The emergence and development of folklore, its specific features. Folklore and folkloristics

In the XIX - early XX century. developed the basic methods of recording and studying folklore.

Method of "Included observation"(used in the stationary form of collecting work). When using this method, conditions for easy communication are created during the collection of material. Informants constitute the natural communicative environment of the collector. The specificity of the collection work is that the texts are recorded in the situation of a conversation, but not a specially organized interview, so in such an environment it is not always possible to use a voice recorder, some of the texts are recorded from memory. The advantages of the material collected in this way are that the texts are observed in a natural setting, the conversation with the informant is provoked only by the interest of the collector, and not by the questions of the questionnaire. At the same time, the context of the conversation, status, gender and age characteristics of the interlocutors are fixed. The disadvantages of collecting material by the method of "participant observation" include, firstly, a small number of texts, which is determined by the conscious inactive position of the collector, and secondly, the inaccuracy of fixing texts (both phonetic characteristics and designations of rhythmic periods of conversation, separate introductory words necessary for the analysis of illocutionary attitudes of the text.

Statistical Method(was developed by B.K. Malinovsky) - is carried out on the basis of drawing up maps and tables.

System (complex) method involves a comprehensive study of folklore, in relation to certain everyday, ethnographic realities.

cartographic method aims to identify the geography of distribution of certain genres of folklore, the study of folklore phenomena "in space and time." This is a strategic method designed for long-term research. Mapping can be carried out according to ethnic, territorial, temporal principles and makes it possible to trace the prevalence and forms of existence of folklore genres among various peoples and ethnic groups in different periods of their history. The study of folklore by the method of mapping requires a lot of preparatory organizational and collecting work, and, as a rule, requires the unification and coordination of folklorists. Thus, a mapping program is preliminarily drawn up, work is carried out to identify and systematize the available materials, gaps are identified, special maps are compiled, and principles for applying materials to the map are developed.

In the XIX - early XX century. the main directions (schools) of researchers of folk art were formed.

founder mythological school became a folklorist f.I. Buslaev, who, following the brothers Grimm, established the connection between folklore, language, mythology, singled out the principle of the collective nature of the artistic creativity of the people.

School of Borrowing pointed out the amazing similarity of many folklore works among the peoples of the West and the East, raised the question of cultural and historical ties between the folk art of different peoples. The borrowing theory found many followers in Russia (G.N. Potanin, F.I. Buslaev).

The most influential in the XIX - early XX century. was historical school. The principles of the historical school finally took shape in the mid-1990s. HGH c. in the generalizing work of V. F. Miller “Essays on Russian Folk Literature”. So, the researcher of epics, for example, had to answer four basic questions: where, when, in connection with what historical events it was created and what poetic sources its creators relied on. They studied the monuments of folklore and ancient Russian literature, extracting from the annals numerous parallels with real story people. So the prototypes of epic heroes, names, as well as real events that formed the basis of the epic plot situations were established.

Despite the harsh criticism of opponents who reproached scientists for the "theory of the aristocratic origin of epics", the traditions of the historical school in Russian folklore of the 20th century. developed.

So, B.A. Rybakov, answering his opponents, insisted on clarifying the deep connections of the epic with the specific history of Ancient Rus'. In his research, Rybakov made extensive use of chronicles, historical and archeological facts 14 .

Among the modern methods or approaches to the study of folklore, it is necessary to name typological, explaining not individual facts, but establishing patterns. Thus, typological similarity is manifested in the folklore of different peoples in a specific type of folk art (orality, collectivity, traditionalism, variability, etc.). Typologically similar forms and ways of being. Typology explains those striking facts of similarities and coincidences that cannot be explained either by borrowing or by the genetic relationship of peoples.

Thus, the variety of approaches in the study of folk art spoke of the attempts of folklore, which is undergoing its formation, to cover the entire subject as a complex system of many genres.

In the 20th century, for a number of folklorists, the methods of formal research became an alternative to the simplified sociological approach: structural-typological method analysis, involving the identification of invariant models of genres, plots, motives and historical-typological method, involving the study of folklore works in a historical and ethnographic context.

The processes of the history of folklore explores historical poetics, created as a special direction by A.N. Veselovsky. Within its framework, poetic genera, genres, stylistic systems are considered - both in general and in their specific manifestations. Historical poetics explores the connections of oral folk art with written literature, music, visual arts.

Recently, there has been a clear trend towards a comprehensive study of folklore, language, mythology, ethnography, folk art as components of a single culture of the people.

Any method involves reliance on facts. New technologies have entered the life of folklorists that improve the accuracy and quality of records, simplify the mechanical operations of accounting and systematizing material, and finding the necessary information.

There are centers for philological, musicological, choreographic study of folk art, regional folklore centers and houses of folk art with their own archives, periodicals and scientific publications.

The study of folk choreography. A special problem is the study of Russian traditional dance. It should be noted that even today, in many respects, folklore dance remains poorly understood, and our ideas about it are more often based not on scientific facts, but on "myths". The root cause of the current situation should be sought in the apparent insufficiency of expeditionary research practice. Comparing two closely related areas of ethnography: ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, it is impossible not to notice a huge difference in their development. Over the past two centuries, thousands of folk songs, hundreds of songbooks have been published. During the Soviet period, a number of research centers appeared with extensive audio funds, which are systematically replenished and processed. Constant scientific research and discussions have allowed the formation of several schools of ethnomusicologists.

The situation with ethnochoreology was quite different. Recordings and publications of authentic dances were extremely rare. The descriptions of the dances were not given in exact accordance with the authentic originals, but in adaptations or in the author's interpretation and were often passed off as originals. There was practically no research on folk terminology. professionals who study folk dance, was not prepared by any educational institution, which did not contribute to the emergence of an extensive and fruitful scientific discussion.

In 1987, the International Folk Dance Forum was held in Novgorod under the auspices of UNESCO. Forum members from different countries recommendations to Russian choreographers were adopted, including 18 points. Let's list some of the recommendations: “raising the question of the need for serious training of choreographers in folk traditions”; “organization of creative workshops and scientific symposiums”; "creation of a working group to clarify the terms used in folk choreography and choreology"; "creation of national archives of folk dances...".

All these questions remain relevant and practically unresolved today. To increase the level of knowledge of folk dance, the regional nature of traditional dance should become the basis for future research. In the all-Russian choreographic tradition, several

Rybakov B.A. Ancient Rus'. Legends. Epics. Chronicles. - M., 1963.

Original regional performing styles that differ in dance vocabulary, performance style and genre and repertoire composition. It is this originality of different regions that makes up the richness of Russian traditional dance.

However, recently there has been a positive trend in addressing the origins of Russian folk choreography, work has begun on finding and fixing authentic originals of folk choreography, which in the last five years has become the subject of expeditionary practice by many folklore and research teams. New repertory collections have appeared, scientific research in the field traditional choreography, a more active appeal of choreographers to folk themes give hope for the further development of research on folk choreography in Russia, including in the study of the entire spectrum of Russian regional dance styles.

Methods of studying folk art (arts and crafts and folk arts and crafts). The study of folk art is one of the youngest branches of the humanities. This branch of science takes shape in the second half of the 19th century. During this period, the foundations of folklore were laid, in parallel with the study of folklore, the collection of objects of Russian antiquity began. The first archaeological excavations and archival research. The concept of national heritage is expanding, the first publications appear. Of great importance are the works of the outstanding philologist, a brilliant connoisseur of Russian literature F. I. Buslaev, who turned to the most important problems of the origin, evolution, and also the nationality of Russian art. Buslaev raised the question of the close connection and interaction of folk poetry with folk art, publishing a number of interesting, previously unknown monuments.

I. E. Zabelin, who belonged to the number of scientists who first turned to the study of the history of the culture of our country, considered Russian art as a deeply distinctive phenomenon. He owns the idea of ​​a national, original system of artistic thinking, inherent in Russian traditional art.

The founder of the science of Russian arts and crafts was V.V. Stasov, he first revealed the artistic value of contemporary peasant art, seeing in it deep ties with ancient culture, and sought to oppose the original beginning ancient Russian art Byzantine influence. For us, the significance of his works, in essence the first serious analytical work in the field of folk art, is extremely great. Stasov's innovation was also reflected in the fact that he considered works of folk art not only as objects for collecting: he suggested that contemporary artists use folk art in their practice as a genuine art with deep national traditions. However, defending the originality of Russian culture, Stasov gave too great importance influence of the cultures of the Middle and Near East.

At the end of the XIX century. interest in folk life and creativity is expanding more and more. There are various publications not only of ancient monuments, but also of works of contemporary folk art.

At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. the press reflects the attempts of a number of zemstvo figures, including artists who worked directly with handicraftsmen, to support the declining crafts, to preserve the treasures of folk art. So, S. A. Davydova left a number of works on women's folk crafts, in particular on Russian lace, the history of this traditional craft, production techniques, and individual lace-making centers. In the collection "Handicraft Industry of Russia" were published interesting information in such women's crafts as embroidery, gold embroidery, weaving.

During this period, zemstvo organizations played a very significant role in the fate of folk crafts. Surveys of handicraft industries undertaken by them, with the aim of providing them with real assistance, are recorded in reports, articles, reference books. The information carefully collected by Zemstvo figures on statistics, economics of crafts and production techniques is the most valuable factual material for scientific research. Zemstvo organizations published multi-volume illustrated collections on handicrafts throughout Russia and in individual regions, descriptions of folk art exhibitions, and works of congresses of handicraft industry workers.

At the beginning of the XX century. there are studies devoted to certain types of folk art production, which is revealed as a great national art.

So, during the years 1910-1912. 12 releases of the album by A. A. Bobrinsky, united common name. It was a great contribution of the author to the culture of Russia. Albums

introduced readers to the treasures of Russian art, and also served as material for the work of researchers and artists. Bobrinsky's work is the richest source of extensive material not only conscientiously collected, but also systematized by the author. Here, for the first time, an attempt was made to accurately indicate the places of existence of most of the products.

Along with such works generalizing a wide range of material as Bobrinsky's albums, publications appear devoted to individual folk crafts, with a description of the history of their occurrence and production techniques.

A prominent role in the study of folk art was played by N. D. Bartram, an artist by profession, the organizer of the Toy Museum, unique in its collection. In the past, a member of the Zemstvo, who worked with handicraftsmen, he paid great attention the study of the economics of fisheries. Among the artists - members of the "World of Art" association, who defended aesthetic views, an environment that seemed to be far from the problems of the development of folk art, there is the greatest interest in it. A. Benois, speaking about the originality of folk art, ardently protests against the forcible introduction of alien influences into the crafts, leading to the decline - artistic culture. The same thoughts are heard in the articles by I. Bilibin and I. Grabar, who speak of the need to save folk art at all costs from the death that threatens it.

