What is a fairy tale in literature 3. What is a fairy tale

18.04.2019

What is a fairy tale? A fairy tale is a moral story with elements of fiction and fantasy. Nice fairy tale one where fiction is only a shell under which a wonderful everyday truth, a reasonable thought, is hidden.

A fairy tale is, in general, fun. But in ancient times the fairy tale had a different meaning, it was supposed to be an epic story

about omnipotent beings, gods and their struggle. With the loss of an important meaning (when people began to forget their pagan beliefs), it lost its former poetic structure, mainly fairy tales - in prose, but traces of the measured structure were preserved, especially in the so-called “sayings” (“soon a fairy tale is told, but not soon the job is done").

Folk tales are of great importance in the life of every person and the whole nation. The important role of fairy tales is that they are a valuable repository of everything experienced, a mirror that forever preserves the reflection of a past life.

We owe the preservation of the material of the life of the people, their worldview to the oral tales of the people, their fairy tales, songs, and legends. How much great value these pearls have, is shown by their extraordinary vitality, which has survived centuries, and in its entirety has survived to this day.

Fairy tales and legends contained so much of universal humanity, they were based on so much common views that wandered from one people to another and took deep roots everywhere, cultivating in a new place in accordance with local views, conditions and habits.

The main merit of the fairy tale is that it is at all times on the side of everything that is right, fair, and good. And at the same time, a fairy tale is an irreconcilable “fighter” against evil, dashing, lies, and aggression. The fairy tale unobtrusively talks about important ethical categories - good and evil.

Russian folk tales are the fundamental basis of Russian culture and Russian literature.

The value of fairy tales is that they provide an opportunity to introduce children to the life and way of life of the Russian people. Russian folk tale is a faithful assistant in developing a person’s language and speech skills. Epithets and figures of speech from fairy tales with their classic and deep meaning are embedded in our consciousness. Fairy tales broaden a person’s horizons and provide an opportunity to increase vocabulary.

The fairy tale has an important mission - the education of the younger generation.

Does not necessarily imply exciting action with magical transformations where glorious heroes win mythical monsters with the help amazing artifacts. Many of these stories are based on events that could well have taken place in real life. These are everyday tales. They teach goodness, ridicule human vices: greed, stupidity, cruelty and others, often containing an ironic basis and social background. What is an everyday fairy tale? This is an instructive story without any special supernatural miracles, useful for children, and often thought-provoking even for adults.

"Turnip"

You don't have to look too far to find an example of such a tale. They can serve everyone famous story about the turnip that my grandfather planted in the garden. The old man did not expect that it would grow too big, so much so that he would not be able to pull it out of the ground alone. In order to cope with challenging task, the grandfather called all his family members for help. They turned out to be a grandmother, granddaughter and animals living in the house. Thus, the turnip was pulled out. The idea of a simple plot is not difficult to understand. When everyone acts together, amicably and unitedly, everything will definitely work out. Even a little mouse took part in the described action.

On in this example It’s easy to understand what an everyday fairy tale is. Of course, the story mentioned contains some fantastic facts. For example, a turnip cannot grow so huge, and animals are not smart enough to do such work. However, if you put aside these details, the moral of the story turns out to be very useful and can be useful in real life.

Heroes of Russian fairy tales

The peculiarity of everyday fairy tales is that most often they contain healthy satire. Naive innocence turns out to be wiser than the most sophisticated cunning, and resourcefulness and ingenuity repel arrogance, vanity, arrogance and greed. Here vices are ridiculed, regardless of person and rank. In such stories, the stupidity and laziness of almighty kings and the greed of hypocritical priests are mercilessly castigated.

A wonderful hero of Russian fairy tales often turns out to be Ivanushka the Fool. This is a special character who always emerges victorious from all, even the most incredible challenges. You can understand what an everyday fairy tale is by remembering other interesting and bright heroes created by the imagination of the Russian people. They are a cunning man who is able to fool all his offenders from among the greedy rich, as well as a soldier whose resourcefulness will delight anyone.

