Large folklore genres, their features. Genres of Russian folklore

Russian folklore is the creativity of the people. It contains the worldview of thousands of people who once inhabited the territory of our state. Their way of life, love for the Motherland and their home, feelings and experiences, dreams and upheavals - all this has been passed from mouth to mouth for centuries and gives us a connection with our ancestors.

The heritage of our people is multifaceted and diverse. Conventionally, the genres of Russian folklore are divided into two groups, which include many types: ritual and non-ritual folklore.

ritual folklore

This group of folk creations, in turn, is divided into two categories:

1. Calendar folklore- a reflection of the way of life: agricultural work, Christmas carols, Maslenitsa and Kupala rites. Through this genre of Russian folklore, our ancestors turned to Mother Earth and other deities, asking her for protection, a good harvest and grace.
2. Family folklore, which described the order of life of each person: the creation of a family and the birth of a child, military service, death. Magnificent songs, funeral and recruiting lamentations - for each event there was a special rite, which gave a special solemnity and mood.

non-ritual folklore

It represents a larger group of folk art works and includes 4 subspecies:

I. Folk drama

• Petrushka Theater - street ironic theatrical performances in the person of one actor;
• crib and religious drama - performances on the theme of the Nativity of Christ and other events.

II. folklore poetry

• Epics: songs-tales that tell about the heroes of antiquity who defended their homeland, their exploits and valor. The bylina about Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber is one of the most famous. Colorful heroes, colorful epithets and the melodic melody of the narrator draw a vivid image of the Russian hero, a representative of the freedom-loving free people. The most famous are two cycles of Russian epics: and.
• Historical songs describe real events that took place in ancient times. Ermak, Pugachev, Stepan Razin, Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov - these and many other great people and their deeds went down not only in history, but also in folk art.
• Chastushka - ironic quatrains, clearly evaluating, and more often ridiculing, life situations or phenomena.
• Lyrical songs are the responses of the common people to events in the political and social life of the state, the relationship between the peasant and the master, the indestructible principles of the peasants' way of life, folk morality. Frequent (dancing) and lingering, daring and beautiful melodic, all of them are deep in content and emotional intensity, forcing even the most callous nature to respond.

III. folk prose

The clearest example familiar to each of us since childhood is fairy tales. Good and evil, justice and meanness, feat and cowardice - everything is intertwined here. And only a pure and open heart of the protagonist is able to overcome all adversity.

IV. Folklore of speech situations.

A very diverse group. Here are proverbs, which are folk aphorisms, and riddles that develop thinking, and children's folklore ( nursery rhymes, pestle, counting rhymes, tongue twisters and others), which helps through play and fun the better development of children.

This is only a small part of the heritage that our ancestors left. Their work has a great cultural value. It does not matter to which particular genre of Russian folklore a particular masterpiece belongs. All of them are united by one common feature - the principles of life are concentrated in each: love, kindness and freedom. That without which the very existence of man is inconceivable.

Folklore is a system of systems. Like literature, it is divided into poetic genera: epic, lyric, drama. Genera are divided into types (song, fairy tale, non-fairy tale prose, etc.), and types are divided into genres. Some genres have a combination of features of different kinds (lyric epic songs). If the classification is based on the mode of existence of works, then folklore will be divided into ritual and extra-ritual. On the basis of volume, small genres are distinguished.

Genre is the basic unit of study of folklore. Each genre is a typical structural model that has the ability to realize a certain life attitude. In the oral folk poetic tradition, genres are interconnected and interact.

Many genres are universal (for example: proverbs, riddles, fairy tales, legends, epic songs). Being perfect forms of artistic assimilation of reality, they lived for centuries in the folklore of different peoples.

Folklore developed depending on changes in everyday life, social life of the people and their consciousness. Many elements of folklore changed, processed, transformed. There was a gradual replacement of the outdated system of genres with a new artistic system.

Russian folklore has its own history. Its roots go back to the ancient Slavic period, and then to the times of a single ancient Russian people. The feudal era led to the flowering of classical folklore. Later, urban folklore appeared, the folklore of industrial workers, and so on.

Early traditional folklore, classical folklore, late traditional folklore- artistic systems that historically replaced one another.

