Late-traditional folklore is a collection of works of different genres and different directions, created in a peasant, urban, soldier, working and other environment since the beginning of the development of industry, the growth of cities, the collapse of the feudal village.
Late traditional folklore is characterized by a smaller number of works and, in general, a lower artistic level compared to classical folklore - a rich, developed, centuries-old culture generated by feudal life and a patriarchal worldview.
Late traditional folklore is distinguished by a complex interweaving of the new with the old. In the village repertoire, the transformation of classical genres took place, which began to be influenced by literary poetics. Proverbs and sayings showed their vitality, anecdotal tales, folk songs literary origin, children's folklore. The old lingering song was strongly pressed by the city " cruel romances", as well as a rapidly and widely spread ditty. At the same time, epics, old historical songs, old ballads and spiritual poems, fairy tales. folk rites and the poetry that accompanied them eventually lost their utilitarian and magical significance, especially in urban conditions.
FROM late XVIII in. in Russia, the first state factories and serf manufactories appeared, in which civilian workers from impoverished peasants, convicts, passportless vagrants, etc. worked. In this motley environment, works arose that laid the foundation for a new phenomenon - the folklore of workers. With the development of capitalism and the growth of the proletariat, the topics expanded, the number of works of oral creativity of workers increased, which was characterized by the influence of book poetry.
Urban folklore has become a new phenomenon - oral works the "grassroots" population of cities (it grew along with the growth of the cities themselves, constantly flowing from the impoverished countryside). Cultural contacts between the city and the countryside had in Russia centuries of history- it is enough to recall the role of Kyiv, Novgorod and other cities in the plots of Russian epics. However, only in the second half of the XIX century. formed cultural traditions actually urban, detached from the land of the population. Along with the old forms and genres, such as the folklore of the market place, the folklore of the fairs, the cries of pedlars (small merchants), the city developed its own song culture (romances), its own non-fabulous prose, and its own rituals; the long tradition of handwritten collections (song books, albums with poems) received a new development. All this in one form or another continues to live in our time.
As A. S. Kargin noted, urban folklore began to be seriously studied only in the 1980s. The researcher wrote: “Many folklorists only in the last quarter of the 20th century intuitively felt and then admitted that a new layer of culture declared itself loudly, which did not fit into the established patterns of traditional folklore. It became obvious that the city had formed a kind of folklore culture, very contradictory, different from the peasant tradition".
In the XX century. the process of the extinction of traditional rites and the death of old genres of folklore accelerated. This was partly facilitated by the fact that in the post-October period, the official attitude towards many phenomena of folklore was negative: they were declared "obsolete" and "reactionary". This extended to agricultural holidays, ritual songs, incantations, spiritual poems, some historical songs, and so on. At the same time, new works of different genres emerged that reflected new problems and realities of life. It is possible to single out the eating and eating stages of the development of Russian folklore after 1917: the civil war; interwar period; Great Patriotic War 1941-1945; post-war period; modern period.
The modern oral repertoire of the people and late traditional folklore are different concepts. The modern repertoire is all those works that people remember or perform, regardless of the time of their creation. The modern repertoire includes some works of classical folklore and even relic elements of early traditional folklore. Late traditional folklore component modern repertoire, works created after the collapse of the feudal village.
Old national folklore performed important functions in later historical and socio-economic conditions. Known for its consolidating role during the fratricidal civil war when all participants tragic events performed traditional works condemning evil and violence. During the years of the Great Patriotic War epics and old soldiers' songs, which agitators and artists turned to, intensified the patriotic feeling of the people.
In the folklore created in the 20th century, researchers note a mosaic pattern: different age, social orientation and different ideological orientation. It reflected the historical inconsistency of the worldview and aspirations of the country's population, rural and urban residents. A number of works supported the beginnings and achievements Soviet power: the elimination of illiteracy, collectivization, industrialization, the defeat of the Nazi invaders, the restoration of what was destroyed during the war National economy, Komsomol construction projects, space exploration, etc. Along with them, works were created in which dispossession and other repressions were condemned. GULAG folklore arose among the prisoners in the camps (a scientific conference in St. Petersburg in 1992 was dedicated to it).
Modern folklore is the folklore of the intelligentsia, students, students, petty bourgeois, rural residents, participants in regional wars, and so on. Folklore of the last quarter of the 20th century. changed so much from earlier forms that it is sometimes called post-folklore. Nevertheless, late-traditional folklore has preserved the continuity of folk oral-poetic traditions. This was expressed in the creation of new works in the form of pre-existing genres, as well as in the partial use of old folklore poetics and stylistics.
In modern folklore process the ratio of the collective and the individual began to change, the role of the individual creative personality. A striking sign of late traditional folklore is the works of professional and semi-professional authors, assimilated by the people.
Late traditional folklore is a complex, dynamic and not fully defined system, the development of which continues. Many phenomena of late-traditional folklore have only been designated or begun to be developed by science. Among them: urban folklore; folklore of the Gulag; folklore of participants in regional wars (in Afghanistan, in Chechnya); folklore of different social groups(for example, student); modern children's folklore; modern non-fairytale prose; joke. Special topics - the relationship of Russian folklore and the folklore of those peoples of Russia, among which Russians are settled; folklore of Russian diasporas abroad.
It is necessary to critically evaluate the experience already accumulated in the study of late traditional folklore (for example, the folklore of the Civil War and the 1920s-1930s in general was covered one-sidedly and incompletely). When referring to published texts of late traditional folklore, one should take into account the possibility of falsifications.
In characterizing the genres and genre systems of classical folklore, we have already touched upon the problem of their late development, the question of book influences. In this chapter, ditties, the folklore of workers and the folklore of the period of the Great Patriotic War will be considered.
Zueva T.V., Kirdan B.P. Russian folklore - M., 2002
Over time, folklore becomes an independent science, its structure is formed, research methods are developed. Now folklore is a science that studies the patterns and features of the development of folklore, the nature and nature, essence, themes of folk art, its specificity and common features with other types of art, features of the existence and functioning of texts of oral literature in different stages development; genre system and poetics.
According to the tasks specially set for this science, folklore is divided into two branches:
History of folklore
folklore theory
History of folklore- This is a branch of folklore that studies the process of emergence, development, existence, functioning, transformation (deformation) of genres and the genre system in different historical periods in different territories. The history of folklore studies individual folk poetic works, productive and unproductive periods of individual genres, as well as a holistic genre-poetic system in a synchronous (horizontal cut of a separate historical period) and diachronous (vertical cut historical development) plans.
folklore theory is a branch of folklore that studies the essence of oral folk art, features of individual folklore genres, their place in a holistic genre system, as well as - internal structure genres - the laws of their construction, poetics.
Folkloristics is closely connected, borders and interacts with many other sciences.
Its connection with history is manifested in the fact that folklore, like all humanitarian sciences, is historical discipline , i.e. considers all phenomena and objects of research in their movement - from the prerequisites for the emergence and origin, tracing the formation, development, flourishing to death or decline. And here it is required not only to establish the fact of development, but also to explain it.
Folklore is a historical phenomenon, therefore it requires a staged study, taking into account historical factors, rice and events of each particular era. The objectives of the study of oral folk art and to identify how new historical conditions or their change affect folklore, what exactly causes the emergence of new genres, as well as in identifying the problem of the historical correspondence of folklore genres, comparing texts with real events, historicism of individual works. In addition, folklore can often itself be historical source.
