What is folklore definition for schoolchildren. Folklore - oral folk art

(English folklore - folk wisdom) is a designation artistic activity popular masses, or oral folk art, which arose even in the pre-literate period. This term was first introduced into scientific use by the English archaeologist W. J. Toms in 1846 and was widely understood as the totality of the spiritual and material culture of the people, their customs, beliefs, rituals, and various forms of arts. Over time, the content of the term narrowed. There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk art culture, as oral poetry and as a combination of verbal, musical, and game types of folk art. With all the variety of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, life, transmission of works from generation to generation by means of natural memory. Collective life determined the appearance among different peoples of the same type of genres, plots, such means of artistic expression as hyperbola, parallelism, various types of repetitions, a constant and complex epithet, and comparisons. The role of folklore was especially strong during the period when mythopoetic consciousness predominated. With the advent of writing, many types of folklore developed in parallel with fiction, interacting with it, influencing it and other forms. artistic creativity influence and experiencing the opposite effect.

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FOLKLORE

English folklore - folk knowledge, folk wisdom), folk poetry, folk poetry, oral folk art, - a set various kinds and forms of mass oral art. creativity of one or several. peoples. The term "F." introduced in 1846 archaeologist W.J. Toms, as a scientific. the term is officially adopted by English. folklore society "Folklore Society", osn. in 1878. Originally "F." meant both the subject of study and the corresponding science. In modern historiography is a science that studies the theory and history of F. and its interaction with other types of art, called. folklore. The definition of F. cannot be unambiguous for all sources. stages, because its social and aesthetic. functions, content, and poetics are directly dependent on the presence or absence in the culture system of a given people of its other forms and types (manuscript or printed book, professional theater and variety art, etc.) and various ways of disseminating verbal art. works (cinema, radio, television, sound recording, etc.). F. arose in the process of the formation of human speech and in ancient times embraced all forms of spiritual culture. It is characterized by a comprehensive syncretism - functional and ideological. (F. contained the rudiments of artistic creativity, sources of knowledge, science, religion, etc.), social (F. served all strata of society), genre (epos, fairy tale, legend, myth, song, etc.). not yet differentiated), formal (the word acted in an inseparable unity with the so-called extra-textual elements - intonation, melody, gesture, facial expressions, dance, sometimes depicting art). Later, in the process of social differentiation of society and the development of culture, various types and forms of philosophies arose, expressing the interests of the department. social strata and classes, folklore genres were formed that had various social and everyday purposes (production, social organizing, ritual, play, aesthetic, cognitive). They were characterized by varying degrees of aesthetic development. beginning, various combinations of text and extra-textual elements, aesthetic. and other functions. On the whole, F. continued to be multifunctional and syncretic. The use of writing to fix the text singled out literature from the oral forms of verbal art that preceded it. creativity. Writing and literature from the moment of its inception turned out to be the property of the highest social strata. At the same time, literature at first, as a rule, was not yet a predominant phenomenon. artistic (for example, chronicles and annals, diplomatic and journalistic works, ritual texts, etc.). In this regard, the actual aesthetic the needs of society as a whole for a long time were satisfied mainly by oral tradition. The development of literature and the growing social differentiation led to the fact that already in the late feud. period F. became preim. (and for many peoples exclusively) the property of the working people of the people. masses, because literary forms of creativity remained inaccessible to them. The social differences of the environment that created literary and folklore works led to the emergence of certain. range of ideas and various arts. tastes. This was accompanied by the development of specific systems of literary (story, novel, poem, poem, etc.) and folklore (epos, fairy tale, song, etc.) genres and their poetics. The transition from oral forms of creation and transmission of arts. works, for which the use of nature is characteristic. means of communication (voice - hearing, movement - sight), to the fixation and stabilization of the text and its reading meant not only a more perfect way of accumulating and preserving the achievements of culture. He was followed and determined. losses: a spatial and temporal gap in the moment of creation (reproduction) of art. work and its perception, the loss of directness. contact between its creator (writer) and perceiver (reader), the loss of extra-textual elements, contact empathy and the possibility of textual and other changes depending on the reaction of the perceiver. The significance of these losses is confirmed by the fact that even in the conditions of universal literacy, not only traditional folklore, but also other oral and, at the same time, synthetic, continue to exist and reappear. forms, and some of them are of a contact nature (theater, stage, readers, writers' performances in front of an audience, performance of poems with a guitar, etc.). Characteristic features of F. in the conditions of its coexistence with literature and in opposition to it: oral, collectivity, nationality, variability, the combination of the word with the arts. elements of other arts. Each work arose on the basis of the poetics developed by the team, was intended for famous circle listeners and acquired ist. life, if it was accepted by the collective. Changes, to-rye were made otd. performers could be very different - from stylistic. variations to a significant revision of the idea and, as a rule, did not go beyond the limits of ideology and aesthetics. environment. Collective creativity. process in F. did not mean its impersonality. Talented masters not only created new songs, fairy tales, etc., but also influenced the process of spreading, improving or adapting traditions. texts to the historically changed needs of the collective. Dialectical The unity of the collective and the individual was contradictory in philosophy, as in literature, but on the whole, tradition in philosophy was of greater importance than in literature. in the conditions of society. the division of labor on the basis of oral tradition, in parallel with the mass and non-professional performance, which is characteristic of the F. of all peoples, there arose peculiar professions associated with the creation and performance of poetic, musical, and other works (other Greek rhapsodes and aeds; Roman mimes and histsiones, Russian buffoons, French jugglers, German shpielmans, later Russian guslars, Ukrainian kobzars, Kazakh and Kyrgyz akyns and fats, French chansonniers, etc.). In early feud. period stood out performers who served the ruling social strata. A transitional type of singer-poet arose, closely associated at first with chivalry (French troubadours or German Minnesingers), later with burghers (German Meistersingers) or clerical student environment (French or German Vagantes; Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian . vertepniks). In some countries and regions in the conditions of slow development of patriarchal feuds. way of life were formed transitional forms a kind of oral literature. Poetic. works were created. persons, distributed orally, there was a desire to stabilize their texts. At the same time, the tradition has preserved the names of the creators (Toktogul in Kyrgyzstan, Kemin and Mollanepes in Turkmenistan, Sayat-Nova in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, etc.). In Russian F. did not have a developed professionalization of singers. We can only talk about names mentioned in writing Ancient Russia(singer Mitus; possibly Boyan). Each genre or group of folklore genres performed a specific task. social and household functions. This led to the formation of F. genres with their own themes, images, poetics, style. AT ancient period most peoples had tribal traditions, labor and ritual songs, mythological. stories, early forms of fairy tales, spells, incantations. Later, at the turn of the transition from a pre-class society to a class society, modern society arose. types of fairy tales (magic, everyday, about animals) and archaic. epic forms. During the formation of the state-va formed heroic. epic, then epic. songs of ballad and ist. content, ist. legends. Later, other genres of classic. F. formed extra-ritual lyric. song and romance, late types of nar. drama and even later - the genres of the worker F. - revolutionary. songs, marches, satirical songs, oral stories. The process of emergence, development genres of fine arts, especially the length of their productive period, the relationship of fine arts with literature, and other types of professional art. creativity are determined by the features of the East. development of each people and the nature of its contacts with other peoples. So, tribal traditions are forgotten among some peoples (for example, among the Eastern Slavs) and formed the basis of the ist. legends from others (eg. Icelandic sagas the Icelanders). Ritual songs, as a rule, were timed to coincide with different periods of the agricultural, cattle-breeding, hunting, or fishing calendar, entered into various relationships with the rites of Christ, Muslim, Buddhist, and other religions. The degree of connection of the epic with the mythological. ideas due to specific socio-economic. conditions. An example of this kind of connection is the Nart legends of the peoples of the Caucasus, Karelian-Finnish. runes, other Greek epic. Relatively early, he left the oral existence of germs. and Western-Roman epic. It existed for a long time and acquired later forms of epic Turkic peoples, south and east. Slavs. There are different genre variants of African, Australian, Asian and European fairy tales. peoples. The ballad among some peoples (for example, the Scots) has acquired clear genre differences, for others (for example, Russians) it is close to the lyric. or ist. song. The phrasing of each people is characterized by a peculiar combination of genres and a certain role of each of them in the general system of oral creativity, which has always been multilayered and heterogeneous. Despite the bright national the coloring of folklore texts, many motifs, plots, and even images of characters in the folklore of different peoples are strikingly similar. Such a similarity could arise as a result of the development of F. from common source(common archaic features of F. Slavs or Finno-Ugric peoples, which go back to the common Proto-Slavic or Proto-Finnish heritage), either as a result of cultural interaction between peoples (for example, the exchange of plots of fairy tales of Russians and Karelians), or the independent emergence of similar phenomena (for example ., general plots of fairy tales American Indians and Peoples Center. Europe) under the influence of the general patterns of development of the social system, material and spiritual culture. In the late feudal time and during the period of capitalism in Nar. the environment is more active than before, lit. works; some forms of lit. creativity became widespread (romances and songs of lit. origin, the so-called folk books, Russian "lubok", German "bilderbogen", etc.). This influenced the plot, style, content of folklore works. People's creativity storytellers acquired some features of lit. creativity (individualization, psychologism, etc.). In the socialist In society, the availability of education provided an equal opportunity for the development of talents and the professionalization of people; a variety of modern forms of mass verbal art. culture - amateur lit. creativity (including partly in traditional folklore forms), club amateur performances, folk songwriting. choirs, etc. Some of these forms are creative, others are performing. Formation of folklore in independent. science belongs to the 30-40s. 19th century The formation of folklore and the beginning of scientific. collection and publication of F. was associated with three DOS. factors: lit. romanticism, which was one of the forms of expression of the self-consciousness of the emerging bourgeois. nations (eg, in Germany, France, Italy), nat.