At the end of the XIX century - the beginning of the XX century. museums are active. The Stroganov School, the Moscow Historical Museum and others systematically collect materials on national art, organize expeditions to different regions of Russia. Among private collections, the unique collection of Russian costumes from different provinces and various items of folk arts and crafts by N. Shabelskaya are especially valuable. The publication of outstanding examples of folk art belonging to Shabelskaya was devoted to a special issue of the magazine "Studio". Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century at the beginning of the twentieth century. valuable material was collected, comprehended and partially published.

A new stage in the study of folk art begins after the revolution. In the context of development Soviet culture there is a new attitude to folk art, which contributed to the emergence of a branch of art history science devoted to the problems of the art of folk crafts and the study of their origins. Domestic science of the Soviet period sought to actively intervene in the fate of crafts, its main goal was to promote the development of folk art. Many works of the 1920s and 1930s are a sharp controversy on the issue of restoring the foundations of folk art. Therefore, the issues of studying the best traditions of Russian art and their creative processing become especially relevant. Among the achievements of Soviet science is the organization of exhibitions in the State Historical Museum in 1922-1923, which for the first time widely familiarized the public with peasant creativity. These were the first scientifically built expositions, where extensive material was systematized. Strictly scientific selection of material allowed scientists to identify certain patterns in the development of folk art, to make a number of theoretical generalizations.

The work “Peasant Art” by V. S. Voronov, one of the leaders of expeditions and organizers of exhibitions in the Historical Museum, is of particular importance for domestic art history. In it, issues of local originality were scientifically developed. V. S. Voronov develops a convincing method for describing and analyzing monuments of folk art, which makes it possible to reveal its specificity. In the works of Voronov, devoted to carving and painting on wood, the provisions are further developed, only outlined in their time in the writings of Bobrinsky; Voronov gives a classification folk ornament and establishes the availability of schools artistic painting: Severodvinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Gorodets. This classification has been preserved in art history to the present day.

In the 1920s and 1930s, issues of folk art were of interest to a wide range of researchers. The works of archaeologists and ethnographers make a great contribution to the comprehensive study of folk art. Among the historical and archaeological works, an article by V. A. Gorodtsov is significant, devoted to the question of the origin of a number of ancient motifs preserved in folk art. His work contains detailed iconography of ancient images that have become traditional in folk art.

The works of ethnographers based on the field collection of material, containing detailed descriptions of household items, the technique of their production, and ornamental decorations, are extremely valuable. The most interesting and full coverage of issues related to folk clothing, in the works of N. P. Grinkova, M. E. Sheremetyeva, N. I. Lebedeva, E. N. Kletnova.

In the 1930s, along with extensive collecting and scientific activity, a great deal of practical work began directly with the existing folk crafts. During these years, unfolded vigorous activity Handicraft Museum(now the Museum of Folk Art), on the basis of which the Scientific Research Institute of the Art Industry (NIIKhP) was created in 1931, which carried out the artistic management of crafts. Such prominent scientists as V. S. Voronov, A. V. Bakushinsky, and later V. M. Vasilenko became the heads of the Institute. The collection of material in museums and crafts was carried out by L. I. Sviontkovskaya-Voronova, the author of a serious work on carved bone, V. Ya. Yakovleva, Z. D. Kashkarova, and E. G. Telyakovsky.

This period was most vividly reflected in the works of the prominent scientist A. V. Bakushinsky, who combined scientific, literary work with practice. He found a new method of research and analysis of works of folk art.

Research methods and views of A. V. Bakushinsky are further developed in the works of V. M. Vasilenko, created on the basis of the extensive material he collected. M. Vasilenko in his works of the 30s, devoted to certain types of crafts, gives a vivid description of folk art, focusing on the art of the pre-Soviet period. His monograph "The Northern Carved Bone" is dedicated to the Kholmogory carvers.

As a result of the activities of the 1930s in the field of science and practical work with crafts, the Institute of Art Industry prepared a collection "Folk Art of the USSR in Artistic Crafts". A. V. Bakushinsky, V. M. Vasilenko, V. S. Voronov, G. V. Zhidkov, E. M. Schilling and others took part in writing the articles. The form told about the creative achievements of the masters of folk art over the two decades of Soviet power.

A new stage in the development of art history is associated with the works of Russian scientists in the post-war period, which is characterized by an appeal to much more a wide range previously unknown materials.

A significant event in historical science was the publication of the work of B.A. Rybakov "The Craft of Ancient Rus'", summing up the author's many years of research work in the field of archeology. Rybakov's extensive work introduced scientists to a whole group of previously unknown wonderful decorative items made by masters of the distant past. New archeological data made it possible to speak more confidently about the degree of development of folk crafts in ancient times, their prevalence and diversity.

The study of the origins of folk art made it possible to raise the question of its origin, development and specifics more broadly. Deepening the research of V. A. Gorodtsov, Rybakov pays great attention to the origin of folk ornament motifs, emphasizing them artistic value and trying to find a link between the compositions that exist in modern embroidery and their ancient prototypes.

L. A. Dintses worked in the field of studying the roots of Russian folk ornament; his works “Ancient Features in Russian Folk Art”, “Russian Clay Toy” are devoted to this topic. Among ethnographers, E. E. Blomqvist, N. I. Lebedeva, and G. S. Maslova dealt with issues related to folk art. The extensive material collected by them contains valuable and detailed information about public dwelling, clothing, patterned weaving.

Thus, the fundamental works of historians and ethnographers, articles and publications in the journals "Soviet Ethnography" and "Soviet Archaeology" contained a lot of new data on the development of Russian culture.

In the 40-50s, the leading works in Soviet art criticism were the works of A. B. Saltykov. Working mainly in the field of ceramics, in his writings he touched upon a number of general problems in the development of folk art, continuing what Stasov, Voronov, Bakushinsky started. He was the first to pose many questions about the specifics of decorative art. A. B. Saltykov focused on issues of tradition and innovation, wrote about the features of the solution artistic image in the work of folk masters, concerned the problem of synthesis, as a characteristic feature of decorative art.

A. B. Saltykov's method consisted in a creative approach to traditional art: he was looking for ways to use the traditions of the past in modern art, in relation to modern life.

For the Research Institute of the Art Industry, the post-war years were a period of intense activity for the further collection and publication of materials on

folk art and practical work with crafts. Collective work begins on the creation of a series of books "Artistic crafts of the RSFSR". Thus, all modern Russian crafts were represented, many of which had not previously been covered in the literature. The processing of expeditionary materials, comparing them with things from museum collections lead to new discoveries, make it possible to clarify the centers of crafts, to localize art schools. Particularly interesting results are obtained by complex expeditions of employees of institutes and museums: historians, architects, and art historians. I. E. Grabar played a leading role in organizing this work.

The State Russian Museum in Leningrad published a number of works dedicated to folk wooden sculpture, embroidery and lace.

It is necessary to mention the contribution to the science of folk art made by local collectors M. Rekhachev, D. V. Prokopiev, M. P. Zvantsev, I. N. Shatrov, who published a number of monographic studies on individual folk crafts in the pre-war years and after the war.

Among scientific publications, the works of V. M. Vasilenko are significant. His monograph "The Art of Khokhloma" is devoted to the question of the stylistic artistic features of Khokhloma painting. A great event was the organization in 1957 of the publication of the journal "Decorative Art of the USSR", on the pages of which articles are published on various issues of folk art. The first issue of the magazine was entirely devoted to folk art.

A major role in the popularization of Russian folk art was played by the work of M. A. Ilyin “Russian Decorative Art” (Moscow, 1959), translated into several foreign languages.

In 1960, the work of S. M. Temerin “Russian Applied Art” was published, highlighting the work of both craftsmen and industrial artists. The author paid great attention to the Soviet applied arts 30s, very little touched upon in the literature, and characterized him from the standpoint of his contemporary aesthetic views.

At the present stage, there are certain difficulties in the analysis of sources, since the newly published works are mainly of a highly specialized art criticism nature.

By studying the works of folk art created in different periods, one can identify in the techniques of craftsmanship, in plots and ornaments, a living connection with the centuries-old national culture. In the conditions of handicraft production, there was also an active assimilation of the achievements of simultaneously working masters. Technical improvements, inventions and new motifs, plots and compositions quickly became common property.

Common were not only the skills of work in the field of embroidery, weaving, painting and wood carving, but also the range of things created, their shape and the nature of the decorative design. As a result, the traditional circle of images and techniques of folk decorative art was continuously enriched with new themes, motifs and plots.

It can be assumed that at present art crafts are both an industry and an area of ​​folk art.

The combination of tradition and innovation, style features and creative improvisation, collective started and views individual, man-made™ products and high professionalism are characteristic features of the creative work of craftsmen and craftsmen.

per century technical progress, machines and automation, standard and unification, handicrafts, made mainly by hand, mostly from natural materials, have acquired special significance.

Thus, to date, the following issues of research into folk art have emerged:

1. Ethnological research, revealing the relationship of the traditional way of life, national character and the originality of the artistic creativity of a particular people.

2. Folklore studies, fixing samples of folk art and studying the history of Russian folklore.

3. Art studies aimed at analyzing the artistic and aesthetic features of amateur art (self-taught artists, amateur authors).

4. Sociological research that reveals the role and place of NHC in the life of an ethnic group, trends and social factors of development.

5. Pedagogical research of the NHC, helping to determine the spiritual and moral values ​​and creative abilities of the individual in the process of non-professional artistic activity.

Modern Russian scientists use a variety of scientific research methods:
empirical methods; questioning; observation; testing, conversations, sociometry; analysis
and content analysis; system analysis; pedagogical modeling; pedagogical

experiment that allows them to perform theoretical studies NHC (identification of the essence, principles, functions, patterns of development of NHT) and applied research (study of specific processes and phenomena in the development of NHT).

Questions and tasks for self-examination:

1. Expand the essence of the concept of "folklore"

2. Tell us about the main stages in the development of Russian folklore.

3. Describe the research methods of folk art (arts and crafts).

4. List the main methods of collecting and studying folk art.

5. Prepare a report on the topic “Formation and development of Russian folklore”, “The first collections of folklore works in Russia”, “Creativity of outstanding collectors and researchers of folklore (Kireevsky, V.I. Dal, A.N. Afanasyev, G.S. Vinogradov , E. A. Pokrovsky, V. Y. Propp, B. N. Putilov and others, to choose from)”.

