Folklore- folk art, artistic collective activity of the people, reflecting their life, views and ideals.
Folklore, translated from English, means "folk wisdom, folk knowledge."
Folklore works (fairy tales, legends, epics) help to recreate the characteristic features of folk speech, melodious and melodic. And proverbs and sayings, for example, demonstrate its conciseness and.
In addition to the term "folklore" in the scientific use of different countries, there are other terms: German - Volkskunde, in the narrower sense of the word - Volksdichtung; French - Traditions populaires. In the 19th century in Russia (now) the somewhat broadly interpreted term "folk literature" or "folk poetry" dominated.
The oldest types of verbal art arose in the process of the formation of human speech in the era of the Upper Paleolithic. Verbal creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected religious, mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. Ritual actions, through which the primitive man sought to influence the forces of nature, fate, were accompanied by the words: they were pronounced, various requests or threats were addressed to the forces of nature. The art of the word was closely connected with other types of primitive art - music, dance, decorative art. In science, this is called "primitive syncretism."
As humanity accumulated more and more significant life experience that needed to be passed on to the next generations, the role of verbal information increased. The separation of verbal creativity into an independent form of art is the most important step in the prehistory of folklore.
Folklore was a verbal art organically inherent in the life of the people. The different purpose of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and style. In the most ancient period, most peoples had tribal traditions, labor and ritual songs, mythological stories, conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore proper was the appearance of a fairy tale, the plots of which were perceived as fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Kyrgyz Manas, Russian epics and others). There were also legends and songs reflecting religious beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual verses). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in the people's memory. If ritual lyrics (ceremonies accompanying the calendar and agricultural cycles, family rituals associated with birth, wedding, death) originated in ancient times, then non-ritual lyrics, with its interest in the ordinary person, appeared much later. However, over time, the boundary between ritual and non-ritual poetry is blurred. So, ditties are sung at the wedding, at the same time, some of the wedding songs pass into the non-ritual repertoire.
Genres in folklore also differ in the way they are performed.(solo, choir, choir and soloist) and various combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing, singing and dancing, storytelling, acting out).
With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldier's, coachman's, burlak's songs. The growth of industry and cities brought to life romances, anecdotes, worker, school and student folklore.
There are productive genres in folklore, in the depths of which new works can appear. Now these are ditties, sayings, city songs, anecdotes, many types of children's folklore. There are genres that are unproductive but continue to exist. So, new folk tales do not appear, but the old ones are still told. Many old songs are also sung. But the epics and historical songs in live performance almost do not sound.
For thousands of years, folklore has been the only form of poetic creativity among all peoples. The folklore of each nation is unique, just like its history, customs, culture. So, epics, ditties are inherent only in Russian folklore, thoughts - in Ukrainian, etc. Some genres (not only historical songs) reflect the history of a given people. The composition and form of ritual songs are different, which can be timed to coincide with the periods of the agricultural, pastoral, hunting or fishing calendar; can enter into a variety of relationships with rituals, or other religions.
Folklore of late times is the most important source for studying the psychology, worldview, and aesthetics of a particular people.
Information sources:
- feb-web - folklore. Literary encyclopedia;
Folklore and literature are two types of verbal art. However, folklore is not only the art of the word, but also an integral part of folk life, closely intertwined with its other elements, and this is the essential difference between folklore and literature. But also how the art of the word folklore differs from literature. These differences do not remain unshakable at various stages of historical development, and yet the main, stable features of each of the types of verbal art can be noted. Literature is an individual art, folklore is a collective art. In literature, innovation, and in folklore, tradition comes to the fore. Literature exists in written form, a means of storing and transmitting a literary text, a book serves as an intermediary between the author and its addressee, while a work of folklore is reproduced orally and stored in the memory of the people. A work of folklore lives in a variety of variants, with each performance it is reproduced, as it were, anew, with direct contact between the performer-improviser and the audience, which not only directly affects the performer (feedback), but sometimes also joins the performance itself.
Anika the warrior and death. Splint.
Editions of Russian folklore.