-liberate. movement (for example, among the southern and western Slavs) and the spread of social liberation. and educational ideas (for example, in Russia - A. I. Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov; in Poland - A. Mickiewicz, etc.). Romantics (German scientists I. G. Herder, L. Arnim and K. Brentano, brothers V. and J. Grimm and others; English - T. Percy and J. MacPherson and others; Serbian - V. Karadzic and others; Fin. - E. Lenrot and others; Russian Decembrists) saw in F. an expression of nat. spirit and national traditions and used folklore works for the reconstruction of the ist. facts not reflected in written sources. Arising within the framework of romanticism, the so-called. mythological school (German scientists A. Kuhn, W. Schwartz, W. Manhardt and others; English - M. Muller, J. W. Cox and others; French - A. Pictet and others; Italian - A de Gubernatis, etc.; Russian - F. I. Buslaev, A. N. Afanasiev, etc.), based on the achievements of the Indo-European. linguistics, considered F. evrop. peoples heritage of the ancient Indo-European. mythmaking. Romance in glory. countries saw in F. the general glory. an inheritance preserved to varying degrees by different branches of the Slavs, just like it. romantics saw in F. modern. German-speaking peoples are the common heritage of the ancient Germans. In the 2nd floor. 19th century on the basis of philosophy. Positivism developed evolutionist schools in folklore, which is associated with the growing awareness of the unity of the patterns of development of F. and the recurrence of folklore plots and motifs in various ethnic groups. environments. So representatives of the so-called. anthropological schools (E. Tylor, E. Lang and J. Fraser - in England; N. Sumtsov, A. I. Kirpichnikov, A. N. Veselovsky - in Russia, etc.) explained the global recurrence of folklore phenomena by the unity of people. psychology. At the same time, the so-called. comparativism (comparative historical method), which explained similar phenomena more or less mechanically. borrowing or "migration of plots" (German - T. Benfey, French - G. Paris, Czech - J. Polivka, Russian - V. V. Stasov, A. N. Pypin, A. N. Veselovsky and others .), and the “historical school” (the most vivid expression in Russia is V.F. Miller and his students; K. and M. Chadwick in England, etc.), which sought to connect the F. of each people with its history and did a great job by comparison ist. documents and folklore stories (especially epic ones). However, " historical school"A simplified understanding of the mechanism of artistic reflection of reality in F. was characteristic and (as well as certain other trends in bourgeois folklore of the late 19th - early 20th centuries) the desire to prove that the masses only mechanically perceived and preserved arts. values ​​created by the upper social strata In the 20th century, Freudianism (which interpreted folklore plots as a subconscious expression of inhibited sexual and other complexes), ritualistic theory (connecting the origin verbal art preim. with magical rituals; French scientists P. Sentive, J. Dumezil, eng. - F. Raglan, gall. - J. de Vries, Amer. - R. Carpenter and others) and the "Finnish school", which establishes the historical and geographical. the areas of distribution of plots and developing the principles of classification and systematization of photography (K. Kroon, A. Aarne, V. Anderson, and others). The origin of the Marxist trend in folklore is associated with the names of P. Lafargue, G. V. Plekhanov, A. M. Gorky. In the 20-30s. 20th century the formation of Marxist folklore studies continued in the USSR, after the 2nd World War of 1939-45 it became widespread in the socialist. countries (B. M. and Yu. M. Sokolov, M. K. Azadovsky, V. M. Zhirmunsky, V. Ya. Propp, P. G. Bogatyrev, N. P. Andreev and others - in the USSR; P Dinekov, C. Romanska, S. Stoykova and others - in Bulgaria, M. Pop and others - in Romania, D. Ortutai and others - in Hungary, Yu. Krzyzhanovsky and others - in Poland, J. Horak , Ya. Ex, O. Sirovatka, V. Gasparikova and others - in Czechoslovakia, V. Steinitz and others - in the GDR). She considers F., on the one hand, as the most ancient form of poetic. creativity, a treasure trove of art. experience nar. masses, as one of the components of the classic. heritage of the national arts. culture of each people and, on the other hand, as the most valuable source. source. When studying the most ancient epochs in the history of mankind, F. is often (along with archeology) an indispensable source. source, especially for the study of ist. development of ideology and social psychology Nar. wt. The complexity of the problem lies in the fact that archaic. folklore works are known, as a rule, only in the records of the 18th-20th centuries. or in earlier lit. reworkings (eg, German "Song of the Nibelungs"), or archaic. elements included in later aesthetics. systems. Therefore, the use of F. for ist. reconstructions require great care and above all the attraction of compare. materials. Also taken into account are the features of the reflection of reality in various genres of phrasing, which combine aesthetic, cognitive, ritual, and other functions in different ways. The experience of studying genres, which were perceived by the performers as an expression of the ist. knowledge (prose. ist. legends and legends, song ist. epic), showed the complexity of the correlation of plots, characters, time, to which their actions are attributed, epic. geography, etc. and authentic ist. events, their real chronological, social and geographical. environment. Development of art.-ist. thinking of the people did not come from empiricism. and a specific image of events to their poeticization and generalization or legendary-fantastic. processing as events are forgotten, and vice versa - from the so-called. n. mythological epic, which is fantastic. reflection of reality in mythology. categories (for example, the successes of mankind in mastering fire, crafts, navigation, etc. are personified in F. in the form of a "cultural hero" of the Promethean type), to the heroic. epic and, finally, to the East. songs, in which much more specific ist are drawn. situations, events and persons, or ist. ballads, in which nameless heroes or heroes with fictitious names act in an environment close to real-historical. In the department same plots ist. legends or epic songs are reflected to a greater extent not empirical. ist. facts, and typical social-ist. collisions, ist. political state. and arts. consciousness of the people and folklore traditions of previous centuries, through the prism of which the ist is perceived. reality. However, as in ist. legends, and in song historical epic. works often preserved the most valuable from the East. point of view details, names, geographic names, everyday realities, etc. So, G. Schliemann found the location of Troy, using the data of other Greek. epic songs of the Iliad and the Odyssey, although he did not accurately determine the location of the "Homeric" layer in the cultural layers of the Trojan excavations. Even more difficult is the mechanism of reflection ist. reality in Nar. fairy tales, lyric and household songs. Songs of a ritual nature, conspiracies, etc., to a greater extent reflect not the ist. reality as such, and the everyday consciousness of the people are themselves facts of Nar. life. That. F. as a whole did not passively reproduce empiricism. facts socio-economic. and political reality or everyday life, but was one of the most important means of expressing Nar. aspirations. Great importance also has F. to clarify the history of ethnic. contacts, the process of formation of ethnographic. groups and historical and ethnographic. regions. Lit .: Chicherov V.I., K. Marx and F. Engels on folklore. Bibliographic materials, "Soviet folklore", 1936, No 4-5; Bonch-Bruevich V. D., V. I. Lenin on oral folk art, "Soviet Ethnography", 1954, No 4; Fridlender G. M., K. Marx and F. Engels and questions of literature, 2nd ed., M., 1968 (folklore main); Propp V. Ya., The specifics of folklore, in the collection: "Proceedings of the anniversary scientific session of Leningrad State University. Section of Philological Sciences, L., 1946; his own, Historical roots of a fairy tale, L., 1946; his own, Folklore and reality, "Russian Literature", 1963, No 3; his own, Principles of classification of folklore genres, "Owls. ethnography", 1964, No 4; his own, Morphology of a fairy tale, 2nd ed., M., 1969; Zhirmunsky V. M., On the issue of folk art, "Uch. app. Leningrad. ped. in-ta im. A. I. Herzen", 1948, v. 67; his own, People's heroic epic, M.-L., 1962; Gusev V. E., Marxism and Russian folklore late XIX - early XX century., M.-L., 1951; his, Problems of folklore in the history of aesthetics, M.-L., 1963; his, Folklore. The history of the term and its modern meaning, "Sov. ethnogr.", 1966, No 2; his own, Aesthetics of folklore, L., 1967; Putilov BN, On the main features of Nar. poetic creativity, "Uch. zap. Grozny ped. in-ta. Ser. philological. Sciences", c. 7, 1952, No 4; his own, About istorich. learning Russian. folklore, in the book: Rus. folklore, c. 5, M.-L., 1960; Kokkiara J., History of folklore in Europe, trans. from Italian., M., 1960; Virsaladze E. B., The problem of the specifics of folklore in modern. bourgeois folkloristics, in the book: Literary research of the Institute of History. cargo. lit., c. 9, Tb., 1955 (summary in Russian); Azadovsky M.K., History of Russian. folkloristics, vol. 1-2, M., 1958-63; Meletinsky E. M., Hero of a fairy tale, M., 1958; his own, the origin of the heroic. epic. Early forms and archaic monument, M., 1963; Chistov K.V., Folkloristics and Modernity, "Soviet Ethnography", 1962, No 3; his own, Sovr. problems of textology in Russian. folklore, M., 1963: his own. On the Relationship between Folkloristics and Ethnography, "Sov. Ethnography", 1971, No 5; his, Specificity of Folklore in the Light of Information Theory, "Problems of Philosophy", 1972, No 6; Folklore and ethnography, L., 1970; Bogatyrev P.G., Questions of the theory of Nar. arts, M., 1971; Zemtsovsky I.I., Folklore as a science, in collection: Slav. musical folklore, M., 1972; Kagan M.S., Morphology of art, L., 1972; Early forms of art, M., 1972; Corso R. Folklore. Story. Obbietto. Metodo. Bibliographie, Roma, 1923; Gennep A. van, Le folklore, P., 1924; Krohn, K., Die folkloristische Arbeitsmethode, Oslo, 1926; Croce B., Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte, Bari, 1929; Brouwer C., Die Volkslied in Deutschland, Frankreich, Belgien und Holland, Groningen-Haag., 1930; Saintyves P., Manuel de folklore, P., 1936; Varagnac A., D?finition du folklore, P., 1938; Alford V., Introduction to English folklore, L., 1952; Ramos A., Estudos de Folk-Lore. Definic?o e limites teorias de interpretac?o, Rio de J., (1951); Weltfish G., The origins of art, Indianapolis-N. Y., 1953; Marinus A., Essais sur la tradition, Brux., 1958; Jolles A., Einfache Formen, 2 ed., Halle/Saale, 1956; Levi-Strauss C., La pendee sauvage, P., 1962; Bawra, S. M., Primitive song, N. Y., 1963; Krappe A. H., The science of folklore, 2 ed., N. Y., 1964; Bausinger H., Formen der "Volkspoesie", B., 1968; Weber-Kellermann J., Deutsche Volkskunde zwischen Germanistik und Sozialwissenschaften, Stuttg., 1969; Vrabie G. , Folklorue Object. principles. Metoda, Category, Buc, 1970; Dinekov P., Bulgarian folklore, Parva part, 2nd ed., Sofia, 1972; Ortutay G., Hungarian folklore. Essays, Bdpst, 1972. Bibliography: Akimova T. M., Seminary on Nar. poetic creativity, Saratov, 1959; Melts M. Ya., Questions of the theory of folklore (materials for the bibliography), in the book; Russian folklore, vol. 5, M.-L., 1960; his own, Modern folklore bibliography, in the book: Russian folklore, vol. 10, M.-L., 1966; Kushnereva Z. I., Folklore of the peoples of the USSR. Bibliographic source in Russian lang. (1945-1963), M., 1964; Sokolova V.K., Sov. folkloristics for the 50th anniversary of October, "Soviet Ethnography", 1967, No 5; Volkskundliche Bibliographie, W.-Lpz., 1919-57; Internationale volkskundliche Bibliographie, Basel-Bonn, 1954-; Coluccio F., Diccionario folklorico argentino, B.-Aires, 1948; Standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend, ed. by M. Leach, v. 1-2, N.Y., 1949-50; Erich O., Beitl R., Wärterbuch der deutschen Volkskunde, 2 Aufl., Stutt., 1955; Thompson S., Motif-index of folk-literature, v. 1-6, Bloomington, 1955-58; his own, Fifty years of folktale indexing, "Humanoria", N. Y., 1960; Dorson R. M., Current folklore theories, "Current anthropology", 1963, v. 4, no 1; Aarne A. and Thompson S., The types of folktale. A classification and bibliography, 2 rev., Hels., 1961; Slownik folkloru polskiego, Warsz., 1965. K. V. Chistov. Leningrad.