Bibliography

1. Azadovsky M.K. History of Russian folklore. - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1958. T. 1. - 479 s; 1963. V.2. -363 p.

2. Asafiev B.V. About folk music / Comp. I.I. Zemtsovsky, A.B. Kunanbaeva. - L .: Music, 1987. -247 p: notes.

3. Banin A.A. Russian instrumental music folklore tradition. - M .: Publishing house of the state. rep. center of Russian folklore, 1997. - 247 p.: notes.

4. Bogatyrev Ts.G. Questions of the theory of folk art. - M.: Art, 1971. - 544 p.

5. Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics / Ed., entry. Art. and note. V.M. Zhirmunsky. - L.: Goslitizdat, 1940. - 364 p.

6. East Slavic folklore: Dictionary of scientific and folk terminology / Ed. V.E. Guseva, V.M. Gatsak; Rep. ed. K.P. Kabashnikov. - Minsk: Navuka i tekhshka, 1993. - 478 p.

7. Gippius E.V. Review of the most important collections of musical recordings of Russian folk songs from the 60s of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century // Materials and articles for the 100th anniversary of the birth of E.V. Gippius / Ed.-ed.: E.A. Dorohova, O.A. Flank. M.: Composer, 2003. S. 59-111.

8. Gusev V.E. Russian folk art culture (theoretical essays) / St. Petersburg, Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography. - St. Petersburg, 1993. - 110 p.

9. Eremina V.I. ritual and folklore. - L.: Nauka, 1991. - 207 p.

10. Ivanova T.G. Russian folklore at the beginning of the 20th century biographical sketches. - St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1993.-203 p.

11. Mints SI., Pomerantseva E.V. Russian folklore: Reader. 2nd ed. - M.: Higher. school, 1971. -416s.

12. Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1994. - 240 p.

13. Rudneva A.V. Russian folk musical creativity In: Essays on the Theory of Folklore. - M.: Composer, 1994. - 222 p.: notes.

14. Russian thought about musical folklore. Materials and documents / Comp. P.A. Wolfius. - M.: Music, 1979. - 367 p.: notes.

15. Russian folk poetry: Reader on folklore / Comp. SOUTH. Round. -M.: Higher. school, 1986. - 535 p.

16. Slavic Antiquities: Ethnolinguistic Dictionary: In 5 volumes / Ed. N.I. Tolstoy. - M.: International relations, 1995. T. 1: (A-G). - 584 s; 1999. Vol. 2: (D-K). - 704 s; 2004. V. 3: (K-P). -704 p.

17. Bibliographic series "Russian Folklore", founded by M.Ya. Meltz: Russian folklore: Bibliographic index. 1945-1959 / Comp. M.Ya. Meltz. - L .: Publishing House of the Library of the Academy of Sciences, 1961. - 402 s; Same. 1917-1944. L., 1966. - 683 s; Same. 1960-1965. L., 1967. - 539 p.; Same. 1901-1916. L., 1981. - 477 p.; Same. 1966-1975. L., 1984. Part 1. - 420 s; 1985. Part 2. - 385 s; Same. 1976-1980 / Comp. T.G. Ivanova. L., 1987. - 399 s; Same. 1881-1900. L, 1990. - 500 s; Same. 1981-1985. SPb., 1993. -

543 s; Same. 1800-1855. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1996. - 262 p.; Same. 1991-1995. SPb., 2001. -642 p.

18. From the history of Russian Soviet folklore. - L.: Nauka, 1981. - 277 p.

19. From the history of Russian folklore. - L .: Nauka, 1990. Issue. 3. - 278 s; Same. - St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1998. Issue. 4-5. - 598 p.

20. Mapping and areal research in folklore: Sat. Art. / Comp. O.A. Flank. - M., 1999. - 220 p. (Proceedings of the State Russian Academy of Sciences named after the Gnessins; Issue 154).

21. Methods of studying folklore: Sat. scientific tr. / Rev. Ed.: V.E. Gusev. - L.: Lenizdat, 1983. - 154 p. (Folklore and folkloristics; Issue 7).

Content:

Introduction ______________________________ __________________________3
I main part _________________________ _________________________4
1. What is folklore ______________________ _________________________-
2. Factors that influenced the formation of folklore _____________________ 5
3. The difference between literature and folklore ______ ___________________________7
4. About the genres of Russian folklore ___________ __________________________9
5. Functions of folklore _____________________ ________________________10
6. Mythological representations in non-ritual folklore ____________12
II About some folklore genres ________________________ ______14

Epics ________________________ ______________________________ -
Historical songs _________________________ _________________15
Song lyrics ________________________ _____________________16
Conspiracies ______________________ _____________________________ 21

Main part.
I.1 . What is folklore
Until now, disputes about what folklore is, what is its specificity have not ceased. This question is far from idle. Folklore is not just folk epics and songs, fairy tales and legends, proverbs and charms. Folklore is special kind information, a special kind of folk art, special form collective creativity.
Yu.M. Sokolov gave a general definition of folklore, the most accepted to date. “Folklore,” he wrote, “should be understood as the oral poetic creativity of the broad masses of the people.”
The word "folklore" is gradually replacing such equivalent terms as "oral literature" and even "folk poetry". The English word "folklore", i.e. folk wisdom, folk tradition, is most often used in relation to folk poetic art, but along with this they also talk about musical and visual folklore. This term is international, although in different countries it is understood far from being the same.
Folklore is poetry created by the people and existing among the masses, in which it reflects its labor activity, social and everyday way of life, knowledge of life, nature, cults and beliefs. Folklore embodies the views, ideals and aspirations of the people, their poetic fantasy, richest world thoughts, feelings, experiences, protest against exploitation and oppression, dreams of justice and happiness. This is an oral, verbal artistic creativity that arose in the process of the formation of human speech. M. Gorky said: “... The beginning of the art of the word is in folklore”
In a pre-class society, folklore is closely connected with other types of human activity, reflecting the rudiments of his knowledge and religious and mythological ideas.

2. Factors that influenced the formation of folklore.
The features of the formation of ancient Russian culture are revealed already at the initial stage of the formation of the ethnic self-consciousness of the Slavs, before the adoption of Christianity by Russia and have a close connection with those times that the Slavs themselves called the "Trojan Ages" or the old time. “There were, brothers, the times of Troyan,” writes the author of The Tale of Igor's Campaign. She calls Boyan "the old Nightingale", and Prince Igor "the mighty grandson of Troyanov."
The memory of this time is also preserved in folklore: the names of the distant ancestors of Russian heroes are mentioned in songs and epics, but nevertheless, the very space of ancient Russian culture begins to be created from the finally determined “place of development”.
Among the factors that influenced the formation of the core of Russian culture, natural and climatic conditions were of paramount importance, and they, in turn, were determined by the peculiarities of the geographical location. How did the relations of the Slavs develop with the space surrounding them? The forest played a significant role in the formation of the “life and concepts” of a person in ancient Rus'. He became a habitat and provided the ancient Slavs with a wide variety of "services". The forest fed, clothed, shod, warmed the ancient Slavs, served as the most reliable refuge from enemies. Despite this, the man was afraid of the forest, inhabiting it with all sorts of fears.
The understanding of space in Russian culture took place through the steppe. It formed an attitude to space as the absence of visible boundaries and limits, and at the same time as a threatening space, beyond which the "unknown" side began, alien, encroaching on the space, which in the minds of the ancient Slavs was already designated as "one's own", images of Russians heroes in oral folk art embodied the desire to protect themselves from this danger, thus, the steppe and the forest combined two opposite principles - infinity and border, elements and the desire to organize space.
Perhaps only the river gave the ancient Slavs a clear system of coordinates, formed skills joint activities, organization and order.
The natural conditions were supplemented by the peculiarities of the climate, which in turn influenced the formation of the type of economic activity, psychological make-up, habits, traditions - everything that is called the mentality of the people. The climatic conditions of the East European Plain - the zone of settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the 6th century - differed from those in which the idea of ​​labor was formed among the peoples of Western European countries. The continental climate, with its long and cold winters, short springs, hot summers and short autumns, demanded from the farmer an enormous exertion of strength during the period of suffering and a leisurely and contemplative attitude to work during the winter.
The complexities of climatic conditions formed the idea of ​​labor activity as an intermittent process. During the harvest, as well as "reclaiming" the space for cultivating the land from the forest, the role of collective labor increased. This is how collectivism developed, the prerequisites for individualism were poorly visible, since there were no motives for competitiveness in labor. Working in a team, people did not seek to stand out among others, since collective activity was more effective.
This was the circumstance that ensured the development of folk poetry in the past, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, the absence of "sharp differences in the mental life of the people." “The mental and moral life,” he points out, “is the same for all members of such a people - therefore, the works of poetry generated by the excitement of such a life are equally close and understandable, equally sweet and related to all members of the people.” In such historical conditions, works appeared created by "the whole people, as one moral person." Thanks to this, folk poetry permeates the collective principle. It is present in the appearance and perception by listeners of newly created works, in their subsequent existence and processing. Collectivity is manifested not only externally, but also internally - in the folk poetic system itself, in the nature of the generalization of reality, in images, etc. portrait characteristics heroes, in certain situations and images of folklore works there are few individual features that occupy such a prominent place in fiction.
As a rule, at the time of creation, the work is experiencing a period of special popularity and creative flourishing. But there comes a time when it begins to distort, collapse and be forgotten. New times require new songs. The images of folk heroes express the best features of the Russian national character; the content of folklore works reflects the most typical circumstances of folk life. At the same time, folk poetry could not but reflect the historical limitations and contradictions of the peasant ideology. Living in oral transmission, the texts of folk poetry could change significantly. However, having reached complete ideological and artistic completeness, the works often remained for a long time almost unchanged as a poetic heritage of the past, as a cultural wealth of enduring value.