There is a close connection between folklore with ethnography as a science that studies early forms material life (household) and social organization people. Ethnography is a source and base for the study of folk art, especially when analyzing the development of individual folklore phenomena.
The main problems of folklore:
Question about the need to collect
The question of the place and role of folklore in the creation national literature
The question of its historical essence
The question of the role of folklore in cognition folk character
The modern collecting work of folklore materials poses a number of problems for researchers that have arisen in connection with the peculiarities ethnocultural situation end of the twentieth century. For regions, these Problems the following:
Ø - authenticity collected regional material;
(i.e. the authenticity of the transmission, the authenticity of the sample and the idea of the work)
Ø - phenomenon contextuality folklore text or its absence;
(i.e., the presence / absence of a condition for the meaningful use of a particular language unit in speech (written or oral), taking into account its language environment and the situation of speech communication.)
Ø - crisis variability;
Ø - modern "live" genres;
Ø - folklore in context modern culture and cultural policy;
Ø - problems publications modern folklore.
Modern expeditionary work faces a major challenge authenticating regional model, its occurrence and existence within the area that is being surveyed. Certification of performers does not bring any clarity to the issue of its origin.
Modern mass media technology, of course, dictates its tastes to folklore samples. Some of them are played regularly by popular performers, others do not sound at all. In this case, we will record the "popular" sample at the same time in in large numbers places from performers of different ages. Most often, the source of the material is not indicated, because assimilation can proceed through the medium of magnetic recording. Such "neutralized" variants can only testify to the adaptation of texts and quirky integration of options. This fact already exists. The question is not whether to recognize it or not, but how and why this or that material is selected and migrates, regardless of the place of origin, in some invariant. There is a risk of attributing to modern regional folklore something that, in fact, is not.
folklore like specific context has now lost the qualities of a stable, living, dynamic structure. As a historical type of culture, it is undergoing a natural reincarnation within the developing collective and professional (author's, individual) forms of modern culture. There are still separate stable fragments of context in it. On the territory of the Tambov region, these are Christmas caroling (“Autumn clique”), meeting spring with larks, individual wedding ceremonies (purchase and sale of the bride), nurturing a child, proverbs, sayings, parables live in speech, oral stories, jokes. These fragments of the folklore context still make it possible to fairly accurately judge the past state and development trends.
Living genres oral folk art in the strict sense of the word remain proverbs and sayings, ditties, songs of literary origin, urban romances, oral stories, children's folklore, anecdotes, conspiracies. As a rule, there are short and capacious genres; the conspiracy is experiencing a revival and legalization.
Reassuring presence paraphrase- figurative, metaphorical expressions that arise in speech on the basis of existing stable oral stereotypes. This is one of the examples of real reincarnations of tradition, its actualization. Another problem is aesthetic value such paraphrases. For example: a roof over your head (protection of special persons); the tax inspector is not a dad; curly-haired, but not a ram (an allusion to a member of the government), just "curly-haired". From the middle generation, we are more likely to hear variants of paraphrases than variants of traditional genres and texts. Variants of traditional texts are quite rare in the Tambov region.
Oral folk art is the most specific poetic monument. It already exists as a grandiose recorded and published archive, folklore, again as a monument, as aesthetic structure, "is animated", "comes to life" on the stage in the broadest sense of the word. Skillful cultural policy favors the preservation of the best poetic examples.
What is modern folklore and what does this concept include? Fairy tales, epics, legends, historical songs and much, much more - this is the heritage of the culture of our distant ancestors. Modern folklore should have a different appearance and live in new genres.
The purpose of our work is to prove that folklore exists in our time, to indicate modern folklore genres and provide a collection of modern folklore compiled by us.
In order to look for signs of oral folk art in modern times, you need to clearly understand what kind of phenomenon it is - folklore.
Folklore is folk art, most often it is oral; artistic collective creative activity people, reflecting his life, views, ideals; poetry, songs created by the people and existing among the masses, as well as applied crafts, art, but these aspects will not be considered in the work.
Folk art, which originated in ancient times, is historical basis throughout the world artistic culture, source of national artistic traditions, the spokesman of the people's consciousness. Folklore works (fairy tales, legends, epics) help to recreate character traits folk speech.
Folk creativity everywhere preceded literature, and among many peoples, including ours, it continued to develop along with and alongside it after its emergence. Literature was not a simple transfer and consolidation of folklore through writing. It developed according to its own laws and developed new forms that were different from folklore ones. But its connection with folklore is obvious in all directions and channels. None can be named literary phenomenon, the roots of which would not go into the centuries-old layers of folk art.
A distinctive feature of any work of oral folk art is variability. Since over the centuries, folklore has been transmitted to oral, then the majority folklore works has several options.
Traditional folklore, created over the centuries and which has come down to us, is divided into two groups - ritual and non-ritual.
Ritual folklore includes: calendar folklore(carols, carnival songs, stoneflies), family folklore (family stories, lullabies, wedding songs, etc.), occasional (spells, incantations, incantations).
Non-ritual folklore is divided into four groups: folk drama(Petrushka theatre, vet drama), poetry (chastushki, songs), folklore speech situations(proverbs, sayings, teasers, nicknames, curses) and prose. Folklore prose is again divided into two groups: fairy tale (fairy tale, anecdote) and non-fairy tale (legend, tradition, bylichka, story about a dream).
What is "folklore" for modern man? These are folk songs, fairy tales, proverbs, epics and other works of our ancestors, which were created and passed from mouth to mouth a very long time ago, and have come down to us only in the form of beautiful books for children or literature lessons. Modern people they don’t tell each other fairy tales, they don’t sing songs at work, they don’t cry and lament at weddings. And if they compose something “for the soul”, then they immediately write it down. All works of folklore seem incredibly far from modern life. Is it so? Yes and no.
Folklore, translated from of English language, means " folk wisdom, popular knowledge. Thus, folklore must exist at all times, as the embodiment of the consciousness of the people, their lives, ideas about the world. And if we do not come across traditional folklore every day, then there must be something else, close and understandable to us, something that will be called modern folklore.
Folklore is not an invariable and ossified form of folk art. Folklore is constantly in the process of development and evolution: Chastushkas can be performed to the accompaniment of modern musical instruments on the contemporary themes, folk music may be influenced by rock music, and contemporary music may include elements of folklore.
Often the material that seems frivolous is "new folklore". Moreover, he lives everywhere and everywhere.
Modern folklore has taken almost nothing from the genres of classical folklore, and what it has taken has changed beyond recognition. “Almost all old oral genres- from ritual lyrics to a fairy tale,” writes Professor Sergei Neklyudov (the largest Russian folklorist, head of the Center for Semiotics and Typology of Folklore of the Russian State University for the Humanities).
The fact is that the life of a modern person is not connected with the calendar and the season, such modern world Hardly ever ritual folklore, we are left with only signs.
Today great place occupy non-ritual folklore genres. And here, not only modified old genres (riddles, proverbs), not only relatively young forms (“street” songs, anecdotes), but also texts that are generally difficult to attribute to any particular genre. For example, urban legends (about abandoned hospitals, factories), fantastic "historical and local history essays" (about the origin of the name of the city or its parts, about geophysical and mystical anomalies, about celebrities who visited it, etc.), stories about incredible incidents, legal incidents, etc. Rumors can also be included in the concept of folklore.
Sometimes, right before our eyes, new signs and beliefs are formed - including in the most advanced and educated groups of society. Who has not heard about cacti, supposedly "absorbing harmful radiation» from computer monitors? Moreover, this sign has a development: "not every cactus absorbs radiation, but only with star-shaped needles."
