, like the genre of political fairy tale itself, serve to express the political views and ideas of the author. It was in fairy tales that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s ardent love for the people, hatred and contempt for their oppressors received especially vivid expression.

The entire cycle of fairy tales “for children of a fair age” is built on sharp social contrasts. It’s not just about good and evil people, it’s about the struggle between good and evil. Fairy tales reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. they recreate a picture of a society torn apart by internal contradictions, full of social drama, and depict a direct and sharp clash between representatives of antagonistic classes. Next to the deep drama of the life of the working people, Saltykov-Shchedrin showed the most shameful comedy of the life of the noble-bourgeois strata of society. Hence the constant interweaving of the tragic and the comic in Shchedrin’s fairy tales, the continuous alternation of feelings of sympathy with feelings of anger, the severity of conflicts and the sharpness of ideological polemics.

In his fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin embodied his many years of observations of the life of the enslaved Russian peasantry, his bitter thoughts about the fate of the oppressed masses, his deep sympathies for the working people and his bright hopes for people's strength.

Saltykov-Shchedrin often resorted to a fairy-tale form of storytelling in his work. The folklore genre allowed the great satirist to expose social vices and bureaucratic failure, bypassing strict censorship.

Let's look at examples of what techniques the master of a well-aimed pen resorted to and what was hidden behind them. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” the satirist immerses the reader in an absolutely fantastic world: two high ranks find themselves on a desert island.

Moreover, none of the generals is adapted to life in extreme conditions. They don’t even know that food in its original form “flies, swims and grows on trees.”

A man who appears from nowhere saves his comrades in misfortune from certain death. He fed and watered the generals, and also wove a rope for himself “so as not to run away.” In a fairy-tale story, a literate reader can easily understand the author’s hint, but Saltykov-Shchedrin introduces an additional detail into the story - “the number of the Moscow Gazette”, thereby enhancing the grotesque and dispelling doubts about the connection of the bizarre story with real life.

The events in “The Wild Landowner” develop no less fantastically.

The hero of this work is even stupider than the mentioned generals. The landowner cannot stand the “servile spirit” and dreams of getting rid of the peasants, not realizing his dependence on them. As soon as the men leave the master, he begins to transform: he does not wash, does not get his hair cut, and begins to walk on all fours. The culmination of the savagery is the transformation of the hero into a bear. The image of a clubfoot was not chosen by chance by the author - he associates it with extreme savagery and stupidity.

It can be concluded that the writer deliberately combined folklore with satire in order to avoid censorship. At the same time, he managed to present topical topics in an accessible form and most fully.

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Updated: 2017-01-21

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“The Tale of How a Man Fed Two Generals” by Saltykov-Shchedrin has common plot features fairy tale, but first of all, it has a satirical orientation.

Social everyday tales, like fairy tales about animals, have the same composition as fairy tales, but everyday fairy tales are qualitatively different. An everyday fairy tale is firmly connected with reality. There is only one world here - the earthly one. If a fairy tale has a more or less definite formula - its beginnings, endings, commonplaces, then an everyday fairy tale can begin in any way, usually it immediately introduces the listener to the story of the events that form the basis of the plot - without a beginning, without a preface.

Each work has its own individual genre characteristics. The main features of folk tales associated with the genre include:

1) the individual language in which the tale is told;

2) looped structure (The beginning and ending embed the fairy tale into the “chain” of others. For example: the beginning “Once upon a time...”, the ending “Here is the end of the fairy tale...”);

3) repetition of actions three times (three iron staffs, three iron boots, etc.);

4) some details of the plot in the fairy tale are connected by special formulas “How long is it short...”;

5) heroes have special names (Ivan the Fool, Vasilisa the Wise, etc.)

Based on folk tradition, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin created a special genre in Russian literature - a literary satirical fairy tale, in which traditional fairy-tale fiction is combined with realistic, topical political satire. In terms of their simple plot, these tales are close to folk tales. The writer uses techniques from the poetics of folklore:

“Once upon a time there was a gudgeon..” (in the fairy tale “The Wise Gudgeon”), “In a certain village there lived two neighbors..” (in the fairy tale “Neighbors”), “In a certain kingdom a Bogatyr was born...” (“Bogatyr”)

Sayings:

“At the behest of the pike”, “not in a fairy tale”),

Threefold repetition of a motive, episode, etc. (three Toptygins, three visits of guests to the Wild Landowner, etc.). In addition, you should pay attention to the construction of a line, characteristic of folk poetic works, with the adjective or verb moved to the end

Transparent morality that is easy to understand from the content.

At the same time, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales differ significantly from folk tales. The satirist did not imitate folk tales, but based on them he freely created his own, his own. Using familiar folklore images, the writer filled them with new ones ( socio-political) meaning, successfully came up with new expressive images (wise gudgeon, idealistic crucian carp, dried roach). Folklore fairy tales (magic, everyday, tales about animals) usually express universal morality, show the struggle of good and evil forces, the obligatory victory of positive heroes thanks to their honesty, kindness, intelligence - Saltykov-Shchedrin writes political fairy tales filled with content relevant to his time.