"Porridge from an ax"

Among the examples of everyday fairy tales in which the above-mentioned characters are involved is “Porridge from an Axe.” This is a very short but instructive story about how easily and cheerfully you can overcome life's difficulties and adversities if you approach everything with humor and have an approach to people.

A resourceful soldier, having come to billet a stingy old woman who pretended to be poor so as not to treat the guest with anything, decided to use a trick to achieve his goal. He volunteered to cook food from an axe. Driven by curiosity, the mistress of the house, without noticing it herself, provided the soldier with all the food necessary for cooking and allowed him to take away the ax, which supposedly had not yet been cooked. Here, the sympathies of all readers and listeners, as a rule, are on the side of the resourceful serviceman. And interested parties have a chance to have a good laugh at the greedy old woman. This is the everyday fairy tale at its best.

Literary works

Great writers also worked in fairy-tale genres. A clear indication of this are the essays genius XIX century of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Imitating folk art, the author assigned a certain character to the characters. social status, which conveyed his political ideas to readers.

Most of his stories should rather be classified as tales about animals. They contain allegories, the purpose of which is to reveal social vices. But this does not exhaust the list of works of this writer, consonant with the genres of folk tales. Everyday tales created on social basis, for example, is reminiscent of “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” This unique narrative breathes subtle humor and inimitable satire, and its characters are so reliable that they are relevant for any era.

Jokes

Anecdotes are also examples of everyday tales. Of course, not everyone has the same attitude towards this kind of folklore. But this colorful genre clearly expresses folk identity, the concept of morality and various vicissitudes public relations. In addition, this form of creativity is always relevant and constantly evolving.

According to modern folkloristics, everyday jokes in different areas have their own characteristic features and features that are of interest for scientific study. This also applies to the general patterns of formation and development of this genre, which have become a topic for research and presentation in many scientific works and dissertations. At all times, an anecdote has proven to be an excellent way for people to respond to the arbitrariness of the authorities, to phenomena and events that contradict their concepts of justice and ethics.

Other forms of the genre

It is not difficult to understand how an everyday fairy tale differs from a magical one. Of course, stories about sorcerers and fantastic adventures are always interesting and find their fans. But capacious, witty stories that reveal the full depth of social and human relations simply cannot be irrelevant. Among other varieties of the genre everyday fairy tale you can call riddles and ridicule. The first of them is an allegorical description of a certain object or event and is asked in the form of a question. And the second is clearly satirical short work, which especially gives a reason to have fun at the vices of unworthy people. There are also boring fairy tales. This is a very interesting genre. In such stories, a certain set of words is deliberately repeated; there is no plot as such, because the action essentially develops in a vicious circle. Bright and famous example similar story could serve as “The Tale of the White Bull.”

All of the above works constitute a treasury folklore, a storehouse of his wisdom and sparkling humor carried through the centuries.

In the seventeenth century. The meaning of the term has changed over four centuries, and it denotes a literary work of an epic nature. The plot of this work is fiction-oriented. There may be elements of real life in it, sometimes even a lot of them, but events happen to the characters that cannot happen in reality. It is customary to distinguish between folklore and literary fairy tales.

How does a literary fairy tale differ from a folk fairy tale?

The most important difference is the distribution path. Of course, now readers find it most often in. But before it ends up on paper, a folk tale goes a long way. It is retold from mouth to mouth, sometimes lasting for many centuries. Then there is a folklore collector who records and processes it.

U has a completely different fate. It, of course, may be connected with some folklore plot, but the writer composes and writes it down, and it reaches readers immediately in the form of a book. The folk tale arose earlier than the literary one. One of its functions was the education of the younger generation, therefore, in folklore, as a rule, a didactic element is clearly expressed. This is also typical for literary fairy tales. The expression “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, good fellows lesson" quite accurately defines one of the main purposes of this genre.