3. The difference between literature and folklore.
Folklore and literature can and should be correlated not only as two types of artistic culture (in synchronous consideration), but also as two stages, two stages, one of which (folklore) preceded the other (literature) in the historical movement of forms and types of culture (that is in diachronic consideration). Even the most ancient literatures of the world (for example, Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, etc.) arose no more than 4,000 years ago, while folklore genetically dates back to the era of the formation of human speech, that is, it arose 100,000-13,000 years ago. Among the Eastern Slavs, with the same age of folklore tradition (rooted in the proto- and pre-Slavic ethnic environment), the age of literature is much more modest - only about 1000 years.
Consideration of the differences between literature and folklore is usually based on a series of oppositions (oppositions). We list the most important of them:

4. On the genres of Russian folklore.

The genres of Russian folklore, as well as the folklore of other peoples, are extremely diverse: some of them are epics, ballads, songs, ditties - songs and are inextricably linked with folk music, others - fairy tales, legends, legends, bylichki and byvalshchina - narrative (prose), the third - dressing up, folk plays (“Tsar Maximilian” and “The Boat”, etc.), puppet shows (“Petrushka”), numerous games, round dances and multi-genre in its composition wedding ceremony- dramatic. Epics, legends, fairy tales, love lyrics live out of connection with the rite; lamentations, sentences, friends, carols, stoneflies are closely related to family or calendar rites; lullabies, nursery rhymes exist in the children's environment; epics, historical songs, legends are the property of adults only, etc.
The connection of individual folklore genres with everyday life, with reality, with the living conditions of the Russian people is also different, which also determines their historical destinies.
At the same time, all genres of verbal folklore are characterized by common features: all of them are works of art of the word, in their origins they are associated with archaic forms of art, they exist mainly in oral transmission, they are constantly changing. This determines the interaction in them of the collective and individual principles, a peculiar combination of tradition and innovation. In this way, folk genre- historically developing type of oral-poetic work. In one way or another, all folklore genres are connected with the history of the people, with the reality that called them to life and determines their further existence, their flourishing or extinction. “Tell me how the people lived, and I will tell you how they wrote” - these wonderful words of the great Russian scientist, academician A.N. Veselovsky can also be attributed to oral creativity: how the people lived, so he sang and told. Therefore, folklore reveals folk philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. A.M. Gorky could rightfully say that “one cannot know the true history of the working people without knowing oral folk art.”
Processes associated with the impact of one of the folklore genres on the traditions of others can be identified. They can be called historical-genre. Such is the connection between the traditions of ballad songs, which were originally formed on the basis of the transformation of the traditions of historical songs, and subsequently experienced the influence of epics and a number of lyrical genres: songs, lamentations.
The processes of formation of national-folk specific traditions in folklore, which stood out from the general composition of the poetic culture of kindred peoples, are seen. These are historical and national traditions. Such are the processes of the formation of the traditions of ritual folklore, epic creativity among various Slavic peoples.
Historians have long noted the historical migration process, which can be traced by studying cultural interactions in the analysis of the international distribution and national processing of some fairy tales, proverbs, and riddles.

5. Functions of folklore.
It is the function of a folklore work, its everyday purpose, that is one of the defining, but, of course, not the only feature in the concept of a genre.
So, for example, the magical function gave rise to the main features of conspiracies, which were supposed to give health, well-being, good luck in hunting, etc., and ritual poetry, which allegedly provided a good harvest, wealth, happiness in family life. At the same time, this function is not the only genre feature of incantations and ritual songs: they differ from each other in the nature of the performance, individual or collective, tale or song, and in the features of the construction of the poetic system. The informational function is the main one, but to varying degrees for historical legends, bylichki about goblin, mermaids and brownies, songs about Ivan the Terrible, Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. However, this does not give us reason to consider all works that are profoundly different in terms of their other characteristics as one genre. We see that a fairy tale and a legend, although they differ in their function, have, since they are genres of oral prose, a number of common features, just like epics and historical songs, which are works of a song epos, or such functionally extremely different small genres as proverbs. and riddles. However, it is the function that most tangibly expresses the genre difference in many similar works. It is the function that gives grounds to divide oral prose into fabulous, for which the main one is aesthetic function, and non-fabulous when the informative function dominates.
The sphere of folklore covers very diverse genres, and if some of them are characterized by the dominance of the aesthetic function, then for others - the dominance of the non-aesthetic and the secondary aesthetic function. Therefore, for example, in order for a predisposition to utter a funeral lament to arise, it is not enough to tune in to the perception of the text with certain aesthetic qualities. Someone's death must occur, and the everyday tradition of the social group to which the performer and her listeners belong must prescribe in connection with this a certain type of funeral rite, which provides for mourning the dead with a lament. Consequently, the pronunciation of a folklore text can be stimulated by ritual situations and the ritual functions of the text in situations of this kind. At the same time, this does not mean that a text that has arisen or reproduced in such conditions should be devoid of aesthetic qualities. Folklorists justifiably talk about the poetics of lamentations, incantations, ritual songs, etc., meaning that their aesthetic qualities arise in the process of ritual activity. Or, in other words, aesthetic activity appears here in a complex complex of forms and types of activity, it accompanies them, arises in connection with them. At the same time, in the folklore of all peoples, genres are well known, which are characterized by the dominance of aesthetic functions. There are no traditional prescriptions for them when they should be pronounced. However, their connection with peasant life could be expressed in the fact that in certain situations it was impossible to pronounce them: for example, fairy tales were performed in Lent. If the tradition did not prescribe ritual fun, then fairy tales could not be performed on days when there was a dead person in the village, and so on.
In some genres, for example, in a fairy tale or a song, the aesthetic function clearly prevails, in others, for example, in legend, it fades into the background, is subordinated to the informative function, even if we have a highly artistic text. It can be minimal, as, for example, in an incantation or a tale, the meaning of which is entirely contained in their utilitarian meaning, which does not prevent them, depending on the talent of the performer, from rising to the heights of poetic art.
The ratio of functions also changes, it is determined by time, place, conditions of performance, depends on the degree of talent and the nature of the performer's creativity. The nature of the work, and consequently its genre affiliation, depends on whether the narrator or the singer seeks to entertain his listeners, impress them with his skill, read them any moral teaching, communicate some knowledge, information, subordinate to his will, or whether the task of the performer - bring good luck, health, well-being.

6. Mythological representations in non-ritual folklore
All arts (with the exception of newly invented ones, such as cinema) - literature, music, dance, visual arts, theater - in one way or another go back to the ritual action of traditional societies. From the point of view of origin, they are nothing more than a late result of the decomposition of the original ritual unity and the oblivion of the original mythological meanings. The highest, from the point of view of modern man, the achievements of the spirit, manifested in art, would perhaps seem to a traditional person to be complete nonsense and a sign of the final decline of the world, evidence of its imminent end. But it should be noted that the oral tradition itself underwent a similar evolution, the development (or decline) of which also followed the path of oblivion. The original meaning of the habitual rites, which lost their "legitimacy" and "legal" status with Christianization, was increasingly eroded from the people's memory, they gradually became customs (that is, that which exists as usual, almost out of habit), accompanied by beliefs, beliefs (i.e. what they believe, traditional man meanwhile, he knew, and in this sense his way of thinking is very close to scientific-rational). The verbal (verbal) side of the rite, without completely separating from the "active" (actional), gave rise to a completely new phenomenon, bearing to varying degrees the features of traditional and written culture - non-ritual folklore. Strictly speaking, only it should be called “oral folk art”, since ritual texts are inextricably linked with the corresponding actions (for example, “curling a beard” from ears), exclude the very concept of creativity as a free generation of new texts: the meaning of the rite is in its invariably precise reproduction that guarantees effectiveness. Creativity, even collective, is out of the question here - there are only slow evolutionary changes in oral texts.
Numerous reflections in folklore of mythological motifs and, more importantly, its very organization with the help of a traditional set of binary oppositions (binary oppositions), the reproduction of the ancient model of the world testify that the tradition not only did not collapse with Christianization, but completely retained its position as a universal regulator of human behavior, only partly yielding this function to the popular faith at the mass level. At its core, folk life remained traditionally pagan. But Christianization opened up new opportunities for the work of the spirit, and bookish written culture opened up new opportunities for reason, rational thinking.

About some folklore genres.

1. Epics.
Epics (Russian heroic epic) are a wonderful heritage of the past, evidence of the ancient culture and art of the people. Arising in the XI-XV centuries. epic songs about the capital city of Kyiv and its struggle with the nomads, about the trading city of Novgorod, its riches and wide international relations, songs about ancient Russian heroes, brave warriors, successful merchants and dashing ushkuyniki for several centuries were passed from mouth to mouth and partially survived in oral tradition to the present day. The Russian heroic epic has been preserved in a living oral existence, perhaps in the original form of the plot content and the main principles of the form. The epic got its name from the word “reality” that is close in meaning. This means that the epic tells about what once actually happened, although not everything in the epic is true. Epics were written down from storytellers (often illiterate), who adopted them according to tradition from previous generations. The main number of plots was created within the Kievan state, that is, in those places that are depicted in them .. The source of each heroic song was some kind of historical fact. In the epic, as in the folk tale, there is a lot of fiction. Bogatyrs are people of extraordinary strength, they ride mighty horses through rivers and forests, lift weights on their shoulders that are beyond the power of any person.
The epic is an old song, and not everything in it is clear, it is told in a leisurely, solemn tone. Many Russian epics speak of the heroic deeds of folk heroes. For example, epics about Volga Buslaevich, the winner of Tsar Saltan Beketovich; about the hero Sukhman, who defeated the enemies - nomads; about Dobryn Nikitich. Russian heroes never lie. Ready to die, but not leave their native land, they consider service to the fatherland their first and holy duty, although they are often offended by princes who do not trust them. Epics told to children teach them to respect human labor and love their homeland. They united the genius of the people.
Epics of the Kyiv cycle, associated with Kyiv, with the Dnieper Slavutich, with Prince Vladimir the Red Sun, heroes began to take shape at the turn of the 10th - 11th centuries. They expressed in their own way the public consciousness of an entire historical era, reflected the moral ideals of the people, preserved the features ancient life, daily life events. “The value of the heroic epic lies in the fact that, by its origin, it is inextricably linked with the people, with those smerd warriors who plowed the land and fought under the banners of Kyiv with the Pechenegs and Polovtsy”

2. Historical songs
Historical songs are a separate genre of folklore. Their artistic originality remains insufficiently studied. In pre-revolutionary science, they were often recognized as a degradation of the heroic epic, a scrap from epics, and in this regard, motives, images and stylistic devices common with epics (as if residual phenomena) were considered their dignity. I beg to differ. “Song of prophetic Oleg”, “Songs about Stepan Razin” can be put today on a par with the “captain's daughter”, “Pugachev's story” and other historical works. They are also of great artistic value. This is an expression of the historical self-consciousness of the people. The Russian people in their historical songs realized their historical meaning. It is also a work of art and history about the past. Its attitude to the past is active: it reflects the historical views of the people to an even greater extent than historical memory. The historical content in the songs is conveyed by the storytellers consciously. Preservation of the historically valuable in the epic (be it names, events, relationships) is the result of the conscious, historical attitude of the people to the content of the epic. The people in their work proceed from fairly clear historical ideas about time. The consciousness of the historical value of the transmitted and the peculiar ideas of the people, and not just mechanical memorization, determine the stability of the historical content of the songs.