The term "folklore", which in 1846 was introduced into science by the English scientist W.J. Toms, in translation means "folk wisdom". Unlike many Western European scientists, who refer to folklore the most diverse aspects of folk life (up to culinary recipes), including here also elements of material culture (housing, clothing), domestic scientists and their like-minded people in other countries consider oral folk art to be folklore - poetic works created by the people and existing among the broad masses of the people, along with musical and dance folklore. This approach takes into account the artistic nature of folklore as the art of the word. Folklore is the study of folklore.
The history of folklore goes into the deep past of mankind. M. Gorky defined folklore as the oral art of the working people. Indeed, folklore arose in the process of labor, has always expressed the views and interests mainly of working people, it manifested in various forms the desire of a person to facilitate his work, to make it joyful and free.
Primitive man spent all his time on work or on preparation for it. The actions through which he sought to influence the forces of nature were accompanied by words: spells, conspiracies were pronounced, the forces of nature were addressed with a request, threat or gratitude. This indivisibility of various types of essentially artistic activity (although the creators-performers themselves set purely practical goals) - the unity of the word, music, dance, decorative art - is known in science as "primitive syncretism", its traces are still visible in folklore. As a person accumulated more and more significant life experience that needed to be passed on to the next generations, the role of verbal information increased: after all, it was the word that could most successfully report not only what was happening Here And Now but also about what happened or will happen somewhere And once upon a time or some day. The separation of verbal creativity into an independent form of art is an important step in the prehistory of folklore, in its independent, albeit connected with mythological consciousness, state. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore proper was the appearance of the fairy tale. It was in a fairy tale that imagination - this, according to K. Marx, a great gift that contributed so much to the development of mankind - was first recognized as an aesthetic category.
With the formation of nations, and then states, a heroic epic took shape: the Indian "Mahabharata", Irish sagas, the Kyrgyz "Manas", Russian epics. Lyrics, not connected with the rite, arose even later: it showed an interest in the human personality, in the experiences of a simple person. Folk songs of the period of feudalism tell about serfdom, about the hard lot of women, about people's defenders, such as Karmelyuk in Ukraine, Janoshik in Slovakia, Stepan Razin in Rus'.
When studying folk art, one should constantly keep in mind that the people is not a homogeneous concept and is historically changeable. The ruling classes tried by all means to introduce into the masses thoughts, moods, works that contradicted the interests of the working people - songs loyal to tsarism, "spiritual poems", etc. exploiters, but also ignorance and downtroddenness. The history of folklore is at the same time a process of constant growth in the self-consciousness of the people, and overcoming what expressed their prejudices.
According to the nature of the connection with the folk life, ritual folklore and non-ritual folklore are distinguished. Folklore performers themselves adhere to a different classification. It is essential for them that some works are sung, others are felt. Philologists refer all works of folklore to one of three genera - to epic, lyrics or drama, as is customary in literary criticism.
Some folklore genres are interconnected by a common sphere of existence. If pre-revolutionary folklore was very clearly distinguished by the social affiliation of its bearers (peasant, worker), now age differences are more significant. A special section of folk poetry is children's folklore - play (drawing lots, counting rhymes, various game songs) and non-play (patter, horror stories, shifters). The main genre of modern youth folklore has become an amateur, the so-called bard song.
The folklore of each nation is unique, as well as its history, customs, culture. Epics, ditties are inherent only in Russian folklore, thoughts - in Ukrainian, etc. The lyrical songs of each people are original. Even the briefest works of folklore - proverbs and sayings - express the same idea in each nation in its own way, and where we say: "Silence is gold", the Japanese with their cult of flowers will say: "Silence is flowers."
However, even the first folklorists were struck by the similarity of fairy tales, songs, legends belonging to different peoples. At first, this was explained by the common origin of related (for example, Indo-European) peoples, then by borrowing: one people adopted plots, motives, and images from another.
Only historical materialism provides a consistent and convincing explanation of all the phenomena of similarity. Based on the richest factual material, Marxist scientists explained that similar plots, motifs, images arose among peoples who were at the same stages of socio-cultural development, even if these peoples lived on different continents and did not meet each other. Thus, a fairy tale is a utopia, a dream of justice that developed among various peoples as they acquired private property, and with it social inequality. Primitive society did not know a fairy tale on any of the continents.