Genres of literary fairy tales

Like any original work, literary fairy tale can have one of three main designs. There are prose, poetic and dramatic constructions. A prominent representative of the prose literary fairy tale was, for example, G.-H. Andersen. V.F. also worked in this genre. Odoevsky, and A. Lindgren, as well as many other excellent authors of children's and adult books.

Excellent examples of poetic fairy tales were left by A.S. Pushkin. An example of a dramatic tale is “Twelve Months” by S.Ya. Marshak. At the same time, authors do not always take folklore stories as a basis. For example, Astrid Lindgren or Tove Jansson’s plots are original and have no analogues in folk art, while “Tales of Mother Goose” by Charles Perrault are based specifically on folk plots.

Gradually, the literary fairy tale became a full-fledged direction fiction. Today this genre is universal, it reflects the phenomena surrounding reality, its problems, achievements, successes and failures. At the same time, the connection with folklore remained the same, inextricable. So, let's try to figure out what a literary fairy tale is.

Definition

First, let's give a definition: a fairy tale is a folk-poetic narrative work that tells about fictional events and characters. Often involving fantastic and magical phenomena.

Now let’s find out what a literary fairy tale is.

This is a genre of storytelling with fantastic or magical plot, occurring in real or magical world, in which both real and fictional characters. The author can raise moral, social, aesthetic problems of history and modernity.

The definitions are similar, but in the second, concerning a literary fairy tale, there is a certain specification and clarification. They relate to the types of characters and space, as well as the author and the problems of the work.

Features of a literary fairy tale

Now we list the main features of a literary fairy tale:

Reflects the aesthetics and worldview of its era.
Borrowing characters, images, plots, features of language and poetics from folk tales.
A combination of fiction and reality.
Grotesque world.
There is a game beginning.
The desire to psychologize heroes.
The author's position is clearly expressed.
Social assessment of what is happening.

Folk and literary tale

What is a literary fairy tale, how does it differ from a folk fairy tale? The author's fairy tale is considered a genre that has absorbed folklore and literary principles. It grew out of folklore, transforming and changing its genre differences. We can say that the folk tale has evolved into a literary one.

A literary fairy tale goes through a number of stages as it moves away from the original source - the fairy tale. We list them in order of increasing distance:

Simple recording folk tales.
Processing recordings of folk tales.
Retelling of a fairy tale by the author.
In the author's fairy tale inner form differs from the folk one, and folklore elements vary depending on the writer's intentions.
Parodies and stylizations - their tasks are related to pedagogical orientation.
A literary fairy tale is as far removed as possible from the common folklore stories, images. The speech and style of such a tale are closer to the literary tradition.

How do folk traditions of literary fairy tales manifest themselves?

What is a literary fairy tale? These, as we have already said, are combinations of literary and folklore. Therefore, in order to answer the question, let’s determine what folk heritage the literary fairy tale inherited.

Writers usually take folklore stories as a basis. For example:

magical origin or birth of the main character;
the stepmother's dislike for her stepdaughter;
the hero's trials are necessarily moral in nature;
rescued animals that become the hero’s assistants, etc.

Writers also exploit fairy-tale images-characters endowed with certain functions. For example:

The ideal hero.
The ideal hero's assistant.
The one who sends the hero on his journey.
Giver of a magical thing.
The one who harms the ideal hero and prevents you from completing the assignment.
A stolen person or thing.
A false hero is one who tries to take credit for the exploits of others.

Space and time fairy world are often built according to the laws of folklore. This is a fantastic, uncertain place, and time either slows down or speeds up, it is also magical and does not lend itself to the laws of reality. For example: Buyan Island; distant kingdom, thirtieth state; whether long or short; The tale is told quickly, but the deed is not done quickly.

Trying to bring their tales closer to folk tales, writers resort to the use of folk poetic speech: epithets, triple repetitions, vernacular, proverbs, sayings, etc.

By turning to folk traditions, we were able to answer what a literary fairy tale is in its connection with folklore. Let us now consider another component of our fairy tale - the literary one, and try to understand what separates it from the folk heritage.

What is a literary fairy tale and how does it differ from a folk tale?