Folk genres:

I. Early traditional folklore (labor songs, divination, incantations).

II. classical folklore:

1. Ritual.

2. Non-ritual:

a) Prose genres (fairy tale, legend, legend, bylichka);

b) Poetic genres (epic, historical song, ballad);

c) Children's folklore (joke, teaser, pestle, nursery rhyme, underwear, counting rhyme, etc.);

d) Small genres (proverb, saying, omen, curse, tongue twister, etc.).

III. Late traditional folklore: (chastushki, poetry of the Great Patriotic War, working folklore).

The foundations of the artistic imagery of oral folk art were formed in the prehistoric period, when, simultaneously with the language (human speech), early traditional folklore appeared.

Early traditional folklore is a collection of ancient genera and types of folklore, an archaic system that preceded the formation of the actual artistic creativity of the people.

The question of the early stages of the development of folklore cannot be considered on the basis of the material of only one people. It is necessary to take into account the ancient kinship of close peoples (for example, the Slavs), as well as the universal, typological laws of the development of society and culture, which acted everywhere.

Researchers of early traditional folklore turn to the data of history and language. They conduct observations on the life and culture of ethnic groups that have been delayed in their development, as well as on the remnants of primitive culture in the folklore of civilized peoples. This approach is called retrospective.

Labor songs.

Labor activity played a huge role in the origin and development of folklore.

During the labor processes, which required constant rhythmic efforts, labor songs were born already in ancient times. They are known among all peoples and were performed when lifting weights, driving piles, plowing a field, drawing water, manually grinding grain, dressing flax, while rowing, and so on. Such songs could be performed when working alone, but they were especially important when working together. The songs contained commands for simultaneous action. Their main element was the rhythm that organized the labor process.

In Russian folklore, echoes of ancient labor songs have been preserved and have come down to our time, which have not lost their production functions. These are the so-called "clubs" - refrains in burlak songs performed on the Kama, Don, and especially on the Volga. They were sung by barge haulers, porters, boatmen, loaders. Depending on the type of labor, its rhythm, a rhythmic pattern of the refrain was created.

Divination. Conspiracies.

Signs, divination, witchcraft, conspiracies are known to all peoples. They are based on the mythical perception of the world, which gave the surroundings a special, intimate meaning. In ancient times, they were based on figurative, metaphorical thinking, assimilation by analogy. The vitality of these phenomena is striking: superstition and witchcraft, especially in a modernized guise, still exist today.

Divination- a means of recognizing the future. The fortuneteller does not try to influence the natural course of events, but only seeks to penetrate the hidden secrets. To recognize the future, it was necessary to turn to evil spirits, so fortune-telling was perceived as a sinful and dangerous occupation (for example, fortunetellers took off their crosses).

For fortune-telling, places were chosen where, according to the idea of ​​the people, it was possible to make contact with the inhabitants of the "other world" (crossroads, bathhouse, cemetery, etc.), as well as the time of day at which this contact was most likely (evening , midnight, until the first roosters). Nevertheless, Christian images also penetrated divination.

Guessing, people sought to get an answer to one or another important question for them: about health, about the harvest and offspring of livestock, about the fate of those who went to war ... The most numerous were girls' guesses about the upcoming marriage.

The most developed in artistic terms were the sacred fortune-telling - collective fortune-telling about the future. In them, the symbolism of special sub-songs played a paramount role.

The name "observant" comes from a type of divination. Having gathered in a hut, the participants (most often girls) took a dish (bowl), put rings or other small objects in it, taking off themselves, poured water into the dish and covered it with a scarf. (A variation of this rite without water is also known.)

Songs were sung in chorus - poetic predictions, and someone, without looking, took out objects placed there from the dish. First, they paid tribute to the bread and only then sang other songs. They could portend wealth, marriage, the continuation of girlhood, misfortune, death. Whose thing was taken out, the prediction was related to that. The number of songs depended on the number of fortunetellers.

Russian Christmas divination on chickens.1858. Lubok

CONSPIRACY(or spell) - a work of a magical nature, pronounced with the aim of influencing the world around, its phenomena and objects, in order to obtain the desired result. Spells are an integral part of witchcraft. The pronunciation of a conspiracy was often accompanied by actions with water, fire, various objects, etc., as well as the sign of the cross. When pronouncing healing spells (for example, in a bathhouse), the patient was given infusions of medicinal herbs, spat, massage, elements of hypnosis were used.