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Folklore is folk art, which is very necessary and important for the study of folk psychology today. Folklore includes works that convey the main important ideas of the people about the main values ​​of life: work, family, love, public duty, homeland. In folklore, the original text of a work is almost always unknown, since the author of the work is not known. The text is passed from mouth to mouth and reaches our days in the form in which the writers wrote it down. Russian folk poetry has gone through a significant path of historical development and has reflected the life of the Russian people in many ways. Its genre composition is rich and varied. It also includes such genres that exist in the folklore of many other peoples - general folklore genres (fairy tale, proverb, riddle, etc.), and such genres that are not found in the oral art of other peoples. So, only in Russian folklore there are epics and ditties and there are no thoughts and kolomyeks in it, which are characteristic of Ukrainian folklore. the genres that make up Russian folklore differ in content, structure and functions. These differences serve as the basis for classifying genres. When classifying, it must be taken into account that in folklore, as well as in literature, two forms of speech are used - poetic and prose, therefore, in the epic genre, poetic types (epic, historical song, ballad) and prose (fairy tale, legend, tradition) should be distinguished. The lyrical genre of works uses only the poetic form. All poetic works are distinguished by the combination of words and melody. Prose works are told, not sung. The dramatic genre also exists in folklore, but it has specific features: here the word and the chant are also combined with the action, which usually represents a ritual, a game, a round dance. Actually dramatic forms are very late and arose under the influence of literature (“Tsar Maximilian”, “The Boat”). The genres of Russian folklore in their totality represent a historically established artistic system in which all types of works are in complex and peculiar relationships and interactions. The formation and existence of a system of genres is one of the important patterns in the development of folklore. The system of folklore genres arises, firstly, in connection with the ideological and artistic principles common to them; secondly, in connection with their historically developed mutual relations; thirdly, in connection with the general historical fate of genres. Despite the fact that each individual genre has more or less defined features (genre-forming features), they all have common features that unite the genres into an internally connected system consisting of interdependent works. First of all, the genres of oral poetry are characterized by a common ideological essence, which should be defined by the word "nationality". The works of one group of genres have as their subject the history of the people (epics, historical songs, legends), the other - the work and life of the people (calendar ritual songs, labor songs), the third - personal relationships (family and love songs), the fourth - the moral views of the people and his life experience (proverb). But all genres taken together cover life, work, history, social and personal relations of people. Genres are related to each other in the same way that they are related to each other. different sides and phenomena itself acts, and therefore form a single ideological and artistic system. The fact that the genres of folklore have a common ideological essence and common task The many-sided artistic reproduction of life evokes a certain commonality or similarity of their themes, plots and heroes. Starting with the common morality of proverbs and fairy tales, subjects of riddles and fairy tales, and ending with the similarity of themes, plots and heroes of historical songs, historical legends, for example, about Ivan the Terrible, folklore forms a single system that has common life material, and therefore general pictures nature and life, scenes of events and exploits, fights with monsters, for example, in fairy tales and epics, similar types of heroes. Folklore genres are characterized by a commonality of principles of folk aesthetics - simplicity, brevity, frugality, plot, poetization of nature, certainty of moral assessments of heroes (positive or negative). The genres of oral folk art are also interconnected by a common system artistic means folklore - a kind of composition (leitmotif, unity of the theme, chain connection, screensaver - a picture of nature, types of repetitions, common places), symbolism, special types of epithets. This system, historically developing, has a pronounced national identity, due to the peculiarities of the language, life, history and culture of the people. In the formation, development and coexistence of genres of folklore, a process of complex interaction takes place: mutual influence, mutual enrichment, adaptation to each other. Interaction of genres has various forms. It serves as one of the reasons for significant changes in oral folk art. The genetic connection of genres suggests that genres are formed on a common folk basis that precedes them, due to which they have common or very similar features, or that one genre serves as the basis for the emergence of another. So, the epic was formed not only on the basis of early types of heroic songs, but, obviously, on the basis of legendary fairy tale genres. In turn, the epic preceded the historical song. Chastushka arose on a wide range of lyrical songs of various types, including dance and game ones. It has long been believed in science that the proverb was born from a parable as its final conclusion, a moral aphorism. Potebnya supported this point of view in his works. Buslaev erected the beginning of small genres to a fairy tale, believing that proverbs, sayings, riddles come from a common basis as examples of “folk wisdom”. From earlier genres, the newly emerging ones also perceived some features overall structure, and elements of poetics (symbolism in a lyrical song and symbolism in a ditty), and verse (verse of an epic and verse of historical older songs). This evolutionary way of origin of genres links them together. In the history of folklore, there is also an opposite phenomenon - the impact of new genres on old ones, and previously popular genres change their structure and poetics. Often, under the influence of new genres, old ones disintegrate. So, a historical song, having arisen as a continuation of the epic, itself, in turn, causes changes in the epic: a greater development of social conflicts and coverage of the personal relationships of the characters, simplification of poetics, for example, a decrease in the role of common places, a change in verse. Chastushka, having arisen as a modification of the traditional lyrical song, then itself began to influence it, under the influence of which the chant decreased in the lyrical song, the composition, plot situation and symbolism were simplified. A peculiar form of interaction between genres of folklore is the inclusion of works of one genre in the works of another. So, one can observe a proverb in an epic and a lyrical song, where it serves as a conclusion, an aphoristic conclusion or a moral rule that regulates the behavior of characters or the course of action. For example, in the epic “Dobrynya and the Serpent”, Dobrynya’s mother advises him before a difficult task: Go to bed early in the evening, But the morning will be wise: The morning will be wiser in the evening. In epics, a conspiracy is used. Ilya Muromets, before shooting at the Nightingale the Robber, speaks his arrow. The conspiracy was also introduced into the epic about Dobrynya and Marinka. In historical songs, there are places that look like lamentations, and sometimes the whole song has the form of a lament ("Xenia's Lament"). Songs are introduced into the fairy tale (for example, Alyonushka's song about brother Ivashechka), riddles that the hero must guess.

The theme of oral folk art in Russian literature is extremely diverse, there are numerous genres and types of folklore. All of them were formed gradually, as a result of the life and creative activity of the people, manifested over several hundred years. Currently, there are specific types of folklore in literature. Oral folk art is that unique layer of knowledge on the basis of which thousands of classical works were built.

Interpretation of the term

Folklore is oral folk art, endowed with ideological depth, highly artistic qualities, it includes all poetic, prose genres, customs and traditions, accompanied by verbal artistic creativity. Folklore genres are classified in different ways, but basically there are several genre groups:

1. Labor songs - formed in the process of work, for example, sowing, plowing, haymaking. They are a variety of cries, signals, tunes, parting words, songs.
2. Calendar folklore - conspiracies, signs.
3. Wedding folklore.
4. Funeral lamentations, recruiting accounts.
5. Non-ritual folklore is small folklore genres, proverbs, fables, omens and sayings.
6. Oral prose - legends, bylichki and past stories.
7. Children's folklore - pestles, nursery rhymes, lullabies.
8. Song epic (heroic) - epics, poems, songs (historical, military, spiritual).
9. Artistic creativity - magical, everyday tales and tales about animals, ballads, romances, ditties.
10. Folklore theater - raek, nativity scene, disguise, performances with puppets.

Consider the most common types of folklore in more detail.

labor songs

This is a song genre, a distinctive feature of which is the obligatory accompaniment labor process. Labor songs are a way of organizing collective, social work, setting the rhythm with a simple melody and text. For example: "Wow, let's pull a little closer to make it more fun." Such songs helped to start and finish the work, rallied the working team and were spiritual helpers in the hard physical labor of the people.