Fairy tales, heroic epics, ballads, proverbs, sayings, riddles, lyrical songs of different peoples, differing in national identity both in form and content, are at the same time created on the basis of laws common to a certain level of artistic thinking and enshrined in tradition. Here is one of the "natural experiments" that confirms this position. The French poet P. J. Beranger wrote the poem "The Old Corporal", using as a basis (and at the same time significantly reworking it) a "complaint" - a special kind of French folk ballad. The poet V. S. Kurochkin translated the poem into Russian, and thanks to the music of A. S. Dargomyzhsky, the song penetrated the Russian folk repertoire. And when, many years later, it was recorded on the Don, it turned out that the folk singers made significant changes to the text (and, by the way, to the music), as if restoring in the main the original form of the French “complaint”, which, of course, the Don Cossacks had never heard. This was affected by the general laws of folk song creativity.
Literature appeared later than folklore, and always, albeit in different ways, used his experience. At the same time, literary works have long penetrated folklore and influenced its development.
The nature of the interaction of the two poetic systems is historically conditioned and therefore varies at different stages of artistic development. On this path, the process of redistribution of the social spheres of action of literature and folklore, which takes place at sharp turns in history, is extremely important, which, on the material of Russian culture of the 17th century. marked by Academician D.S. Likhachev. If even in the XVI century. storytellers were kept even at the royal court, then a century and a half later, folklore leaves the life and life of the ruling classes, now oral poetry is the property of almost exclusively the masses, and literature is the property of the ruling classes. Thus, later development can sometimes change the emerging trends in the interaction of literature and folklore, and sometimes in the most significant way. However, the stages passed are not forgotten. What began in the folk art of the time of Columbus and Athanasius Nikitin, uniquely echoed in the searches of M. Cervantes and G. Lorca, A. S. Pushkin and A. T. Tvardovsky.
In the interaction of folk art with realistic literature, more fully than ever before, the inexhaustibility of folklore as an eternal source of continuously developing art is revealed. The literature of socialist realism, like no other, relies not only on the experience of its immediate predecessors, but also on all the best that characterizes the literary process throughout its entire course, and on folklore in all its inexhaustible richness.
The law “On the protection and use of monuments of the history of culture” adopted in 1976 includes “records of folklore and music” among the national treasures. However, recording is only an auxiliary means of fixing a folklore text. But even the most accurate recording cannot replace the living spring of folk poetry.
There is not a single person in the world who would not like folk tales, songs and dances. You can find everything in them - spontaneity, the subtlest sadness and daring joy. And, probably, the most important thing that attracts modern people in them is the unique charm of antiquity and a certain nostalgic aroma of ancient times. So, folklore - what is it and what are its main features?
Basic definition
Folklore is called the collective creativity of the people, expressing its worldview and ideals, as well as serving as a complete reflection of its mentality. Usually this is oral creation - epics, tales, proverbs, conspiracies, riddles. Considering the question of folklore - what it is, one cannot fail to mention the very meaning of this word. In translation "Folk-lore" - literally "folk wisdom" or "folk knowledge". This term was introduced into use in 1846 by the English researcher William Toms.
In our country, a huge contribution to the study of this area of culture was made by many enlightened people - M. Lomonosov, A.S. Pushkin, G. Derzhavin, N. Roerich, I.I. Shishkin and many other writers, artists, historians and scientists. After the revolution, great attention was paid to the question of folklore - what it is, Maxim Gorky paid. It was thanks to this main proletarian writer that the main problems of Soviet folklore were developed.
Main characteristics
So, folklore - what is it and what are its signs? The main distinguishing features of folk art can be called non-writing, verbality, of course, collectivity and deep traditionalism. This, in fact, is the only area of culture on which the state and power cannot exert any influence at all. Tales, epics and legends have been passed down from father to son for centuries. In addition to the literary sphere, mentality and traditionalism are also manifested in all other areas of folk art - in dance, music, etc.
Basic varieties and genres of folklore
The main folk art include epic, riddle, proverb and lamentation.