Conspiracies were passed from elder to younger, more often by relatives. There was a belief that sorcerers must get rid of their knowledge before death, and that they could do this by deceit (for this they had only to touch another person).

They also believed that the text of the conspiracy could not be changed, otherwise its strength would weaken. Therefore, not relying on memory, conspiracies were entered into notebooks. There was even a written form of their existence. However, despite this, conspiracies, like any folklore phenomenon, were subject to variability.

classical folklore- a rich system of developed, artistically full-fledged genres. It functioned productively for centuries, was closely connected with the feudal way of life and the patriarchal consciousness of the people.

Classical folklore works are usually divided into ritual and non-ritual.

Ritual folklore consisted of verbal-musical, dramatic, game, choreographic genres that were part of traditional folk rituals.

Non-ritual folklore.

In oral prose, two large sections stand out: fairy tales and fairy tale prose. At the basis of their distinction lies the different attitude of the people themselves to fairy tales as fiction and "events" as truth. From the point of view of the people, fairy tales have no other purpose than to act on fantasy. They amaze, surprise, delight, are interesting for their unusual humorous situations.

Tradition is a story about the past, sometimes very distant. Tradition depicts reality in ordinary forms, although fiction is necessarily used, and sometimes even fantasy. The main purpose of legends is to preserve the memory of national history. Traditions began to be written down before many folklore genres, as they were an important source for chroniclers. In a large number of legends exist in the oral tradition in our days.

Traditions are an "oral chronicle", a genre of non-fairytale prose with an emphasis on historical authenticity. The very word "pre-giving" means "to transmit, to preserve." Traditions are characterized by references to old people, ancestors. The events of the legends are concentrated around historical figures who, regardless of their social position (be it the king or the leader of the peasant uprising), most often appear in an ideal light.

Any legend is historical in its essence, because the impetus for its creation is always a genuine fact: a war with foreign invaders, a peasant revolt, large-scale construction, a crowning of the kingdom, and so on. However, tradition is not identical with reality. As a folklore genre, it has the right to fiction, offers its own interpretation of history. Plot fiction arises on the basis of a historical fact (for example, after the hero of a legend stays at a given point). Fiction does not contradict historical truth, but, on the contrary, contributes to its revelation.

legends- these are prose works in which the events associated with the phenomena of inanimate nature, with the world of plants, animals, as well as people (tribes, peoples, individuals) are fantastically comprehended; with supernatural beings (God, saints, angels, unclean spirits ). The main functions of legends are explanatory and moralizing. Legends are associated with Christian ideas, but they also have a pagan basis. In legends, a person turns out to be immeasurably higher than evil spirits. .

Folk demonological stories- these are superstitious narratives associated with characters from the category of lower mythology.

The pagan attitude of the peasants in the middle of the XIX century. captured by I. A. Goncharov. He wrote: “In Oblomovka, they believed everything: both werewolves and dead people. If they tell them that a haystack was walking around the field, they will not think and believe; will anyone miss the rumor that this is not a ram, but that something else, or that such-and-such Marfa or Stepanida is a witch, they will be afraid of both the ram and Martha: it would never occur to them to ask why the ram became not a ram, and Martha became a witch, and they will even pounce on that Whoever would dare to doubt this - the faith in the miraculous in Oblomovka is taxing!

In science, demonological stories were first called blades of grass. - those. small stories about goblin, brownies, devils and devils, half-creatures, sorcerers - in a word, about representatives of a dark, unclean force.

Demonological stories are turned to the present, what happened in them is incredible, the narrator experiences a feeling of fear. The main goal pursued by a bylichka or a past story is to convince listeners of the truth of what is being reported, to emotionally influence them, to instill fear of a demonic being. The plots of bylicheks and bylytsin are usually not large in size, one-motif. The characters are a human and a demonic being. The devil (devil) was very popular - a universal image denoting any "evil spirit". Different characters of the bylichek could be called devils.

The time, the place of the event, the image of the demonic being (his portrait and behavior) are characteristic. Demons appear at the "unclean", borderline time of the year and day: at Christmas time, on the Kupala night, at noon, at midnight, before dawn, after sunset. Everything happens at dusk, on a hopeless night, in fog, in the light of the moon...