Chapter 2 Conclusion

“Fairy tales for children of a fair age” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin use folklore canons, but not completely and gradually develop into something else, expressed in the form of a satirical political fairy tale, otherwise, they are transformed under the influence cultural context era. It should also be noted that poetics is artistic system with a special worldview, the so-called “folklore consciousness,” the roots of which go back to the archaic past of humanity, and the purpose of the functions of the poetics of folklore, one might say, is the expression of this consciousness.

Based on folk tradition, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin created a special genre in Russian literature - a literary satirical fairy tale, in which traditional fairy-tale fiction is combined with realistic, topical political satire.

Chapter 3. Artistic and poetic function: the artistic world and the poetics of the folk word in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

Many Russian writers recognized the serious significance of fairy-tale fiction: fairy tales always tell about something incredible, impossible in real life. However, fantastic fiction includes “an ordinary and natural idea,” that is, there is truth in fiction. The great Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov wrote that thanks to fantastic fiction, “an ordinary and natural idea,” that is, the truth of life, is expressed “more powerfully” than the story would be told without fiction.

IN AND. Dalia in the dictionary defines a fairy tale as “a fictional story, an unprecedented and even unrealistic tale, a legend” and gives as an example several proverbs and sayings associated with this folklore genre. “Either do business or tell stories. The tale is a fold, but the song is reality. The tale is beautiful, the song is beautiful. It cannot be said in a fairy tale, nor can it be described with a pen. Before you finish reading the fairy tale, don’t give directions. A fairy tale begins from the beginning, is read to the end, and does not stop in the middle.” From these proverbs it is obvious: a fairy tale is a product of folk imagination - “folding”, bright, interesting work, having a certain integrity and special meaning.27

When analyzing the characteristics of folk spiritual life, one can come across such a concept as conciliarity, which is also reflected in fairy tales. Conciliarity represents the unity of action, thought, feeling, and in fairy tales it is opposed to selfishness and greed. Labor acts not as a duty, but as a holiday. Almost all folk tales that personify the joy of work end with the same saying: “Here, to celebrate, they all started dancing together...”, in the fairy tales “The Horse”, “The Tale of How a Man Fed Two Generals” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin depicts the exploitation of peasant labor.

In a folk tale the following are depicted: moral values people, as: kindness, as pity for the weak, which triumphs over selfishness and manifests itself in the ability to give the last to another and give one’s life for another; suffering as a motive for virtuous actions and deeds; victory of spiritual strength over physical strength. By embodying these values ​​as the basis of a fairy tale, its meaning becomes deep, despite the naivety of its purpose. The artistic world of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin absorbed these features of folk art.

The writer partly continues the romantic traditions (two worlds), built on the continuous play of the conventional world with the present. The allegorical nature of the text is destroyed with the help of abundant concrete realities; Aesopian language begins to live its own life, independent of the author’s tasks. It should be noted that in fairy tales, in most cases, sarcasm only coexists with romantic irony, but in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin dominates her.

In folklore, the writer took as a basis not only images familiar to the national consciousness, but also the distribution of ethical traits between characters, usual for folklore, is replaced by his creation psychological portrait(The Ram-Nepomnyashchy with his “sudden thirst for formless aspirations” in the fairy tale “The Ram-Nepomnyashchy”, the Raven-petitioner with his heart that truly ached, even the simple-minded Chizhik with his unassuming dreams in the fairy tale “The Raven-petitioner”).

M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin fruitfully uses folk fairy tale traditions. In a folk tale, each animal evoked its own set of impressions in people, and this was developed in the versions of the tale by its different performers. For example: the nicknames of the frog were associated with the sounds it made in the water: “rumble on the water”, “squeaky toad”, “croaked frog”, “balagta on the water”. The bunny aroused visual impressions: “white bunny Ivanov’s son”, “running bunny”, “rogue bunny”.

Images of a bear and a wolf are often accompanied by nicknames such as: “there’s wood in the den,” “forest oppression,” “you’re crushing everyone.” The image of a fox acquired evaluative characteristics: “fox-beauty”, “fox-sister”, etc.

It is impossible not to pay attention to the image of the bear: in almost all fairy tales the bear is fooled and ridiculed. This tradition of depicting a bear is noticeable in many Russian folk tales: “The Bear and the Old Woman”, “The Cat and the Wild Animal”, “The Bear Learns Carpentry”, “A Man, a Bear and a Fox”... In fairy tales, perhaps only a wolf can be stupider than a bear.

The popular mockery of the beast may be caused by the loss of the totem cult. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Eastern Slavs“bear fun” was widespread. It is a dramatized amusement, a grotesque mockery of the rituals of the past; as we know, Tsar Ivan the Terrible also liked this fun. For example, in 1571, on his orders, a certain Subota Sturgeon came to Novgorod, who collected cheerful people - buffoons - and bears throughout the Novgorod land and took them to Moscow on several carts. The king himself could not even fall asleep without fairy tales and fables.