Calendar folklore

This type of oral folk art belongs to the ritual traditions of the calendar cycle. The life of a peasant working on the land is inextricably linked with weather conditions. That is why there appeared great amount rituals that were performed to attract good luck, prosperity, a large offspring of livestock, successful farming, etc. The most revered holidays of the calendar were Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, Epiphany and Trinity. Each celebration was accompanied by songs, chants, incantations and ritual actions. Let us recall the famous custom of singing songs to Kolyada on the night before Christmas: “The cold is not a problem, Kolyada is knocking at the house. Christmas is coming to the house, it brings a lot of joy.

wedding folklore

Each separate place had its own types of folklore, but mostly they were lamentations, sentences and songs. Wedding folklore includes song genres that accompanied three main ceremonies: matchmaking, farewell of parents to the bride, and a wedding celebration. For example: "Your product, our merchant, is just a miracle!" The ritual of handing over the bride to the groom was very colorful and was always accompanied by long and short merry songs. At the wedding itself, the songs did not stop, they mourned the bachelor life, wished love and family well-being.

Non-ritual folklore (small genres)

This group of oral folk art includes all types of small genres of folklore. However, this classification is ambiguous. For example, many of the types belong to children's folklore, such as pestles, lullabies, riddles, nursery rhymes, teasers, etc. At the same time, some researchers divide all folklore genres into two groups: calendar-ritual and non-ritual.

Consider the most popular types of small genres of folklore.

A proverb is a rhythmic expression, a wise saying that carries a generalized thought and has a conclusion.

Signs - a short verse or expression that tells about those signs that will help predict natural phenomena, weather.

A proverb is a phrase, often with a humorous bias, illuminating a phenomenon of life, a situation.

A sentence is a small verse-appeal to natural phenomena, living beings, surrounding objects.

A tongue twister is a small phrase, often rhymed, with words that are difficult to pronounce, designed to improve diction.

oral prose

Oral prose includes the following types of Russian folklore.

Legends - a story about historical events in folk retelling. The heroes of the legends are warriors, kings, princes, etc.

Legends - myths, epic tales of heroic deeds, people, fanned with honors and glory, as a rule, this genre is endowed with pathos.

Bylichki - short stories that tell about the meeting of the hero with some kind of "evil spirits", real cases from the life of the narrator or his acquaintances.

Byvalschiny - a summary of what really happened once and with someone, while the narrator is not a witness

Children's folklore

This genre is represented by a variety of forms - poetic, song. Types of children's folklore - that accompanied the child from birth to his growing up.

Pestles are short rhymes or songs that accompany the very first days of a newborn. With the help of them, they nursed, nurtured children, for example: "The nightingale sings, sings, pretty, but pretty."

Nursery rhymes are small melodious poems designed to be played with kids.

Podushushki,

Rotok - talker,

Handles - grips,

Walker legs.

Calls - poetic, song appeals to nature, animals. For example: "Summer is red, come, bring warm days."

A joke is a short fairy tale poem sung to a child, a short story about the world around him.

Lullabies are short songs that parents sing to a child at night to lull them to sleep.

Riddle - poetic or prose sentences that require a solution.

Other types of children's folklore are counting rhymes, teasers and tall tales. They are extremely popular even today.

Song epic

The heroic epic demonstrates ancient species folklore, he talks about the events that happened once in song form.

Bylina is an old song told in a solemn but unhurried style. Glorifies the heroes and tells about their heroic deeds for the benefit of the state, the Russian fatherland. about Dobryn Nikitich, Volga Buslaivaich and others.

Historical songs are a kind of transformation of the epic genre, where the style of presentation is less eloquent, but the poetic form of narration is preserved. For example, "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg."

Artistic creativity

This group includes epic and song genres created in the spirit of folk art.

A fairy tale is a short or long epic narrative, one of the most common genres of oral folk art about fictional events, heroes. All this is folklore, the types of fairy tales in it are the following: magical, everyday and reflect those ideas about the world, good, evil, life, death, nature that existed among the people. For example, good always triumphs over evil, and there are wonderful mythical creatures in the world.

Ballads are poetic songs, a genre of song and musical creativity.

Anecdotes are a special kind of epic narration about comic situations in people's lives. Originally they did not exist in the form in which we know them. These were stories complete in meaning.

Fiction is a short story about impossible, improbable events, something that was fiction from beginning to end.

Chastushka is a small song, usually a quatrain with humorous content, telling about events, incidental situations.

folklore theater

Street performances were very common among the people, the plots for them were various genres, but most often of a dramatic nature.

Nativity scene - a kind of dramatic work intended for street puppet theater.

Rayok - a kind of picture theater, devices in the form of a box with changing patterns, the stories told at the same time reflected the oral forms of folklore.

The presented classification is the most common among researchers. However, it should be understood that the types of Russian folklore complement each other, and sometimes do not fit into the generally accepted classification. Therefore, when studying the issue, a simplified version is most often used, where only 2 groups of genres are distinguished - ritual and non-ritual folklore.

English folklore - folk wisdom) - the name of folk art accepted in international scientific (including aesthetic) terminology. The term was introduced in 1846 by Eng. scientist W. J. Thoms; subsequently entered into scientific use in all countries. The concept of "F." initially covered all areas of the spiritual (and sometimes material) culture of the masses, then gradually its significance narrowed. In modern There is no single generally accepted use of the term in science. In bourgeois aesthetics and cultural studies, the identification of the concepts of "F." and "culture of uncivilized peoples", or "primitive, communal culture"; the definition of f. as "relics primitive culture in the culture of civilized communities”; at the same time, there is a definition of it as "the culture of the popular classes in civilized countries", etc. In the socialist countries, three main ones coexist. concepts that define F. as: 1) oral-poetic creativity; 2) a complex of verbal, musical, game, dramatic and choreographic types of folk art; 3) folk art. culture in general (including fine and decorative arts). The second concept prevails. The reduction of F. only to verbal forms breaks the organic connections existing in folk art between the word, music, game, and other elements of art. creativity. Expansive understanding of F. as the whole artist. culture ignores the specific differences between non-fixed and fixed (“objective”) forms folk art. Marxist aesthetics proceeds from the dialectical-materialistic understanding of F. as a socially conditioned and historically developing artist. activities of the masses, which has a set of interrelated specific features (collectivity creative process, traditionality, non-fixed forms of transmission prod. from generation to generation, multi-element, variability), closely related to labor activity, life, customs of the people. Having arisen as a prehistory, throughout the centuries-old history of mankind, F. was both a claim and a non-claim, combining aesthetic and non-aesthetic functions. Not yet being "artistic production as such" (Marx), art should not be identified with professional art (although it does not rule out the emergence of masters). Being the source of literature, composer music, theater, F. does not lose its relatively independent place in the history of art. It is a system of types, not fully correlated with the system of genera and genres of professional art. The style of each people is distinguished by its originality and pronounced ethnic identity, the richness of regional and local stylistic forms within each national art. At the same time, F, of all peoples, expressing the worldview of the working masses, is characterized by the similarity of social and aesthetic ideals and ideological content.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Folklore