In addition to the structure of folklore itself, the structure of its distribution in society has changed. Modern folklore no longer carries the function of self-consciousness of the people as a whole. Most often, the carriers of folklore texts are not residents of certain territories, but members of some sociocultural groups. Tourists, goths, parachutists, patients of one hospital or students of one school have their own signs, legends, anecdotes, etc. Each, even the most small group people, barely realizing their commonality and difference from all others, immediately acquired their own folklore. Moreover, the elements of the group may change, but the folklore texts will remain.
As an example. During a campfire hike, they joke that if the girls dry their hair by the fire, the weather will be bad. The whole campaign of the girls is driven away from the fire. Hitting a hike with the same travel agency, but with completely different people and even instructors in a year, you can find that the sign is alive and they believe in it. Girls are also driven away from the fire. Moreover, there is opposition: you need to dry your underwear, and then the weather will improve, even if one of the ladies still broke through with wet hair to the fire. Here, not only the birth of a new folklore text in a certain group of people is evident, but also its development.
The most striking and paradoxical phenomenon of modern folklore can be called network folklore. The main and universal feature of all folklore phenomena is the existence in oral form, while all network texts are, by definition, written.
However, as Anna Kostina, deputy director of the State Republican Center for Russian Folklore, notes, many of them have all the main features of folklore texts: anonymity and collective authorship, variability, traditionalism. Moreover, online texts clearly strive to "overcome writing" - hence the widespread use of emoticons (allowing to indicate intonation), and the popularity of "padon" (deliberately incorrect) spelling. Funny untitled texts are already widely circulating on the net, absolutely folklore in spirit and poetics, but incapable of living in a purely oral transmission.
Thus, in modern information society folklore not only loses a lot, but also gains something.
We found out that in contemporary folklore little remains of traditional folklore. And those genres that remained have changed almost beyond recognition. New genres are also emerging.
So, today there is no longer ritual folklore. And the reason for its disappearance is obvious: the life of modern society does not depend on the calendar, all ritual actions that are an integral part of the life of our ancestors have come to naught. Non-ritual folklore also highlights poetic genres. Here are urban romance, and courtyard songs, and ditties on modern topics, as well as such completely new genres as chants, chants and sadistic rhymes.
Prose folklore has lost fairy tales. Modern society manages already created works. But anecdotes and many new non-fairy genres remain: urban legends, fantastic essays, stories about incredible incidents, etc.
The folklore of speech situations has changed beyond recognition, and today it looks more like a parody. Example: "He who gets up early - he lives far from work", "Do not have one hundred percent, but have one hundred clients."
AT separate group it is necessary to single out a completely new and unique phenomenon - network folklore. Here and "padonsky language", and network anonymous stories, and "letters of happiness" and much more.
Having done this work, we can say with confidence that folklore did not cease to exist centuries ago and did not turn into Museum piece. Many genres simply disappeared, those that remained changed or changed their functional purpose.
Perhaps, in a hundred or two hundred years, modern folklore texts will not be studied at literature lessons, and many of them may disappear much earlier, but, nevertheless, new folklore is a representation of a modern person about society and about the life of this society, its identity and cultural level. A remarkable richness of ethnographic details characterization of various social groups of the working population of Russia mid-nineteenth century left V. V. Bervi-Flerovsky in his book “The Condition of the Working Class in Russia”. His attention to the peculiar features of the life and culture of each of these groups is found even in the very titles of individual chapters: "Worker-tramp", "Siberian farmer", "Trans-Ural worker", "Worker-prospector", "Mining worker", "Russian proletarian ". All this is different social types representing the Russian people in a specific historical setting. It is no coincidence that Bervi-Flerovsky considered it necessary to highlight the characteristics of the "moral mood of the workers in the industrial provinces", realizing that in this "mood" there are many specific signs that distinguish it from the "moral mood"<работника на севере», а строй мыслей и чувств «земледельца на помещичьих землях» не тот, что у земледельца-переселенца в Сибири.
The era of capitalism and especially imperialism brings new significant transformations in the social structure of the people. The most important factor that has a tremendous impact on the entire course of social development, on the fate of the entire people as a whole, is the emergence of a new, most revolutionary class in the history of mankind - the working class, whose entire culture, including folklore, is a qualitatively new phenomenon. But the culture of the working class must also be studied concretely historically, in its development, its national, regional and professional characteristics must be taken into account. Within the working class itself there are different strata, different groups, differing in the level of class consciousness and cultural traditions. In this regard, the work of V. I. Ivanov “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” retains great methodological significance, which specifically examines the various conditions in which the formation of working class detachments took place in industrial centers, in the industrial south, in an atmosphere of “special life” in the Urals. .
The development of capitalist relations in the countryside is breaking up the rural commune, splitting the peasantry into two classes—small producers, some of whom are constantly being proletarianized, and the rural bourgeois class—the kulaks. The idea of a single supposedly peasant culture under capitalism is a tribute to petty-bourgeois illusions and prejudices, and an undifferentiated, uncritical study of the peasant creativity of this era can only strengthen such illusions and prejudices. The social heterogeneity of the people in the conditions of the struggle of all the democratic forces of Russia against the tsarist autocracy and serf-owning remnants for political freedom was emphasized by V. I. Ivanov: "... the people fighting the autocracy consists of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat." It is known from the history of society that the social structure of the people who made the anti-feudal revolution in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy was just as heterogeneous. It is also known that, having taken advantage of the gains of the people, the bourgeoisie, having come to power, betrays the people and itself becomes anti-people. But the fact that at a certain stage of historical development it was one of the constituent elements of the people, could not but be reflected in the nature of the folk culture of the corresponding era.
Recognition of the complex, constantly changing social structure of the people means not only that the class composition of the people is changing, but also that the relationships between classes and groups within the people are developing and changing. Of course, since the people are primarily the working and exploited masses, this determines the commonality of their class interests and views, the unity of their culture. But, recognizing the fundamental commonality of the people and seeing, first of all, the main contradiction between the exploited masses and the ruling class, as V.I. Ivanov, "demands that this word (people) does not cover up a lack of understanding of class antagonisms within the people."
Consequently, the culture and art of the people in a class society, "folk art" is class in nature, not only in the sense that it opposes the ideology of the ruling class as a whole, but also in that it is itself complex and sometimes contradictory in its nature. its class and ideological content. Our approach to folklore, therefore, involves the study of the expression in it of both the nationwide ideals and aspirations, and not all the coinciding interests and ideas of individual classes and groups that make up the people at different stages of the history of society, the study of reflection in folklore as contradictions between the whole people and the ruling class and possible contradictions “within the people”. Only such an approach is a condition for a truly scientific study of the history of folklore, the coverage of all its phenomena and understanding them, no matter how contradictory they may be, no matter how incompatible they may seem with the "ideal" ideas about folk art. Such an approach serves as a reliable guarantee both against the false romantic idealization of folklore and against the arbitrary exclusion of entire genres or works from the field of folklore, as happened more than once during the dominance of dogmatic concepts in folklore. It is important to be able to judge folklore on the basis of not speculative a priori ideas about folk art, but taking into account the real history of the masses and society.