In the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of a bear is found in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” which reveals the problems of the foundations of the monarchical system. The Toptygins from this fairy tale are sent by the lion to the voivodeship. Their dementia does not allow them to perform more or less decent actions towards their subjects. The goal of their reign was to commit as many “bloodsheds” as possible.

The people's anger decided their fate: the Toptygins were killed by the rebels, but the idea of ​​a revolutionary reorganization of the state did not greatly attract the writer, because he believed that violence only begets violence. The main idea of ​​this tale is that even the most meek patience comes to an end, and the tyranny of rulers who are not “burdened” with intelligence and insight will one way or another one day work against them, which is what happened.

Saltykov-Shchedrin also often depicts representatives of the “fish” world. On the one hand, the fish images refer us to a direct allegory: the silence of the inhabitants of quiet backwaters is the irresponsibility, alienation of the people. But on the other hand, the problems of these works are much more complex.

So, for example, if the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow” is based on a description of the hero’s entire life, then the fairy tale “Crucian the Idealist” goes back to a philosophical dialogue. We can say that before us is a kind of fairy tale-dispute, where a harmonious combination of two opposite principles is found. And the fairy tale “Dried Roach” is reminiscent of a philosophical political pamphlet in its artistic features. It reflects the atmosphere in Russia after the assassination of Emperor Alexander II, the panicky state of society, “there are superfluous thoughts, superfluous conscience, superfluous feelings in the world.”28

If we compare Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” with Russian folk tales, it should be noted that Saltykov’s heroes are special, sharply different from the heroes of Russian folk tales: in folk tales the hero often changes for the better (Ivan the Fool turns into Ivan Tsarevich), and for Saltykov-Shchedrin everything remains unchanged. In Shchedrin's fairy tales there is no triumph of good over evil, as in Russian folk tales. Rather, vice triumphs in them, but in “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age” there is always a moral, which makes them similar to fables.

In the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, reality is not perceived in the context of familiar meanings and values. Reality is presented as absurdity, as something incredible, but it is precisely this that becomes the terrible reality that surrounds the writer.

“Terrible laughter”, or “the laughter of fear” is one of the main author’s techniques in the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. This laughter, as it is often called, meaningless and destructive, exposes stereotypes and illusory ideas about life. In folk tales, laughter primarily carries the self-ironic character of generally accepted ideals.

Summarizing the observations, it should be noted that the artistic and poetic world of fairy tales consists of structural forms of mythopoetic thinking. M. E. Saltykov - Shchedrin uses a system of binary oppositions, which, as is known, go back to the poetics of myth (dream/reality, life/death, truth/lie, top/bottom, rich/poor, etc.). Special role in the formation of deep semantics, which goes back to mythopoetics, belongs to such images - symbols as horses, fields, conscience, etc., that is, symbols of different semantic layers: from mythological to modern figurative everyday life.

The artistic world of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin interprets the poetics of the folklore genre depending on the author's goals. We will consider the transformation of the people's worldview in the next section.

3.1 Transformation of the folk worldview in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin.

Almost every Russian fairy tale has a “fool” who stands out from the rest of the heroes. The strength of the fool in Russian folk tales is in his kindness and responsiveness, in his readiness to help those in trouble, in the absence of greed; M.E. also turns to this hero. Saltykova-Shchedrin. Only his hero ends up in a society in which high human virtues are recognized as abnormal, dangerous and are subjected to severe persecution. The ending of Saltykov-Shchedrin's tale is not like the ending of a folk tale: a miracle does not happen.

The artistic world of the fairy tale “The Bogatyr” contradicts folk tradition: the image of a warrior hero, a “brave husband” turns into an anti-ideal. Breaking folklore traditions, the hero is the son of “Baba Yaga” and acts as an evil idol, a representative of the pagan world. A hero's restless sleep is tantamount to death. Shchedrin's motive for death is caused by a feeling of exhaustion of the generic ideal image.

The work "A Christmas Tale" reveals the role of truth through the prism of religious sermons. This tale takes truth, but from a distorted public vision. It should be noted that in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin - two truths: one is the “real” truth, which has already set the teeth on edge, the truth of the world around us. There is another truth - a truth-dream, which is inaccessible to a mere mortal. The truth of the hero of fairy tales is not yet stable, since “no one can truly determine where and why he is going...”29 (in the fairy tale “The Crow the Petitioner”).

In fairy tales, truth-seeking is inextricably linked with the theme of conscience; in popular ideas, conscience is a mirror reflecting how strongly kindness, honesty, and responsibility are established in human consciousness. In the satirist’s fairy tales, the understanding of conscience is reduced or distorted, for example, in the work “Conscience Has Missed”, conscience suddenly disappears among the people and unexpectedly ends up with Samuil Davidovich, who nevertheless finds a way out of this situation. The hero “adapted” his conscience to his ordinary life - “everything in the world is bought and sold.” Thus, through an external donation, external rather than internal repentance, he “bought his conscience” in order to subsequently lead an ordinary way of life, now according to his conscience, but outside of conscience-spiritual existence. At the end of the work, there is still a ray of hope; the writer draws the image of a child in whom his conscience is still buried: “And the little child will be a man, and there will be a great conscience in him. And then all untruths, deceit and violence will disappear.”