A person meets them where they are: as a rule, in deserted and dangerous places. These are wastelands, forest jungles, swamps; crossroads and rosstans of deserted roads; caves, pits, reservoirs, especially whirlpools (for example, near mills), whirlpools; wells, even vessels of water. Demons live on trees (birches and willows, in hazel); in undergrounds and attics, in abandoned houses, in baths, barns, barns; and even in the hut - under the stove or behind it.

epics- these are epic songs in which heroic events or individual episodes of ancient Russian history are sung. In its original form, epics took shape and developed during the period of early Russian statehood (in Kievan Rus), expressing the national consciousness of the Eastern Slavs. (about Vladimir Svyatoslavovich, Vladimir Monomakh, Dobryn, Sadko, Alexander Popovich, Ilya Muromets, etc.)

historical songs- these are folklore epic, lyrical-epic and lyrical songs, the content of which is dedicated to specific events and real persons of Russian history and expresses the national interests and ideals of the people. They arose about important events in the history of the people - those that made a deep impression on the participants and were preserved in the memory of subsequent generations. (Songs about Ivan the Terrible, about the Time of Troubles, about Stepan Razin, about Petrovsky time, about the Pugachev uprising, about the Patriotic War of 1812)

Folk ballads- these are lyric-epic songs about a tragic event. Ballads are characterized by personal, family and household themes. The ideological orientation of the ballads is associated with folk humanistic morality. In the center of the ballads are moral problems: love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, crime and remorse.

Late traditional folklore- this is a collection of works of different genres and different directions, created in a peasant, urban, soldier, working and other environment since the beginning of the development of industry, the growth of cities, the collapse of the feudal village.

Late traditional folklore is characterized by a smaller number of works and, in general, a lower artistic level compared to classical folklore - a rich, developed, centuries-old culture generated by feudal life and a patriarchal worldview.

Late traditional folklore is distinguished by a complex interweaving of the new with the old. In the village repertoire, the transformation of classical genres took place, which began to experience the influence of literary poetics. Proverbs and sayings, anecdotal tales, folk songs of literary origin, children's folklore showed their viability.

The old lingering song was strongly pressed by the city's "cruel romances", as well as the rapidly and widely spread ditty. At the same time, epics, old historical songs, old ballads and spiritual poems, fairy tales were gradually forgotten. Folk rituals and the poetry that accompanied them eventually lost their utilitarian and magical significance, especially in urban conditions.

From the end of the XVIII century. in Russia, the first state-owned factories and serf manufactories appeared, in which civilian workers from impoverished peasants, convicts, passportless vagrants, etc. worked. In this motley environment, works arose that laid the foundation for a new phenomenon - folklore of workers. With the development of capitalism and the growth of the proletariat, the topics expanded, the number of works of oral creativity of workers increased, which was characterized by the influence of book poetry.

The emergence of the working class, a layer of artisans, led to the formation of a new branch in folklore, which over time becomes a noticeable and specific phenomenon.

From peasant folklore, this work inherited the most democratic traditions, experience, forms, and repertoire that meet the spirit of the times and the needs of "their" class.

There was a critical rethinking of them, taking into account the demands of the working class, its position, as can be seen from the example of Russian folk songs that existed in Russia in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

At the first stage, the emerging songs of the workers were nourished by the traditions of peasant folk songs of social protest, songs of literary origin, Decembrist, populist songs. Peasant song often served as a plot-figurative basis for creating sharply social songs of workers.

The work song, the urban romance, which by that time had formed into an independent branch of creativity, began to actively spread among the peasants, in turn influencing the development of new forms of peasant folklore.

The acquisition by working folklore of its original outlines, the borrowing of various elements from other spheres of creativity and their processing are a process full of drama. It is associated with the rejection of peasant folklore, and in a certain sense with its genre reworking, renewal, and simplification.

The destruction of the patriarchal way of life, which began especially rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. - since the abolition of serfdom and the capitalization of Russia, it has fundamentally changed the situation in traditional art. Folklore gradually moved to other positions in the cultural environment. Folklore of the 20th century is just one paradigm of cultural development with all the consequent cardinal changes in the foundations of its existence.

