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 of 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 socialist countries three cores 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 of folk art. Marxist aesthetics proceeds from the dialectical-materialistic understanding of F. as a socially conditioned and historically developing artist. activity of the masses, which has a set of interrelated specific features (collectivity of the creative process, traditionalism, non-fixed forms of transmission of products from generation to generation, poly-elementality, variability), closely related to labor activity, life, and 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 "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 represents 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
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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 determined by different concepts and interpretations of the connections between the subject of folklore studies and 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 studies arose, different rates of subsequent development, different composition the main fund of texts, to-rye used by science 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 folk”) and a historical and cultural criterion are introduced - archaic forms that dominate or function as remnants. (The word “popular” is more definite than “folk”, in a sociological sense, and does not contain an evaluative meaning (“ National 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, these are the "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 the supporters of each of the concepts testifies to the complexity of the subject of folklore, its connections with various types of people. activities and people. life. Depending on which connections are especially important and which are considered secondary, peripheral, the fate of the main term of folklore is also formed within the framework of a particular 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 reckon with 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 specificity of the research methods of folklore inevitably develops 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 unified 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 form, it was 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 late time are perceived as predominantly artistic phenomena, however, in most cases, the dominant function for them was practical, informational, magical, religious, and aesthetic. 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), then. part of the legends and legends, bylichek (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 sections of ethnography, but to the same extent - the history of art, just as verbal folklore is one of the sections 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 practicality. 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 according to certain rules (grammatical, logical, etc.), which in their entirety constitute the tradition of the language spoken by speakers, the folklore tradition is a transmission texts, the entry of texts into the tradition, their assimilation and reproduction. Here, too, there is no clearly defined border. Texts are brought into 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 (the role of which in the performance process was written by A. Lord and his followers, and in Russia as early as 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. a 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 in 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 a special significance and a 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 not accompanied 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 verbally 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 nature of folklore, if we consider it centuries of history 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). Folklore 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 life of the primary contact social group (including the so-called professional forms) or, conversely, created by it, but consumed outside 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 of a literary work and his reader communicate through a written text, they can be separated from each other by decades or hundreds of kilometers, or both. simultaneously. 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 language, but on the scale of the ethnos, it continues to prevail for a long time, because. in the everyday life of the masses still plays essential role. 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 of the society. 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, which is characterized by the dominance of aesthetic. 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 popular 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. 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, printing, the press, and later radio, television, etc. technical means mass communication leads to the fact that the social area of folklore forms continues (and now decisively) narrowing. 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 increasing 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 understand the general patterns of 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 motives, 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
(English folklore - folk wisdom) is a designation of the artistic activity of the 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 emergence of various peoples similar genres, plots, such means artistic expressiveness, as hyperbola, parallelism, various types of repetitions, constant and complex epithet, 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 of artistic creativity and experiencing the opposite effect.
Great Definition
Incomplete definition ↓
FOLKLORE
English folklore - folk knowledge, folk wisdom), folk poetry, folk poetry, oral folk art - a combination of various types 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. F.'s definition 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 cit., 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 (epic, 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 ones 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 a certain circle of 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. Dialectic 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, transitional forms of a kind of oral literature were formed. 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 the writing of Ancient Rus' (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. IN 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. traditions from others (for example, the Icelandic sagas among 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 late forms of the epic of the 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 a 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 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 scholars 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 the legacy of the ancient pra-Indo-Europe. 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 " historical school"(the most striking expression in Russia is V.F. Miller and his students; K. and M. Chadwick in England, etc.), who sought to connect the F. of each people with its history and did a great job of comparing historical documents At the same time, the "historical school" was characterized by a simplified understanding of the mechanism of artistic reflection of reality in phrasing and (as well as certain other currents of bourgeois folklore of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) striving to prove that the popular masses only mechanically perceived and preserved the artistic 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), and ritualistic theory (which connected the origin of verbal arts predominantly with magical rites, French scientists P. Sentive, J. Dumézil, English - F. Raglan, Dutch - J. de Vries, Amer. - R. Carpenter, etc.) and the "Finnish school", establishing the historical and geographical areas of distribution of plots and developing principles for the classification and systematization of photographs (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 ancient eras history of mankind F. is often (together 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 phantasy, 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. 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 folk traditions previous centuries, through the prism of which the East 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. F. is also of great importance for clarifying 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., Specifics of folklore, in collection: "Proceedings of the anniversary scientific session of Leningrad State University. Section of Philological Sciences, L., 1946; his own, Historical roots fairy tale , L., 1946; his own, Folklore and Reality, "Russian Literature", 1963, No 3; his, Principles of Classification of Folklore Genres, "Sov. Ethnography", 1964, No 4; his own, Morphology of a fairy tale, 2nd ed., M., 1969; Zhirmunsky V. M., To the question of Nar. creativity, "Uch. zap. Leningrad. ped. institute named after A. I. Herzen", 1948, v. 67; his own, National heroic epic, M.-L., 1962; Gusev V. E., Marxism and Russian. folkloristics of the 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, Aesthetics of folklore, L., 1967; Putilov BN, On the main features of Nar. poetic creativity, "Uch. zap. Grozny ped. in-ta. Ser. philological. Sciences", century. 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, The 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 Obiect. 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.
Folklore
Folklore
FOLKLORE - the artistic creativity of the broad masses of the people, mainly oral and poetic creativity. The term was first introduced into scientific use in 1846 by the English scientist William Thoms.
In a literal translation, Folk-lore means: folk wisdom, folk knowledge. At first, this term denoted only the very subject of science, but sometimes they began to call it the scientific discipline that studies this material; however, the latter is more correctly called folkloristics.
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 our country, the somewhat broadly interpreted term "folk literature" or "folk poetry" dominated.
The artistic and historical significance of folklore was deeply revealed by A. M. Gorky, whose statements are of leading importance in the development of the main problems of folklore. In his report at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, Gorky said:
“I again draw your attention, comrades, to the fact that the most profound and vivid, artistically perfect types of heroes were created by folklore, the oral creativity of the working people. The perfection of such images as Hercules, Prometheus, Mikula Selyaninovich, Svyatogor, then - Doctor Faust, Vasilisa the Wise, the ironic lucky Ivan the Fool and, finally, Petrushka, defeating the doctor, priest, policeman, devil and even death - all these are images in the creation of which rationality and intuition, thought and feeling were harmoniously combined. Such a combination is possible only with the direct participation of the creator in the work of creating reality, in the struggle for the renewal of life ”(M. Gorky, Soviet literature, report at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, M., 1935, p. 12).
F. - poetic creativity, growing on the basis of the labor activity of mankind, reflecting the experience of millennia. F., being ancient written literature and passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, is the most valuable source for understanding the history of every nation, no matter what stage of social development it is at. At the same congress of writers, A. M. Gorky addressed the writers of the Caucasus and Central Asia: “The beginning of the art of the word is in folklore. Collect your folklore, learn from it, process it. He gives a lot of material to you and to us, poets and prose writers of the Union. The better we know the past, the easier, the more deeply and joyfully we will understand the great significance of the present we are creating. M. Gorky emphasizes in F. its labor and collective beginning, its materialistic and realistic basis, its artistic power. Highlighting the specific features inherent in oral folk poetry, M. Gorky at the same time does not oppose F. written fiction as phenomena isolated from each other. In folk art, he sees that deep and fruitful soil on which, in essence, all the greatest works of literature relied.
F. poetic cannot be considered in isolation from other manifestations of spiritual culture. Oral folk poetry is closely connected with the areas of folk theatrics (facial expressions, gesture, dramatic action - when performing not only the so-called "folk drama" and dramatized rites - wedding, funeral, agricultural, round dances and games, but also when telling epics, fairy tales , during the performance of songs), choreographic art (folk dances, dances, round dances), musical and vocal art. Consequently, folklore studies include some sections of such disciplines as theater studies, choreography, and musicology (its section, called "musical ethnography" or "musical philology"). At the same time, phrasing cannot be studied without the help of linguistics, without studying the dialect in which these oral poetic works are created. However, folkloristics is first of all a part of literary criticism, and phrasing is a part of verbal art. F., like written fiction, is a verbal figurative knowledge, a reflection of social reality. But the creation of fine arts by the masses, the conditions under which fine arts existed, and the nature of artistic creativity in the pre-capitalist period, when a significant part of the old fine arts that has come down to us, was formed, determined the well-known features of fine arts in comparison with written fiction. The collective beginning in philology, the anonymity of most folklore monuments, and the significant role of tradition in faculties—all this leaves its mark on faculties and determines the well-known features of its study.
Folkloristics as a science has existed for a little over a hundred years. Its emergence not as an accidental and amateur collection of oral poetic materials and their literary processing (such characteristic phenomena for Europe at the end of the 18th century, but for Russia in the first decades of the 19th century), but as a scientific study of phrasing dates back to the first decade of the last century. The origin of folklore studies is closely connected with that broad direction in the field of philosophy, science and art. early XIX century, which was called romanticism. In the idealistic romantic philosophy of that time, the assertion was very popular that the history of a people is determined not by the will of individuals, but is a manifestation of its “spirit”, the expression of which is also all areas of collective creativity, where the creator is the people themselves (language, mythology, .).