Folk tales especially poignantly show the aspirations of the people, their dreams, desires and hopes. In fairy tales one can find a daring dream of a different, bright and fair life, and the desire to surrender to the charm of a bright fiction, forgetting for a moment an unsettled life, and the desire, at least in fantasy, to punish a master, a priest, a merchant with undisguised pleasure. In fantastic fiction, the fairy tale embodies everything that troubled the heart and mind of the people. A distinctive feature of such fiction is its deep nationality.

In the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin transforms the people's worldview: society is vicious, and the truth is reflected as if in a distorting mirror.

In the fairy tales “The Fool”, “Conscience Is Missing”, “Christ’s Night”, “The Christmas Tale”, the morality of the ruling classes is denied, where conscience turns into “worthless rags” that need to be gotten rid of, and the presence of “vile” thoughts is necessary. for successful adaptation to life, and each person is forced, as a result, to “choose between tomfoolery and meanness.”

3.2 Satirical function in folk tales and fairy tales by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

The main function of the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in the opinion of the writer himself, is a satirical orientation, which is also characteristic of folk tales and can be expressed in the use of the folk language - vernacular and colloquial speech, as well as phraseological structures, including proverbs and sayings, traditional fairy tale techniques. All this does not obscure the meaning of fairy tales, but creates a comic effect. The fantasy of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales is based on reality and carries a generalized content, which is expressed, for example, in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship.”

The inclusion of images of the animal world in nicknames (Toptygin, donkey, Wild beast) is a common technique in satirical and humorous folk speech. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the forms of satirical works for the fairy tale.

Language in literature is the main means for artistic image life. Words in the language of a literary work are used to reveal figuratively ideological content works and author's assessment. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in addition to allegories, Aesopian language and similes, will use folk wit - colloquial speech or vernacular, he strives to clearly convey to the reader the artistic idea of ​​​​the work. “Colloquial speech is words, expressions, phrases, forms of inflection that are not included in the norm of literary speech; are often allowed in literary works and colloquial speech to create a certain flavor.” The great satirist often drew synonyms from popular speech and enriched his works with this. As you know, a phraseological unit is a stable combination of words that is used to show individual objects, signs, and actions. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin often used them to give fairy tales expressiveness, imagery and a careless satirical style. For example, “And he began to live and live…”; “Well, let it stay like this for the time being!”; “The hard one brought some devil!”; “... teeming with people”, “... with a bag around the world...”; “and he’s already right there...”, “... like a sin...”, “... on his own two feet...”, “... no sooner said than done.” A special group should include the author’s popular tautological phrases, which are characteristic of popular speech: “And he began to live and get along...”, “... snakes and all sorts of reptiles swarmed in the bushes”, “... wandered from corner to corner, shrouded in the darkness of times “,” “...and Toptygin is already here,” “suddenly a whole theory of dysfunctional well-being has arisen.”30

It is also necessary to note phraseological combinations of a fabulous folk-aesthetic nature: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state,” “And he began to live well.”

Since ancient times, fables and satirical tales have actively used images of the animal kingdom. By turning to these images, people acquired some freedom and the opportunity to speak in an intelligible, funny, witty manner about serious things. M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin used the popular form of artistic storytelling in his works. The writer masterfully embodied the denounced social types in the images of animals, achieving a vivid satirical effect. The very fact of likening representatives of the ruling classes and the ruling caste of the autocracy beasts of prey the satirist declared his deepest contempt for them. It should be noted that M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin often accompanies his allegorical images with direct hints of their hidden meaning.

The peculiarity of the poetics and the irresistible artistic persuasiveness of the writer’s fairy tales lies in the fact that, no matter how the satirist “humanizes” his images of animals, no matter how difficult roles he assigns to the “tailed” heroes, the latter always retain their basic natural properties and qualities.

In fairy tales, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin combines the real with the fantastic, the reliable with fiction. The fantasy of fairy tales is based on reality, inextricably linked with specific political reality. For example, in the fairy tales “The Eagle Patron” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” the satirist describes the activities of the heroes, making it clear that we are not talking about bird and bear affairs and actions. (“Toptygin wrote a report and is waiting...”, “he would hire a servant and live comfortably..”)31

In the images of predators, the satirist emphasizes their main features, using such techniques as grotesque. The contrast between magical themes and the clearly expressed real political meaning of Saltykov-Shchedrin is emphasized in such fairy tales as “The Sleepless Eye” and “The Bogatyr”, and thereby more strongly reveals the political essence of any type or circumstance.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin gradually adds elements of reality to the plot of fairy tales, for example: hares learn “statistical tables published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs...”32, write correspondence to newspapers, and newspapers publish articles about them; bears go on business trips and receive travel money; the birds are talking about the capitalist railway worker Guboshlepov; fish talk about the constitution, debate about socialism; a landowner living “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state” reads the real newspaper “Vest”.