Oral tradition, dance, handicrafts and songs are the main varieties of folklore proper. At the same time, it is also worth highlighting its ritual types. This area of art usually has pagan roots and manifests itself as a kind of opposition to the new religion. However, this is not always the case. For example, during the years of the USSR, when any cults were banned, it was Christian ritual folklore that showed itself very strongly. In this light, folk art can even be considered a reflection of some kind of confrontation between the common people and the authorities, and any.
Folklore works reflect the experience of millennia. And regardless of the stage of social development of a particular nation, fairy tales and epics are one of the most valuable sources of knowledge of its history. Perhaps the Russian minion of fate Ivan the Fool, the beautiful Vasilisa, the Greek villain Prometheus and Hercules, the German Freya, the Scandinavian trolls, etc. are able to tell about what events took place on earth in antiquity, much more than it might seem at first glance.
Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Thoms. In literal translation, it means - "folk wisdom", "folk knowledge" and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.
In Russian science, other terms were also fixed: folk poetic creativity, folk poetry, folk literature. The name "oral creativity of the people" emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name "folk poetic creativity" indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1
Folklore is 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, ethnology (ethnography) 2 . 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. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a kind of area of folklore 3 .
The science that studies folklore is called folklore. If by literature we understand not only written art, but verbal art in general, then folklore is a special department of literature, and folklore, therefore, is a part of literary criticism.
Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of the word. In this he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.
The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. The ancient art of the word was inherent utility- the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.
The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of fusion, non-segmentation. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity, it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity, along with other types of social consciousness, into an independent area of spiritual activity.
Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time, V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no "famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the inner and outer life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. a song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and now poems come out of the songs, which only the people can call themselves the author. 4
Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work, not only because information about him, if he was, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, narrator, narrator, but there is no author, writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.
Traditional succession covers large historical intervals - whole centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebnya, folklore arises "from memorable sources, that is, it is passed from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory is enough, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of people's understanding" 5 . Each carrier of folklore creates within the boundaries of the generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. "The works of folklore always bear the seal of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or "existed." For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It does not have individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators, to perfection owning the generally accepted traditional methods of saying and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in terms of thoughts and feelings expressed in it. Folklore is folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying content. Folklore is folk in origin, in all signs and properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms. 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. traditional- the most important and basic specific property of folklore.
Any folklore work exists in large numbers options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile variable nature.
A characteristic feature of the folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (it. improvvisazione - unexpectedly, suddenly) - the creation of a folk work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and cries. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic limits.
Considering all these signs of a folklore work, we will give an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: "Folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other fine arts, both to ancient art and to new art created in modern times and being created today." 7
Folklore, like literature, is the art of the word. This gives reason to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are called genera. Each genus covers a group of works of a certain type. Genre- type of art form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, genus means a way of depicting reality, and genre means a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of the change of its genres. In folklore, they are more stable than literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore arise not as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, are replaced by others. So, for example, epics appear in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die off. With a change in the conditions of existence, genres are destroyed and forgotten. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.
What is the relationship between reality and its representation in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. "Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself, conventionality is allowed." 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, symbolism.
The development of society is based on the ability of each new generation to perceive the experience accumulated by people who lived before them. This applies to all areas of life. What is folklore? This is precisely such a creative experience that is passed on to posterity for preservation and further development.
Artistic traditions are strong in the visual arts, in folk crafts, in music, and dancing. But the basis, which largely determines the national character, has always been oral folk art.
folk wisdom
The term "folklore" (other English folc lore - "folk wisdom") was introduced into circulation in the middle of the nineteenth century by William John Thoms, an English historian and archaeologist. Scientists from different countries have different understandings of what folklore is. Its definition as folk literature and forms of folk art associated with the word is accepted by our art critics. In the West, folklore refers to traditions in various aspects of everyday and cultural life: in housing, clothing, cooking, etc.
The common essence of these definitions is the artistic creative experience transmitted and preserved by many generations. This experience is based on life realities and is closely related to the working conditions and everyday life of people. Both epic tales and short proverbs are a reflection of folk concepts about the surrounding nature, about historical events, about the spiritual and material. A close relationship with work and everyday life is the main feature of folk art, its difference from the classical types of artistic activity.