Examples and comparisons of literary and folk tales allow us to highlight a number of their differences.

A literary fairy tale is distinguished by its depiction. The author tries to describe the area and events in detail, to make the characters closer to reality, so that the reader believes in what is happening as much as possible.

Thus, what is a literary fairy tale if not the psychologism of the heroes? The writer is trying to explore inner world character, to depict experiences. Thus, Pushkin in “Tsar Saltan,” depicting the hero’s meeting with his wife and son, describes: “A zealous spirit began to beat within him... the spirit in him became busy, the king burst into tears.” You won't find this in folklore.

Ershov, Pushkin, Odoevsky and other fairy tale writers endow their characters with full-fledged character. These are not just heroes typical of folklore, these are full-fledged living people with their own aspirations, experiences, and contradictions. Pushkin even gives the little devil in “The Tale of Balda” a naive, childish character.

What else is different about a literary fairy tale?

What is a literary fairy tale? The answers to this question can be found in the specifications literary work. Namely, in vivid expression author's position. In a fairy tale, it manifests itself through assessments and attitudes towards what is happening, from which it is easy to guess which of the characters the author sympathizes with and which he dislikes or ridicules. So, describing the priest, his fears and natural greed, Pushkin ridicules this.

A literary fairy tale will always reflect the author's view of the world, his idea of life and ideas. We will see the writer, his aspirations, values, spiritual world, desires. In a folk tale, only the ideals and values of the entire people can be reflected; the personality of the narrator in it will be erased.

So, what is a literary fairy tale in its classical sense? This is a fusion of the author's originality and folk traditions.

Origins of the literary fairy tale

The roots of literary fairy tales go back to ancient times. There is a recorded Egyptian tale of two brothers dating back to the 13th century. BC e. The epic also contains references to fairy tales, for example, in the Babylonian cycle about Gilgamesh, among the Assyrians - in the legends about Ahikar, in Greek - the Iliad and the Odyssey.

During the Middle Ages, the literary fairy tale was used by the church, turning it into a parable. This tradition survived until the 19th century.

The Renaissance brought elements of fairy tales into the short story, using them to create satirical and didactic elements.

The emergence of a literary fairy tale

But only in the 18th century. literary fairy tale has become independent artistic genre, largely due to the passion for romanticism folk traditions. At this time, in order to answer the question of what a literary fairy tale is, examples would have to be taken from Charles Perrault and A. Galland in Europe and from M. Chulkov in Russia.

In the 19th century The popularity of literary fairy tales is increasing. Goethe, Chamisso, Tieck, Edgar Poe, Hoffmann, Andersen turn to this genre. Russian literature of this period is also rich in fairy tales. These are V. Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin, N. Gogol, A. Tolstoy and others.

Tales of Pushkin

What is a literary fairy tale? The definition we gave above is perfectly illustrated by the fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin. Initially, they were not intended for children, but quickly found themselves in a circle children's reading. The names of these fairy tales have been known to us since childhood:

"The Tale of Tsar Saltan."
"The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda."
"The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish."
"The Tale of dead princess and about 7 heroes."
"The Tale of the Golden Cockerel."

All these tales have a plot connection with folk tales. Thus, “The Tale of Balda” is reminiscent of the folk tale “The Farmhand Shabarsh.” “About the Fisherman and the Fish” - “The Greedy Old Woman”, a recording of which was presented to the poet by V.I. Dal, a famous collector of folklore. “The Tale of Saltan” is close to the fairy tale “About Wonderful Children”. Pushkin saw inexhaustible themes and subjects for literature in folk art. Thus, the poet’s fairy tales, better than any definition, can answer the question of what a literary fairy tale is.

Let's consider one of Pushkin's fairy tales. The essence of this tale is a satire on church ministers who deceive the people. Also ridiculed human qualities: stupidity, greed and hypocrisy. Out of greed, the priest decides to hire a servant for a pittance who will do the hard work. Stupidity forces him to agree to Balda's proposal. But as the reckoning approaches, deceit and malice awaken in the priest - he decides to destroy the worker.