№24 Modern peasant and urban folklore (in my opinion, complete crap!!! I don’t know who was looking for this answer)
Folklore in the “broad” sense (all folk traditional peasant spiritual and partly material culture) and “narrow” (oral peasant verbal artistic 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 of the main fund of texts , to-rye used by science in each of the countries. In modern folklore, four main concepts enjoy the greatest authority, which at the same time constantly interact: a) folklore - orally transmitted common people's experience and knowledge. This refers to all forms of spiritual culture, and with the most extended interpretation - and some forms of material culture. Only a sociological restriction (“common people”) and a historical and cultural criterion are introduced - archaic forms that dominate or function as remnants. (The word "folk" is more definite than "folk" in a sociological sense, and does not contain an evaluative meaning ("people's artist", "people's poet"); b) folklore - folk art or, according to a more modern definition, "artistic communication ". This concept allows us to extend the use of the term “folklore” to the sphere of music, choreography, and depiction. etc. folk art; c) folklore is a folklore verbal tradition. At the same time, those that are associated with the word stand out from all forms of common people's activity; d) folklore is an oral tradition. At the same time, oral language is of paramount importance. This makes it possible to single out folklore from other verbal forms (first of all, to oppose it to literature). 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.
Modern Folkloristics, in an effort to learn the general laws of the development of folklore, cannot but take into account the fact that it is perceived by the peoples themselves as an expression of ethnicity that is precious to them. specificity, the spirit of the people. Of course, the correlation between the universal and specifically ethnic is each time determined by the specific conditions for the development of an ethnos - the degree of its consolidation, the nature of its contacts with other ethnic groups, the characteristics of settlement, the mentality of the people, etc. If we use the categories of generative grammar, we could say that general, international. patterns, as a rule, appear at the level of deep structures, and specific national patterns - at the level of surface structures. If we turn, for example, to fairy tales or story epic. songs (their international recurrence is well studied), it is impossible not to state what their plots mean. degrees are international, and their incarnations in real texts vary in different ethnic groups. and local traditions, acquiring certain ethnic. features (a language intimately associated with folklore, the realities of everyday life, beliefs, a set of characteristic motifs, from which, as A.N. action develops, characteristic social relations, etc.). Both fairy tale and epic traditions seem to create their own world, which has no direct analogies in reality. This world is invented by collective fantasy, it is a transformed reality. However, no matter how complex the connection between fairy-tale reality and true reality, it exists and reflects not just and not only something universal, but also the features of being and thinking of a certain people.
THIS IS WHAT I FOUND!!! (KATIA)
traditional folklore - these are the forms and mechanisms of artistic culture that are preserved, fixed and transmitted from generation to generation. They capture universal aesthetic values that retain their significance beyond concrete historical social changes.
Modern folklore reflects the current stage of development of folk art. It incorporates modern aesthetics, problems and artistic images. It is also a non-literate culture, the carriers of which are often the marginalized sections of society. In the structure of modern folklore, the so-called neo-folklore can be distinguished. This is everyday artistic creativity of a non-formalized leisure nature, including at the same time forms of folklore, mass and professional art, amateur art, distinguished by aesthetic diversity, style and genre instability, and acting as the "second" wave in modern folklore culture.
Peasant folklore belongs to the peasant subculture. This is a fairly stable art system. It contains labor, ethical, family, marriage and aesthetic values of farmers. Its archaic layers that have come down to us represent, in spirit and meaning, the value system of the agricultural calendar and the culture of the peasantry, which combines the features of paganism and Christianity.
urban folklore appeared in a later period, its wide distribution dates back to the 18th century. It developed in constant interaction, on the one hand, with author's art in its written (printed) forms, and, on the other hand, with peasant folklore. The processes of borrowing from one layer of culture to another were very characteristic. They took place through petty-bourgeois folklore, the ideas, images and artistic techniques of which were decisive for urban folklore.
Thus, we can state a wide variety of interpretations of the concept of "folklore". However, gradually the definitions of folklore in the narrow and broad senses turned out to be dominant: as oral folk art and as a combination of all types of folk art in the context of folk life.
Genres of contemporary urban folklore
Urban song folklore
Cruel romance
city song
Pragmatics of oral storytelling
Unfabulous prose of a provincial town
Folklore of communal apartments
family folklore
Modern joke
Contemporary album tradition
magic letters
№25. The concept of "game", game culture. Psychology, fundamentals, functions and nature of the game.
The game- this is a type of activity that does not result in the production of any material or ideal product (with the exception of business and design games for adults and children). Games often have the character of entertainment, they are aimed at getting rest. Sometimes games serve as a means of symbolic relaxation of tensions that have arisen under the influence of the actual needs of a person, which he is not able to weaken in any other way.
gaming culture is understood as one of the subsystems of culture, in which the attributive features of gaming activity are realized and the specificity of its subject, object, procedural, resulting, institutional characteristics is reflected.
There are several game types:
Individual
Group
subject
Story
role-playing
Games with rules.
Signs (features) of the game:
free developing activity, undertaken only at will, for the sake of pleasure from the very process of activity, and not just from the result.
creative, improvisational, active in nature activity.
emotionally intense, elevated, competitive, competitive activity.
activities that take place within the framework of direct or indirect rules that reflect the content of the game.
imitative activity. “The game is not an “ordinary” life and life as such. It is rather an exit from the framework of this life into a temporary sphere of activity that has its own direction. make-believe."
activity isolated from the "ordinary" life by the place of action - the playing area and duration. It "plays out" within certain limits of space and time. Inside the game space reigns its own unconditional order. ( J. Huizinga, 1992).
Availability minimum game situation.
Game Features:
communicative - expansive influence. The game covers all those present (participants, spectators, organizers), i.e., establishes emotional contacts;
activity - revealing the interaction of people with each other and the world around them;
compensatory - restoring energy, life balance, tonic psychological stress;
educational - Organizing human activity. The game allows you to create targeted education and training;
pedagogical, didactic - developing skills and abilities (memory, attention, perception of information of various modalities are trained);
predictive - predictive, experimenting;
modeling - linking reality with the unreal;
entertaining - creating a favorable atmosphere, turning a scientific event into an exciting adventure;
relaxation - relieving emotional stress, positively affecting the nervous system;
psychotechnical - restructuring the player's psyche for the assimilation of large amounts of information;
developing - corrective manifestations of personality in game models of life situations.
There are several concepts in the approach to the phenomenon of the game:
a) German philosopher and psychologist K. Groos; according to it, play is a preliminary preparation for the conditions of the future life;
b) an Austrian psychologist K. Buhler, which defines the game as an activity performed for the sake of obtaining pleasure from the very process of activity;
c) a Dutch scientist F. Beitendijk, considering the game as a form of realization of common primordial inclinations: to freedom, to merge with the environment, to repetition.
G) Z. Freud believed that the game replaces repressed desires.
and) G. Spencer treated the game as a manifestation of excess vitality.
h) G. V. Plekhanov. The game is a product of labor, arising, as it were, from imitation of labor processes.
The nature of the game
The game is meaningful activity, i.e., a set of meaningful actions, united by the unity of a motive.
A game action is not performed for the practical effect it has on the object being played. The game is an expression of a certain attitude of the individual to the surrounding reality.
The game of the individual is always closely connected with the activity on which the existence of the given species is based. In animals, it is associated with the basic forms of instinctive life, through which their existence is maintained; at human"game is a child of labor" .
This connection of the game is hardly vividly captured in the content of the games: all of them usually reproduce certain types of practical non-game activities.
Man game - the product of activity through which a person transforms reality and changes the world.The essence of the human game - in the ability, displaying, transforming reality.