English folklore, folk-lore) - folk art, art created by the people and existing among the broad masses of the people (epics, fairy tales, ditties, proverbs, songs, dances, etc.). Distinguish between verbal folklore (folk poetry), music, dance, etc. (in the cultural aspect)? in the “broad” sense, all folk traditional peasant spiritual and partly material culture, and in the “narrow” sense - oral peasant verbal art. tradition. Folklore is a set of structures integrated by the word, speech, regardless of what non-verbal elements they are associated with. Probably, it would be more accurate and definite to use the old and from the 20-30s. obsolete terminology. the phrase "oral literature" or not very specific sociological. restriction “oral folk literature”. This use of the term is defined different concepts and interpretations of the connections of the subject of folklore with other forms and layers of culture, the unequal structure of culture in different countries of Europe and America in those decades of the last century, when Ethnography and folklore arose, different rates of subsequent development, different composition of the main fund of texts that science used in each of the countries. In modern In folklore, four main concepts enjoy the greatest authority, which at the same time constantly interact: a) folklore - orally transmitted common people's experience and knowledge. This refers to all forms of spiritual culture, and with the most extended interpretation - and some forms of material culture. Only a sociological restriction (“common people”) and a historical and cultural criterion are introduced - archaic forms that dominate or function as remnants. (The word "folk" is more definite than "folk" in a sociological sense, and does not contain an evaluative meaning ("people's artist", "people's poet"); b) folklore - folk art or, according to a more modern definition, "artistic communication ". This concept allows us to extend the use of the term “folklore” to the sphere of music, choreography, and depiction. etc. folk art; c) folklore is a folklore verbal tradition. At the same time, those that are associated with the word stand out from all forms of common people's activity; d) folklore is an oral tradition. At the same time, oral language is of paramount importance. This makes it possible to single out folklore from other verbal forms (primarily to contrast it with literature). That. we have the following concepts: sociological (and historical-cultural), aesthetic, philological. and theoretical and communicative (oral, direct communication). In the first two cases, this is a “broad” use of the term “folklore”, and in the last two, two variants of its “narrow” use. The unequal use of the term "folklore" by supporters of each of the concepts indicates the complexity of the subject of folklore, its connections with various types of people. activities and people. life. Depending on which connections are given especially importance and which are considered secondary, peripheral, the fate of the main term of folklore is also formed within the framework of one or another concept. Therefore, the named concepts in a certain sense not only intersect, but sometimes do not seem to contradict each other. So, if the most important features of folklore are recognized as verbal and oral, then this does not necessarily entail a denial of connection with other artists. forms of activity or, moreover, unwillingness to take into account the fact that folklore has always existed in the context of folk everyday culture. Therefore, the dispute that flared up more than once was so empty - is folklore a philological or ethnographic science. If we are talking about verbal structures, then their study must inevitably be called philological, but since these structures function in folk life, they are studied by ethnography. In this sense, folkloristics is at the same time an integral part of both sciences, at every moment of its existence. However, this does not prevent it from being independent in a certain respect - the specifics of the research methods of folklore studies inevitably develop at the intersection of these two sciences, as well as musicology (ethnomusicology - see Ethnomusicology), social psychology, etc. It is characteristic that after the disputes of the 50-60s. about the nature of folklore (and not only in our country), folkloristics was noticeably philologized and at the same time ethnographized and moved closer to musicology and the general theory of culture (the works of E.S. Markaryan, M.S. Kagan, the theory of ethnos by Yu.V. etc.). The first and most expand. the concept in its concrete outlines could and should have arisen at an early stage in the development of ethnography and folklore. These sciences could not yet offer a single method for studying such diverse areas of folk culture as a fairy tale (or ballad), folk dwelling, epic song and blacksmithing. At the same time, they were not ready for a differentiated consideration of different areas traditional culture. The second concept (aesthetic), being rigidly programmed (only artistic forms of folk culture), is fraught with ignoring the natural nature of traditional archaic forms of folklore in the context of folk culture. The clear emphasis of the adjective “artistic” constantly threatens to turn into an evaluative category, the criterion of which is very relative. Aesthetic the function of many folklore genres, upon closer examination, turns out to be not the only one, not the dominant one. In its more or less pure it formed relatively late. However, it was formed late even in the sphere of professional culture. So, in the history of Russian. lit. prose is what could be called fiction, for which the aesthetic. function became dominant, arose only in the 17th century. Medieval literature, music, choreography, portray. art in later times are perceived as predominantly artistic phenomena, however, in most cases, the dominant function for them was a practical, informational, magical, religious, and aesthetic function. the function very often remained secondary, concomitant, arising at least in syncretic. unity with the above or other functions. The division into artistic and non-artistic in such a situation is impossible: one overflows into the other and exists in an organic complex. Moreover, such a dissection is impossible in the field of folklore. Folklore genres are grouped into two unities: the first of them is dominated by some kind of non-aesthetic. function, in the second - aesthetic. The first includes ritual folklore, conspiracies (the main function of which is magical and also ritual), lamentations (for those reasons), that means. part of the legends and bylichkas (the function of which is primarily informational and which were not always retold “artistically”, at least the performers did not have such a psychological attitude). In the second - fairy tales, epic and historical. songs (in combination with the function of information, acting in the form of historical memory), ballads, historical. songs and some other genres. The foregoing is comparable to the situation, which has always been characteristic of folk art. In peasant life, there were almost no things that did not have practical. destination. Carving on the pediment of the hut, painting and carving on a spinning wheel, shape and ornament on household ceramics, decorations on women's clothing and headdresses, etc. organically combined practical and artistic. The study of folk art is one of the natural branches of ethnography, but to the same extent - the history of art, just as verbal folklore is one of the branches of philology and ethnography. Even folk music, considered in its entirety (“music of the oral tradition”, as musicologists sometimes call it), contains forms with a very distinct practical. function. Such, for example, is pastoral music, especially developed in mountainous regions, as well as forms associated with the most diverse. magical actions. Of course, there are complexes (song, instrumental), aesthetic. the function of which is sufficiently developed, but they can be understood in connection with those complexes for which practical. the function is just as important or just dominates. The third of the concepts mentioned above singles out verbal (verbal) forms, recognizes folklore as speech, verbal communication. This raises two problems. The first is the selection of folklore from everyday, business, practical. speech. If any language is not just a tool for speaking or writing, but a system that simulates a human. world, ideas about the world, a picture of the world, then folklore (just like mythology, literature) is a secondary modeling system that uses language as material. The second problem is that, unlike everyday speech practice, which generates one-time texts on certain rules (grammatical, logical, etc.), in their totality constituting the tradition of the language spoken by speakers, the folklore tradition is the transmission of texts, the entry of texts into the tradition, their assimilation and reproduction. Here, too, there is no clearly defined border. Texts are brought into the tradition precisely in the process of verbal communication. Initially, one-time texts are created, including future folklore ones. These are texts of minimal volume - phraseological units, stable speech turns, acquiring a secondary meaning, a secondary modeling character, these are, as it were, “secondary words” that enter the tradition of the language from speech. They acquire their function and become the simplest elementary folklore forms. The maximum texts in terms of volume are contaminated fairy tales, epic poems, etc. Between elementary and maximum forms there is the whole variety of folklore genres, which have the most diverse functions and structure. A differentiated approach is needed to closed and open structures (compare fairy tales and lamentations or lullabies), as well as to structures that have strong (all ritual folklore, play songs, etc.) and weak extra-textual connections (epic songs, ballads, many types of lyrical songs, etc.) Extra-textual connections are one of the most important criteria for distinguishing a whole group of folklore genres and literature. And, finally, the fourth concept focuses on oral language as the most important feature of folklore. It is closely related to the third philological concept and is built on the desire to single out oral forms among verbal forms, to connect the main features of folklore with a fundamentally different type of communication than in literature - direct and contact (phase to phase communication, direkte Kommunikation), as well as with the role of memory in the preservation and functioning of folklore, with the functioning of the text as a means of realizing both the process and the result of communication, with the variation and role in it of the performer (subject of communication) and the perceiver (recipient) as a potential performer. Theoretically, no less important is the problem of feedback, the dependence of the performer and his text on the audience and their reaction in the process of perceiving the text, as well as the process of forming verbal formulas - stereotypes (A. Lord and his followers wrote about the role of which in the performance process, and in Russia back in the middle of the 19th century - A.F. Hilferding). Development of the problem of oral language in the 20th century. actually was not her discovery as specific. phenomena. “Orality” and “popularity” (=common people) figured in all four concepts, which were mentioned above. This obliges us to evaluate “nationality”, at least purely theoretically, as a sociological one. category that constantly appears in the works of folklorists. It arose in connection with folklore in a period that is usually called romantic in the history of social thought. It was the time when folkloristics (as well as ethnography) matured as a science. In the historical and cultural sense, this was the initial period of urbanization of the most developed countries of Europe, when the process of eradicating archaic traditions began to take shape. Ethnography and folklore arose at a time when the ground began to go under their feet. The carriers of the archaic tradition increasingly turned out to be people from the social lower classes - the peasants and the lower strata of the townspeople. They were presented to folklorists as the only keepers of ethnicity. traditions that at the time of maturation nat. European identity. peoples acquired special meaning and special cultural status. Parting with the archaic tradition stimulated the creation of a kind of illusion - the society of the New Age sometimes began to seem devoid of any tradition in comparison with the outgoing "traditional society". Modern culturology emphasizes the connection between “culture and tradition”. There is no society without culture, i.e., according to E.S. Markaryan, - an adaptive-adapting mechanism that ensures the functioning of the society. Such a mechanism cannot be formed without the “non-genetic memory of the collective” (Yu.M. Lotman), i.e. without tradition, to-paradise means. least is a system of socially significant stereotypes. The transition from a pre-industrial society to an industrial and urban one was accompanied not by the elimination of tradition as such or (which in this case is the same thing) culture as such, but by the replacement of one system of traditions by another, one type of culture by another. That. the opposition of pre-industrial society as “traditional” to industrial as “non-traditional” has no theoretical. grounds and is preserved by inertia or (more often) very conditionally. This also applies to folklore. Any transmission of a text, whether folklore or literary, oral or fixed in writing, distributed orally, by copying a manuscript or by printing a book, is a tradition. The difference between them is the difference in the content of what is transmitted through direct or indirect communication, in the ways in which such a transmission is formed, in the set of stereotypes, in the pace and ways of updating them. After the above considerations related to the outlined four main concepts of the use of the term “folklore”, the question arises: is it possible, taking into account them, to give a definition of folklore, which could still be “cross-cutting”, i.e. correct, for different peoples at different stages of history? If we focus on the narrow definition of folklore associated with the philological and theoretical-informative concept, but at the same time take into account the broader ethnographic. context, it could be said that folklore is a set of verbal or verbal-non-verbal structures that function in everyday life. This refers to structures that function orally in contact groups (family, community, locality, district, region, ethnic group and within the range of a particular language or bilingualism). In this definition there is no characterization of the content, stylistic. features, genre, plot repertoire, because for all the traditional folklore, if we consider its centuries-old history, it was a dynamic phenomenon. At least, at different stages of the history of spiritual culture, he acquired certain (not always known to us) features. The functions of folklore as a whole and its individual genres could not but change depending on the general changes in the structure of the entire spiritual culture, on the type of correlation between folklore and, relatively speaking, “non-folklore” forms and types of spiritual culture. If we keep in mind only the aspect that interests us, then we could talk about three stages in the development of spiritual culture. The first of them could be designated as syncretic (a society of an archaic type). Folk forms, incl. and those who were already to some extent familiar with aesthetics. function in its archaic. varieties (often secondary and not dominant) were closely intertwined with diverse complexes, which later gave rise to the most diverse branches of spiritual culture - rituals, beliefs, religion, myths, historical. performances, songs, narrative genres, etc. At this stage, all forms of spiritual culture associated with language, or more precisely, all traditional verbal texts that form secondary language modeling systems (monofollorism), can be considered folklore. Already at this stage, systems of folklore texts, complex in composition and structure, arise and function, serving the various needs of the archaic. societies - communicative, cognitive, social-classification, semiotic, practical (the experience of economic activities, hunting, fishing, military clashes, fixed in the word, etc.). Archaic. the period of development of spiritual culture is replaced by the stage of dualism (or, in the terminology of Yu. Kristeva (see Kristeva), “post-syncretic” period), which is characterized by a gradual transition from homogeneous monofolkloristics to the parallel existence of everyday and, relatively speaking, “out of everyday” forms spiritual culture associated with the language, i.e. forms that arise outside the everyday life of the primary contact social group(including the so-called professional forms) or, on the contrary, created by it, but consumed outside of it. In this sense, spiritual culture did not develop in isolation, but according to general laws, covering both material culture and the sphere of social organization of the society. Vivid examples in this sense are folklore and literature. The emergence of writing was an extremely important event. If the performance of folklore works and their perception were always simultaneous and carried out within the framework of a primary formal or informal social contact group, then the author literary work and its reader communicate through written text, may be separated from each other by decades or hundreds of kilometers, or both at the same time. Archaic syncretic. the complex is becoming more and more differentiated. Next to folklore, literature is gradually being formed, professional depictions. art and theatre. Within the folklore layer, the process of genre differentiation continues. Genres with a dominant aesthetic are distinguished. function (fairy tale, epic song, love song, etc.) and genres, in which non-aesthetic. the function still continues to dominate (spells and incantations, ritual songs, the so-called "non-fairy-tale prose", spiritual verses, etc.). The second group of genres retains its syncretic. structure, strong extra-textual connections, etc. archaic. peculiarities. Folklore ceases to be the only form of culture associated with the language, but on the scale of the ethnic group, it continues to prevail for a long time, because. still plays an important role in the life of the masses. Over time, folklore gradually begins to lose some of its functions, transfers them, to a greater or lesser extent, to literature, professional theater, professional music and choreography. The new functions generated by the development of the community, all the more bring to life new forms that exist in parallel with folklore, sometimes genetically related to them, but no longer folklore. Most of the European peoples throughout the Middle Ages and in the first centuries after it, folklore permeated the life of not only the common people, but also the middle and upper layers about-va. Before the invention of printing, the number of handwritten copies of any literature. works were insignificant. Yes, and literature itself, for example, in Russia, as already mentioned, back in the 17th century. has just begun to take shape as fiction, for which the dominance of aesthetic is characteristic. functions. If in professional art we constantly meet with various varieties of “folklorism”, i.e. with the secondary use of elements of folklore, then the folk life, as a rule, still knows mainly the direct (primary) continuation of the tradition. Texts that are not folklore in their origin, falling into the oral and common folk sphere, usually experience intensive adaptation to tradition and traditional ways of functioning. The third stage of the correlation of folklore and non-folklore forms of spiritual culture is historically associated with the New Age. It can be conditionally called the stage of urbanization. The gradual or more rapid reorientation of the countryside towards urban values ​​and forms of culture, the elimination of mass illiteracy, the development of education systems, book printing, the press, and later radio, television, and other technical means of mass communication lead to the fact that the social area of ​​folklore forms continues (and now decisively) to narrow. There are public forms of language and art. culture. The folklore heritage is more or less actively used in their creation, however, generalization can be compared. homogeneity (homogeneity) of spiritual culture develops not in the folklore sphere, but in the sphere of professional forms of literary, musical, theatrical, etc. creativity, just as obschenats. the language develops as a written supra-dialect language. This stage is characterized by the growing penetration of professional forms into the life of the nation (including its lower and higher social strata) through books, periodicals, cinema, radio, television, sound (and later video) reproducing mechanisms, etc. . With a very wide distribution of written forms in the conditions of mass literacy, new oral (more precisely, auditory and audiovisual) techniques are rapidly developing. forms of communication of a non-folklore nature, which are used, in particular, for the transmission of texts of both literary and folklore (or conventionally folklore, secondary) nature. A network of over-(super-) contact connections is formed, which covers entire regions of the globe and overlaps the connections of contact groups of different scales. The latter play an ever smaller role in the process of transmission and accumulation of culture. The folklore heritage is increasingly preserved in generalized or secondary forms. This was the main direction of development. However, in the 20th century in a number of countries that suffered the most from the gigantic military clashes of the century, periods can be noted when something like a backward movement took place, the resuscitation of oral forms of a domestic nature. This was especially evident in Russia during the years of the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars. Modern Folkloristics, seeking to know the general laws of the development of folklore, cannot but take into account the fact that it is perceived by the peoples themselves as an expression of ethnicity that is precious to them. specificity, the spirit of the people. Of course, the correlation between the universal and specifically ethnic is each time determined by the specific conditions for the development of an ethnos - the degree of its consolidation, the nature of its contacts with other ethnic groups, the characteristics of settlement, the mentality of the people, etc. If we use the categories of generative grammar, we could say that general, international. patterns, as a rule, appear at the level of deep structures, and specific national patterns - at the level of surface structures. If we turn, for example, to fairy tales or story epic. songs (their international recurrence is well studied), it is impossible not to state what their plots mean. degrees are international, and their incarnations in real texts vary in different ethnic groups. and local traditions, acquiring certain ethnic. features (a language intimately associated with folklore, the realities of everyday life, beliefs, a set of characteristic motifs, from which, as A.N. action develops, characteristic social relations, etc.). Both fairy tale and epic traditions seem to create their own world, which has no direct analogies in reality. This world is invented by collective fantasy, it is a transformed reality. However, no matter how complex the connection between fairy-tale reality and true reality, it exists and reflects not just and not only something universal, but also the features of being and thinking of a certain people. Lit.: Kagarov E.G. What is folklore // artistic folklore. T. 4/5. M., 1929; Gusev V.E. Folklore: (The history of the term and its modern meanings) // SE. 1966. N 2: He is. aesthetics of folklore. L., 1967; Rusin M.Yu. Folklore: Traditions and Modernity. Kyiv, 1991; Folklore in the Modern World: Aspects and Ways of Research. M., 1991; Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture. SPb., 1994; Historical and ethnographic research on folklore. M., 1994; Mirolyubov Yu.P. Russian pagan folklore: essays on everyday life and customs. M., 1995. K. V. Chistov. Cultural studies of the twentieth century. Encyclopedia. M.1996