Russian folklore fully contains all the components characteristic of world folklore, the leading categories of which are "genus" and "genre", and their mutual correspondence. There are three kinds in Russian folklore:

• 1) epic, subdivided into documentary (non-fairytale) and fairy-tale prose. Non-fairytale (documentary) prose includes such genres as legends, legends, folk tales, anecdotes, and fairy tale - cult-animistic tales, fairy tales about animals, magical or fantastic, fairy tales, social fairy tales, anecdotes, parables, fables ;
• 2) lyrics, includes ritual and lyrical songs. Ritual songs include calendar and ritual (carols, sowing, baptismal, freckles, Easter, Kupala, harvesters) and family ritual (wedding, funeral, lamentations). The lyrical ones include family and everyday (songs about love, women's lot, satirical songs) and social and everyday (Cossack, recruit, soldier, serf) songs;
• 3) drama, combines calendar and ritual (nativity scene, Christmas drama, Easter drama, spring and summer games, Kupala action) and family ritual (for birth, housewarming, wedding, funeral) works that combine dramaturgy, development of events and synthesis music, words and actions.
• 4) lyric epic, includes heroic lyric-epic works - epics, thoughts, historical songs, and non-heroic - ballads, chronicle songs. These works organically combine lyrical and epic elements.

Epic, lyrical, dramatic and lyric-epic works are divided into genres - song (carols, thoughts, songs, ballads, etc.) and prose (fairy tales, myths, etc.), some of them have many varieties. For example, a fairy tale as a species has such genres, or genre varieties: fairy tales about animals, fairy tales, social fairy tales and fables.

In another classification, Russian folklore is divided into such groups of genres as ritual and non-ritual folklore. Each of these types of folklore contains a range of genres corresponding to it.

A) Ritual folklore:

calendar folklore: winter, spring, summer and autumn cycles (carols, carnival songs, stoneflies),

family folklore (family stories, lullabies, wedding songs, lamentations),

occasional folklore (spells, rhymes).

• B) Non-ritual folklore:
  • - folklore drama (Petrushka theatre, crib drama, religious drama),
  • - poetry (epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, ditty),
  • - prose: fabulous (fairy tale: fairy tale, fairy tale about animals, social, historical) and non-fairytale (tradition, legend, bylichka, mythological story,),
  • - folklore of speech situations (proverbs, sayings, good wishes, curses, riddles, tongue twisters)

At the same time, there is a division of folklore into poetic and prose genres.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Modern literature has its origins and one of its forerunners was the folklore genre.

Even before the invention of printing, works of folk art were passed from mouth to mouth.

Today let's look at what folklore is in the modern sense, what functions it performs, who studies it and how, by what features one can distinguish folklore works and, of course, look at examples of such works in Russian art.

Folklore is our genetics

The term "folklore" (from the English folk-lore "folk wisdom") appeared in Europe at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. In Russia, it has been actively used since the 30s of the nineteenth century.

He generalized ideas about literary and musical works (songs, dances) created by a team of unknown authors from the people over several tens (or hundreds) of years in the distant historical past.

Until the 20th century, works of arts and crafts and architectural creativity were also called folklore.

Simply put, folklore is oral folk art. Currently, the concept is actively used in the musical and literary sense.

We are interested in the latter, and it is important to note that it is he who is the first source of fiction. Its second source - spiritual literature, created in such cultural centers as monasteries - influenced the people's worldview with a cementing moral principle.

Folklore, on the other hand, opened the floodgates of everyday colloquial speech, the sources of verbal imagery and fairy-tale fantasy.

Genres of folklore

Works of oral folk art are usually divided into three varieties:

1. Lyric;
2. epic;
3. Dramatic.

As in fiction, epics are represented by traditional genres for each of the genera. Lyrical songs reveal the innermost themes of folk life.

The following types are distinguished:

1. historical;
2. love;
3. wedding;
4. funeral;
5. labor;
6. road (coachmen);
7. robbery;
8. comic.

epic genres-, fairy tale, tale, true story, fiction, bylichka, byvalshchina.

Small genres folklore - saying, tongue twister, riddle, joke - also elements of the epic.

To present folklore dramatic works, one must see the folk fair theater "rayek". Texts for him were written in a special verse - raeshnik. Christmas mysteries, farce comedies, cartoons, everyday sketches - all this is a folk drama.

Features of folklore works

Having carefully read the definition, we can distinguish several important features of folklore:

it's our genetics. If the people disappear from the face of the Earth, it will be possible to “pick up” its culture with the help of fairy tales, legends, proverbs, songs.

Russian folklore

Works of Russian literary folklore are studied from the first steps schools. These are Russian folk tales, proverbs, riddles. Older children get acquainted with epics about Russian heroes.