In play, for the first time, the child's need to influence the world is formed and manifested - this is the main, central and most general meaning of play.
The commonality and difference between playing with difficulty is primarily in their motivation.
The main difference between play activity and work activity lies in the general attitude towards one's activity. While working, a person does not only what he has an immediate need or immediate interest in; very often he does what needs to be done or should be done, regardless of the presence of an immediate interest or an immediate need. In their play activities, players do not directly depend on what practical necessity or social duty dictates. The doctor, busy with his work, treats the patient because his professional or official duties require it; the child, playing doctor, "treats" others only because it attracts him. The game expresses a more direct attitude to life, it proceeds from immediate motives - immediate interests and needs.
Essence of the game, is that game motives are not in the utilitarian effect and the material result, which usually gives a given action in a practical non-game plan and not in the activity itself, regardless of its result, but in a variety of experiences, significant for the child, in general for the player .
In play, only the conditions of play are imaginary, in which the child mentally places himself, but the feelings that he experiences in these imaginary conditions are authentic feelings that he really experiencing.
The game is a way of realizing the needs and requests of the child within his capabilities.
№26. Russian wooden architecture. Famous architectural ensembles and residential buildings in Russia.
Since ancient times, wood and clay have been the main building materials for Russian architects. Clay bricks have been widespread in Rus' since the middle of the 10th century, and wood has been used as the main building material since time immemorial. It was wooden architecture that became the basis of a special style of Russian medieval architecture, which implies the optimal combination of beauty and functionality of buildings.
The ax remained the main tool of the builder for many centuries. The fact is that the saw breaks the wood fibers during operation, leaving them open to water. The ax, crushing the fibers, seals the ends of the logs, as it were. Not without reason, they still say: "cut down the hut." Therefore, saws were used exclusively in carpentry.
If we turn to the history of Russian wooden architecture, then the largest and unique reserve of folk art is the Russian North. There are more preserved wooden buildings in the Arkhangelsk province than anywhere else in Russia. It is physically impossible to see all these monuments, so at one time some of them were transferred to one of the most famous architectural museums in Russia in the village of Malye Korely, which is located near Arkhangelsk. Several residential complexes of various districts - Kargopol-Onega, Mezensky, Pinezhsky and Severo-Dvinsky - are recreated in Malyye Korela, while all the buildings are grouped according to a “geographical” feature, as if creating a reduced model of the entire Russian North in the complex.
Another architectural ensemble of unsurpassed beauty is located near the village of Kizhi. In terms of the concentration of heritage sites, the Kizhi historical, cultural and natural complex is a unique historical territory that has no equal in the European North of Russia.
Together with architectural monuments that have been preserved unchanged from the moment of construction or taken out of other areas and recreated on the territory of the reserve, the Kizhi museum collection illustrates the main aspects of the traditional culture of the indigenous peoples of Karelia: Karelians, Veps, Russians.
Excellent material for studying the main directions of medieval wooden architecture is provided by Kostroma. The city arose in the Middle Volga region, that is, in an area exceptionally rich in forests, which determined the nature of the development. I must say that stone construction until the very end of the 17th century in Kostroma was an extremely rare phenomenon - even the houses of the richest nobles and merchants and the house of the mother of Tsar Mikhail Romanov - Martha, were wooden. You can restore the image of the ancient wooden temples of Kostroma using architectural monuments preserved in the Museum of Wooden Architecture and on the territory of the Kostroma Region.
The ancient Russian city of Suzdal is exceptionally rich in architectural monuments. Picturesquely and evenly distributed throughout the city, they form an architectural ensemble of rare beauty and integrity. The style chosen by the ancient architects gives charm to the ancient city, whose history dates back almost thousands of years.
At first, this museum arose on a small treeless and almost deserted island of Kizhi on Lake Onega. And once there was a vast settlement here, called in the Novgorod cadastral books "Spassky Kizhi churchyard". Kizhi - from the name of the island, and Spassky - from the name of the church on the churchyard of the island.
Chapel of the Archangel Michael from the village of Lelikozero is one of the architectural gems of the Russian North. In addition, like many other chapels, it was the most beautiful building in the village and gave the inhabitants many bright, festive minutes.
Church of the Resurrection, 1776 Suzdal (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Windmill. Village Volkostrov (Nasonovshchina), 1928
A windmill from the village of Volkostrov (Nasonovshchina) was built in 1928 by a local craftsman Nikolai Yakovlevich Bikanin (1880 - 1958). The mill is an excellent example of the engineering talent of northern peasants.
Spaso-Preobrazhenskaya Church, XVII century.
The many-domed Transfiguration Church was erected in 1714, at the height of the Northern War, on the site of an old church that had burned down from a lightning strike.
Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God (dome), XVII century
In 1764 the Church of the Intercession was built. Its nine heads form a strikingly beautiful openwork crown - light, feminine and graceful, and at the same time, solemn, regally majestic: like a Russian beauty in an embroidered pearl dress.
Chapel of Michael the Archangel, XVII-XVIII centuries.
The chapel was a place of communion with God. In troubled times, it became a watchtower, warning with the ringing of bells about the approach of danger.
Chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin, XVIII century.
The ancient Kizhi building has been standing on the shores of Lake Onega for three centuries already (the logs of the chapel were cut down in 1702). As before, the chapel serves as a reference point for fishermen. Its small silhouette gives the island village a special charm of simplicity, reliability and harmony.
Ascension cube church, 1669 Kushereka village, Onega region
On the coast of the White Sea, the type of a cube-shaped temple was widespread. A cube is a complex shape of a coating resembling a tetrahedral onion. A distinctive feature of the architectural appearance of the northern cubic churches is their beauty, grace and harmony.
Village Kondratievskaya.
The exact time of construction of the surviving chambers is unknown; presumably, they were placed in the middle of the 17th century.
Chapel of the Three Saints, 17th century Kavgora village
On the highest hill of a wooded area in the Kondopoga region of Karelia, the village of Kavgora was once located. Here, surrounded by a ring of boulders, next to the giant fir trees, stood the chapel of the Three Saints: Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian.
Sergeeva's house from the village of Lipovitsy, late 19th - early 20th centuries
A typical Zaonezhsky house, built at the turn of the century, in which ancient constructive techniques are combined with new trends in wooden architecture. An excellent example of folk building art.
Wicker fence (detail)
Chapel of Our Lady of All Who Sorrow, 18th century Eglovo village.
This is a traditional Zaonezhsky building. the history of its creation is largely unclear. Until 1882, inclusive, the chapel was not mentioned in the documents of the Kizhi parish. Possibly late 19th century. it was transported from another place, supplemented with boarding and roofing iron. Restored in 1983-1984.
19th century Village Kondratievskaya.
Chapel of Saint Macarius, 18th century Fedorovskaya village.
Chapels, which were often built without the permission of church authorities, became widespread in the Russian North. This feature determined the great influence of peasant tastes on the architecture of these structures.
The architectural ensemble of the Spassky Kizhi Pogost, XVII century.
"The Graveyard of Spassky on Kizhi on Lake Onega. And on the graveyard is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, and another Church of the Intercession of the Holy Mother of God" (from the scribe book of the Moscow clerk Andrei Pleshcheev about the Zaonezhsky graveyards of 1582-1583)
House of Oshevnev (fragment of the veranda), 1876. Village of Oshevnevo
Wooden road-flooring, 19th century.