Folklore as a special kind of art is a qualitatively unique component of fiction. It integrates the culture of the society of a certain ethnicity at a special stage in the historical development of society.

Folklore is ambiguous: it manifests both boundless folk wisdom, and folk conservatism, inertia. In any case, folklore embodies the highest spiritual forces of the people, reflects the elements of the national artistic consciousness.

The term "folklore" itself (from the English word folklore - folk wisdom) is a common name for folk art in international scientific terminology. The term was first introduced in 1846 by the English archaeologist W. J. Thomson. As an official scientific concept, it was first adopted by the English Folklore Society, founded in 1878. In 1800-1990, the term entered into scientific use in many countries of the world.

Folklore (English folklore - "folk wisdom") - folk art, most often it is oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses of the people (tradition, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epic), folk music (songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theater), dance, architecture, visual and arts and crafts.

Folklore is creativity that does not require any material and where the person himself is the means of embodying the artistic concept. Folklore has a clearly expressed didactic orientation. Much of it was created specifically for children and was dictated by the great people's concern for young people - their future. "Folklore" serves the child from his very birth.

Folk poetry reveals the most significant connections and patterns of life, leaving aside the individual, the special. Folklore gives them the most important and simple concepts about life and people. It reflects what is of general interest and vital, what affects everyone and everyone: the work of a person, his relationship with nature, life in a team.

The value of folklore as an important part in education and development in the modern world is well known and generally recognized. Folklore always responds sensitively to people's requests, being a reflection of the collective mind, accumulated life experience.

The main features and properties of folklore:

1. Bifunctionality. Each folklore work is an organic part of human life and is conditioned by practical purpose. It is focused on a certain moment of people's life. For example, a lullaby - it is sung to soothe, lull a child to sleep. When the child falls asleep, the song stops - it is no longer needed. This is how the aesthetic, spiritual and practical function of the lullaby is manifested. Everything is interconnected in the work, beauty cannot be separated from benefit, benefit from beauty.

2.Polyelement. Folklore is polyelemental, since its internal diversity and numerous interconnections of an artistic, cultural-historical and socio-cultural nature are obvious.

Not every folklore work includes all artistic and figurative elements. There are also genres in which their minimum number. The performance of a folklore work is the integrity of a creative act. Among the many artistic and figurative elements of folklore, they are distinguished as the main verbal, musical, dance and mimic. Polyelementity is manifested during the event, for example, “Burn, burn clearly so that it does not go out!” or when studying a round dance - the game "Boyars", where row-by-row movements occur. In this game, all the main artistic and figurative elements interact. Verbal and musical are manifested in the musical and poetic genre of the song, performed simultaneously with the choreographic movement (dance element). This manifests the polyelement nature of folklore, its original synthesis, called syncretism. Syncretism characterizes the interconnection, integrity of the internal components and properties of folklore.

3. Collectivity. Absence of the author. Collectivity is manifested both in the process of creating a work and in the nature of the content, which always objectively reflects the psychology of many people. Asking who wrote a folk song is like asking who wrote the language we speak. Collectivity is due to the performance of folklore works. Lead some components of their forms, for example, the chorus, require the mandatory inclusion in the performance of all participants in the action.

4. Lack of writing. Orality in the transmission of folklore material is manifested in the absence of writing in the forms of transmission of folklore information. Artistic images and skills are transmitted from the performer, the artist to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student. Folklore is oral art. It lives only in the memory of people and is transmitted in a live performance "by word of mouth". Artistic images and skills are transmitted from the performer, the artist to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student.

5. Tradition. Manifold creative manifestations in folklore it only seems spontaneous outwardly. Over a long period of time, objective ideals of creativity have evolved. These ideals became those practical and aesthetic standards, deviations from which would be inappropriate.

6.Variability. Variation of the network is one of the incentives for constant movement, "breathing" of a folklore work, and each folklore work is always, as it were, a variant of itself. The folklore text turns out to be unfinished, open to each subsequent performer. For example, in the round dance game "Boyars", children move "row by row", and the step may be different. In some places it is a regular step with an accent on the last syllable of the line, in others it is a step with a footstep on the last two syllables, in the third place it is a variable step. It is important to convey to the mind the idea that in a folklore work, creation-performance and performance-creation coexist. Variability can be considered as the variability of works of art, their uniqueness when performed or in another form of reproduction. Each author or performer supplemented traditional images or works with his own reading or vision.