3. Song lyrics.
Lyrical songs have retained their connection with some rituals (wedding, round dance) or originated from playing rituals. In the texts of such songs, the influence of the traditional model of the world with its set of main oppositions, as well as some mythological motifs, is still fully restored.
Consider a lyric song.

I'll go out the gate
I'll look far.
The mountains are high there
The lakes are deep.
In these lakes
Pike fish lives
White Beluga.
I'll throw a net -
I live to take out fish.
Where to sit
Live fish to clean?

I'll sit down
To the green garden;
I'll sit still
To the valley,
On the summer trail.
Wherever the darling goes
etc.................

n1.doc

1. The social nature of folklore. In our time, the problems of folklore are becoming more and more relevant. Not a single human science - neither ethnography, nor history, nor linguistics, nor the history of literature can do without folklore materials and research. We are gradually beginning to realize that the clue to many and very diverse phenomena of spiritual culture lies in folklore. Meanwhile, folkloristics itself has not yet defined itself, its tasks, the specifics of its material and its own specifics as a science. True, in our science there are a number of works of a general theoretical nature. However, life is moving forward at such a rapid pace that the propositions put forward in these works no longer satisfy, do not correspond to the extremely complex picture that has gradually been revealed to us as a result of persistent research work. To determine the subject and essence of our science, to establish its place among other related sciences, to determine the specifics of its material has become a matter of urgent necessity. The correctness of methods and, consequently, of conclusions also depends on a correct understanding of the essence and task of science. The formulation of general theoretical questions has not only a general cognitive, philosophical significance, but also helps to concretely resolve the research problems that confront us.

In Western Europe there is also no shortage of general theoretical work. However, these works as a whole satisfy us even less than the early Soviet works. Folkloristics is an ideological science. Its methods and attitudes are determined by the worldview of the era and reflect it. With the fall of the worldview, the principles of the science he created fall. We cannot be guided by scientific views created by romanticism or enlightenment or any other direction. Our task is to create science from the worldview of our era and our country.

The specifics of folklore 17

What is meant by "folklore" in the latest Western European science? To answer this question, it is enough to open any monograph under the appropriate title. So, if we take the book of the famous German folklorist Ion Meyer "Deutsche Volkskunde" (1921, "German Folklore"), then we will see the following sections there: village, buildings, courtyards; plants; customs; superstition; language; legends; fairy tales; folk songs; bibliography.

Such a picture is typical of all Western European science, predominantly German and French, and to a lesser extent - for English and American. The same picture, but with more specialization, is given by magazines. Here, for example, one studies the smallest details buildings, architraves, shutters, princelings, stoves, utensils, household items, vessels, cradles, spinning wheels, costumes, hats, etc., etc. Along with this, ritual life, weddings, holidays, and also all area of ​​poetic creativity: fairy tales, legends, songs, legends, sayings, etc.

This picture is not accidental. It reflects a certain understanding by science of its tasks. The presuppositions or propositions on which this science is built may be reduced to the following:

1) the culture of one stratum of the population is studied, namely, the peasantry;

2) the subject of science is both material and spiritual culture;

3) the peasantry of only one people serves as the subject of science, namely, in most cases, its own, the one to which the researcher himself belongs.

None of these provisions can be accepted by us. Our science is entirely built on other foundations.

We, firstly, separate the realm of material and spiritual creativity and make them the subject of different, albeit related, related, mutually connected and dependent sciences. The view that the material and spiritual creativity of the peasantry can be studied by one science is essentially a noble view. This is not done for the culture of the ruling classes. The history of technology and architecture, on the one hand, and the history of literature or music, etc., on the other, are different sciences, because here are the upper strata of society. On the contrary, as far as the peasantry is concerned, the construction of ancient stoves and the rhythm of lyrical songs can be studied by the same science. We know perfectly well that there is the closest connection between material and spiritual culture, and yet we share

18 The specifics of folklore

The area of ​​material and spiritual creativity is exactly the same > as it is done for the culture of the upper classes. Folklore is understood only as spiritual creativity, and even; already, only verbal, poetic creativity. Since poetic creativity is in fact almost always associated with music, one can speak of musical folklore and single it out as a special folklore discipline.

Such an understanding of folklore has long been characteristic of Russian science. Thus, what we call folklore is not called folklore at all in the West. We call folklore that which in the West is called traditions populaires, tradizioni populari, Volksdichtung, etc., and which is not the subject of an independent science there. On the contrary, what is called folklore in the West, we do not consider science, but at best we recognize it as popular science of homeland studies. But whose poetic work is being studied? As we can see, peasant creativity is being studied in the West. To this it must be added that the modern peasantry is being studied, but only in so far as this modernity has preserved the past. Its subject is the "living antiquity" - an installation that we also kept for quite a long time.

Such a point of view is unacceptable for us because we study every phenomenon as a process in its motion. Folklore existed before the peasantry appeared on the historical arena in general. Approaching the matter historically, we will have to say that for pre-class peoples we will call folklore the creativity of the totality of these peoples. All the poetic creativity of primitive peoples is entirely folklore and serves as the subject of folklore. For peoples who have reached the stage of class development, we will call folklore the creativity of all strata of the population, except for the dominant one, whose creativity belongs to literature. First of all, this includes the creativity of the oppressed classes, like peasants and workers, but also of intermediate strata, gravitating towards the social ranks. So, one can still talk about petty-bourgeois folklore, but it is no longer possible to talk, for example, about the folklore of the nobility.

Finally, we see that in the West, folklore is understood as the peasant culture of one people, namely, in most cases, their own. The principle of selection here is quantitative and national. The culture of one people is the subject of one science, folklore, Volkskunde. The culture of all other peoples, including primitive ones, is the subject of another science, called very differently: anthropology

The specifics of folklore 19

Gia, ethnography, ethnology, ethnology - Volkerkun-de. There is no clear terminology.

While we fully acknowledge the possibility scientific study national cultures Nevertheless, such a principle is completely unacceptable for us, and it is easy to bring it to the point of absurdity. Indeed: if, suppose, a French scientist studies French songs, then this is folklore. If this scientist studies, for example, Albanian songs, then this is already ethnography. We must clearly oppose our point of view to such an understanding: the science of folklore embraces the creativity of all peoples, no matter who studies them. Folklore is an international phenomenon.

All of the above allows us to summarize our positions and say: folklore is understood as the creativity of the social lower classes of all peoples, at whatever stage of development they may be. For pre-class peoples, folklore is understood as the creativity of the totality of these peoples.

Here the question naturally arises: what is folklore in a classless society, in the conditions of our socialist reality?

It would seem that as a class phenomenon it would have to die out. However, after all, literature is a class phenomenon, but it does not die out. Under socialism, folklore loses its specific features as the work of the social rank and file, since we have neither the top nor the bottom, there is only the people. Therefore, folklore in our society becomes a national property in the full sense of the word. That which is inconsonant with the people in the new social situation dies off. The rest undergoes profound qualitative changes, approaching literature. What these changes are - this is yet to be shown by research, but it is clear that the folklore of the era of capitalism and the era of socialism cannot be the same.

2. Folklore and literature. All the foregoing determines only one side of the matter: this determines the social nature of folklore, but nothing has yet been said about all its other features.

The above features are clearly not enough to single out folklore as a special kind of creativity, and folkloristics as a special science. But they determine a number of other signs, already specifically folklore in essence.

First of all, let us establish that folklore is the product of a special kind of poetic creativity. But poetry is also literature. Indeed, between folklore and literature, between folklore and literary criticism, there is the closest connection.

20 The specifics of folklore

Literature and folklore, first of all, partially coincide in their poetic genres and genres. True, there are genres that are specific only to literature and are impossible in folklore (for example, the novel), and vice versa: there are genres that are specific to folklore and impossible in literature (for example, conspiracy). Nevertheless, the very fact of the existence of genres, the possibility of classifying here and there into genres, is a fact that belongs to the realm of poetics. Hence the commonality of some tasks and methods of studying literary criticism and folklore.

One of the tasks of folklore studies is the task of identifying and studying the category of genre and each genre separately, and this task is literary criticism.

One of the most important and most difficult tasks of folklore studies is the study of the internal structure of works, in short, the study of composition, structure. A fairy tale, an epic, riddles, songs, conspiracies - all this has still little studied laws of addition, structure. In the field of epic genres, this includes the study of the plot, the course of action, the denouement, or, in other words, the laws of plot structure. The study shows that folklore and literary works are built differently, that folklore has its own specific structural laws. Literary criticism is unable to explain this specific regularity, but it can be established only by the methods of literary analysis.

The same area includes the study of means of poetic language and style. Exploring the means poetic language- a purely literary task. Here again it turns out that folklore has means specific to it (parallelisms, repetitions, etc.) or that the usual means of poetic language (comparisons, metaphors, epithets) are filled with a completely different content than in literature. This can only be established through literary analysis.

In short, folklore has a very special, specific poetics for it, different from the poetics of literary works. The study of this poetics will reveal the extraordinary artistic beauty inherent in folklore.

Thus we see that not only is there a close connection between folklore and literature, but that folklore as such is a phenomenon of a literary order. It is one of the types of poetic creativity.

Folkloristics in the study of this side of folklore, in its descriptive elements, is a literary science. The connection between these sciences is so close that between

The specifics of folklore 21

Folklore and literature and the corresponding sciences often put an equal sign in our country; the method of studying literature is wholly transferred to the study of folklore, and this is the end of the matter. However literary analysis can, as we see, only establish the phenomenon and patterns of folklore poetics, but he is unable to explain them.

In order to protect ourselves from such a mistake, we must establish not only the similarities between literature and folklore, their relationship and to some extent consubstantial, but also establish the specific difference between them, determine their difference. Indeed, folklore has a number of specific traits, which distinguish it so strongly from literature that the methods of literary research are not enough to solve all the problems associated with folklore.

One of the most important differences is that literary works always and certainly have an author. Folklore works may not have an author, and this is one of the specific features of folklore.

The question must be posed with all possible precision and clarity. Or we recognize the existence of the people; creativity as such, as a phenomenon of social and cultural historical life peoples, or we do not recognize it, we affirm that it is a poetic or scientific fiction and that there is only the creativity of individual individuals or groups.

We stand on the point of view that folk art is not a fiction, but exists precisely as such, and that the study of it is the main task of folklore as a science. In this regard, we stand in solidarity with our old scientists, like F. Buslaev or O. Miller. What the old science felt instinctively, expressed still naively, clumsily, and not so much scientifically as emotionally, must now be cleansed of romantic errors and raised to the proper height. modern science with her thoughtful methods and precise techniques.