The special sciences also reflected these trends. The linguistics of that time reflected them especially vividly; it was at that time that comparative linguistics was born (see Linguistics).
In the publication of the first romantic publications F. clearly shine through concrete political goals. To understand them, one need only take into account that these first publications coincide in time with the Napoleonic wars. Such is the famous collection of German folk songs compiled by the poets Arnim and Brentano, "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (3 Tle, Heidelberg, 1806-1808), "Die deutschen Volksbucher" Görres (Heidelberg, 1807) and finally "Kinder und Hausmarchen" by the Brothers Grimm ( 2 Bde, B., 1812-1814).
leadership role in the scientific development F. in the era of romanticism was played by the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (especially Jacob). In his general theoretical reasoning and in his works on particular issues of the history of law, language, literature, folklore, Jacob Grimm was guided, by his own admission, by "patriotic goals." In studying folklore, Grimm used the same comparative method that guided him in his work on language. Jacob Grimm and all his followers explained similar phenomena in the philosophy of European peoples by inheriting a common poetic wealth from a single “Proto-Indo-European” ancestor. In an effort to reveal the most ancient features in fairy tales and legends, Grimm and his followers in the works of oral poetry paid the main attention to the remains religious beliefs; interest in myths especially increases when Sanskritologists (A. Kuhn, M. Müller), who tried to find the origins of European folklore in Vedic hymns and incantations, act as Grimm's followers; hence the Grimm school itself received in the history of science the name of the "mythological" school. With the greatest completeness, Grimm's views on the nature of oral poetry and on the history of its development from ancient times are expounded by him in the book German Mythology (1835). Grimm's views were further developed in the middle of the 19th century. in the works of his followers - the German scientists Kuhn, Schwartz, Manngardt, the English scientist Max Muller, the French - Pictet and the Russian scientists F. I. Buslaev, A. N. Afanasiev and O. F. Miller.
In Russia, as in Germany, the "mythological" school was also the first stage in the development of scientific folklore. As in Germany, scientific research was preceded by a period of romantic collection of "folk poetry" and its use for artistic purposes (folklore themes in Zhukovsky, Pushkin, early Gogol and etc.). PV Kireevsky's passion for collecting folk songs gave tremendous results. Kireevsky, like other representatives of Slavophilism, was guided in his hobbies by moods close to German nationalist romanticism. Kireevsky and other Slavophiles were not so much scholars as primarily publicists. In Russia, the first truly learned folklorists were F. I. Buslaev and A. N. Afanasiev. The scope and nature of Buslaev's activities are very reminiscent of the activities of Jacob Grimm. He was both a linguist and a historian of national literature and folk literature. Buslaev mainly applied methodological techniques and theoretical principles of the mythological school to the Russian and Slavic material in general. Buslaev's views on folk poetry were set out with all clarity in his books: Historical essays Russian Folk Literature and Art” (2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1861) and “Folk Poetry” (St. Petersburg, 1887). The most extreme and ardent supporter of the mythological school in Russia was A. N. Afanasiev. To a much greater extent than Buslaev, he was characterized by all those fascinations with linguistic and mythological rapprochements that led to the fantastic constructions of many European mythologists. Afanasiev combined his numerous articles on mythology in a systematized and processed form in the famous three-volume work “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” (M., 1865-1869). Afanasiev also has the merit in compiling the first scientific collection of Russian fairy tales "Russian Folk Tales" (1st ed. in 8 issues, M., from 1855-1863). Orest Fedorovich Miller was also a prominent representative of the mythological school in Russia. In his huge book “Comparative Critical Observations on the Layer Composition of the Russian Folk Epos. Ilya Muromets and the Heroism of Kiev” (St. Petersburg, 1869) Orest Miller applied the principles of the mythological school to the interpretation of the Russian bygone epic, but with such straightforwardness and lack of critical tact that not only its opponents, but even its supporters had to point out the author’s excessive hobbies. In the spirit of the mythological theory, many works of the Kharkov scientist A. A. Potebnya were also written, who devoted a number of his works to the disclosure of specific poetic images in folk songs.
With the change in socio-economic life in Europe by the 60s. XIX century, with the development of industry, the intensified expansion of European capital, with the deployment of the colonial policy of European states, issues of trade, financial, political and cultural relations with non-European countries began to become increasingly important. New worlds opened up, it seemed necessary to give an explanation to the newly discovered facts, in particular in F. Eg. it turned out to be completely impossible to explain the similarity of plots in the tales of different peoples by their origin from a common ancestor. Should have appeared new attempt explain this similarity. Such an attempt was made by the German scientist Benfey. In 1859, he published a collection of Hindu stories Panchatantra (6th century AD) with a German translation, providing the publication with a large preface, which was destined to become a turning point in the development of folklore. Benfey pointed out the striking similarity of Sanskrit tales with European and with tales of other, non-European peoples. The similarity of plots, according to Benfey, is caused not by the kinship of peoples, but by cultural and historical ties between them, by borrowing; hence the names of Benfey's theory - "comparative theory", "borrowing theory", "migration theory", "the theory of wandering plots", "wandering plots".
The main reservoir from which European peoples drew materials for poetic creativity, according to representatives of the Benfeev school, was ancient india.
For several decades, this theory enjoyed great success. A number of supporters of the mythological school also went over to the Benfeist camp, for example. Max Muller, in Russia - Buslaev, who wrote a vivid essay in the spirit of a new direction: “Passable stories and stories” (collection “My leisure”, part II, M., 1886). Passionately, with great exaggeration, the well-known art critic V. V. Stasov defended Benfeev’s point of view in his article “The Origin of Russian Epics” (“Bulletin of Europe”, 1868, Nos. 1-4, 6 and 7, reprinted in vol. III Sobr. op. by Stasov, St. Petersburg, 1894).
The famous academician A. N. Veselovsky also worked for a long time in the spirit of the theory of borrowing. Such is eg. his work “From the history of literary communication between East and West. Slavic legends about Solomon and Kitovras and Western legends about Morolf and Merlin" (St. Petersburg, 1872). In the spirit of the same school of borrowing, Academician V. F. Miller wrote his first major work on Russian phrasing (“Excursions into the Region of the Russian Folk Epos”, Moscow, 1892). A. I. Kirpichnikov (“The experience of a comparative study of the Western and Russian epos.” Poems of the Lombard cycle, M., 1873), academician I. N. Zhdanov (“On the literary history of Russian epic poetry”, Kiev, 1881, "Russian bylevoy epic", St. Petersburg, 1895, etc.), M. G. Khalansky ("South Slavic legends about the kralevich Mark in connection with the works of the Russian epic epic", Warsaw, 1893-1895), A. M. Loboda (“Russian epics about matchmaking”, Kiev, 1904) and many others. others
Persistently, but without due methodological caution, the famous Siberian traveler G. N. Potanin defended the eastern origin of the European heroic and fairy tale epic (“Eastern motifs in the medieval European epic”, M., 1899).
Despite the enormous influence of the theory of borrowing on the folklore of all countries, its weaknesses were gradually revealed: a superficial, insufficiently careful use of plot comparison techniques and a tendency to talk about borrowing only on the basis of general plot similarities in legends, fairy tales, epics. At the same time, it was overlooked that the essence of the matter is not only in the plot scheme, but in the work of art, taken as a whole, with all the features of its ideology and artistic form.
Some researchers, such as the French scientist Joseph Bedier, author of the monumental study "Fablio" (Paris, 1893), expressed a general skepticism about the futility of research on the migration of subjects. However, not all folklorists of the late XIX and early XX centuries. shared this pessimism.
So for example. the well-known Russian orientalist academician S. F. Oldenburg strongly objected to Bedier's categorical statements and argued that in some cases it is possible to quite accurately establish borrowings and the path of migration of plots.
When F. researchers met with numerous cases of striking coincidences in the work of peoples not only not related to each other, but also geographically and historically far apart from each other, it turned out to be completely impossible to explain these coincidences by borrowing. Ethnographic, linguistic, folklore studies acquired exceptional importance in Great Britain and the United States due to the huge colonial conquests carried out by these states. As a result of accumulated observations, the English scientist Taylor (the author of the famous book "Primitive Culture") and his follower, the Scottish scientist Leng, put forward a new theory to explain the similarity of plots and motives among a wide variety of peoples. This theory was called the "anthropological" theory. It was based on the premise that all peoples generally follow the same paths of development and that their poetic creativity is carried out according to the same laws of psychology, therefore, it is quite natural to allow the independent origin of poetic plots among the most diverse peoples in the most distant geographical points from each other. Therefore, this theory is also called the "theory of spontaneous generation." The anthropological school of the so-called. "survivals" or "relics", i.e., remnants in the poetry of elements of earlier cultures.
Over the past decades, the principles of the anthropological school in England have been carried out in the works of the famous ethnologist and historian James Fraser (the author of the fundamental work on primitive religion "The Golden Bough", in English (1890, the same, 3rd ed., in 12 vols., 1911-1915 ); its abridged edition was translated into Russian, M., 1928, in 4 issues). In his writings, James Frazer exclusively great importance gives magic, which, in his opinion, played an extremely important role in primitive ritual actions and in related songs and other types of ph. In the 20th century. on German soil, anthropological theory received some revision in the works of the famous psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (especially in his multi-volume Psychology of Peoples), as well as in the German folklorists Leistner and von der Leyen.