7. Improvisation is a feature of folk art. Each new performance of the work is enriched with new elements (textual, methodical, rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic). brought by the performer. Any performer constantly introduces his own material into a well-known work, which contributes to the constant development, change of the work, during which the reference artistic image crystallizes. Thus, the folklore performance becomes the result of many years of collective creativity.

In modern literature, the broad interpretation of folklore as a combination of folk traditions, customs, views, beliefs, and arts is common.

In particular, the famous folklorist V.E. Gusev in the book "Aesthetics of Folklore" considers this concept as an artistic reflection of reality, carried out in verbal - musical, choreographic and dramatic forms of collective folk art, expressing the worldview of the working masses and inextricably linked with life and life. Folklore is a complex, synthetic art. Often in his works elements of various types of arts are combined - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnography. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scholars took a broad approach to folklore, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life.

The main aspects of the content of folk culture include: the worldview of the people, folk experience, housing, costume, work, leisure, crafts, family relations, folk holidays and rituals, knowledge and skills, artistic creativity. It should be noted that, like any other social phenomenon, folk culture has specific features, among which it is worth highlighting: an inextricable connection with nature, with the environment; openness, educational nature of the folk culture of Russia, the ability to contact with the culture of other peoples, dialogue, originality, integrity, situationality, the presence of a purposeful emotional charge, the preservation of elements of pagan and Orthodox culture.

Traditions and folklore are wealth developed by generations and conveying historical experience and cultural heritage in an emotionally figurative form. In the cultural and creative conscious activity of the broad masses, folk traditions, folklore and artistic modernity merge in a single channel.

The main functions of folklore include religious - mythological, ritual, ritual, artistic - aesthetic, pedagogical, communicative - informational, social - psychological.

Folklore is very diverse. There is traditional, modern, peasant and urban folklore.

Traditional folklore is those forms and mechanisms artistic culture that are preserved, fixed and passed down from generation to generation. They capture universal aesthetic values ​​that retain their significance outside of concrete - historical social changes.

Traditional folklore is divided into two groups - ritual and non-ritual.

Ritual folklore includes:

calendar folklore (carols, carnival songs, stoneflies);

family folklore (wedding, maternity, funeral rites, lullabies, etc.),

occasional folklore (charms, incantations, incantations).

Non-ritual folklore is divided into four groups:

Folklore of speech situations (proverbs, sayings, riddles, teasers, nicknames, curses);

Poetry (chastushkas, songs);

· folklore drama (Petrushka theatre, crib drama);

prose.

Folklore poetry includes: epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs (poetry parodies), sadistic rhymes. Folklore prose is again divided into two groups: fabulous and non-fabulous. Fairy tale prose includes: a fairy tale (which, in turn, is of four types: a fairy tale, a fairy tale about animals, a household fairy tale, a cumulative fairy tale) and an anecdote. Non-fairytale prose includes: tradition, legend, bylichka, mythological story, dream story. The folklore of speech situations includes: proverbs, sayings, good wishes, curses, nicknames, teasers, dialogue graffiti, riddles, tongue twisters and some others. There are also written forms folklore such as chain letters, graffiti, albums (eg songbooks).

Ritual folklore is folklore genres performed within the framework of various rituals. The most successful, in my opinion, was the definition of the rite by D.M. Ugrinovich: “A rite is a certain way of transferring certain ideas, norms of behavior, values ​​and feelings to new generations. The rite is distinguished from other ways of such transmission by its symbolic nature. This is its specificity. Ritual actions always act as symbols that embody certain social ideas, ideas, images and evoke corresponding feelings. The works of calendar folklore are timed to coincide with the folk annual holidays, which had an agricultural character.

Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs: carols, Shrovetide songs, stoneflies, Semitsky songs, etc.

Vesnyanki (spring calls) are ritual songs of an incantatory nature that accompany the Slavic rite of calling spring.

Carols are New Year's songs. They were performed during Christmas time (from December 24 to January 6), when caroling was going on. Caroling - walking around the yards with carol songs. For these songs, carolers were rewarded with gifts - a festive treat. The main meaning of the carol is magnificence. Carolers give an ideal description of the house of the magnified. It turns out that before us is not an ordinary peasant hut, but a tower, around which "there is an iron tyn", "on each stamen there is a dome", and on each dome "a golden crown". Match this tower and the people living in it. Pictures of wealth are not reality, but the desired: carols perform to some extent the functions of a magic spell.

Maslenitsa is a folk holiday cycle that has been preserved among the Slavs since pagan times. The rite is associated with the farewell to winter and the meeting of spring, which lasts a whole week. The celebration was carried out according to a strict schedule, which was reflected in the names of the days of the Pancake week: Monday - "meeting", Tuesday - "flirty", Wednesday - "gourmet", Thursday - "revelry", Friday - "mother-in-law evening", Saturday - "sister-in-law gatherings ”, Sunday - “seeing off”, the end of the Maslenitsa fun.

Few Shrovetide songs have come down. By subject and purpose, they are divided into two groups: one is associated with the rite of meeting, the other - with the rite of farewell ("funeral") Maslenitsa. The songs of the first group are distinguished by a major, cheerful character. First of all, this is a majestic song in honor of Maslenitsa. The songs accompanying the farewell to Maslenitsa have a minor key. The “funeral” of Maslenitsa meant seeing off winter and a spell, a greeting for the coming spring.

Family rituals are predetermined by the cycle of human life. They are divided into maternity, wedding, recruiting and funeral.

Birthing rites sought to protect the newborn from hostile mystical forces, and also assumed the well-being of the infant in life. A ritual washing of the newborn was performed, health was spoken of by various sentences.

Wedding ceremony. It is a kind of folk performance, where all the roles are painted and there are even directors - a matchmaker or a matchmaker. The special scale and significance of this rite should show the significance of the event, play the meaning of the ongoing change in a person's life.

The rite educates the behavior of the bride in the future married life and educates all the participants of the rite present. It shows the patriarchal nature of family life, its way of life.

funeral rites. During the funeral, various rituals were performed, which were accompanied by special funeral lamentations. Funeral lamentations truthfully reflected life, everyday consciousness of the peasant, love for the deceased and fear of the future, the tragic situation of the family in harsh conditions.

Occasional folklore (from lat. occasionalis - random) - does not correspond to generally accepted use, is of an individual character.

A variety of occasional folklore are conspiracies.

SPELLS - a folk-poetic incantatory verbal formula to which magical power is attributed.

CHALLENGES - an appeal to the sun and other natural phenomena, as well as to animals and especially often to birds, which were considered messengers of spring. Moreover, the forces of nature were revered as living: they turn to spring with requests, wish it to come soon, complain about the winter, complain.

COUNTERS - a type of children's creativity, small poetic texts with a clear rhyme-rhythmic structure in a playful form.

Genres of non-ritual folklore evolved under the influence of syncretism.

It includes the folklore of speech situations: proverbs, fables, omens and sayings. They contain a person's judgments about the way of life, about work, about higher natural forces, statements about human affairs. This is a vast area of ​​moral assessments and judgments, how to live, how to raise children, how to honor ancestors, thoughts about the need to follow precepts and examples, these are everyday rules of behavior. In a word, their functionality covers almost all ideological areas.

MYSTERY - works with a hidden meaning. They have a rich fiction, wit, poetry, figurative structure of colloquial speech. The people themselves aptly defined the riddle: "Without a face in a disguise." The subject that is conceived, the “face”, is hidden under the “mask” - allegory or allusion, roundabout speech, bluff. No matter how many riddles are invented to test attention, ingenuity, quick wits. Some are made up of simple question, others are like puzzles. It is easy to solve riddles for those who have a good idea of ​​the objects and phenomena in question, and also know how to unravel the hidden meaning in words. If a child looks at the world around him with attentive, keen eyes, noticing its beauty and richness, then every tricky question and every allegory in a riddle will be solved.

PROVERB - as a genre, unlike a riddle, it is not an allegory. In it, a certain action or deed is given an expanded meaning. In their form, folk riddles adjoin proverbs: the same measured, folded speech, the same frequent use of rhyme and consonance of words. But the proverb and the riddle differ in that the riddle must be guessed, and the proverb is a lesson.

Unlike a proverb, a SAYING is not a complete judgment. This is a figurative expression used in an extended sense.

Sayings, like proverbs, remain living folklore genres: they are constantly found in our everyday speech. The prepositions contain a capacious playful definition of the inhabitants of a locality, city, living in the neighborhood or somewhere far away.

Folklore poetry is epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs.

BYLINA is a folklore epic song, a genre characteristic of the Russian tradition. Such epics as "Sadko", "Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber", "Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich" and others are known. The term "epic" was introduced into scientific use in the 40s of the 19th century. folklorist I.P. Sakharov. The basis of the plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - "old", "old", implying that the action in question took place in the past).

FOLK SONGS are very diverse in their composition. In addition to songs that are part of the calendar, wedding and funeral rites. These are round dances. Game and dance songs. A large group of songs are lyrical non-ritual songs (love, family, Cossack, soldier, coachman, robber and others).

Special Genre songwriting - historical songs. Such songs tell about the famous events of Russian history. The heroes of historical songs are real personalities.

Round dance songs, like ritual ones, had a magical meaning. Round dance and game songs depicted scenes from the wedding ceremony and family life.

LYRICAL SONGS are folk songs that express the personal feelings and moods of the singers. Lyrical songs are original both in content and in art form. Their originality is determined by genre nature and specific conditions of origin and development. Here we are dealing with a lyrical kind of poetry, different from epic in terms of the principles of reflecting reality. ON THE. Dobrolyubov wrote that in folk lyrical songs "an inner feeling is expressed, excited by the phenomena ordinary life", and N.A. Radishchev saw in them a reflection of the soul of the people, spiritual grief.

Lyrical songs are a vivid example of the artistic creativity of the people. They contributed to national culture a special artistic language and samples of high poetry, reflected the spiritual beauty, ideals and aspirations of the people, the moral foundations of peasant life.