Village well. Kostroma (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Chapel of Peter and Paul, XVII-XVIII centuries. Nasonovshchina village.
The chapel stands on an open flat area. On a summer day, the entire Kizhi volost came to her for a chapel feast. The guests were received by residents of the Volkostrov village, or, more precisely, a bush of villages: Nasonovshchina, Posada, Shlyamino ... The chapel was the center and decoration of Volkostrov.
Chapel of the Sign of the Virgin (detail), 18th century Cobra Village.
In the village of Kobra, located in the depths of a small bay, on a cape jutting out into the lake, there is a chapel of the Sign of the Virgin. In the 19th century The building was sheathed with boards and covered with roofing iron. In 1962, after restoration, the chapel acquired its former appearance.
Windmills-pillars on a "ryazhe", 19th century
"Pillar" mills are named for the fact that their barn rests on a pillar. Of course, the barn rests not only on a pillar, but on a frame-ryazhe (from the word "cut" - logs cut not tightly, but with gaps). Rows at the posts can be of different shapes and heights, but not higher than 4 meters.
Spaso-Kizhi churchyard (fragment of a fence), 17th century
The most interesting Kletskaya church of the beginning of the 17th century from the village of Fominsky, Kostroma region.
Architectural ensemble of the Spaso-Kizhi churchyard, XVII century.
The very word "graveyard" speaks of the significance of the settlement. So in the old days they called not only a fairly large administrative-territorial unit, consisting of several volosts, with many villages, villages, exhibitions and repairs, but also its main settlement, which served as an administrative center.
Bell tower, 19th century. Ivanovo village.
Church of the Transfiguration from the village of Spas-Vezhi on the territory of the Ipatiev Monastery. Kostroma.
Judging by the scribe books, the church was built in 1628. This is the largest of the wooden Klet churches that have survived to this day.
Ipatiev Monastery (fragment of the gate)
From the moment of its inception, the Ipatiev Monastery, as it were, took on the role of a fortress, according to legend, already in ancient times it was surrounded by oak walls.
Church of the Cathedral of Our Lady from the village of Kholm, XVI century. Kostroma.
According to some ancient written sources, it was built in 1552. The oldest surviving monument of wooden architecture of the Kostroma region. The church came to us in a rebuilt form, the changes affected the upper, crowning part of the building, and partly its foundation.
Architectural ensemble of the Spaso-Kizhi churchyard, XVII century.
Thousands of people rush here, to the island of Kizhi, to see the "eighth wonder of the world" created by ordinary Zaonezhsky peasants. Now here is a museum-reserve of folk wooden architecture.
Church of the Savior from the village of Fominskoye (tented dome and bell tower), XVIII century. Kostroma.
Church of the Savior from the village of Fominskoe (fragment), XVIII century. Kostroma.
Museum of Wooden Architecture. Kostroma.
Not a single ancient wooden building has been preserved in Kostroma itself, but you can imagine the appearance of the ancient temples of the city from the monuments of wooden architecture that have been preserved on the territory of the Kostroma region. Since 1958, the best of these monuments have been transported to Kostroma, to the Museum of Wooden Architecture.
Church of St. John the Theologian on the Ishni River, 1687-1689 Rostov, Yaroslavl region.
There are not so many legends about any monument on the Rostov land as about this small chopped church. The most poetic of them says that the church was not built, she herself sailed from the lake along the Ishni River in finished form and stood where she stands now.
Fragment of a village house. Kostroma (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Church of the Cathedral of Our Lady from the village of Kholm (fragment), XVI century. Kostroma.
There was a legend that the builders of this ancient building were buried in the altar of the temple they built. Few were honored with this, because even burial near the walls of a church building was considered a great honor.
Church of the Savior from the village of Fominskoe, 18th century Kostroma.
Spaso-Preobrazhenskaya Church (fragment), 18th century Suzdal (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
The beginning of the museum was laid by the Church of the Transfiguration of 1756 from the village of Kozlyatyeva, Kolchuginsky district. They built churches from pine, without using iron nails. The domes were covered with silvery aspen plowshares.
Architraves of a village house (deaf carving fragment). Kostroma (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Bridges. Kostroma (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Well with a gate. Borosville village.
Fragment of a village house. Kostroma (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
Spaso-Preobrazhenskaya Church (fragment), 18th century Suzdal (Museum of Wooden Architecture)
The largest Russian folklorist, professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Doctor of Philology Sergey Yurievich Neklyudov- the author of more than four hundred works on theoretical folklore, mythology, epic and traditional literature of the Mongolian peoples, editor-in-chief of the journal on Russian folklore and traditional culture "Live Antiquity".
In the early 1990s, he was one of the first in our country to start studying modern Russian urban folklore, which he gave the then rooted name “postfolklore”. Today, among other things, he manages the Center for Typology and Semiotics of Folklore at the Russian State Humanitarian University and manages the website "Folklore and Post-Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics". Olga Balla talks with Sergey Neklyudov about what “post-folklore” is, how it differs from folklore and what are the tasks of researchers in relation to it.
- Sergey Yurievich, how would you draw the line between "folklore" and "postfolklore"?
- Most likely, there is no distinct border between them - as is usually the case in the humanities. There are always some intermediate or marginal forms that combine the features of both phenomena.
- But why was the term “postfolklore” needed at all?
- The fact is that folklore - both our domestic and European - grew out of the study of the so-called classical forms of folklore. This is the folklore of those communities that have acquired a written language, as a rule - a state system and in many cases - one of the world religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism (and did not remain with the traditions of ethnic "paganism"). Of course, there are typically "classical" cultures in which this last feature is not so clearly expressed or absent at all - say, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and some others.
On this material - almost exclusively rural - the entire analytical toolkit of folklore, all the concepts of folklore genres, the method of transmitting oral texts, the environment in which folklore exists, and its bearers, have been worked out. Therefore, scientists for a long time did not notice new forms of folklore, urban in origin and environment.
In Russian folklore it was, for example, an urban romance; even earlier - ditty. By the end of the 19th century, it became impossible not to notice it - it was present in huge numbers both in the city and in the countryside, but for a long time it was perceived as a subject unworthy of study, as a damage to "real" folklore.
Mastering this material was painful and difficult. Only at the very beginning of the 20th century, Dmitry Zelenin, a remarkable Russian folklorist and ethnologist, for the first time in his article “New Trends in Folk Poetry” soberly and clearly said that both the ditty and urban romance also have the right to be studied.
The new government, established in 1917, did not sympathize with the peasantry. On the contrary, the attitude towards him was either wary or hostile, even hostile, and, accordingly, his cultural traditions also did not arouse interest. This is on the one hand.
On the other hand, by that time qualitative changes had already taken place in folklore, attention to the language of the city street had awakened, which professional folklorists, in particular, N.E. Onchukov, A.M. Astakhova, E.V. Hoffman (Pomerantseva), and linguists and literary critics - R.O. Jacobson, V.B. Shklovsky, S.I. Kartsevsky, A.M. Selishchev and others.
All this stopped at the beginning of the 1930s: the study of urban folklore forms was practically banned. Then - a half-century failure. Urban folklore is reduced to the so-called working folklore - a forcibly isolated, and partially falsified - segment of the tradition, from which protest, satirical texts containing profanity, "thieves", "philistine" have been removed. But even in this form, it remains ideologically inconvenient, and therefore it is studied mainly from pre-revolutionary texts.