With the latter, this theory was modified into a "psychological" theory. Great importance in the process of creating poetic images and plots was given to the states of sleep and hallucinations by representatives of this school. One of the varieties of the psychological school was the so-called. "Freudianism".
In Russia, the anthropological and psychological schools have not received any noticeable development, except for the fact that many of the results of the anthropological school were used in the original teachings of Academician A. N. Veselovsky.
A. N. Veselovsky, who began his scientific activity in the spirit of the Benfey school of borrowing, and then mastered the provisions of the anthropological school, combining them with the principles of Darwin's evolutionary theory, with Spencer's theory, made an attempt to draw a general picture of the development of poetic species. In his theoretical (unfinished) work: “Three chapters from historical poetics”, written by him in 1898-1899 (“ZhMNP”, 1899, nos. 3-5, and otd., St. Petersburg, 1899, reprinted in the Collected Works A. N. Veselovsky, series 1, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1913), Veselovsky used the grandiose material of world philosophy and made an attempt to establish the pattern of development of poetry in the first stages of human culture, when different types of art were not yet separated from each other and when art itself was closely merged with the production and practical activities of man and religious and magical moments. He traced how poetry in its development moves from syncretism to separate, independent types of art, and within poetry a gradual differentiation of genera (epos, lyrics, drama) and their types takes place, by gradually releasing them from the ritual-magical complex. In parallel with the disclosure of the process from syncretism to differentiated types of poetry, Veselovsky established the development of poetic creativity along the line "from singer to poet." With all the wealth of concrete observations made by Veselovsky, his theory as a whole cannot be considered correct, since the evolution of poetic forms was revealed to him immanently, although in some cases the material itself led him to formulate problems about the connection between literature and social development.
The scientific theory of Veselovsky is one of the most valuable elements of the legacy that remains from the bourgeois science of ph. Unfortunately, the works of Veselovsky have still not been sufficiently studied by Marxist literary criticism.
Another major phenomenon of bourgeois folklore should be considered the so-called. "historical school" headed by academician VF Miller. This school has occupied a dominant position in the Russian science of folklore since the mid-1990s. right up to the Great October Socialist Revolution and even in the first years after it. The historical school did not seek, like the mythological one, to look for the origins of folklore phenomena in the ancestral homeland or in the parent language. Historical theory was based on the establishment of concrete connections between folklore and the history of the Russian people. The starting point of any folklore work, according to representatives of this school, is some historical fact. According to the formulation of V. Miller, counter processes are observed in F.: poeticization historical fact and historicization of the poetic plot. The first attempts at a historical explanation of Russian F. were made long before Miller's main works, for example. L. N. Maykov (“On the epics of the Vladimir cycle”, St. Petersburg, 1863), N. P. Dashkevich (“On the question of the origin of Russian epics. Epics about Alyosha Popovich and how the heroes were transferred to Holy Rus'”, Kiev, 1883) and M. G. Khalansky (“Great Russian epics of the Kiev cycle”, Warsaw, 1885). V. Miller, as already mentioned, for many years worked in the direction of the school of borrowing, but since the mid-90s. began to publish articles based on the principles of the "historical school". These articles were combined by him into three large volumes of "Essays on Russian Folk Literature" (vol. I, M., 1897, vol. II, M., 1910, vol. III (posthumous), M. - L., 1924). In his “Essays”, devoted to the study of the history of individual epics, he went from the present into the depths of history, trying, with such a retrospective examination, to consistently “remove” individual rows of “layers” or “layers” of the epics and hypothetically restore its original appearance.
The evidence, as well as some of his comparisons with the facts of a historical and literary order, were strained and far from always convincing. The same should be said about the method in the works of his students and followers: A. V. Markov (“From the history of the Russian epic epic”, issue I, M., 1905, and issue II, M., 1907), S. K. Shambinago (“Songs of the Time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible”, Sergiev Posad, 1914, etc.), B. M. Sokolov (“ historical element in epics about Danil Lovchanin”, “Russian Philological Bulletin”, 1910, “The brother-in-law of Grozny, the daring fighter Mamtryuk Temgryukovich” (“ZhMNP”, 1913, No. 7), etc.).
The performance of the "historical school" had a well-known positive side, since it was directed against a one-sided passion for the theory of borrowings and set itself the task of linking F. with the history of the people.
But the historical constructions of Miller and his students proceeded from an erroneous, unscientific understanding of the historical process; Later on, the errors of the school were exacerbated by attempts at a vulgar sociological interpretation of the history of F.
The results of the work of Miller and the historical school were used by V. A. Keltuyala for his “Course in the History of Russian Literature” (part I, book 1, St. Petersburg, 1906; part I, book 2, St. Petersburg, 1911).
In this course (especially in its second edition), Keltuyala, relying partly on individual statements by Miller, put forward in a categorical form a deeply incorrect position that the Russian epic epic, as well as all other types of Russian f. were not created by the people (i.e. . by the working masses), but by the classes that dominated in the era of feudalism. With these statements of his, Keltuyala, as he thought, took a materialistic point of view and challenged the romantic-Slavophile and populist tendencies in folklore.
V. Miller in his later works, in turn already under the influence of Keltuyala, also put forward the problem of the social genesis of the Russian epic, a problem that had not previously attracted much attention to him. He also began to prove in detail the idea of a military-druzhina aristocratic and merchant environment, which created in their own interests that epic, which supposedly only later became the property of the “people”.
This view of Miller became generally accepted in Russian pre-October science, ch. arr. in relation to the Russian epic epic. The anti-nationality and incorrectness of this interpretation of F. has recently been proved by our Soviet criticism and folklore.
At the present time, as in the past, philosophies are being used by the bourgeoisie of all countries for their class purposes. In Western Europe and America, a number of branched scientific directions are known, which, however, for the most part are epigones of the aforementioned folklore schools. The most widespread is one of the variants of the theory of borrowing, the so-called. "Finnish school" headed by the Helsingfors professor K. Kron who died in 1933. In 1907, together with the Swedish scientist Sidov and the Danish scientist Axel Olrik, he organized the international federation of folklorists "Folklore Fellows", which began to publish the research series "Folklore Fellows Communications", or abbreviated "FFC". One of the main tasks set by the federation for itself was the study of fairy tale, legendary and heroic plots, the determination of the starting points of their origin and the geographical ways of their distribution. Typical examples of monographic works made in the spirit of the Finnish school can be considered the works of the former Kazan professor, now a professor in Tartau, Walter Anderson (“The Emperor and the Abbot. The Story of an Anecdote” - in Russian, vol. I, Kazan, 1916, in German language, Helsingfors, 1923). Of the Russian folklorists, N. P. Andreev, a student of Anderson, worked in the same direction of the Finnish school. The main provisions of the Finnish school were set forth in Karl Krohn's book "Die folkloristische Arbeitsmethode" (Oslo, 1926).
If the theoretical and methodological principles of the Finnish school cannot but evoke strong objections from the point of view of Marxist folkloristics as the principle of epigonizing bentheism, brought to the point of formalistic exaggeration, then the purely technical side of the work of the Scandinavian folklorists should be highly appreciated.
One of K. Kron's greatest students, Anti Aarne, compiled in 1911 Verzeichnis der Marchentypen (Index of Fairy Tale Plots, 1911), which has now become an international guide for systematizing plot schemes. It was translated into Russian and revised accordingly, bringing under this index all the main collections of Russian fairy tales, N. P. Andreev (N. P. Andreev, “Index of fairy tale plots according to the Aarne system”, L., 1929). Following the example of Aarne, the American scientist Thomson compiled a multi-volume index fabulous motives different peoples of the world (Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk-Literature, vol. I-VI, 1932-1936). At present, the representatives of the Finnish school themselves have admitted that their theory and methodology have reached an impasse. The transition proposed by Sidov from a comparative analysis of international plots to an analysis of the plots of F. of only one nationality does not pave new paths, but only leads to national self-restraint, in which one cannot but see some reflection of the nationalist tendencies of the bourgeoisie of a number of European countries.
Bourgeois reaction also makes attempts to use F. for its own purposes. The instrument of grossly tendentious, anti-popular perversion of F. for these purposes is the point of view of Hans Naumann, who considers F. to be an exclusively “relic” phenomenon; Nauman denies the creative process among the masses. Naumann's position is entirely imbued with a caste spirit.
As for Soviet folklore, it has come a long and difficult path of development over the 20 years of the existence of Soviet power. In the early years, it is true, they still dominated university teaching and scientific organizations theory of pre-revolutionary bourgeois folklore, ch. arr. historical school and migration theory. Being a part of literary criticism, folklore naturally reflected those trends that existed in the theory and history of literature. Thus, “formalism” found its reflection in folkloristics. Here it is necessary to take into account not only sporadic statements on the folklore of V. Shklovsky and O. Brik, but also more systematic works on the folklore of V. Zhirmunsky (in his books “Rhyme, its history and theory” (Pb., 1923) and “Introduction into Metrics”, L., 1925) and especially two books on the formal analysis of fairy tales: R. M. Volkov, “The Fairy Tale” (Odessa, 1924) and V. Propp, “Morphology of a Fairy Tale” (L., 1928).