Chastushki is one of the youngest folklore genres. These are small rhymed poems. The first ditties were excerpts from songs big size. Chastushka is a comic genre. It contains a sharp thought, apt observation. Topics are varied. Chastushki often ridiculed what seemed wild, ridiculous, nasty.

CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE is commonly referred to as works that are performed by adults for children, as well as those composed by the children themselves. Lullabies, pestles, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters and incantations, teasers, rhymes, absurdities, etc. belong to children's folklore. Modern children's folklore has been enriched with new genres. These are horror stories, mischievous rhymes and songs (funny alterations of famous songs and poems), anecdotes.

There are various connections between folklore and literature. First of all, literature is derived from folklore. The main genres of dramaturgy that have developed in Ancient Greece, - tragedies and comedies - go back to religious rites. Medieval romances of chivalry, about journeys through fictional lands, about fights with monsters, and about the love of brave warriors, are based on the motifs of fairy tales. Literary lyric works originate from folk lyric songs. The genre of a small action-packed narrative - a short story - goes back to folk everyday tales.

Very often, writers deliberately turned to folklore traditions. Interest in oral folk art, fascination with folklore awakened in the pre-romantic and romantic eras.

The tales of A.S. Pushkin go back to the plots of Russian fairy tales. Imitation of Russian folk historical songs - "Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilievich ..." by M.Yu. Lermontov. Style features folk songs recreated in his poems about the heavy peasant lot N.A. Nekrasov.

Folklore not only influences literature, but is itself affected in the opposite way. Many author's poems have become folk songs. Most famous example- a poem by I.Z. Surikov “Steppe and steppe all around ..”

folklore drama. It includes: Petrushka theatre, religious drama, crib drama.

Nativity scene drama got its name from a nativity scene - a portable puppet theater that has the shape of a two-story wooden box, resembling a stage platform for the performance of medieval mysteries in architecture. In turn, the name, which came from the plot of the main play, in which the action developed in a cave - a nativity scene. The theater of this type was widespread in Western Europe, and it came to Russia with itinerant puppeteers from Ukraine and Belarus. The repertoire consisted of plays of religious themes and satirical skits - interludes, which had an improvisational character. The most popular play is King Herod.

PETRUSHKA THEATER - glove puppet theater. The main character of the play is a resilient Petrushka with a big nose, protruding chin, with a cap on his head, with the participation of which a number of scenes are played out with various characters. The number of characters reached fifty, these are such characters as a soldier, a gentleman, a gypsy, a bride, a doctor and others. Such performances used the techniques of folk comic speech, lively dialogues with a play on words and contrasts, with elements of self-praise, with the use of action and gestures.

The Petrushki Theater was created not only under the influence of Russian, Slavic, Western European puppet traditions. It was a kind of folk theatrical culture, part of the extremely developed in Russia (spectacular folklore). Therefore, a lot of things unite it with folk drama, with performances of farce grandfathers-barkers, with sentences of friends at a wedding, with amusing popular prints, with jokes of local people, etc.

The special atmosphere of the city's festive square explains, for example, Petrushka's familiarity, his unbridled gaiety and promiscuity as an object of ridicule and shame. After all, Petrushka beats not only class enemies, but everyone in a row - from his own bride to the quarter, often beats for no reason at all (arap, a beggar old woman, a German clown, etc.), in the end he hits him too: the dog is merciless pats him on the nose. The puppeteer, as well as other participants in the fair, square fun, is attracted by the very opportunity to ridicule, parody, bludgeon, and the more, louder, unexpected, sharper, the better. Elements of social protest, satire were very successfully and naturally superimposed on this ancient comic base.

Like all folklore amusements, "Petrushka" is stuffed with obscenities and curses. The primordial meaning of these elements has been studied quite fully, and how deeply they penetrated into the folk laughter culture and what place swearing, verbal obscenity and degrading, cynical gestures occupied in it, is fully shown by M.M. Bakhtin.

Performances were shown several times a day in different conditions (at fairs, in front of the booth, on the streets of the city, in the suburbs). "Walking" Petrushka was the most common use of the doll.

A light screen, puppets, miniature backstage and a curtain were specially made for the mobile folklore theater. Petrushka ran around the stage, his gestures and movements created the appearance of a living person.

comic effect episodes were achieved by techniques typical of folk culture of laughter: fights, beatings, obscenities, imaginary deafness of a partner, funny movements and gestures, mocking, fun funerals, etc.

There are conflicting opinions about the reasons for the extraordinary popularity of the theater: topicality, satirical and social orientation, comic character, a simple and understandable game for all segments of the population, the charm of the main character, acting improvisation, freedom of choice of material, the puppet's sharp language.

Parsley is a folk holiday fun.

Parsley is a manifestation of popular optimism, a mockery of the poor over those in power and the rich.

Folklore prose. It is divided into two groups: fabulous (fairy tale, anecdote) and non-fairytale (legend, tradition, bylichka).

FAIRY TALE is the most famous genre of folklore. This is a kind of folklore prose, hallmark which is fiction. Plots, events and characters are fictional in fairy tales. The modern reader of folklore discovers fiction in other genres of oral folk art. Folk storytellers and listeners believed in the truth of the bylichki (the name comes from the word "truth" - "truth"); the word "epic" was invented by folklorists; the people called epics "old times". Russian peasants, who said and listened to epics, believing in their truth, believed that the events depicted in them took place a long time ago - in the time of mighty heroes and fire-breathing snakes. They did not believe in fairy tales, knowing that they tell about something that did not exist, does not exist, and cannot be.

It is customary to distinguish four types of fairy tales: fairy tales, household (otherwise - novelistic), cumulative (otherwise - "chain-like") and fairy tales about animals.

MAGIC FAIRY TALES differ from other fairy tales in a complex, detailed plot, which consists of a number of unchanging motifs that necessarily follow each other in a certain order. These are fantastic creatures (for example, Koschey the Deathless or Baba Yaga), and an animated, human-like character denoting winter (Morozko), and wonderful objects (self-assembled tablecloth, walking boots, flying carpet, etc.).

In fairy tales, the memory of performances and rituals that existed in deep, deep antiquity is preserved. They reflect the ancient relationships between people in a family or clan.

HOUSEHOLD TALES tell about people, about their family life, about the relationship between the owner and the farmhand, the master and the peasant, the peasant and the priest, the soldier and the priest. A commoner - a farm laborer, a peasant who has returned from the service of a soldier - is always smarter than a priest or a landowner, from whom, thanks to cunning, he takes away money, things, and sometimes his wife. Usually, in the center of the plots of everyday fairy tales, there is some unexpected event, an unforeseen turning point that occurs due to the cunning of the hero.

Household fairy tales often satirical. They ridicule the greed and stupidity of those in power. They do not tell about miraculous things and travels to the Far Far Away kingdom, but about things from peasant everyday life. But household tales are no more believable than fairy tales. Therefore, the description of wild, immoral, terrible acts in everyday fairy tales does not cause disgust or indignation, but cheerful laughter. After all, this is not life, but fiction.

Everyday fairy tales are a much younger genre than other types of fairy tales. In modern folklore, the heir to this genre is an anecdote (from gr.anekdotos - “unpublished”

CUMULATIVE TALES built on repeated repetition of the same actions or events. In cumulative (from Latin Cumulatio - accumulation) fairy tales, several plot principles are distinguished: the accumulation of characters in order to achieve the necessary goal; a heap of actions ending in disaster; a chain of human or animal bodies; forcing episodes, defiantly unjustified experiences of the characters.

The accumulation of heroes helping in some important action is evident in the fairy tale "Turnip".

Cumulative fairy tales are a very ancient kind of fairy tales. They have not been studied enough.

In TALES ABOUT ANIMALS, the memory of ancient ideas has been preserved, according to which people descended from ancestors - animals. Animals in these tales behave like people. Cunning and cunning animals deceive others - gullible and stupid, and this trickery is never condemned. The plots of fairy tales about animals are reminiscent of mythological stories about heroes - rogues and their antics.

Fairy-tale prose is stories and incidents from life that tell about a person's meeting with characters of Russian demonology - sorcerers, witches, mermaids, etc. This also includes stories about saints, shrines and miracles - about the communication of a person who has accepted Christian faith, with forces of a higher order.

BYLICHKA - a folklore genre, a story about a miraculous event that allegedly happened in reality - mainly about a meeting with spirits, "evil spirits".

LEGEND (from Latin legenda “reading”, “readable”) is one of the varieties of non-fairytale prose folklore. Written tradition about some historical events or personalities. Legend is an approximate synonym for the concept of myth; epic story about what happened in time immemorial; the main characters of the story are usually heroes in the full sense of the word, often gods and other supernatural forces are directly involved in the events. The events in the legend are often exaggerated, a lot of fiction is added. Therefore, scientists do not consider the legends to be completely reliable historical evidence, without denying, however, that most of the legends are based on real events. In a figurative sense, legends refer to glorious, admirable events of the past, depicted in fairy tales, stories, etc. As a rule, they contain additional religious or social pathos.

The legends contain memories of the events of antiquity, an explanation of some phenomenon, name or custom.

The words of Odoevsky V.F. sound surprisingly relevant. remarkable Russian, thinker, musician: “We must not forget that from an unnatural life, that is, one where human needs are not satisfied, a painful state occurs ... in the same way, idiocy can occur from the inaction of thought ..., - a muscle is paralyzed from an abnormal state of the nerve, - in the same way, the lack of thinking distorts the artistic feeling, and the absence of an artistic feeling paralyzes thought. At Odoevsky V.F. one can find thoughts about the aesthetic education of children on the basis of folklore, consonant with what we would like to bring to life today in the field of children's education and upbringing: “... in the field of human spiritual activity, I will confine myself to the following remark: the soul expresses itself either through , colors, or through a series of sounds that form singing or playing a musical instrument "