In high school schools study folklore sources of works of classical literature: stories and poems by A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. V. Gogol. Without knowing folk plots and characters, which in a sense have become the ABC of national imagery, it is impossible to fully understand the diverse world of national culture.

Many people think that apart from "Kurochka Ryaba", "Kolobok" and "Turnip", the Russian people have nothing to tell. This is not true. Open the collection of fairy tales - you are guaranteed an exciting read!

In a moment of lyrical longing, leaf through the collection of folk songs, or rather listen to them with musical accompaniment. What they sing about touches everyone, touches the most secret strings, causes both smiles and tears. This is our sounding life, our knowing that everything in the world is repeatable.

What is the meaning of folklore

Folk art is always functional, it is not born out of nowhere and always has a clear goal. Scientists suggest to share works of folklore to the following types:

1. Ritual;
2. Non-ritual.

The first type describes the repetition of ritual actions, life events significant for many generations. Ritual folklore is divided into family and calendar. The first concerns the milestones of family life: matchmaking and marriage, the birth of children, the death of relatives. It is widely represented by wedding and funeral songs, lamentations, incantations.

Separately worth children's folklore with his lullabies, nursery rhymes, pestles.

Non-ritual folklore is timed to coincide with the calendar circle of peasant life: the change of seasons and the economic activity of the farm worker. Each event of the cycle is accompanied by special songs: carols, chants, smells, etc.

Non-ritual genres include epics, fairy tales, ditties, riddles, proverbs, sayings.

study of folklore

See how important folklore is! That is why it was necessary to create a separate scientific discipline to study it. It's called folklore. Along with ethnography, this science explores the life of the common people.

Ethnographers are engaged in describing dwellings, clothing, dishes, food, rituals, discovering objects of material culture, and folklorists do the same when studying the artistic word.

Their goal is to trace how the types and genres of artistic creativity changed, how new plots and motives appeared, what social and psychological phenomena were reflected in certain works.

Outstanding domestic scientists I. M. Snegirev, I. P. Sakharov, F. I. Buslavev, A. N. Veselovsky, P. N. Rybnikov, V. Ya. Propp and many others became the first collectors of folklore works.

Under their editorship, there were collections of proverbs, tales, recorded by them on expeditions around the country. Extracting old samples of folk art, folklorists give readers a rich world of our sounding past.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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Folklore. Genres of folklore

Folklore(from English folk- people, lore- wisdom) - oral folk art. Folklore arose before the advent of writing. Its most important feature is that folklore is the art of the spoken word. This is what distinguishes it from literature and other forms of art. Another important distinguishing feature of folklore is the collectivity of creativity. It arose as a mass creativity and expressed the ideas of the primitive community and clan, and not of an individual.

In folklore, as in literature, there are three types of works: epic, lyrical and dramatic. At the same time, epic genres have a poetic and prose form (in literature, the epic genre is represented only by prose works: a story, a story, a novel, etc.). Literary genres and folklore genres differ in composition. In Russian folklore, epic genres include epics, historical songs, fairy tales, traditions, legends, tales, proverbs, and sayings. Lyrical folklore genres are ritual, lullaby, family and love songs, lamentations, ditties. Dramatic genres include folk dramas. Many folklore genres have entered literature: song, fairy tale, legend (for example, Pushkin's fairy tales, Koltsov's songs, Gorky's legends).

Folklore genres each have their own content: epics depict the feats of arms of heroes, historical songs - events and heroes of the past, family songs describe the everyday side of life. Each genre has its own heroes: heroes Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich act in epics, Ivan Tsarevich, Ivan the Fool, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga act in fairy tales, wife, husband, mother-in-law in family songs.

Folklore differs from literature in a special system of expressive means. For example, the composition (construction) of folklore works is characterized by the presence of such elements as the sing-along, the beginning, the saying, the slowing down of the action (retardation), the trinity of events; for style - constant epithets, tautologies (repetitions), parallelisms, hyperbole (exaggerations), etc.

The folklore of different peoples has much in common in genres, artistic means, plots, types of heroes, etc. This is explained by the fact that folklore, as a form of folk art, reflects the general laws of the social development of peoples. Common features in the folklore of different peoples may arise due to the proximity of culture and life or long-term economic, political and cultural ties. A large role is also played by the similarity of historical development, geographical proximity, movement of peoples, etc.