The application of the methodological principles of N. Ya. Marr's theory to folklore was of great scientific importance. The "paleontological analysis" of linguistic phenomena in terms of understanding the stadial nature of their development, worked out by the Japhetidological new doctrine of language, was applied by Marr himself to the phenomena of F., especially to mythology (the study of Ishtar and others). A group of students of N. Ya. Marr, who formed the “sector of the semantics of myth and folklore” at the Institute of Language and Thought of the Academy of Sciences, released teamwork(“Tristan and Isolda”, L., 1932) in the spirit of Marr's teaching on language. The works of Academician N. Ya. Marr put in a new way the problem of the coincidence of plots and images in the folklore of various peoples (for example, the legend of Prometheus with the legend of Amran among the peoples of the North Caucasus, the legend of the founding of Kiev with a similar Armenian legend, etc.), explaining this coincidence not as a legacy from an unprecedented “fore-people” and not as a borrowing, but by the unity of the process of development of language and thinking experienced by all peoples, by the identity of the stage they are experiencing. It should also be noted that the Japhetidological school pays special attention to the philosophy of the peoples of the USSR.
For a long time, largely under the influence of the vulgar sociological school of M.N. arr. "sociological determination" of folklore phenomena. Instead of a genuine Marxist analysis, they usually occupied themselves with detailing the vulgar sociological propositions of Keltuyala and Miller, unable to adequately overcome the traditions of bourgeois methodology. This is the fault of the author of this article.
At the end of 1936, at the initiative of Pravda, in connection with the decision of the Committee for Arts on the production of Demyan Bedny's play "Bogatyrs", the concept of the aristocratic origin of the national epic epic (shared by the author of these lines) was sharply criticized, its vulgar sociological the basis. At the same time, the articles in Pravda pointed to the possibility of bringing this vulgar sociological concept closer to the theoretical construction of bourgeois “scientists” like Hans Naumann. This just criticism of reactionary folklore concepts played a decisive role in Soviet folklore. The main trouble of many Soviet folklorists was the insufficient use of the statements of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin about folklore and the principles of the methodology of Marxism-Leninism in general.
Marx and Engels were very interested in F. Their correspondence indicates that they mostly read and reread the works of German, Danish, Norwegian, Scottish, Spanish, Serbian and Russian F. East says its repeated use in scientific and polemical works. The founders of Marxism have repeatedly noted the great importance of folklore as an artistic creation (see, for example, Engels' letter to Marx on the Old Danish ballads of June 20, 1860). The memoirs of Lafargue, W. Liebknecht, and others testify to Marx's and Engels' direct love for works of oral literature. Marx's and Engels' statements about folklore are thematically extremely diverse.
Of great importance for understanding the phenomena of F. and its development was famous saying Marx (in the introduction to the "Critique of Political Economy") about the Greek epic, about its mythological basis, about its connection with a certain stage social development and about the reasons for the artistic pleasure he has brought to the present day.
In the literary heritage of Marx and Engels there are many statements on specific historical and historical-literary issues related to F. They were interested in clarifying the sources of certain folklore works, and the problem of historical and geographical localization of the main images of F., the use of F. by writers and the significance of F. as a historical and historical document. They always pointed out the enormous political role of folklore, the need to use it as an instrument of agitation and propaganda, each time welcoming the publication of this or that text, if this text was of interest in terms of combating the existing system. More than once they spoke about revolutionary philosophy, about its political function in the past and present, about its class modifications and distortions over the centuries and decades.
The historical significance of F., in particular folk songs, was repeatedly and persistently emphasized by Paul Lafargue. Lafargue even devoted a whole treatise to F., the article "Wedding Songs and Customs" (in Russian in the collection of articles by Lafargue: "Essays on the History of Culture", M. - L., 1926).
G. V. Plekhanov came close to F.’s questions in his “Letters without an address” (“ Scientific review”, 1899, No. 11, and 1900, Nos. 3 and 6; rev. in "Works" by Plekhanov, vol. XIV, M. (1925)). One of the main problems that interested him was the problem of the origin of art. Among other Marxists, Vorovsky, Lunacharsky, and others have separate statements on F.
As for V. I. Lenin’s attitude to folklore, there were no direct statements from him in the press, but the memoirs of N. K. Krupskaya and V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, who speak of great interest and Lenin's attention to folklore. Bonch-Bruevich recalls: “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, studying Dahl’s dictionary, liked to visit folk holidays, was interested in proverbs, loved revolutionary songs and memorized them quickly. Vladimir Ilyich carefully read the Smolensk ethnographic collection, noting the great value of the materials contained in it. When one day the conversation turned to oral poetic creativity, Vladimir Ilyich asked to be allowed to look through some collections of epics, songs and fairy tales. His request was granted. What interesting stuff, he said. - I skimmed through these books, but I see that, obviously, there are not enough hands or the desire to generalize all this, to look at all this from a socio-political point of view, because on this material one could write an excellent study about the aspirations and expectations of the people. Look in the fairy tales of Onchukov, which I looked through - after all, there are wonderful places here. This is what we need to call the attention of our literary historians. This is genuine folk art, which is also necessary and important for the study of folk psychology today.”
Stalin's statements about culture "socialist in its content and national in form" are of great guiding importance for Soviet folkloristics. In the light of this teaching, F. cannot but occupy a prominent place in public life. “And if it is a matter of familiarizing various nationalities with proletarian culture,” says Stalin, “then there can hardly be any doubt that this familiarization will take place in forms corresponding to the language and way of life of these nationalities” (Stalin I., “Questions of Leninism” , Sotsekgiz, Moscow - Leningrad, 1931, p. 178). This initiation proceeds, along with other forms, as witnessed by collectors and researchers of modern Soviet folklore, among all nationalities of the Soviet Union through national songs and tales, through proverbs and sayings, through various other types of national phrasing, which grows on the basis of the language and way of life of these nationalities.
Widely deployed, especially for last years, amateur art activities of workers and collective farm masses, in which traditional artistic skills in the oral-poetic, musical, dance, and visual arts play a significant role, open up an immense field of observations for folklore researchers, which lead to conclusions that leave no stone unturned from slanderous statements of reactionaries about the creative sterility of the working people.
The conditions of social life in the USSR brought to the attention of folklorists-researchers a number of such historical and theoretical problems that were not noticed or deliberately obscured by bourgeois folkloristics.
“We have the material both in natural resources, and in the reserve of human strength, and in the wonderful scope that the great revolution gave to folk art - in order to create a truly powerful and abundant Rus'” (Lenin V.I., Soch., 3rd ed., vol. XXII, M. - L., 1931, p. 376). “Such a revolution can be successfully carried out only with the independent historical creativity of the majority of the population, especially the majority of the working people” (V.I. Lenin, Soch., 3rd ed., vol. XXII, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, p. 440) . These words of Comrade Lenin also apply to the field of art. The role of F. as the voice of modernity, as a reflection and instrument of the class struggle, as a means of agitation and propaganda, as a method of mass artistic education in the spirit of genuine internationalism and deep love for the socialist homeland, as a cultural heritage was clarified in numerous scientific, popularizing and pedagogical works of Soviet folklorists . The close connection with the practical issues of the political and economic life of the country very clearly distinguishes Soviet folkloristics from the narrowly cabinet, often meager work of many folklorists in the bourgeois West.
The disclosure, in connection with the rise of the national culture of many peoples of the USSR, oppressed by the colonial policy of tsarist Russia, of enormous oral and poetic wealth, primarily the heroic epic, provides abundant and fresh material for theoretical constructions in the field of folklore.
Guided by the Marxist-Leninist teaching of dialectical materialism and using the achievements of the paleontological analysis of the new doctrine of language, Soviet folklorists are making, though still timid, attempts to recreate the common history of F. and F. of individual nationalities. These attempts still encounter many obstacles, primarily in the insufficient development of specific issues and monuments of folklore, in the absence of an exhaustive bibliography of F., insufficient coordination of the work of folklorists throughout the Union, and the comparatively small number of special scientific personnel.
Gorky's well-known speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 played a huge role in raising public interest in folklore. Gorky demonstrated the tremendous importance of folklore for understanding the history of peoples, the history of their literatures, and for the development of Soviet literature.
Moscow and Leningrad were the main centers of scientific collecting and research work on F.. In Moscow, folklore work from 1923 to 1930 was concentrated in the Folklore Section of the State. acad. thin Sciences, transformed in 1930 into the State. acad. art history, as well as from 1926 to 1930 in the Folklore subsection of the Institute of Literature and Language RANION. The main workers of these organizations carried out many expeditions to collect various types of F. both in villages and in factories and factories (in particular, the broad staging of the study of proletarian F. is the merit of Soviet folklorists, since bourgeois folkloristics almost completely ignored this topic ).