In this tale, as in others, Pushkin creates psychologically perfect characters. The author gives each person character and personal characteristics. And the language, although poetic, is as close as possible to the folk language. Pushkin always sought to move away from pretentious literary verse to something lighter, more flexible, and freer. He managed to find all these qualities in folk art.

Thus, the literary fairy tale has a rich history of development, is a unique fusion of folklore and author's work and continues to develop to this day.

I offer several definitions of a fairy tale, taken from different sources:

1. “A fictional story, an unprecedented and even impossible story, a legend” (V. Dal. Dictionary living Great Russian language. M., 1994. T.4. P.170).
2. “A narrative, ordinary folk-poetic work about fictional persons and events, mainly with the participation of magical, fantastic forces” (S. Ozhegov. Dictionary of the Russian Language. M., 1986. P.625).
3. "A narrative work of oral folk art about fictitious events, sometimes with the participation of magical fantastic forces (Dictionary of the Russian Language. M., 1988. T. IV. P. 102).
4. "One of the main genres of oral folk poetry, epic, predominantly prose work of art magical, adventurous or everyday character with a focus on fiction" (Literary encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1988. P.383).
5. “A short instructive, often optimistic story, including truth and fiction” (S.K. Nartova-Bochaver. 1996).
6. “An abstracted form of local legend, presented in a more condensed and crystallized form. The original form of folk tales are local legends, parapsychological stories and stories of miracles that arise in the form of ordinary hallucinations due to the invasion of archetypal contents from the collective unconscious” (M.A. von Franz 1998. pp. 28-29).

The authors of almost all interpretations define a fairy tale as a type of oral narrative with fantastic fiction. The connection with myth and legends pointed out by M.L. Von Franz takes the fairy tale beyond the limits of a simple fantasy story. A fairy tale is not only a poetic invention or a game of fantasy; through content, language, plots and images, it reflects the cultural values of its creator.

Any fairy tale is focused on a social and pedagogical effect: it teaches, encourages activity and even heals. In other words, the potential of a fairy tale is much richer than its ideological and artistic significance. From a socio-pedagogical point of view, the socializing, creative, holographic, valeological-therapeutic, cultural-ethnic, verbal-figurative functions of a fairy tale are important.

1. Socializing function - introducing new generations to the universal and ethnic experience accumulated in the international world of fairy tales.
2. Creative function - the ability to identify, form, develop and implement creativity personality, his figurative and abstract thinking.
3. The holographic function manifests itself in three main forms: the ability of a fairy tale to reveal the big in the small; the ability to imagine the universe in three-dimensional spatial and temporal dimensions (sky - earth - underworld; past - present - future); the ability of a fairy tale to actualize all human senses, to be the basis for the creation of all types, genres, types of aesthetic creativity.
4. Developmental - therapeutic function - education healthy image life, protecting a person from harmful hobbies and addictions.
5. Cultural-ethnic function - familiarization with historical experience different nations, ethnic culture: life, language, traditions, attributes.
6. Lexico-figurative function - the formation of a person’s linguistic culture, mastery of polysemy and artistic and figurative richness of speech.

It is impossible to say exactly when fairy tales appeared, but we can confidently say that this happened before the advent of writing. Proof of this is the numerous finds of fairy tales in the most ancient manuscript sources. Based on known data, it can be argued that initially fairy tales passed from mouth to mouth. Thus, not only conservation took place, but also evolution. Each narrator conveyed the meaning of the tale in contemporary words. However, the allegorical meaning had to remain alone.

Naturally, folk tales had their own author, but over the years and distances this lost its meaning and was forgotten. So the story, retold several times, lost its authorship. And the plot for a fairy tale could be anything: from difficult journey to a normal everyday situation. Also, all animate and inanimate objects could act as heroes: trees, mountains, animals and birds, people and deities.

The word "fairy tale" in it modern sense appeared only in the 17th century. Before this they said “fable” or “fable” (from the word “bayat” - to tell).