The peculiarity of the artistic time of a fairy tale is expressed in the grotesque and parodic form of alternating the present and the past. Basically, the heroes of fairy tales live with pleasant memories of blessed times when “there was plenty of food,” “there were all sorts of animals in the forest,” and “the water was teeming with fish,” “it would be nice to live like the landowners lived in the old days.” Transitions from the past to the present, from the present to the past in fairy tales occur suddenly, as evidenced by the use of the word “suddenly,” which belongs to the category of chance, and therefore leads to the exposure and rejection of the hero from life. For example, in the fairy tale “Conscience Has Disappeared,” conscience disappears “suddenly,” “almost instantly.” However, the consequences of the loss of conscience do not fit within the boundaries of “today”, representing extended processes occurring in an unscrupulous world. All episodes in the fairy tale (the awakening of conscience in a drunkard, a tavern owner, a policeman, an entrepreneur) return to the starting point of moral unconsciousness.

The peculiarity of the artistic space of the satirist’s works is presented in the contrast of ideal and reality, evil and good, that is art space develops within the framework of the opposition of “closed” and “open” space.

As you know, laughter is one of the main weapons of satire. “This weapon is very powerful,” wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin, “for nothing discourages vice more than the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it.” According to the writer, the main purpose of laughter is to arouse feelings of indignation and active protest against social inequality and political despotism.

Depending on the ideological intentions and objects of the image, one can distinguish different shades of laughter in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Fairy tales, which depict all social strata of society, can serve as a vivid example of the satirist’s humor in all the richness of its artistic manifestation. Here there is contemptuous sarcasm, branding kings and royal nobles (“Eagle Patron”, “Bear in the Voivodeship”), and cheerful mockery of the noble class (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”, “Wild Landowner”), and a disdainful mockery of the shameful cowardice of the liberal intelligentsia (“The Wise Minnow,” “Liberal”).

The fairy tales “The Sane Hare” and “The Selfless Hare” should be analyzed together as only together they represent a comprehensive satirical characterization“rabbit” psychology, both in its practical and theoretical manifestations in the writer’s work. As already noted, the image of the hare in folk tales is sharply different. IN

“The Selfless Hare” reveals the psychology of an unconscious slave, and “The Sane Hare” tells the story of a perverted consciousness that has developed servile tactics of adaptation to a regime of violence.

The tale of the selfless hare is a vivid example of M.E.’s crushing irony. Saltykov-Shchedrin, exposing, on the one hand, the wolfish habits of the enslavers, and on the other, the blind obedience of their victims.

The fairy tale begins its story with the fact that a hare was running not far from the wolf’s den, the wolf, seeing him, shouted: “Bunny! Stop, honey! And the hare only increased his speed. The wolf got angry, caught him, and said: “I sentence you to deprivation of your belly by being torn to pieces. And since now I’m full, and my wolf is full... then sit under this bush and wait in line. Or maybe... ha ha... I’ll have mercy on you!” What about the hare? He wanted to run away, but as soon as he looked at the wolf’s den, “the hare’s heart started pounding.” A hare sat under a bush and lamented that he had so much time to live and his hare dreams would not come true: “I was hoping to get married, bought a samovar, dreamed of drinking tea and sugar with a young hare, and instead of everything - where did I end up?” ! One night the bride's brother galloped up to him and began to persuade him to run away to the sick bunny. The hare began to lament his life more than ever: “For what? what did he do to deserve his bitter fate? He lived openly, did not start revolutions, did not go out with weapons in his hands, ran according to his needs - is this really what death is for? But no, the hare cannot move: “I can’t, the wolf didn’t tell me!” And then the wolf and she-wolf came out of the den. The hares began to make excuses, convinced the wolf, pityed the wolf, and the predators allowed the hare to say goodbye to the bride and leave her brother as her husband.

Released into the wild, the hare “like an arrow from a bow” hurried to the bride, ran, went to the bathhouse, stayed with the bride for a while and ran back to the den - to return by the specified time. The return journey was difficult for the hare: “He runs in the evening, runs at midnight; His legs are cut by stones, his fur hangs in tufts on his sides from thorny branches, his eyes are clouded, bloody foam is oozing from his mouth...” After all, “he gave his word, you see, but the hare is master of his word.” At first glance, it may seem that the hare is extremely noble and thinks only about how not to let the bride’s brother down, but fear and obedience to the wolf stems from slavish obedience. Moreover, he realizes that the wolf can eat him, but at the same time he stubbornly hopes that “maybe the wolf will... ha ha... have mercy on me!”34. This type of slave psychology overpowers the instinct of self-preservation and is elevated to the level of nobility and virtue.