In recent years, Moscow folklorists have united in the work of the Folklore Section of the SSP. From the beginning of 1938, a special department of Russian folklore was organized at MIFLI. Since 1930, the Folklore Section of the Academy of Sciences has been the unifying folklore center in Leningrad. In previous years folk work was conducted in the section of peasant art of the Eastern Institute of Art History and in the Fairytale Commission of the Geographical Society. Of the regional folklore centers, Saratov, Irkutsk, Voronezh, Smolensk should be noted. In the national regions and republics, work on folklore was widely developed in local scientific institutions: in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Tashkent, Ashgabat, etc. However, in a number of national republics and regions, folklore studies have been used more than once by local nationalist elements for their purposes hostile to the socialist system. Despite individual manifestations of local nationalism, and sometimes great-power chauvinism in folklore, the flowering of genuine Soviet folklore speaks for itself. One of the brightest and clearest evidence of this is the volume “The Creativity of the Peoples of the USSR” (XX years of the Great October Socialist Revolution in the USSR 1917-1937) (M., 1937, ed. Pravda). This book, compiled from the best examples of the folklore of various peoples, is evidence of the high cultural, political and artistic growth of the working people of the Soviet Union and an indicator of the enormous role that oral poetic creativity - folklore - plays in the life of the working masses of the people.
The height to which folk poetic creativity in the USSR rose is shown by the creative activity of such folk poets as the Lezghin ashug-order-bearer Suleiman Stalsky and the Kazakh akyn-order-bearer Dzhambul, whose names and songs are known throughout the Union and are surrounded by a halo of great glory. Bibliography:
Buslaev F. I., Historical essays on Russian folk literature and art, vol. I-II, St. Petersburg, 1861; His, Folk Poetry. Historical essays, Petersburg, 1887; Veselovsky A.N., Collected Works, Series 1, vol. I and vol. II, no. I, Petersburg, 1913; Miller V. F., Essays on Russian folk literature, 3 vols., M., 1897, 1910, 1924; Pypin A.N., History of Russian Ethnography, vols. I-IV, St. Petersburg, 1890-1892; Speransky M.N., Russian oral literature, M., 1917; Loboda A. M., Russian heroic epic, Kyiv, 1896; Savchenko S. V., Russian folk tale (History of collecting and studying), Kyiv, 1914; Kagarov E.G., What is folklore. "Artistic folklore", M., 1929, book. 4-5; Sokolov Yu. M., Immediate tasks of studying Russian folklore, ibid., 1926, book. 1; His own, Folkloristics and literary criticism, in the book: In memory of P. N. Sakulin. Collection of articles, M., 1931; Him, The Nature of Folklore and Problems of Folkloristics, "Literary Critic", 1934, No. 12; Zhirmunsky V. M., The problem of folklore, in Sat. "WITH. F. Oldenburg. To the fiftieth anniversary of scientific and social activity (1882-1932)”, ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, L., 1934; Azadovsky M.K., Preface to Sat. "Soviet folklore", vol. 1, ed. Acad. Sciences of the USSR, L., 1934; Gorky M., Soviet literature (Report at the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers), M., 1934; Him, On Literature, 3rd ed.; M., 1937; Piksanov N. K., Gorky and folklore, L., 1935; Against the falsification of the people's past (About the play "Bogatyrs" by Demyan Bedny), ed. "Art", Moscow - Leningrad, 1937; Sokolov Yu. M., Russian epic epic (The problem of social genesis), "Literary critic", 1937, No. 9; Van Gennepp A., Le folklore, P., 1924; Kaindl R. F., Die Volkskunde, ihre Bedeutung, ihre Ziele und ihre Methode, Wien, 1903; Corso R., Volklore. Story. Obbietto. Metodo. Bibliography, Roma, 1923.
Literary encyclopedia. - In 11 tons; M.: publishing house of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Friche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
Folklore
(English folk-lore - folk wisdom), a term introduced in 1846 by the English scientist W. J. Toms to refer to folk culture. In modern folklore, this word is understood in two ways - more broadly and more narrowly. In a narrow sense, folklore is called oral verbal and musical folk art, in a broader sense, the whole set of cultural phenomena generated by the creativity of a team or individuals within the framework of collective consciousness. In the latter sense, folklore includes not only verbal genres, but also language, beliefs, rituals, crafts. The most important feature of folklore, in contrast to literature and modern book culture in general, is its traditionalism and orientation towards the oral method of transmitting information and, as a result, variability, the absence of a stable form, the only correct option. Folklore is a phenomenon of collective consciousness, its existence is impossible outside of society, the performer needs a listener who simultaneously acts as a co-creator, helping the performer, and as a "censor". Folklore is focused not on the creation of something new, like modern book culture, but on the repeated reproduction of what already exists, therefore, cultural facts external to folklore (author's poems that become folk songs) rarely penetrate folklore.
Folklore is characterized by formulaicity - the use of a large number of stable turns, clichés, "common places", repeating both within one and in different genres. The basis of folklore creativity is improvisation within the framework of tradition. The performer of a folklore text does not keep it in memory and does not pronounce it by heart, but every time at the moment of performance he creates it anew, constructing it like a mosaic from separate fragments. Therefore, from one performer it is almost impossible to record the same text word for word several times even with a small time interval.
Folklore is based on the most ancient human ideas about the world around and even in modern society contains traces of archaic beliefs, rituals, mythological plots. Most of them are not felt by the folklore carriers as such, but are only reconstructed, however, since the end of the 18th century. folklore attracted the attention of researchers as a "living antiquity". The role of folklore in the life of its bearers is much broader than the role of literature, music, and other forms of art in the life of modern urban man. Folklore is a universal system that provided all the cultural and everyday needs of a person. Only a small number of folklore genres are entertaining, while the rest are correlated with history, medicine, agronomy, meteorology and many other areas of modern knowledge. In modern life, some of the phenomena of folklore have been supplanted and disappeared, but others continue to exist and develop to this day.
Along with the folklore of the people as a whole, there is the folklore of separate closed groups, united by common interests, age, professional, gender and other characteristics: school, army, tourist, etc. Such folklore provides cultural needs and performs a unifying and isolating function. Knowledge of texts relating to the folklore of a particular group also serves as a way of identification, separating one's own from another's. Encyclopedia of cultural studies
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Introduction
1. History of folklore
2. The essence and concept of the term "folklore"
3. Specific features folklore
4. The relevance of the study of folklore
Bibliography
Introduction
Folklore is folk wisdom. Folklore is the study of folklore. Folklore combines different types of arts (music, pagan and Christian rites and traditions). The core of folklore is the word. Folklore is a phenomenon, not an art, it combines the arts. And above all, it is a synthetic phenomenon. At the time of the formation of folklore, syncretism should be attributed (mutually; penetration; fusion; connectedness.) One of the most important qualities of folklore is the oral nature of its existence. The genre of folklore dies when its creativity ceases to be passed from mouth to mouth. In folklore, variability is widely developed (everyone who hears information conveys it in his own way.). Tradition in folklore is the rules, the framework that must be observed. Contamination is the merging of several stories into one. Folklore reflects the people's position, upbringing, morality, worldview.
1. History of folklore
The spoken word, ancient stories passing from generation to generation, from mouth to mouth, were the beginning from which, through the millennia, folk tales about the Gods, fairy tales and anecdotes grew, and then history, science, and literature.
This oral word, the rhythms of tunes, the peoples carried from the primeval forest through the centuries and settled on the earth, and, creating this or that culture in every corner, put the word and rhythm at the basis of their oral and musical creativity.
"The Russian people have created a huge oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics - spoken in a singsong voice, to the sound of strings - about the glorious deeds of heroes, defenders of the land of the people - heroic, magical, everyday and ridiculous tales.
It is vain to think that this literature was only the fruit of popular leisure. She was the dignity and mind of the people. She made and strengthened him moral character, was his historical memory, the festive clothes of his soul and filled with deep content his entire measured life, flowing according to customs and rituals associated with his work, nature and veneration of fathers and grandfathers. "Russian Folklore" / Edited by V.P. Anikina, - M.: Art Lit., 1985. - p. 3.
The term "folklore" was introduced into science by the English scientist William Thoms in 1846. The term is accepted in international science and in translation means - the wisdom of the people. It is difficult to give a short definition of such a concept. Folklore is the life of the people, its history, its gradual development. Folklore is not invented from above, it is created by the people in the process of life and for the good.
2. Essence and conceptterm" folklore"
Folklore is folk art, most often it is oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, outlook, ideals, principles. Folklore includes works that convey the main important ideas of the people about the main values of life: work, family, love, public duty, homeland. Our children are brought up on these works even now. Knowledge of folklore can give a person knowledge about the Russian people, and ultimately about himself.
Folklore - artistic folk art, artistic creative activity of the working people; poetry, music, theater, dance, architecture, fine and decorative arts created by the people and existing among the masses. In collective artistic creativity, the people reflect their labor activity, social and everyday way of life, knowledge of life and nature, cults and beliefs. folklore ethnography rite
The folklore that has developed in the course of social labor practice embodies the views, ideals and aspirations of the people, their poetic fantasy, the richest world of thoughts, feelings, experiences, protest against exploitation and oppression, dreams of justice and happiness.