Brought up in the school of literary traditions, we often still cannot imagine that a poetic work could arise in any other way than a literary work arises through individual creativity. We all think that someone had to compose or put it together first. Meanwhile, completely different ways of the emergence of poetic works are possible, and the study of them is one of the main and very complex problems.

22 The specifics of folklore

Folkloristics. There is no way to go into the full breadth of this problem here. It suffices to point out here only that folklore should be genetically close not to literature, but to language, which is also not invented by anyone and has neither an author nor authors. It arises and changes quite naturally and independently of the will of people, wherever appropriate conditions have been created for this in the historical development of peoples. The phenomenon of universal similarity is not a problem for us. It would be inexplicable for us that there is no such similarity. The similarity indicates a pattern, and the similarity of folklore works is only a special case. historical pattern leading from the same forms of production of material culture to the same or similar social institutions, to similar tools of production, and in the field of ideology - to the similarity of forms and categories of thinking, religious ideas, ritual life, languages ​​and folklore. All this lives, is interdependent, changes, grows and dies.

Returning to the question of how to empirically imagine the emergence of folklore works, it will suffice here to point out at least that. folklore may initially constitute an integrating part of the rite. With the degeneration or fall of the rite, folklore is detached from it and begins to live an independent life. This is just an illustration of the general situation. Proof can only be given by specific research. But the ritual origin of folklore was clear, for example, already to A. N. Veselovsky in last years his life.

The difference cited here is so fundamental that it alone forces us to single out folklore as a special kind of creativity, and folkloristics as a special science. The historian of literature, wishing to study the origin of a work, seeks its author. The folklorist, with the help of broad comparative material, establishes the conditions that created the plot. But this difference is not limited to the difference between literature and folklore. They differ not only in their origin, but also in the forms of their existence, their existence.

It has long been known that literature is distributed by writing, folklore - by word of mouth. This difference is still considered a purely technical difference. However, this difference goes to the heart of the matter. She marks deep different life these two types of poetry. A literary work, once created, does not change. It works in the presence of two quantities:

The specifics of folklore 23

This is the author, the creator of the work, and the reader. The intermediate link between them is a book, manuscript or performance. If a literary work is unchanged, then the reader, on the contrary, is always changing. Aristotle was read by the ancient Greeks, Arabs, humanists, and we read it, but everyone reads and understands it differently. A true reader always reads creatively. A literary work can please, delight or revolt. He would often like to intervene in the fate of the heroes, reward or punish them, change their tragic fate to a happy one, and execute the triumphant villain. But the reader, no matter how deeply he may be moved by a literary work, is not able and has no right to make any changes to it to suit his personal tastes or the views of his era.

What is the situation with folklore in this respect? Folklore also exists in the presence of two quantities, but quantities different from what we have in the literature. This is the performer and the listener, directly, or rather, directly opposed to each other.

Let's focus our attention first on the performer. As a rule, he performs a work not created by him personally, but heard by him before. In this case, the performer can in no way be compared with the poet reading his work. But he is not a reciter of other people's works, not a reciter, accurately conveying someone else's work. This is a figure specific to folklore, full of the deepest interest for us and requiring the closest historical study from the primitive choir to the storyteller Kryukova and others. The performer does not repeat letter for letter what he heard, but makes his own changes to what he heard. Even if these changes are sometimes quite insignificant (but they can be very large), even if the changes that occur with folklore texts sometimes occur with the slowness of geological processes, the very fact of the variability of folklore works is important in comparison with immutability " works of literature.

If the reader of a literary work is, as it were, a powerless censor and critic deprived of any authority, then every listener of folklore is a potential future performer, who in turn - consciously or unconsciously - will introduce new changes into the work. These i changes are made not by chance, but by everything that is inconsonant with the epoch, system, new moods, new tastes, new ideology will be discarded.

24 The specifics of folklore

Sy will affect not only what will be discarded, but also in what will be reworked and added. A significant (although not decisive) role is played by the personality of the narrator, his individual tastes, outlook on life, talents, and creative abilities. Thus, a folklore work lives in constant movement and change. Therefore, it cannot be fully studied if it is written down only once. It must be written the maximum number of times. We call each such entry a variant, and these variants are a completely different phenomenon than, for example, editions of a literary work created by the same person.

In this way, folklore works circulate, changing all the time, and this conversion and variability is one of the specific features of folklore.

But literary works can also be drawn into the orbit of this folklore appeal. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain is told like a fairy tale, Lermontov's Sail, Delvig's The Nightingale, etc., etc. are sung.

How are we going to qualify this case? What do we have in this case - folklore or literature? The answer seems to be quite simple. If, for example, a lubok book, or life, etc., is recited by heart without any changes against the original, or “The Black Shawl” is sung exactly according to Pushkin, or from Nekrasov’s “Peddlers”, then this case is fundamentally not much different from a performance from the stage or wherever. But as soon as such songs begin to change, to be sung differently, to create variants, they already become folklore, and the process of their change is subject to the study of the folklorist.

Obviously, however, there is something else. There is an essential difference between the folklore of the first kind, which often dates back to prehistoric times and has variants on an international scale, and the poems of poets, freely performed and transmitted further by ear, there is an essential difference. In the first case, we have pure folklore, i.e., folklore both in origin and in circulation and circulation. In the second case, we have folklore of literary origin, which includes only one of its features, namely, folklore only in circulation, but literature in origin.

This difference should always be kept in mind when studying folklore. A song that we consider to be purely folklore, in fact, by origin, may turn out to be an author's, literary one. So, such, it would seem, purely folklore,

The specifics of folklore 25

Well-known songs like "Dubinushka" or "Because of the island on the rod" belong to little-known poets, one - to Trefolev, the other - to Sadovnikov. There are many such examples, and the study of these literary-folklore connections is one of the most interesting tasks of both the history of literature and folklore. In a broader aspect, this is a question about the book sources of folklore in general.

But this case brings us back to the above question of authorship in folklore. We took only two extreme cases. The first is folklore, individually created by no one, which arose back in prehistoric time in the system of any ritual or otherwise, and survived in oral transmission to the present day. The second case is clearly an individual work of modern times, circulating as folklore. Between these two extreme points, in the course of the development of both folklore and literature, all forms of transition are possible, which here can neither be foreseen nor analyzed. This is a matter of concrete consideration in each case separately.

For any modern folklorist it is obvious that such questions are resolved, however, not descriptively, statistically, but in their development. The genetic study of folklore is only a part of its historical study, and this leads us to another question, to the question of folklore as a phenomenon not only of a literary, but also of a historical order, and of folklore as a historical, and not just a literary discipline.

3. Folklore and ethnography. In our time, all the humanities can only be historical. We consider every phenomenon in its movement, starting from its inception, tracing its development, flourishing and, perhaps, degeneration, fall, disappearance. This, however, does not mean that we are on the evolutionary point of view. Evolutionary science, having established and traced the fact of development, is limited to this. Genuine historical science requires not only the establishment of the very fact of development, but also its explanation. Poetic creativity is a phenomenon of a superstructural order. To explain means to elevate a phenomenon to the causes that created it, and these causes lie in the sphere of the economic and social life of peoples.

The science that studies the earliest forms of material life and the social organization of peoples is ethnography. Therefore, historical folklore, which studies the origin of phenomena, their first link, is based on ethnography. Ta-

26 The specifics of folklore

Some study is the first link in genuine historical study. Therefore, between folklore and ethnography there is the closest connection. Outside of ethnography there can be no materialistic study of folklore.

We still do not know exactly what exactly and to what extent is born in primitive society. In any case, a fairy tale, epic, ritual poetry, incantations, riddles as genres cannot be explained without the involvement of ethnographic data. And not only genres, but also many motifs (for example, the motif of a magical helper, marriage with an animal, the thirtieth kingdom, etc.) find their explanation in ideas and religious and magical practice at different stages of the development of human society. The involvement of ethnographic materials is important, however, not only for genetic study in the narrow sense of the word, but also for the study of initial development, because from forms of material and social life depends not only on the origin of genres, plots and motifs, but also on their future life and variability.

The implementation of this principle is interesting and fruitful only if it is given to the full extent of the material, penetrating into the smallest details of both folklore and ethnographic materials. It is not enough to say that the motif of noble animals is of totemic origin, that the Edda was created at the stage of decomposition of the tribal system, etc. This must be shown in such a way that there is no doubt about this, that is, on a very broad concrete comparative material. . So, for example, to study the marriage of a hero (and matchmaking is one of the most common motifs of myth, fairy tale and epic), it is necessary to study the forms of marriage that existed at various stages of the development of human society. Moreover, we need knowledge, and, moreover, if possible, detailed knowledge, of marriage rites and customs. For example, we want and must know exactly at what stages of development and among which nations the bridegroom is tested and what is the nature of this test. Only then will we properly understand the corresponding phenomena in folklore.

However, in the implementation of these principles, it is easy to fall into error, believing that folklore directly reflects social or domestic, or other relations. Folklore, especially at the early stages of its development, is not everyday life. The matter is extremely complicated and complicated by the fact that reality is not transmitted directly, but through the prism of certain thinking, and this thinking is so

The specifics of folklore 27

Personally, it is very difficult to compare many phenomena of folklore with anything else. Cause-and-effect relationships do not yet exist in the system of this thinking, other forms of connection predominate here, and which ones we often do not yet know. There are no generalizations yet, no abstractions, no concepts; the process of generalization here corresponds to some other, still little studied operations of thinking. Space and time are perceived differently than we perceive them. The categories of unity and plurality, the qualities of subject and object (identifying oneself with animals) play a completely different role than they play with us, in our thinking. What is recognized as real is what we never recognize as real, and vice versa. Primitive man sees the world of things differently than we do, and at different stages of development he sees it differently. Therefore, sometimes we will search in vain behind the folklore reality for everyday reality.

In folklore, people act in this way and not otherwise, not because it was so in reality, but because it seemed so according to the laws of primitive thinking. And consequently, this thinking and the whole system of the primitive worldview must be studied. Otherwise, neither the composition, nor the plots, nor individual motifs can be understood, or we run the risk of either falling into a kind of naive realism, or we will perceive the phenomena of folklore as grotesque, exotic, free play of unbridled fantasy.

There is no need to say here that one of the manifestations of this thinking are religious ideas, which have the closest connection with folklore.

Here, not only religious phenomena and mental images are important, but religious and magical practice is important, the whole set of ritual and other actions by which primitive thinks to influence nature and protect himself from it. Folklore here itself will turn out to be part of the system of religious ritual practice.