The title of the tale surprisingly accurately expresses the idea of ​​narrative conflict, thanks to the oxymoron used by the satirist - a combination of opposing concepts. The word hare is very often figuratively synonymous with cowardice. And the word selfless in combination with this synonym gives an unexpected comic effect: selfless cowardice that characterizes main conflict fairy tales. Saltykov-Shchedrin demonstrates to the reader the perversity of human qualities in a society based on violence. The wolf praised the selfless hare, who remained true to his word, and pronounced a mocking sentence on him: “... sit for the time being... and later I will... ha ha... have mercy on you!”

Despite the fact that the wolf and the hare symbolize the hunter and the prey with all the accompanying characteristics (the wolf is bloodthirsty, strong, despotic, angry, and the hare is cowardly, cowardly and weak), these images are also filled with topical social content. The image of the wolf represents the exploitative regime, and the hare represents the average person who believes that a peace agreement with the autocracy is possible. The wolf enjoys the position of a ruler, a despot, the entire wolf family lives according to “wolf” laws: the wolf cubs play with the victim, and the wolf, ready to devour the hare, pities him in her own way...

However, the hare also lives by wolf laws: the hare is not just cowardly and helpless, but cowardly. He goes into the wolf’s mouth and makes it easier for him to solve the “food problem,” believing that the wolf has the right to take his life. He doesn't even try to resist. The hare justifies all his actions and behavior with the words: “I can’t, the wolf didn’t tell me!” He is used to obeying, he is a slave of obedience. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin deeply despises the psychology of a slave: the author's irony gradually turns into caustic sarcasm.

The hare from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale “The Sane Hare” is described in the work as follows: “even though it was an ordinary hare, it was an extraordinary one. And he reasoned so sensibly that it fits even a donkey.”

This hare usually sat under a bush and talked to himself, discussing various topics: “Every animal, he says, is given its own life. For a wolf - wolf's, for a lion - lion's, for a hare - hare's. Whether you are satisfied or dissatisfied with your life, no one asks you: live, that’s all,” or “They eat us, they eat, and we, hares, breed more and more each year,” or “These vile people, these wolves - this is true say. All they have on their minds is robbery!” But one day he decided to show off his sound thoughts in front of the hare. “The hare talked and talked,” and at that time the fox crawled up to him and began to play with him, stretching out in the sun, the fox told the hare to “sit closer and poop,” and she herself “played comedies in front of him.” The fox is clearly mocking the “sensible” hare in order to eventually eat him. And the worst thing is that both understand this perfectly. The fox is not even very hungry to eat the hare, but “where has it been seen that foxes let go of their own dinner,” one has to obey the law, willy-nilly. All the smart, justifying theories of the hare, the idea of ​​regulating the wolf's appetites that has completely taken possession of him, are shattered to smithereens by the cruel truth of life. It turns out that hares were created to be eaten, and not to create new laws. Convinced that wolves “will not stop eating” hares, the “sensible” hare creates a project for more rational eating of hares - not all at once, but one by one.

M.E. In the tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin ridicules pathetic attempts to theoretically justify slavish “rabbit” obedience and liberal ideas about adaptation to a regime of violence. Both tales clearly express Political Views writer.

In the fairy tales “The Idealist Crucian” and “The Wise Minnow” end with a bloody denouement, which is not typical for the writer. With the death of the main characters of the fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin emphasizes the tragedy of ignorance of the true ways to fight evil with a clear understanding of the need for such a fight. In addition, these tales were also influenced by the political situation in the country at that time - ferocious government terror, the defeat of populism, and police persecution of the intelligentsia.

Researcher M. S. Goryakina rightly notes that the presence of folklore in the basis of the narrative of both fairy tales is obvious; The characters' colloquial speech is consonant with the folk language.

Saltykov-Shchedrin uses elements of living, folk speech that have already become classical. The satirist emphasizes the connection of these fairy tales with folklore with the help of: numerals with non-numerical meanings (“far away kingdom”, “from distant lands”), typical sayings and sayings (“the trail is gone”, “runs, the earth trembles”, “never “You can’t tell a fairy tale, you can’t describe it with a pen,” “soon the fairy tale will tell…”, “don’t put your finger in your mouth,” “neither stake, nor yard”), numerous constant epithets and colloquialisms (“fed up little thing,” “misterous fox,” “ you’re melting away”, “the other day”, “oh you, goryun, goryun!”, “a hare’s life”, “sort out”, “a tasty morsel”, “bitter tears”, “great troubles”, etc.)

It should be noted that the plots of both fairy tales contain elements of reality. So in the fairy tale “The Sane Hare” the hero every day learns “statistical tables published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs...”, and they write about him in the newspaper: “In the Moskovskie Vedomosti they write that hares do not have a soul, but steam - but There he is… running away!”37. The sensible hare also tells the fox a little about real human life - about peasant labor, about market entertainment, about the recruit's lot. In the fairy tale about the “selfless” hare, events are mentioned that were invented by the author, unreliable, but essentially real: “In one place the rains poured, so that the river, which the hare had jokingly swam across a day earlier, swelled and overflowed ten miles. In another place, King Andron declared war on King Nikita, and on the very hare’s path the battle was in full swing. In the third place, cholera appeared - it was necessary to go around the whole quarantine chain by a hundred miles...”