Folklore is national, and this is its merit. Every nation has traditions, customs, symbols of worship. The nation cherishes its cultural acquisitions and passes from mouth to mouth as the most valuable. "Each national culture has its own spiritual acquisitions and discoveries, its own dramas and tragedies, its own vision of the world ... The future of every nation is connected with the national culture, which is the guarantor of life for it. This idea has its own immanent logic: it is she who lays the spiritual and intellectual potential of the nation, strengthens the spiritual health of the people, creates its moral ideal. Arnoldov L.I. National cultures: a modern vision. M: MGIK, 1992. S. 5.
Folklore is a historical category. Heroes who became famous for victories in wars and unprecedented discoveries live in the works of folk art. In songs and epics, events of ancient years appear, proverbs and sayings born at the place of work, and not just words. Each generation accepts its cultural gifts and continues them. I.V. Malygina believes that cultural heritage is a very important, very significant part of each national culture, but not always fully realized and understood if it is considered only from the point of view of modernity. Therefore, in order to comprehend the original image of the world of a particular people, it is necessary to expand the time frame for the study of culture. The author refers national culture to the category of historical sciences.
Folk art is a natural process. The people and works of art are integral parts.
Folklore is a long chain of its works. Passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, the works changed, acquired new forms of existence, but the people kept them and brought them to this day. The works of folk art have neither authorship nor any affiliation, they are an invaluable asset of every nation. Folklore works are not the creations of individuals, but the result of individual and mass creativity, dialectically interconnected. They are a reflection of reality in the minds of the masses, the result of the processing of this reality in folk fantasy, and therefore allow us to look for an expression of folk ideals, aspirations, moods, feelings in folklore.
Many writers, philosophers, and thinkers were engaged in unraveling the mystery of the authorship of works of folklore. The intriguing process of the eternal life of some works made us think about its beginning.
Science is full of different opinions about the beginning of folk art. Many scientists are trying to understand the phenomenon of the existence of folk traditional culture. The problem of national heredity, expressed in the system of genres and in the implementation of the diachronological transfer of the wealth of national folklore from generation to generation, worries many ethnographers from the point of view of the historical and genetic tree of the nation.
Folklore
The science of folklore - folkloristics - is a completely independent, lively and interesting science, closely related to another science close to it - ethnography. Ethnography deals with the description and study of the life of various peoples, their economy, crafts, artistic crafts, household tools and household items, clothing and weapons, beliefs, rituals and games. Every nation develops its way of life in its own way, and its historical life develops unequally in different material and social conditions. And folklore, reflecting the life of the people in various manifestations, each nation has its own characteristics. "The true history of the working people cannot be known without knowing the oral folk art" "The Book of Russian Folklore" / N. Kolpakova; - L .: A manual for high school students, 1948. - p. eleven.
Folkloristics studies a complex of verbal, verbal-musical, musical-choreographic, game and dramatic types of folk art. Its basic object is Russian folklore, the folklore of the peoples of Russia and foreign countries.
o theory, history, textology of folklore;
o its classification and systematization;
o issues of its collection and archiving;
o studying the interaction of folklore and professional arts;
o methodology of folklore research;
o history of collecting and studying folklore.
For folkloristics, the development of already established industries and the creation of new ones are relevant. Philological folklore studies the traditional spiritual culture of the people in its linguistic expression.
About folklore in the words of great people.
"Folklore (English folk-lor) - folk wisdom, folk knowledge, works of folk poetic and musical creativity. Folklore - the science of folk poetic creativity (folklore)." Accurately, briefly, laconically B.A. Vvedensky Famous Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of radiophysics. defines the broad concept of folklore.
A.S. Kargin Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Cultural Studies of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian Academy of Sciences gives the following definition: "Folklore is the most important element that makes up the history of culture, its protagonist, reflecting, on the one hand, the largest events in the life of the people and the state, on the other hand, certain cycles human life, seasons, employment. At the same time, folklore is an independent form of spiritual practice that develops according to its own laws and has its own capabilities and means of influencing the history of a person, his thoughts and actions. Kargin L.S. Folk art culture: Course of lectures. M., 1997. P. 182 .
L.L. Kupriyanova Academician and Scientific Secretary of the Republican Academy of Additional Education, characterizing the phenomenon of "folklore", calls it "the repository of the wisdom and vitality of the people."
L.V. Shamina Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation, Professor of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, calls folklore a collection of genres of folk art, united by functionality, features of poetics, origin and historical destiny.
M.S. Kolesov, who believes that "folklore is a special sphere of non-professional spiritual culture of society, which: in content expresses the worldview and psychology of the masses; in form it is art; has its social carrier the people as a community of direct producers of material goods; performs both aesthetic and and practical functions.
3. Specific features of folklore
According to D.S. Likhachev, the attitude to the past forms its own national image. Each person is a bearer of the past and a bearer of a national character, he is a part of society and a part of its history. Not preserving the memory of the past in himself, he destroys part of his personality, and tearing himself away from national, family and personal roots, he dooms himself to premature decay.
Any nation has its own characteristics of development and life. But these features are also influenced by some factors - geographical location, climatic conditions, historical background. Each nation finds its own forms of self-expression with a certain idea and meaning.
The specific properties of the culture of the people affect not only the entire history of the country, but also on each individual. A person cannot live apart from his roots, he grows and absorbs the culture of his ancestors. Therefore, it is often and quickly possible to determine what nationality a person is, and to judge his genetic characteristics. "Every historical culture imposes on the individual certain permanent features and, knowing its general character, we can guess under it individual living faces, even if we did not see them at all, just as vice versa, seeing such faces, we can understand the general meaning of culture, which for some reason became unclear or forgotten. "Rozanov V.V. Religion and culture. M: Pravda, 1990. P. 82.
Culture is the basis for the development of an individual and society as a whole. The culture of an individual people is specific, that is why all nations are so different, but the meaning, the idea of a highly moral, artistic vision of the world connects everyone. Culture, despite constant intellectual change, is fundamental basis social development, one of the productive means of formation and development of man.
Cultures are specific, but the constant interaction of the peoples of different countries brings creativity closer. The culture of one nation cannot live separately, just as a person cannot exist outside of this process. A complex act of merging and coexistence of cultures of different peoples is necessary for each of them. Thanks to this difficult action, the culture of an individual people is enriched. The boundaries and possibilities of each other's knowledge are expanding. In the process appear common features and differences are accepted.
It is characteristic of all types of folklore that the creators of a work are at the same time its performers, and the performance, in turn, can be the creation of variants that enrich the tradition; also important is the closest contact between performers and people who perceive art, who themselves can act as participants in the creative process.
The main features of folklore also include the long-standing indivisibility, the highly artistic unity of its types: poetry, music, dance, theater, and decorative arts merged in folk ritual actions; in the folk dwelling, architecture, carving, painting, ceramics, embroidery created an inseparable whole; folk poetry is closely connected with music and its rhythm, musicality, and the nature of the performance of most works, while musical genres usually associated with poetry, labor movements, dances. The works and skills of folklore are directly passed down from generation to generation.
Functions of folklore
Folklore contributes to the deepening of knowledge about the folk spiritual culture in its past and present. Folklore introduces the life, traditions, customs of one's own and "neighboring people".
With the help of folklore, the assimilation of moral and behavioral cultural norms and values enshrined in the culture of any people is carried out. Moral and behavioral norms and values are expressed in a system of images. Revealing the characters of fairy-tale characters, delving into the essence of their actions, the student understands what is good and what is bad, thereby easily determines his likes and dislikes, comprehends folk ideas about human beauty. Wise folk proverbs and sayings inform about behavioral norms.
With the help of folklore, it is possible to cultivate a respectful attitude towards the culture of one's own ethnic group, as well as a tolerant attitude towards other ethnic cultures. Studying folklore, the child realizes that the people are the creator, the creator of the cultural heritage that needs to be admired and proud of. Folklore - centuries old folk labor, which stores the history of the ethnic group.
Folklore contributes to the development of aesthetic taste. The child feels the beauty of folk thought, he has a need to communicate with the people. He seeks to understand what means the people use in their work, and tries to apply them in the future.
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.
The aesthetic 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 form, it was formed relatively late. However, it was formed late even in the sphere of professional culture. Thus, in the history of Russian literary prose, what could be called fiction, for which the aesthetic function became dominant, arose only in the 17th century.
Folklore classification.
Various attempts to classify folklore were made already at the end of the last century, and they were directly related to discussions about the scope of the concept of "folklore". At the same time, they reflect different methodological principles of different directions in science. Without claiming to be complete general classifications, I will dwell on some of them that are of fundamental interest (special classifications certain types folklore will be indicated below, in the course of presentation).
Naturally, those numerous folklorists who consider folklore as a combination of various types of folk culture solve the problem of classification as a grouping of these types. Thus, J. L. Gomm combined all the products of the folk tradition into two main groups: one was myths, fairy tales, legends, the other - customs, ceremonies, actions and beliefs (or, in other terminology, customs, rituals, actions) .1 A more developed classification was proposed by Sh.S. Ben. She combined all types of folklore into three main groups with the following subdivisions.
I. Beliefs and actions relating to: earth and sky; plant worldp; the world of animals; human existence; things made by man; soul and the other world; superhuman existence (gods, deities, etc.); omens and predictions; the art of magic; disease and healing.
II. Customs: social and political institutions; rituals of individual life; occupations and production; calendar holidays; games, dancing, sports and entertainment.