From all that has been said, by the way, it is clear that the textual study of folklore, that is, the study of only texts taken without connection with the economic, social and ideological life of peoples, is a vicious method. Meanwhile, in the West, for the most part, only collections of texts are published; the scientific apparatus of such collections consists of indexes of motifs, plots, sometimes variants to them, but without any data about the people from whom it was collected, about the forms of existence and functions of folklore, about the specific conditions for performance and recording. All the above considerations are enough to see how close the connection between folklore and ethno-

28 The specifics of folklore

Graphics. Ethnography is especially important for us in the study of the genesis of folklore phenomena. Here ethnography forms the basis of the study of folklore, and without this base the study of folklore hangs in the air.

4. Folkloristics as a historical discipline. It is quite obvious, however, that the study of folklore cannot be limited to genetic research, and that far from everything in folklore goes back to primitiveness or is explained by it. Innovation takes place throughout historical development peoples. Folklore is a historical phenomenon, and folklore is a historical discipline. Ethnographic study is, as it were, the first stage of such historical study.

The task of historical study is to show, firstly, what happens to the old folklore under new historical conditions, and, secondly, to study the emergence of new formations.

Here, of course, it is impossible to establish all the processes that take place in folklore during the transition to new forms of social order or even during development within a given system. These processes take place everywhere with surprising uniformity. One of them is that the inherited folklore comes into conflict with the old social system that created it, and denies it. He denies it, of course, not directly, but denies the images he created, turning them into their opposite or giving them a reverse, condemning, negative coloring. Once holy turns into hostile, great - into harmful, evil or monstrous. But at the same time, the old is sometimes preserved without any special changes, coexisting peacefully with the New images and relationships. This is how folklore comes into conflict with itself, and there are always a lot of such contradictions in folklore. Thus, folklore formations are created not as a direct reflection of everyday life (this is a relatively rarer case), but from contradictions, from clashes of two eras or two ways of life and their ideology.

But the old and the new can be not only in a state of uncoordinated contradictions, but also enter into hybrid combinations. Such hybrid compounds are filled with folklore and religious performances. The dragon, the serpent is a combination of a worm, a bird and other animals. Marr showed how, with the domestication of the horse, the cult role of the bird passes to him. The horse becomes winged. Hence, flying ships, winged chariots, etc. become clear. Study

The specifics of folklore 29

The cult role of fire will show why the horse enters into union with fire, becoming a fiery horse, and how the idea of ​​a fiery chariot is created, etc. Such hybrid connections are possible not only in the field of visual images, they are deeply hidden in the field of the most diverse representations and relations. By transferring the new to the old, entire plots can be created. Thus, it can be shown that the plot about the hero who kills his father and marries his mother, i.e. the plot of Oedipus, was created as a result of the transfer of hostile relations to the daughter's fiancé, son-in-law-heir, to the heir-son, and the role of the daughter the king, as the transferor of the throne through marriage, to the king's widow. Such formation is not accidental and not isolated, it is in the nature of folklore.

Finally, the old is simply rethought, and there are extremely many types of rethinking. Rethinking consists in changing the old according to the new life, new ideas, new forms of consciousness. Strictly speaking, transformation into its opposite is only one of the types of rethinking. The study of rethinking is not always an easy task, since changes can reach unrecognizability, and the disclosure of the original forms is possible only if there is a very large comparative material on different peoples and stages of their development.

We call this kind of study staged study. Arranging the material according to the stages of development of peoples, understanding by "stage" the degree of culture, determined by the totality of signs of material, social and spiritual culture, we will have to get "historical poetics" in the true sense of the word, that historical poetics, the foundation of which was laid by Veselovsky.

The path indicated here is the historical path leading the study from the bottom up, from the old to the new. It must be said that ethnography and history do not yet help us enough in this respect. We do not have a clear periodization of the stages of development. Morgan's scheme, backed up by Engels, has not yet been worked out by anyone on a broad basis, not developed, not carried to the end.

Along with such a bottom-up study, our science has adopted the reverse path from top to bottom, i.e., the reconstruction of early "mythological" foundations by analyzing late materials. Such a paleontological study, shown by Marr for language, is fundamentally correct and quite possible for folklore. But this way is more risky and difficult. It is necessary and inevitable where there are no immediate materials for the early stages. It may turn out that folklore

30 The specifics of folklore

For some peoples will prove precious historical source, according to which the ethnographer reconstructs both the social system and the ideas of the people. Folklore, requiring historical study, can thus itself turn out to be a precious historical and ethnographic source.

The path of study outlined here represents the conquest of our science. In the West, the principle is still dominated not by stages, but by simple chronological study. The ancient material will always be considered older than the material recorded in our day. Meanwhile, from the stadial point of view, the ancient material may reflect a relatively late stage of the agricultural state, and the modern text - much earlier totemic | relations.

It is obvious that each stage must have its own social system, its own ideology, its own artistic creativity. But the fact is that folklore, like other phenomena of spiritual culture, does not immediately register the change that has taken place and for a long time under new conditions retains the old forms. Since every nation always goes through several stages of its development, and all of them are reflected in folklore, settle in it, the folklore of any nation is always multi-stage, and this is one of its characteristic phenomena. The task of science is to stratify this complex conglomerate, and thereby recognize and explain it.

The process of reworking the old into the new is the main creative process in folklore, traceable to the present day. To say so is by no means to belittle creativity in folklore. The concept of "creativity" does not mean the creation of something completely new. The new naturally grows out of the old. Folklore is creatively active by its very nature and essence, but creativity is carried out on the basis of some laws, and not arbitrarily, and the task of science is to clarify these laws.

We know what happens among peoples whose folklore has been recorded in our time, among peoples of the most diverse stages of development and living in the most diverse conditions of nature, we know. But there are stages that are not currently represented by any living peoples, stages that have irrevocably receded into the past, and about whose folklore we therefore know nothing directly. This is the stage of the early slave-owning agricultural state, of different types and different natural and historical conditions, such as the Eastern states, Egypt, Greece, Rome were in antiquity. Folklorist who historically studies any material, whether it be a genre,

The specifics of folklore 31

Jet, motif or something else, here sees himself covered in nebula, for it is obvious that no one wrote down folklore in those days. This is all the more painful because this stage for the first time gives the right to talk about the formation of classes; this is a stage in the development of agriculture and agricultural cults, a stage in the formation of a new consciousness. It is obvious that profound changes must have taken place with folklore, about which we know nothing directly.

However, where there are no direct sources, there are indirect sources, which to some extent and sometimes still hypothetically allow filling this gap. When social differentiation leads to the formation of classes, creativity is differentiated in the same way. With the emergence of writing, a new formation arises among the ruling classes, namely (writing, fiction, i.e. fixing the word through its recording. We now know that this early, first literature is entirely or almost entirely folklore. The beginning of literature is listed on writing folklore, "and therefore, the position for the researcher is no longer hopeless. This means that the study of ancient literatures, like Egyptian " Books of the dead”, the myth of Gilgamesh, myths ancient greece, ancient tragedy and comedy, etc. is a must for a folklorist. True, this is not just folklore, but folklore in reflections and refractions. If we have managed to correct for the priestly ideology, for the new state and class consciousness, for the specificity of the new literary forms developed and created by this consciousness, we will be able to see behind this motley picture its folklore basis.

Here folklorist and literary critic will meet in their aspirations. What happens to folklore and literature at this stage of development is of the greatest importance to understand the history of spiritual culture in general. Folklore is the bosom of literature, it is born from folklore. Folklore is the prehistory of literature. All the literature of the peoples of this stage can and must be studied on the basis of folklore. Thus, the transmission process basically goes from the bottom up; it can be traced in feudalism in all its varieties, it is clear in the folklore and literature of the Mongolian peoples, it becomes clear for European Middle Ages. Already in other forms we see the use of folklore sources in literature late XVIII and throughout the 19th century, it exists today. In this article, there is no need to show this with examples, this is a matter of special investigations.

32 The specifics of folklore

This process is natural and historically conditioned. Therefore, any attempts to assert the opposite phenomenon, to depict folklore as a "descended cultural heritage" (that is, descended from the social elites) are not scientific. Such statements are usually based on the fact that the people sing songs created by the ruling class. Indeed, such songs are sung. But to erect this particular phenomenon in general principle there is a profound mistake inherent in alien and hostile worldview systems.

Literature born from folklore soon leaves the mother who nursed it. Literature is the product of a different form of consciousness, which can conditionally be called individual consciousness. This does not mean that it is carried out through an individual cut off from the environment; this, on the contrary, means that the individual represents this environment and his people, but represents them in his individual, unique personal creativity.

On the other hand, in the social ranks, creativity continues on the old foundations, sometimes in relationship with the creativity of the ruling class. It is passed from mouth to mouth, and we have already given its specific features above. It only needs to be added here that it (in our country right up to the October Revolution, and in the West up to the present day) is determined by other forms of consciousness than the creativity of the upper classes. If the old science called this creativity "unconscious" or "impersonal", then these terms may not be very precise and do not exhaust the essence of the matter, but they reflect some thought that is itself true. Suffice it to say that Marx even Greek mythology characterized as "nature and social" forms that have already received an unconscious artistic processing in popular fantasy "(our detente). If Marx is not afraid of this word, then we have no need to avoid it. Our business is to develop and clarify what lies under this, but to get around this problem of the specifics of folk art, as an act of still little studied forms of consciousness, is impossible for us.

Like any genuine art, folklore has not only artistic perfection, but also a deep ideological content. Revealing it ideological content- one of the tasks of folklore. The old science in the person of Buslaev and his followers was again right when they saw in him the expression of the moral foundations of the people, although, perhaps, they saw these foundations and ideals not where we now see them. The ideological and emotional content of Russian folklore can be briefly reduced not to the concept of good, but to the category

The specifics of folklore

Rii fortitude. This is the same strength of spirit that leads our people to victory. The study of Russian folklore shows that Russian folk art is highly saturated with historical self-awareness. This can be seen both in the heroic epic and in historical songs, later in songs Patriotic Wars. A people with such an intensity of historical consciousness and with such an understanding of its historical tasks can never be defeated.

What do we mean by "folklore"? If we take the etymology of this word, then in translation from English we get: “folk” - people, people, “lore” - knowledge (knowledge in any field). Therefore, folklore is folk knowledge. In the etymology of this word, we see a deep meaning, very important for reasoning about the nature of folklore. Actually, folklore itself is “the knowledge of the people,” as the American folklorist F.J. Childe (281, p. 291).