It should be noted that in these tales the language is laconic and deeply folk. It is known that the very first image of a hare that has come down to us can be considered a statue made of white marble, dating back to the 6th century BC. e., now this statue is in the Louvre under the name “Hera of Samos” or

"Goddess with a hare." In Russian folk tales, the hare is usually small, pitiful, stupid, cowardly, as in the fairy tale “The Hare and the Fox,” where many heroes came to his aid, and the rooster eventually drove the fox out of the hare’s house, and the hare himself only cried and did not tried neither to enter into a fight with the fox nor to outwit her. True, sometimes there are some exceptions in the behavior of this character.

Thus, we can conclude that M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, using folk images, creates new ones that reflect the spirit of his era, reveals the attitude of the people around him. In literary criticism there is a term “laughter through tears”; it also applies to the work of a satirist. The writer’s symbolic images are still relevant today.

Conclusion for Chapter 3

In the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin transforms the people's worldview: society is vicious, and the truth is reflected as if in a distorting mirror. As already noted, the folk tale is a literary genre, and that is why there is such an abundance of folklore motifs in the author's fairy tales. The artistic world of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin interprets the poetics of the folklore genre depending on the writer’s intention and thereby expands the boundaries of the fairy tale genre and fills it with new meaning. The satirist paints pictures of all social strata of society, using the traditional canon of folk art. The main feature of the poetics of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is the use of the form of fantasy to depict the reality of an entire era.

Conclusion

A folk tale has a long history; it is an epic work, mainly of a fantastic nature, the purpose of which is to teach morals or entertain. Many years of experience in artistic processing of oral poetry fairy tales and motives preceded the emergence of the literary fairy tale in Russian culture. The study of the genre features of fairy tales has led researchers to ambiguous conclusions: there are two points of view on determining the boundaries of the fairy tale genre.

On the one hand, a fairy tale is distinguished as a single genre, which has several genre varieties, on the other hand, a fairy tale is distinguished as a generic concept that unites several genres. In our work we adhere to the second point of view.

The question of comparing the classification of folk tales and Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales has not been fully studied. Differences in views on the definition of a folk tale are associated with what is regarded as the main thing in it: an orientation toward fiction or the desire to reflect reality through allegory and fiction.

With a problem-thematic approach, one can distinguish tales dedicated to animals, tales about unusual and supernatural events, and social and everyday ones. All the features of folk tales, thematic and genre-forming, appeared in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin and influenced them. poetic features. The study uses the classification of the functions of poetics, developed by V. Ya Propp, in the analysis of a literary fairy tale.

The work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is inseparable from his life path and personal qualities, the cycle of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales is considered the result of his satirical creativity. The writer’s appeal to the fairy tale genre is due to the socio-political situation in the state. The peculiarity of the author's fairy tale is that in a small work, the writer was able to combine the lyrical, epic and satirical principles and extremely acutely express his point of view on the vices of the class of those in power and on the most important problem of the era - the problem of the fate of the Russian people, using the traditional folklore genre folk tale.

In the course of our work, we studied the transformation of the people's worldview in the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, which resulted in the following conclusions:

1. The traditional genre of folk tales is modified in the writer’s work and turns into something else, expressed in the form of a satirical political tale.

2. Traditional folklore images of M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin are filled with a new, socio-political meaning.

– The comic effect is created through the use of vernacular and colloquial speech, as well as phraseological structures, including proverbs and sayings, traditional fairy tale techniques.

In “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age,” Saltykov-Shchedrin shows how spiritually meager and vicious human life turns out to be, having lost its highest purpose, raising not only specific historical problems of the last two decades of the nineteenth century, but also universal, timeless problems of the people’s worldview.

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The creativity of Saltykov-Shchedrin is extremely diverse. He wrote novels, dramas, chronicles, essays, reviews, stories, articles, reviews. Among the satirist’s vast heritage, his fairy tales occupy a special place. The form of folk tale was used by many writers before Shchedrin. Literary tales, written in verse or prose, recreated the world of folk ideas, folk poetry, and sometimes contained satirical elements, for example, Pushkin’s fairy tales “About the Priest and His Worker Balda,” “About the Golden Cockerel.” Shchedrin creates sharply satirical tales, continuing the Pushkin tradition.

Fairy tales are the result of many years of life observations, the result of the writer’s entire creative journey. They intertwine the fantastic and the real, the comic is combined with the tragic, they widely use the grotesque, hyperbole, and display the amazing art of Aesopian language. In fairy tales we meet all Shchedrin's heroes. Here are the stupid, fierce, ignorant rulers of the people, their exploiters (\"Bear in the Voivodeship\", \"Eagle Patron of the Arts\", \"Wild Landowner\") here and the people themselves, hardworking, talented, powerful and at the same time submissive to their exploiters (\"The Tale of How a Man Fed Two Generals\", \"Horse\") here are also people awakening, seeking truth and overthrowing the yoke of autocracy (\"The Raven Petitioner\", \"On the Way\ ", \"Bogatyr\").