III. Prose, singing and sayings: stories perceived as true (as true), i.e. myths, legends, heroic tales, etc.; stories for entertainment (fairy tales in all their varieties); songs and ballads; Proverbs and sayings; proverbs and nursery rhymes; local sayings.
Sentive divided folklore into three major sections of the life of the "folk classes": A) "material life", B) "intellectual life" and C) "social life". In the first group, he included all types of folk material culture and various forms of productive activity of the masses. In the second group - folk language, folk knowledge, folk philosophy, magical rites, religious beliefs and prejudices of the masses, folk aesthetics with the following divisions: 1) folk art - graphics, decorations of household utensils, clothes, dwellings; folk imagery; the art of sound - singing and instrumental music; 2) folk literature - riddles, dances, songs and ballads; fairy tales, fables and folk theater; folk books; rhythmic language and singing. The third group includes family relations, various associations, unions and societies that unite "ordinary people" - up to amateur sports, hunting, singing, etc. societies, as well as various workers' organizations, trade unions, etc.
American folklorist R.S. Boggs, who includes only verbal creativity in the field of folklore, in the 40s proposed to confine himself to dividing folklore into three large groups: A) literary folklore, B) linguistic folklore, and C) scientific folklore (the system of ideas and beliefs of the masses, their prejudices, etc. . P.). Another American folklorist - A. Taylor, who understands folklore more broadly, distinguishes the following areas - "folklore of physical objects", or various types of folk material culture, "folklore of gestures and games", "folklore of ideas" and, finally, "oral folklore" , or "folklore words".
genres of folklore.
All folklore genres are usually grouped, as in literature, into three groups or three types: dramatic, prose and song. Any folklore originates in small genres, which include riddles, proverbs and sayings.
A proverb is understood as a well-aimed figurative saying of an instructive nature, typifying the most diverse phenomena of life and having the form of a complete sentence.
Proverbs satisfied many of the spiritual needs of the working people: cognitive-intellectual (educational), production, aesthetic, moral, etc. Proverbs are not antiquity, not the past, but the living voice of the people: the people retain in their memory only what they need today and will need tomorrow . When a proverb talks about the past, it is evaluated from the point of view of the present and the future - it is condemned or approved, depending on the extent to which the past reflected in the aphorism corresponds to the people's ideals, expectations and aspirations. The proverb is created by all the people, therefore it expresses the collective opinion of the people. It contains the people's assessment of life, the observations of the people's mind. A successful aphorism, created by an individual mind, does not become a popular proverb if it does not express the opinion of the majority. Folk proverbs have a form favorable for memorization, which enhances their significance as ethnopedagogical means. Proverbs are firmly embedded in memory. Their memorization is facilitated by a play on words, various consonances, rhymes, rhythm, sometimes very skillful. The ultimate goal of proverbs has always been education, since ancient times they have acted as pedagogical means. On the one hand, they contain a pedagogical idea, on the other hand, they have an educational impact, carry out educational functions: they tell about the means, methods educational influence, corresponding to the ideas of the people, give characterological assessments of the personality - positive and negative, which, defining one way or another the goals of personality formation, contain a call for education, self-education and re-education, condemn adults who neglect their sacred duties - pedagogical, etc.
There is a lot of practical material in the proverbs: worldly advice, wishes in work, greetings, etc.
The most common form of proverbs is admonition. From a pedagogical point of view, teachings of three categories are interesting: teachings that instruct children and youth in good morals, including the rules of good manners; teachings calling adults to decent behavior, and, finally, instructions of a special kind, containing pedagogical advice, ascertaining the results of education, which is a kind of generalization of pedagogical experience. They contain a huge educational and upbringing material on the issues of upbringing. According to proverbs, positive and negative personality traits are presented as the goals of upbringing and re-education, suggesting an all-round improvement in the behavior and character of people. At the same time, it is noteworthy that all peoples recognize the infinity of human perfections. Any person, no matter how perfect he is, can climb one more step of perfection. This step leads not only man, but also mankind to progress. Many proverbs are motivated and reasoned calls for self-improvement.
In the "Literary Encyclopedia" a riddle is characterized as "an intricate poetic description of an object or phenomenon that tests the ingenuity of the guesser." The definitions of the riddle are based on the same signs:
The description is often framed in the form of an interrogative sentence;
The description is concise and the rhythm is inherent in the riddle.
So the riddle is short description an object or phenomenon, often in poetic form, containing an intricate task in the form of an explicit (direct) or alleged (hidden) question.
Riddles are designed to develop the thinking of children, to teach them to analyze objects and phenomena from various areas of the surrounding reality; moreover, the presence of a large number of riddles about the same phenomenon made it possible to give a comprehensive description of the object (phenomenon). But the significance of riddles in mental education is far from being exhausted by the development of thinking; they also enrich the mind with information about nature and knowledge from the most diverse areas of human life. The use of riddles in mental education is valuable in that the totality of information about nature and human society is acquired by the child in the process of active mental activity.
Riddles contribute to the development of the child's memory, his imaginative thinking, the speed of mental reactions.
The riddle teaches the child to compare the features of various objects, to find common things in them, and thereby forms in him the ability to classify objects, to discard their insignificant features. In other words, with the help of a riddle, the foundations of theoretical creative thinking are formed.
The riddle develops the observation of the child. The more observant the child, the better and faster he guesses riddles. A special place in the process of raising children is occupied by the diagnostic function of the riddle: it allows the teacher, without any special tests and questionnaires, to identify the degree of observation, ingenuity, mental development, as well as the level of creative thinking of the child.
A proverb - from the simplest poetic works, such as a fable or a proverb, can stand out and independently turn into living speech, the elements in which thicken their content; this is not an abstract formula of the idea of the work, but a figurative allusion to it, taken from the work itself and serving as its deputy (for example, "a pig under an oak", or "a dog in the manger", or "he takes out dirty linen from the hut")
A saying, unlike a proverb, does not contain a generalizing instructive meaning.
Proverbs and sayings are comparative or allegorical statements and contain the worldly wisdom of the people. From these two sprouts, metaphors (in riddles) and figurative comparisons (in sayings), folk poetry grows.
Song genres of folklore are represented by epic songs and ballads, ritual and lyrical songs, ditties, labor songs and improvisations. Lamentations also join the song genre.
The songs reflect the age-old expectations, aspirations and innermost dreams of the people. The songs are unique in their musical and poetic design of the idea - ethical, aesthetic, pedagogical. Beauty and goodness in the song act in unity. Good fellows, sung by the people, are not only kind, but also beautiful. Folk songs have absorbed the highest national values, focused only on good, on the happiness of man.
Songs are a more complex form of folk poetry than riddles and proverbs. The main purpose of the songs is to instill a love for the beautiful, to develop aesthetic views and tastes. The song is characterized by high poeticization of all aspects of folk life, including the upbringing of the younger generation. The pedagogical value of the song is that beautiful singing was taught, and it, in turn, taught beauty and kindness. The song accompanied all the events of folk life - work, holidays, games, funerals, etc. The whole life of people passed in a song that the best way expressed the ethical and aesthetic essence of the individual. Full song cycle is the life of a person from birth to death. Songs are sung to the baby in the cradle, who has not yet learned to understand, to the old man in the coffin, who has already ceased to feel and understand. Scientists have proven the beneficial role of gentle songs in the mental development of a child in the womb. Lullabies not only lull the baby to sleep, but also caress him, soothe, and bring joy. Some categories of songs are designed for specific age groups, although, of course, most songs cannot be sharply demarcated and distributed by age. Small children sing other songs of adults with special enthusiasm. Therefore, we can only talk about the predominant performance of certain songs at a particular age.
Noteworthy means of educational influence are pestles and nursery rhymes. In them, the growing child completely occupies the attention of an adult. Pestushki got their name from the word to nurture - to nurse, carry in their arms. These are short poetic refrains that accompany the movements of the child during nurturing.
Pestlets make sense only when accompanied by their tactile reception - a light bodily touch. Gentle massage, accompanied by a cheerful unpretentious song with a distinct pronunciation of poetic lines, causes a cheerful, cheerful mood in a child. In pestles, all the main points are taken into account physical development child. When he begins to stand on his feet, he is told one thing; a child taking the first steps is taught to stand firmly on its legs and at the same time other pests speak.
The pestles gradually turn into nursery rhymes that accompany the child's games with fingers, arms, legs. In these games, there is often also a pedagogical one - instruction in diligence, kindness, friendliness.
The song is a complex form of folk poetry. The main purpose of the songs is aesthetic education. But they are aimed at the implementation of other aspects of personality formation, i.e. are a complex means of influencing the personality.
The songs reveal the external and internal beauty of a person, the meaning of beauty in life; they are one of the best means of developing aesthetic tastes in the younger generation. Beautiful melodies enhance the aesthetic impact of the poetic words of the songs. The influence of folk songs on peasant youth has always been enormous, and their significance has never been limited to the beauty of verse and melody (external beauty, beauty of form). The beauty of thoughts, the beauty of content are also related to strengths folk songs.