Literature and folklore - the art of the word
There are differences in the understanding of what folklore is and what traditional literature is. One of the types of verbal creativity exists in the memory of the people and is transmitted mainly orally, and the book is the means of storage and transmission of the literary text. In literature, the author of a work has a specific name and surname. And folk poetry is anonymous. The writer mostly works alone, a fairy tale or an epic is the result of collective creativity. The narrator is in direct contact and interaction with the audience, the influence on the reader is indirect and individual.
The novelty of ideas and innovation in views on reality - that's what is valued in the book. Traditions born by previous generations - that's what folklore is in literature. For each word in the story, story, novel, the writer found a single and exact place. Each new narrator makes his own changes to a fairy tale or anecdote, and this looks like an element of creativity.
The connection between folk and traditional word creation is also obvious and significant. From recorded oral traditions, the most ancient monuments of literature were born. Many forms of poetic and prose compositions are borrowed from folklore. The tales of Pushkin and Ershov, Tolstoy and Gorky, Bazhov's tales come from the collective art of the word. And what is folklore in literature today? Characters from folk art are present in Vysotsky's songs. “The Tale of Fedot the Archer” by Filatov is folk in form and language. This is an example of the mutual influence of traditional literature and folklore. She was dismantled into quotes and "went to the people."
Genre richness
Like traditional literature, three types of folklore prose and poetry are distinguished: epic (epics, tales, fairy tales, legends, traditions, etc.), lyrics (poems and songs of a different nature) and drama (nativity scenes, games, wedding and funeral rites, etc. d.).
It is customary to divide folklore genres according to their belonging to calendar and family rituals. The former include poetic accompaniment of New Year's, Christmas, Shrovetide festivities, a meeting of spring, harvest festivals, etc. These are carols, fortune-telling, round dances, games, etc. The latter include wedding poems and songs, toasts and congratulations on important dates and events, funeral laments, etc.
A large group of folk poetry is associated with a functional environment. Songs, sentences, sayings, ditties help in work (craft, workers, peasants), it is easier to endure adversity with them (soldiers, prison camps, emigrants). Narrative prose is associated with this group: fairy tales and everyday life, stories, narratives, fables, etc.
Children's folklore is composed by adults for babies (lullabies, nursery rhymes, pestle) and by children for games and communication (counters, teasers, myrilla, horror stories, etc.). And what is folklore in small forms? Who does not know proverbs, sayings, tongue twisters? Who hasn't heard and told jokes? They have always been the most active and relevant forms of folk art.
Word and music
The origins of folk art go back to the time of prehistoric rituals. Then music, songs, dances constituted a single action that had a mystical or utilitarian meaning. Together with elements of arts and crafts: costumes, musical instruments, such rituals had a great influence on the development of art. And also to the formation of national identity.
Music played on folk instruments occupies a large place in the performing arts. But what is folklore in music if not an accompaniment to poetic compositions of various kinds? Russian guslars, French troubadours, oriental ashugs and akyns accompanied by playing musical instruments epics and legends, legends and traditions.
Folk song is a phenomenon of world culture. In every language, in sorrow and in joy, songs composed in ancient times and understandable to our contemporaries are sung. In the processing of classical composers, at grandiose rock concerts, folklore motifs are loved and relevant.
Soul of the people
In our global world, folk art is one of the most important ways to preserve the national character, the soul of the nation. Russian folk art was born from Slavic mythology, Byzantine Orthodoxy. It is a reflection of national traits that have developed in the course of turbulent historical cataclysms. Nature, climate also undoubtedly left their mark on the Russian mentality. The dependence of a simple person in big and small on the lordly or royal will accompanied him for many centuries. But this dependence did not kill his love for his small homeland and awareness of the greatness of Russia.
Hence - the main features of the Russian character. Considering them, one can understand what Russian folklore is. Patience in work and perseverance in war, faith in goodness and hope for the best, grief without boundaries and fun without restraint - all this is inherent in Russian people and is reflected in folk poetry and music.
Until the spring runs dry
The art of the people is alive as long as the people are alive. It changes with it. Epics were composed about the heroes, now they are making cartoons. But to know what folklore is, how it affects national and world art, to preserve and develop traditions is important for any generation.