Fairy tales depict the betrayal of liberals (\"Liberal\", \"Dried roach\"), the cowardly narrow-mindedness of the average person (\"Sane Hare\").

In many of Shchedrin's fairy tales, there is a belief in the final triumph of positive ideals. This faith illuminates the sad pages of his satire with the light of optimism. Thus, in the fairy tale "Conscience Lost" Shchedrin stigmatizes the world of predators, money-grubbers and covetous people - a society that has lost its conscience. But the writer expresses confidence that conscience, thrown out like an unnecessary old rag, once in the cradle where a little Russian child lies, will find its protector in him.

Like Nekrasov, Shchedrin wrote his fairy tales for the people, for the broadest reading circles. He turned to oral folk art, enriching traditional images and plots with new, revolutionary content. Masterfully used by the satirist vernacular, as well as the language of journalism, and clerical jargon, and archaisms, and foreign words.

Shchedrin widely used images from folk tales about animals: a greedy wolf, a cunning fox, a cowardly hare, a stupid and evil bear. However, the satirist introduced topical political motives into the world of folk tales and, with the help of traditional, familiar fairy-tale images, revealed complex problems of our time.

Thus, in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” the dull, sometimes evil, sometimes good-natured fairy-tale clubfooted bear, under the pen of a satirist, acquires the features of an obscurantist administrator who exterminates sedition, oppresses the people and destroys education.

The satirist castigated not only weaknesses and vices in his fairy tales. For example, in the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow,” with bitter mockery he draws the image of a frightened man in the street, “a dunce who doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, doesn’t see anyone, doesn’t share bread and salt with anyone, but just He is saving his cold life."

This tale poses extremely important (and not only for Shchedrin’s era) philosophical problems: what is the meaning of life and the purpose of man, what ideals should he strive for, how to live?

The image of a small, pitiful fish, incompetent. sickening and cowardly, perfectly characterizes the trembling man in the street. The writer attributes human properties to the fish and at the same time shows that humans have “fish-like” traits. Thus, "minnow" is the definition of a person, it is artistic metaphor, aptly characterizing the breed of ordinary people, cowardly and pathetic.

The entire biography of the gudgeon comes down to a short formula: "He lived - he trembled and died - he trembled." With his fairy tale, the writer wants to tell the reader: live in such a way as to give people warmth and light, because happiness can only be one thing - bringing happiness to others.

The images of fish, animals, and birds created by the satirist have become household names. If we talk about a person: this is a real idealistic crucian carp, this one is a dried roach, and that one is a wise gudgeon, then it is clear to everyone what qualities we mean.

Of all the arts, literature has the richest possibilities for embodying the comic. Most often, the following types and techniques of comedy are distinguished: satire, humor, grotesque, irony. Satire is called looking “through a magnifying glass” (V. Mayakovsky). The object of satire in literature can be a variety of phenomena. Political satire is most common. A clear proof of this is the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The fantastic nature of fairy-tale plots allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to continue criticizing the social system, bypassing censorship even in the face of political reaction. Shchedrin's tales depict not just evil or good people, not just the struggle between good and evil, like most folk tales, they reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century.

Let us consider the features of the problems of the writer’s fairy tales using the example of two of them. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” Shchedrin shows the image of a hard worker-breadwinner. He can get food, sew clothes, conquer the elemental forces of nature. On the other hand, the reader sees the man’s resignation, his humility, his unquestioning submission to the two generals.

He even ties himself to a rope, which once again indicates the submissiveness and downtroddenness of the Russian peasant. The author calls on the people to fight, protest, calls to wake up, think about their situation, and stop submitting meekly.

In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the author shows to what extent a rich gentleman can sink when he finds himself without a man. Abandoned by his peasants, he immediately turns into a dirty and wild animal, moreover, he becomes a forest predator. And this life, in essence, is a continuation of his previous predatory existence. The wild landowner, like the generals, acquires a dignified appearance again only after his peasants return.

In their literary form and style, Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are associated with folklore traditions. In them we meet traditional fairy-tale characters: talking animals, fish, birds. The writer uses the beginnings, sayings, proverbs, linguistic and compositional triple repetitions, vernacular and everyday peasant vocabulary, constant epithets, words with diminutive suffixes, characteristic of a folk tale. As in a folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not have a clear time and spatial framework. But, using traditional techniques, the author quite deliberately deviates from tradition.

He introduces socio-political vocabulary, clerical phrases, and French words into the narrative. Episodes of modern social life appear on the pages of his fairy tales. This is how styles are mixed, creating a comic effect, and the plot is combined with modern problems. Thus, having enriched the tale with new satirical techniques, Saltykov-Shchedrin turned it into a tool of socio-political satire.