A fairy tale is a very popular genre of oral folk art, an epic, prose, plot genre. It is not sung like a song, but told. The subject of the story is unusual, surprising, and often mysterious and strange events: the action has an adventurous character. The plot is distinguished by its multi-episode nature, completeness, dramatic tension, clarity and dynamic development of action. The fairy tale is distinguished by its strict form, the obligatory nature of certain moments, and also traditional beginnings and endings. The beginning takes listeners into the world of a fairy tale from reality, and the ending brings them back. She jokingly emphasizes that the fairy tale is fiction.

The fairy tale differs from other prose genres in its more developed aesthetic side. The aesthetic principle manifests itself in idealization goodies, and in the vivid depiction of the “fairy-tale world” and the romantic coloring of events.

Fairy tales have been known in Rus' since ancient times. IN ancient writing there are plots, motifs and images reminiscent of fairy tales. Telling fairy tales is an old Russian custom. Even in ancient times, the performance of fairy tales was available to everyone: men, women, children, and adults. There were people who cherished and developed their fabulous heritage. They have always been respected by the people.

In the 18th century, several collections of fairy tales appeared, which included works with characteristic compositional and stylistic fairy-tale features: "The Tale of the Gypsy"; "The Tale of the Thief Timashka."

The all-Russian collection by A.N. was of great importance. Afanasyev "Folk Russian Tales" (1855 - 1965): it includes fairy tales that existed in many parts of Russia. Most of them were recorded for A.N. Afanasyev and his closest correspondents, of whom it is necessary to note V.I. Dalia.

IN late XIX- appears at the beginning of the 20th century a whole series collections of fairy tales. They gave an idea of the distribution of works of this genre, its state, and put forward new principles of collecting and publishing. The first such collection was the book by D.N. Sadovnikov "Tales and legends of the Samara region" (1884). It contained 124 works, and 72 were recorded from only one storyteller A. Novopoltsev. Following this, rich collections of fairy tales appeared: “Northern Tales”, “Great Russian Tales of the Perm Province” (1914). The texts are accompanied by explanations and indexes.

After October Revolution the collection of fairy tales took on organized forms: it was conducted scientific institutes and higher educational institutions. They continue this work today.

In Russian fairy tales, wealth never had its own value, and the rich were never a kind, honest and decent person. Wealth had meaning as a means to achieve other goals and lost this meaning when the most important values in life were achieved. In this regard, wealth in Russian fairy tales was never earned through labor: it came by chance (with the help of fairy-tale helpers - Sivka-Burka, the Little Humpbacked Horse...) and often left by chance.

The images of Russian fairy tales are transparent and contradictory. Any attempts to use the image fairy tale hero How the image of a person leads researchers to the idea of the existence of a contradiction in a folk tale - the victory of the hero-fool, the “low hero”. This contradiction is overcome if we consider the simplicity of the “fool” as a symbol of everything that is alien to Christian morality and condemned by it: greed, cunning, self-interest. The simplicity of the hero helps him to believe in a miracle, to surrender to its magic, because only under this condition is the power of the miraculous possible.

Another important feature of folk spiritual life is reflected in folk tales- conciliarity. Labor acts not as a duty, but as a holiday. Conciliarity - the unity of action, thought, feeling - in Russian fairy tales opposes selfishness, greed, everything that makes life gray, boring, prosaic. All Russian fairy tales, personifying the joy of work, end with the same saying: “Here, to celebrate, they all started dancing together...”.

The tale also reflects others moral values people: kindness, like 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. The embodiment of these values makes the meaning of the fairy tale the deepest, as opposed to the naivety of its purpose. The affirmation of the victory of good over evil, order over chaos determines the meaning life cycle living being. The meaning of life is difficult to express in words; it can be felt in oneself or not, and then it is very simple.

Thus, the wisdom and value of a fairy tale is that it reflects, reveals and allows you to experience the meaning of the most important universal human values And life meaning generally.

From the point of view of everyday meaning, the fairy tale is naive, from the point of view of life meaning, it is deep and inexhaustible.