As for the subject itself, the following must be said here. The folklore of rural communities differs from the folklore of the city street quite strongly. First of all, in the countryside, it embraces almost the entire culture - there the farmer, the shepherd, the blacksmith, and the village priest are served by the same traditions, the same system of rituals, the same texts.
And urban folklore is fragmented. It is much more connected with written forms, with the author's beginning. Moreover, for the city dweller it is ideologically marginal: the city man satisfies his ideological needs in a different way, with the use of other products - mainly related to the mass media and popular culture.
Rural folklore is dialectal and regional - these are the traditions of one village, one region, one region. Urban - "sociolecten": it is rather characteristic of certain social groups - gender and age, professional, amateur .. - which do not have a strong territorial conditionality.
And most importantly: none of the forms of "classical" folklore - neither its genres nor texts - practically survived in the city. From this point of view, folklore as such, in its "classical" phase, is indeed going away - but a new kind of oral culture is emerging. That is why I proposed to designate it with the term “post-folklore”, that is, as it were, “after-folklore”. It differs from the folklore "classics" much more significantly than the "classics" from the archaic, although even there the difference is quite large. Other genres, other texts also appear there, but still there are much more parallels, crosshairs, links between them. We do not have the opportunity to observe the transition between the “classic” and the archaic, but the transition to post-folklore is happening almost before our eyes, and in scientific terms this is extremely valuable.
- And how did it all start again in the 90s?
- I can talk about personal experience. It is customary to conduct folklore practice at philological faculties. However, in the early 1990s there was no money for expeditions, and the situation - domestic, transport ... - became obscure. And you have to practice. And then Andrei Borisovich Moroz, who teaches Russian folklore at the Russian State Humanitarian University, and I decided to hold it in the city. To some extent it was due to poverty.
They sent students to collect songs: yard, school, camp - any, living in folklore existence. This is the most understandable urban genre, the easiest to record. With jokes, for example, it is more difficult. You can ask a person: “Sing a song,” and he will sing if he knows how and if he wants to, but to tell a joke, you need a special situation - it can be caught or even provoked by a skilled folklorist, but not a trainee student.
They recorded some songs, and there turned out to be a lot of rather curious observations. Since this all started.
- Were you the first to do this with us?
- Nearly. The first was actually a St. Petersburg folklorist and my old friend Alexander Fedorovich Belousov. He initiated the study of both children's folklore and urban folklore. In the 1970s and 1980s, he published two brochures at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute, where he worked then, for part-time students; he also compiled the first collection of materials and studies on children's folklore, very bright. It was not about classical children's folklore, according to which works were written as early as the beginning of the 20th century, but about modern forms: fortune-telling about the Queen of Spades, horror stories, sadistic rhymes ... This two-volume book was printed on rotaprint, also in Tallinn, and read out to holes. I didn’t deal with children’s folklore either then or after.
In the 90s, we still had to prove that such subjects can and should be dealt with. In 1996, we started working on a project on contemporary urban folklore, and a few years later we published a whole volume of research on it. The participants of this work, mostly young, gathered from six Russian cities. With difficulty, painfully, we learned to speak the same language: an unexplored area, after all. All this was infinitely difficult and beautiful - as always on a new field.
But time passes quickly, new generations come to science, and now so many people want to deal with post-folklore! And those who would like to engage in folklore "classics", say, an epic, are few.
Of course, the epic is a dead genre, now it does not exist. But what of that - philologists explore ancient literature. The science of culture tends - and rightly so - to deal with its past. If she does not deal with it, she will not understand her present. This is exactly what happens in our area: those who do not know how to understand "classical" folklore will not be able to cope with post-folklore either.
Since childhood, I myself knew and loved the city song, it was my tradition. Earlier, especially before the beginning of the 70s, our fellow citizens, and not only young ones, sang a lot. But in the 70s, cassette recorders appeared, which rather quickly turned active music-making - solo or in chorus, with a guitar, accordion, piano, or without accompaniment at all - into passive music-making, into listening. The progress of technology in general has a strong effect on cultural forms. The gramophone, when it appeared, also had a considerable influence on the song tradition.
Somehow, in my spare time, I began to remember how many songs I know - not necessarily full texts, but at least fragments, at least I know that there was such a song. I counted a hundred. This list is by no means the largest - generally speaking, there are, according to my very rough estimate, two thousand or so of these songs in everyday life. And this is in addition to very narrow traditions: say, songs of one school, one faculty, one circle, which also have a folklore existence, but usually do not go beyond any small community.
It seems that now the song as an active genre is dying. People satisfy their need for singing in other ways - for example, through karaoke.
I look at my students - both current and former, now already candidates of science, but still very young - they never sing! Even the oldest of them are born in the late 70s.
And the next - the 80s, early 90s - even more so. I do not see even traces of these traditions. There are, of course, people who love to sing, but as a mass phenomenon, this disappears. Everyone lives inside their own capsule, even the musical one. Cultural forms are changing.
But the joke lives on - to a large extent, having moved to the Internet.
- The Internet, presumably, has a strong influence on modern folklore forms?
- He influences and himself is influenced by folklore, and at the same time he himself is an environment very similar to folklore. There is a certain structural commonality here. However, "Internetlor" is a separate matter. Now they are doing it. Me not. In general, there are already dissertations devoted to "Internetlor".
When folklore traditions pass from the archaic to the "classic", to writing, and in general, when culture goes into writing, literary material is consolidated in fixed forms, often with marked authorship. The reverse process leads to the fact that the form becomes plastic, and the authorship goes away. This is clearly seen in the songs.
My interns in the early 90s asked: “And if they sing Vysotsky, should they record it?” So, if the singers do not know that the song belongs to Vysotsky, then this is folklore, and its variation is not constrained by anything. This is an absolutely clear criterion. Folklorization always leads to a lack of knowledge about the author...
- And about the sample text, probably, right?
- It is more difficult with sample texts. Let's say, recordings of songs on records at one time acted on folklore in the same way as author's texts. When Utyosov recorded "Gop-with-smoke",
“From Odessa kichman”, “Babliki”, - his editors drowned out all other versions - and there were many of them! - and became dominant, having a strong influence on the entire subsequent oral tradition. Such a stable, fixed authoritative text - a publication or a record - which can be consulted, is appropriately called a "controlling authority".
Culture moves mainly in the direction of fixing its "messages", hardening forms, as well as preserving in them some individual beginning - moreover, of course, the impersonal-mass principle is always present. The Internet, in a strange way, seems to take a step back: its forms are much more plastic than in the oral tradition. The texts circulating in it are easily separated from the author and become "no one's": they are available to the editorial intervention of everyone who receives them. This is very similar to the folklore environment, although it does not repeat it at all.
- Are there any special methods of working with post-folklore material?
- I'd like to say no. The methodology is essentially the same. The study of traditional and archaic forms gives the necessary research skill, which makes the scientist a folklorist. What in post-folklore is sometimes mistaken for a private invention of the author, then replicated, in fact, sometimes turns out to be almost a mythological stereotype - and it can be identified only if you are guided in world folklore. Here, too, "wandering plots", stable motifs, stereotypes of oral rhetoric circulate - technologically, the tradition here and there is arranged more or less the same. Of course, there are also differences, but they can be understood only when you know how things were in the previous phases of its development.
Folklore has many parallels with the literary tradition. Not to mention numerous "folklorisms", that is, direct penetration of oral elements into literary literature, such parallels can be seen, abstracting from the personality of the author, in the very movement of literary material in time - starting from the sources accessible to us or reconstructed.