And the words of the songs themselves, and the conditions, and the nature of their performance contribute to the strengthening of health, the development of diligence. The songs glorify health, it is called happiness, the highest good. The people have always believed that songs develop the voice, expand and strengthen the lungs: "To sing loudly, you must have strong lungs", "A sonorous song expands the chest."
The importance of the song in the labor education of children and youth is invaluable. As mentioned above, the songs accompanied and stimulated the labor process, they contributed to the coordination and unification of the labor efforts of the workers.
Fairy tales are an important educational tool, worked out and tested by the people over the centuries. Life, folk practice of education convincingly proved the pedagogical value of fairy tales. Children and a fairy tale are inseparable, they are created for each other, and therefore acquaintance with the fairy tales of one's own people must necessarily be included in the course of education and upbringing of each child.
The most characteristic features of fairy tales are nationality, optimism, the fascination of the plot, imagery and fun, and, finally, didacticism.
The material for folk tales was the life of the people: their struggle for happiness, beliefs, customs, and the surrounding nature. In the beliefs of the people there was a lot of superstitious and dark. This is dark and reactionary - a consequence of the difficult historical past of the working people. In most fairy tales, best features people: diligence, talent, loyalty in battle and work, boundless devotion to the people and homeland. The embodiment of the positive traits of the people in fairy tales made fairy tales an effective means of transmitting these traits from generation to generation. Precisely because fairy tales reflect the life of the people, their best traits, and cultivate these traits in the younger generation, nationality turns out to be one of the most important characteristics of fairy tales.
Many folk tales inspire confidence in the triumph of truth, in the victory of good over evil. As a rule, in all tales of suffering goodie and his friends are transient, temporary, joy usually comes after them, and this joy is the result of a struggle, the result of joint efforts. The optimism of fairy tales is especially liked by children and enhances the educational value of folk pedagogical means.
The fascination of the plot, imagery and amusingness make fairy tales a very effective pedagogical tool.
Imagery- an important feature of fairy tales, which facilitates their perception by children who are not yet capable of abstract thinking. In the hero, those main character traits that bring him closer to the national character of the people are usually very convex and vividly shown: courage, diligence, wit, etc. These features are revealed both in events and through various artistic means, such as hyperbolization. Thus, as a result of hyperbolization, the feature of industriousness reaches the maximum brightness and convexity of the image (in one night to build a palace, a bridge from the hero’s house to the king’s palace, in one night to sow flax, grow, process, spin, weave, sew and clothe the people, sow wheat , grow, harvest, thresh, grind, bake and feed people, etc.). The same should be said about features such as physical strength, courage, courage, etc.
Imagery is complemented funnyness fairy tales. The wise educator-people took special care to make fairy tales interesting and entertaining. In a folk tale, there are not only bright and lively images, but also subtle and cheerful humor. All peoples have fairy tales, the special purpose of which is to amuse the listener.
Didacticism is one of the most important features of fairy tales. Fairy tales of all peoples of the world are always instructive and instructive. It was precisely noting their instructive nature, their didacticism, that A.S. Pushkin at the end of his "Tale of the Golden Cockerel":
The tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it!
Good fellows lesson.
Due to the features noted above, fairy tales of all peoples are an effective means of education. Fairy tales are a treasure trove of pedagogical ideas, brilliant examples of folk pedagogical genius.
The folk theater, which exists in forms organically connected with oral folk art, originated in ancient times: the games that accompanied the hunting and agricultural holidays contained elements of reincarnation. Theatricalization of the action was present in calendar and family ceremonies (Christmas costumes, weddings, etc.).
In the folk theater, a theater of live actors and a puppet theater are distinguished. The Russian theater of Petrushka was close to the Ukrainian nativity scene, the Belarusian batleika.
The most characteristic feature of the folk theater (as well as folklore art in general) is the open conventionality of costumes and props, movements and gestures; during the performances, the actors communicated directly with the audience, which could give cues, intervene in the action, direct it, and sometimes take part in it (sing along with the choir of performers, portray minor characters in crowd scenes).
The folk theater, as a rule, had neither a stage nor scenery. The main interest in it is focused not on the depth of disclosure of the characters of the characters, but on the tragic or comical nature of situations and situations.
The folk theater acquaints young spectators with verbal folklore, develops memory, figurative thinking. Comic characters ridicule the vices of people, dramatic ones teach empathy. By participating in their simple productions, the child learns to speak correctly and beautifully, to make a speech in front of the public, to overcome shyness.
Folk dance is one of the oldest types of folk art. The dance was part folk performances at festivals and fairs. The appearance of round dances and other ritual dances is associated with folk rituals. Gradually moving away from ritual actions, round dances were filled with new content, expressing new features of life.
The peoples engaged in hunting, animal husbandry, reflected in the dance their observations of the animal world. The nature and habits of animals, birds, domestic animals were conveyed figuratively and expressively: the Yakut bear dance, the Russian crane, the gander, etc. grape). IN folk dance military spirit, valor, heroism are often reflected, battle scenes are reproduced (Georgian horumi, berikaoba, Cossack dances, etc.). The theme of love occupies a large place in folk dance art: dances expressing the nobility of feelings, respectful attitude towards a woman (Georgian kartuli, Russian Baino quadrille).
Dance allows you to develop plasticity, special coordination of movements, methods of correlation of movement with music. Children learn to move rhythmically, to communicate with each other in motion (round dance, stream).
In folk arts and crafts, the non-voluminous, eternally living soul of the people, their rich practical experience and aesthetic taste are immortalized. Artistic woodworking, pottery, weaving, painting, weaving and embroidery were the most developed in Belarus.
In some features of folk art, the norms of work and life, culture and beliefs can be traced. The most common element is the ornament born in antiquity, which helps to achieve the organic unity of the composition and is deeply interconnected with the technique of execution, the sense of the object, the plastic form, the natural beauty of the material. Folk craftsmen have been highly valued since ancient times. The secrets of their craft were passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, combining the wisdom and experience of the past and the discovery of the present. Children with early age joined the work, helping parents. Joint work helps children to better master the craft, learn from the experience of a mentor (parents), instills diligence.
4. The relevance of the study of folklore
Attention to folklore, ancient layers of culture, tradition in general, as an inexhaustible source of education and development of a person, has been especially active in the socio-pedagogical environment in recent years. This is due to the functional features of the genres of folklore, with the deep spirituality and wisdom of folk art, with the continuity of the process of transferring national culture from generation to generation.
At the beginning of the new century, there is an increased interest in national culture, ethnic processes, traditional art, and folklore. Scientists note a special growth of the historical and national self-consciousness of each nation, explaining this by socio-psychological, political reasons.
Preservation and development of national culture, its roots is the most important task, which requires careful attitude to historical and cultural monuments, to traditional folk art. The revival of folklore, folk customs, rituals and holidays, traditional arts and crafts and fine arts is an urgent problem of our time. Folklore, its genres, means, methods most fully fill the whole picture of people's life, give a vivid picture of the life of the people, their morality, spirituality. Folklore reveals the soul of the people, its dignity and features. From the point of view of science, folklore is a phenomenon that deserves special study and careful evaluation.
Bibliography
1. Adonieva S.B. Pragmatics of modern folklore. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg. state un-t, 2000.
2. Gusev V.E. Folklore: (The history of the term and its modern meanings) / / SE. - 1966. - N 2.
3. Kagarov E.G. What is folklore // Artistic folklore. T. 4/5. - M., 1929.
4. Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture. - SPb., 1994.
5. Rusin M.Yu. Folklore: Traditions and Modernity. - Kyiv, 1991.
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The concept and essence, the content of the phenomenon of folklore, its educational value and main functions. Characteristics of the main genres of folklore, the educational potential of each. Peculiarities practical application main folklore genres in education.
term paper, added 03/12/2011
Ethnography is a social science. The origin of Russian ethnography. Development and formation of Russian ethnography. Russian ethnography at present. The main direction of ethnography in the post-reform era was the study of social and family life.
abstract, added 08/25/2010
Collectors and researchers of folklore have long paid attention to the "coherence" of Russian proverbs. A special study of the poetic form of proverbs and genres close to them is devoted to the study of I. I. Voznesensky.
abstract, added 06/05/2005
Characteristics of the phenomenon of folk art crafts, their place in the ethnocultural practices of Tyva. Analysis of the specifics of their occurrence, existence and development conditions. Original features of traditional handicrafts. Creativity of Tuvan masters.
thesis, added 06/24/2015
Historical conditions for the formation of folk art crafts of the Russian population of the South Urals. Stone cutting, casting, pottery and clay toys. Woodcarving, wooden utensils, spindly products. Zlatoust engraving on steel.
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 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 artistic nature 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, always expressed the views and interests of mainly working people, in it in the most various forms Man's desire to make his work easier, to make it joyful and free was manifested.
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. Separation of verbal creativity into an independent art form - major step in the prehistory of folklore, in its independent state, although connected with mythological consciousness. 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 heavy female lobe, about public 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- game (drawing lots, counting rhymes, various game songs) and non-game (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. So, a fairy tale is a utopia, a dream of justice, which 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, at the same time are created on the basis of common for a certain level artistic thinking and traditional laws. 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 general laws folk song art.
Literature appeared later than folklore, and always, albeit in different ways, used his experience. In the same time literary works have long penetrated into 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.