I have been studying Mongolia for many years. Quite “classical” forms of folklore exist there, although with the preservation of a large number of archaic elements. Writing there - from the XIII century; accordingly there is a literary tradition. When Buddhism was adopted, the characters of its pantheon, now firmly entrenched in the mythology of the Mongols, were as new to them as they are now - realities forced to be mastered by folklore under the pressure of our modernity. Old traditions should not be understood as predetermined and unchanging - active cultural transformations have occurred in the past as well. However, in order to understand them, it is useful to deal with living processes that we have the opportunity to observe directly.
I see one difference - and the main one. It is not about methodology, but rather about the researcher-material relationship. Here I am going to Mongolia as a researcher - I am not a Mongol and do not associate myself with the Mongolian culture, although I am quite familiar with it; my view is a view from the outside. Or: I'm going to a Russian village - it seems to be my culture there, but the village folklore is still not my texts, there is still a certain distance. Even a soil researcher who is in love with the culture of the village cannot remove his urban higher education from his memory. He remains a city man, and for him all these folk songs and rituals are still a foreign culture.
With urban folklore, it is completely different: we are all, to one degree or another, bearers of tradition. And here other difficulties arise.
There is such a form: self-recording. Let's say I remember a song to fix it, but I forgot some places. Looks like some other words could be used. But for a folklorist, this is a monstrous violation of the authenticity of the recording: I do not write down what I heard, but make my own additions, substitute another word or give a different edition, believing, for example, that it will sound better this way. Thus, I produce my own reconstruction of the text. However, this edition may be consistent with my scientific concept - and work for it. This is epistemologically unacceptable.
But I'm the bearer of tradition! So, is it still possible? Or not? Where are the limits of my arbitrariness? How do I separate the self-explorer from the self-carrier?
This is perhaps the main difficulty, although not everyone is aware of it.
In addition, as carriers, we do not see much. In the 90s, the American anthropologist Nancy Rees spoke at the Russian State University for the Humanities and talked about her research on the so-called "Russian conversations", russian talk (that's what her book is called). Among other things, she wrote down quite a few different complaints of our compatriots about life. "How does is called? Nancy asked. - You have such a genre: I call it lamentation ... "- I say:" Whining? Her: "Yes, yes, nytjo, that's good!"
And we only noticed this genre for the first time - precisely thanks to an external observer. And it's really a genre: a typical beginning, a stable structure, repetitive components, and so on.
Or the cries of football fans - this is typical folklore. St. Petersburg folklorist Vladimir Solomonovich Bakhtin, one of the pioneers in the study of modern folklore, understood that it was possible to write down typical questions on the bus, the requests of beggars (also a genre: they have a stable intonation, some are even rhythmized), rumors, rumors, gossip ... - things are absolutely folklore, transmitted in a stable form. There are urban lore and urban mythology that is expressed in these lore. In Moscow, for example, these are legends about Moscow cellars, the Kremlin or Lubyanka, about giant rats in the subway, about crocodiles in the sewers...
There are actually many such "speech genres" - as in the village environment, they are simply devoted to other topics there. They mainly occupy the niche of “lower mythology” - ideas about master spirits - brownies, goblin, water ... - or about carriers of mythologized specialties: witches, sorcerers ... In the city, this area of \u200b\u200bmythology looks a little different - as I said, folklore almost never passes from the village to the city. However, for example, traditional bylichkas are being turned over - stories about meetings with spirits and, in general, about contacts with the other world.
This is the oldest genre, according to written sources, it is known in ancient China. A person meets a spirit, he rewards or punishes him - there are many similar plots, usually quite elementary.
There are, for example, stories about how a person finds himself in the realm of spirits or, on the contrary, they appear in the world of people. A person gets there either by accident, or he is called or lured - for practical purposes. For example, you need to give birth to a devil - they invite a midwife from the village, or you need a musician at a goblin's wedding; in another world, probably, it is bad with such specialists. The hero of the bylichka returns rewarded, although sometimes these awards go sideways to him. Sometimes there is an abduction with sexual intentions - say, a goblin takes away a girl he loves or a female spirit takes possession of a man - let's remember Danila the master and mistress of the Copper Mountain in Bazhov's Ural tales. However, the latter form is not very characteristic of Russian folklore.
Usually people come back from another world some kind of strange - speechless, half-mad; some don't live long after that... So, stories about UFOs are built according to absolutely the same pattern as these little stories. However, where the goals of the abduction should be indicated, there remains an empty space - traditional motives are clearly not suitable: it’s not to play the violin and not to take birth with an alien! - and the latest pseudo-scientific mythology has not developed stable models for this. The material for the ufological bylichka is drawn from science fiction - from books and films, so the set of realities turns out to be extremely poor: silver space suits, little men ... The world of the traditional bylichka is rich in the picture of the world that exists in the village, and here - only that meager assortment of fantastic images, which is received from the TV screen, and not everything can be stated in the language of an oral story.
Forms related more to the ethnography of the city - graffiti, for example - and, of course, parafolklore written forms are drawn into the field of post-folklore - there are much more of them in urban life than in rural life. This is a whole series of written texts - authorless, rewritten from notebook to notebook, living almost according to oral laws: songbooks, albums, "holy letters" or "letters of happiness" ... After all, not all songbooks are functional. Sometimes, especially in the album tradition, a song is recorded for more than just mnemonic purposes, although the primary impulse is likely to be just that. The rewritten song text - say, in girlish, soldier, prison albums - becomes a readable poem, decorated with pictures, vignettes, turning into an intrinsically valuable cultural product. The album tradition has its roots and its development. The modern album of all these varieties has common ancestors: salon albums of the late 18th century, which in turn go back to European samples.
- We see that the study of post-folklore is a new field of knowledge. What tasks does she have to solve? After all, she, apparently, only develops?
- She, perhaps, has already developed. Conceptually, all this subject field is more or less mastered and understandable. Further, I would say - boring everyday work.
Unfortunately, little is happening in this direction. Well, some areas are being processed; but there is nothing like what has been done, say, in the field of the study of the Russian epic. Of course, there is a disparate age; but nevertheless, a whole library has been written about epics - although a lot of unresolved issues remain in epics. Russian - and not only Russian - a fairy tale, a song - on each of these issues there are bibliographies, large corpora of scientific publications of texts ... But there is almost nothing here yet, critical corpora of texts have not yet been collected, and without this their study is very difficult. But it's not just that.
"Postfolklore" is difficult to collect. People involved in, say, anecdotes, mostly draw their material from the Internet. However, classical folklore requires that everything be written down from oral existence, because there is a huge difference between the written word, including on the Internet, and the spoken word.
It is difficult to write down texts of post-folklore, sometimes it is simply difficult to notice them, the pronunciation of some of them cannot be provoked ... Yes, and there are simply technical problems. Let's say a beggar enters the subway and starts talking. At the same time, it is hard to hear it, there is shaking in the metro, you can’t record it on a tape recorder. And in some cases it’s scary to approach: this environment is very criminalized. With the city song - in its natural existence - the same thing. For example, there is a guy in the underpass, singing with a guitar, next to him is a hat for collecting a fee. But as soon as you talk to him, a second one immediately appears, probably his pimp: “What do you want ?!” It is easier with children's folklore, children are more open.
In a word, we examined this field from a helicopter, we know what objects, sections, boundaries exist here. And now we need to go down to each object in order to deal with it seriously and a lot.
Olga Balla
Magazine