The German philosopher I. Herder (see: 1, pp. 118-122; 91, pp. 458-467; 167, pp. 182-186) can be considered the founder of folklore as a science, although the term “folklore” that is familiar to us for he did not use the designations of folk art. I. Herder became not only one of the first collectors of folk poetry and songs, having published in 1778 the work “Voices of the Nations in Songs”, but also published scientific works “Fragments on German Literature”, “Critical Groves”, “On Ossian and songs of the ancients” and others, in which he put forward the principle of a historical approach to the phenomena of folk culture. He drew attention to the collection and study of folk poetry and songs, considering them the source of poetry in general. His external reasons for this were as follows.

In 1760-65. the poet and collector of old Scottish ballads and legends J. MacPherson, based on them, wrote poems under the general title "Songs of Ossian, son of Fingal." In the following century, the folklore authenticity of Ossian's Songs proved to be problematic, but in that century his works aroused great public interest in folk poetry and antiquity.

In 1765, the Englishman, writer and publisher T. Percy, using a folk manuscript collection of the 17th century, also published a book of old English songs "Monuments of English Poetry", accompanying it with three scientific articles on the work of ancient bards and medieval minstrels.

I. Herder, interested in these publications, introduced the concept of “folk song” (Volkslied) into science, as he called the ancient and contemporary folk songs preserved in folk life, as well as poetry that existed among the people at that time. Noting the historical role of the people in the creation of national culture, I. Herder wrote that the poetry of each people reflects its customs, customs, working and living conditions. I. Herder has a great merit in defining folklore as a source for the creation of national literature and art, which was subsequently developed by romantic artists.

The term "folklore" was proposed in the middle of the 19th century. English cultural historian William John Thoms in the article "Folk-Lore", in the journal "The Athenaeum" in 1846 (published under the pseudonym A. Merton). In the article, W. J. Thoms called for the collection of folk art, and in the very title of the article he emphasized that folklore is “folk knowledge” (2, pp. 179-180). Later, in 1879, in the Folk-Lore Record, W. J. Thoms emphasized that folklore is oral history people, the remnants of former beliefs, traditions, customs, etc. In defining the meaning of the term “folklore”, W.J. Thoms has a noticeable connection with the ideas of I. Herder and the aesthetics of the German romantics (F. Schelling, J. and etc.).

In 1870, the Folklore Society (“Folk-Lore Society”) was created in England. The Folk-Lore Record magazine gives the following meaning of the term: folklore is "the ancient customs, customs, rites and ceremonies of past epochs, turned into superstitions and traditions of the lower classes of civilized society", and in a broader sense - "the totality of forms of unwritten history people", and further: "It can be said that folklore covers the entire culture of the people, which was not used in the official religion and history, but which is and which has always been its own work." .

The spread of the term "folklore" and its introduction into scientific use is associated with the works of V. Manngardt, E. Tylor, E. Lang and others.

So the term "folklore" appeared in science as a designation of the totality of archaism, traditions and folk culture, with a clearly expressed "ethnographic" approach to folklore, and its boundaries were very wide.

In 1874, the American scientist F.J. Childe published in Johnson's Universal Encyclopedia the article "Poetry of the Ballad", where he did not use the terms "folk" and "folklore", using others instead - "people" (people) and "popular "(folk). With these themes, he characterized the folk culture as a whole. Expressing his attitude to the problem of the authorship of a ballad, he wrote that folk poetry "will always be an expression of the mind and heart of the people, as an individual, and never - the personality of an individual person" (281, p. 291).

F. J. Childe was the founder of the American school of folklore and separated his theory of folk poetry from the ideas of the German "romantic" school. In 1892, in Johnson's Universal Encyclopedia, a student of F. J. Child, V. Nevel, developing the ideas of F. Child, defined folklore as the formally universal customs and beliefs of an entire ethnic community, preserved through conservative and less educated classes. He noted as the main characteristics of folklore - "oral creativity", "oral tradition", an addition to literature.

Parallel to the term "folklore", in the science of Western countries, there were other names - Poesie populaire, Traditions populaires, Tradizioni populari (folk traditions), Volkdichtung (folk poetry), Volkskunde (folk art). Only in the XX century. the term "folklore" became common. In its broadest sense, i.e. as "folk traditions", "folk art", it began to be used by most scientists in Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the USA, Latin America and other countries. In the science of the Scandinavian countries and Finland, folklore is defined as a collective traditional knowledge transmitted through word and action.

In 1949-50. in the United States, a two-volume encyclopedic "Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legends" was published. It contains more than 20 articles on folklore by scientists from different countries and scientific fields, which gave different definitions of folklore and methods of its research.

The Mexican scientist M. Espinoza defines that “folklore consists of beliefs, customs, superstitions, proverbs, riddles, songs, myths, legends, tales, ritual ceremonies, magic, both primitive and illiterate people, and masses of people in a civilized society ... Folklore may be called a direct and true expression of the memory of primitive man" ["Standard dictionary of folklore ...", p. 399].

Similar views are held in the aforementioned "Dictionary" and other authors. So, M. Barbier includes in folklore everything that relates to " traditional culture» - up to culinary recipes; B. Botkin writes that “everything in a purely oral culture is folklore” [ibid., p. 398].

Argentine folklorist C. Vega in 1960 published the work “Folkloristics. Subject and notes for its study in Argentina. K. Vega called folklore such manifestations of folk culture: myths, legends, fairy tales, fables, riddles, songs, games, rituals, beliefs; features of the national language, housing, furniture, utensils, etc.

K. Vega speaks of the presence of two different levels of culture, which correspond to the conditionally "enlightened classes" and the "people" proper. Folklore acts as a cultural "survival", which 50-100 years ago was common among the "enlightened" classes, but was gradually forced out into the masses, primarily rural, where it is preserved and continues to function (176, p. 174-192 ).

We believe that the aforementioned authors, firstly, take rather broad boundaries for defining folklore, linking it with ethnology; secondly, they underestimate the essence of the folklore-historical process, which ensures both the continuity of traditions and innovation, the renewal of the system of types and genres of folklore.

In domestic science in the XVIII-XIX centuries. such concepts as "folk poetry", "oral folk literature" were used. The concept of "folklore" was introduced only in the 1890s. - early 20th century E. Anichkov, A. Veselovsky, V. Lamansky, V. Lesevich, which expanded the subject of the study itself.

But even later, in Soviet folklore, the designation “oral folk art” was used for a long time, which limited the subject of research itself. Along with the importance of the oral transmission of folklore, the collective nature of its creation (or the anonymity of authorship) and variability have always been emphasized.

A common belief is that folklore is "folk art". It is possible that such an interpretation is appropriate in cases when it comes to concert performances of folklore. But this kind of "folklore art" is almost always presented in the arrangements and arrangements of professionals, but also "torn out" from the context of folk life.

Note that back in 1938-41. in the work "Russian folklore" Yu.M. Sokolov wrote about the impossibility, due to the close connection of folklore with folk culture, genetic connection with myth, etc., to interpret it only as art and apply the term “oral folk poetic creativity” to it (216, p. 7-8) .

An authority recognized in world science, V.Ya. Propp called folklore verbal creativity and musical-song genres. He wrote: “What is meant by folklore in Western European science? If we take the book of the German folklorist I. Meyer "Deutshe Volkskunde", then we see the following sections there: village, buildings, courtyards, plants, customs, superstitions, language, legends, fairy tales, folk songs. This picture is typical of all Western European science. We call folklore what in the West is called folk traditions, folk poetry. And what is called folklore in the West can be called "popular science homeland studies" [V.Ya. Propp. "Folklore and Reality", 1976, p. 17-18].

V.Ya. Propp wrote: “Folklore is understood only as spiritual creativity, and even already, only verbal, poetic creativity. Since poetic creativity is almost always associated with music, one can speak of musical folklore and single it out as an independent scientific discipline” [ibid., p. eighteen].

The works of domestic researchers of the 20th century reflect ideas about folklore as part of the traditional peasant culture, the remaining layers of culture in the peasant environment over subsequent periods in the history of society. (3. Chicherov V.I. The winter period of the Russian folk agricultural calendar of the 16th-19th centuries. Essays on the history of folk beliefs. M., 1957; Propp V.Ya. Russian agricultural holidays. M., 1963; Rozhdestvenskaya S.B. Russian folk artistic tradition in modern society. M., 1981; Nekrasova M.A. Folk art as part of culture. M., 1983; Chistov K.V. Folk traditions and folklore. Essays on theory. L., 1986. Gusev V.E. Russian folk art culture. (Theoretical essays). SPb., 1993 and others).

M.S. Kagan associated folklore mainly with peasant creativity and therefore spoke of the extinction of folklore, considered it as pre-art, etc.

V.E. Gusev in the article "Folklore as an Element of Culture" and others writes that three main aesthetic approaches to folklore have now been identified:

1 - folklore is only oral folk art,

2 - folklore is a complex of verbal, musical, dance and entertainment-playing types of folk art,

3 - folklore - this is folk art culture in general, including fine and decorative arts.

The shortcomings of the first approach to folklore lie in the rupture of multifunctional ties that really exist in culture; its correlation only with the word, not noticing its non-verbal syncretic manifestations; studying the specifics of folklore only from the side of language, connections with literature, etc.

The second approach is based on the identification of the artistic specifics of folklore, differentiation between "pictorial" and "expressive" types of artistic activity. In "The Aesthetics of Folklore" V.E. Gusev classified folklore according to the epic, dramatic and lyrical types of art; verbal, musical, dance, theatrical types, etc. He determined the genre specifics of folklore by the artistic form, poetics, everyday use, connection with music, etc. .

In the third approach to folklore, we see the desire to unite in the concept of "folklore" the entire folk culture as a whole, blurring its specific and genre boundaries. Undoubtedly, folk costume (clothes, shoes, jewelry), ritual and ritual objects, musical instruments and even the manner of playing them play an important role in folklore creativity; folk architecture, for example, as a “pictorial and decorative background” on which the action takes place (Russian wedding, etc.). In this regard, we note that there is such a thing as "plastic folklore", that is, folk decorative and fine art (see: 236, 237).

The essential characteristic of folklore by domestic researchers was mainly determined, first of all, by its artistic features, its comparison with literature, which aimed researchers at characterizing it as a specific type of art - "folk art". really, its like art. But in such an approach to folklore, it must have all the specific features of art, as well as the completeness of its characterization as a form of social consciousness.

This leads to an underestimation of folklore, which has a specific connection with both the material and everyday, and with the spiritual and artistic spheres of the historical and cultural process. First of all, folklore is a folk everyday and artistic tradition with a variety of sociocultural functions. K.S. Davletov writes about the most important social function of folklore - "the function of folk history, folk philosophy, folk sociology" (65, p. 16).

Describing its sociocultural functions in the past, K.V. Chistov notes that folklore then satisfied not only the artistic needs of the people. “Speaking in modern language, it was both an oral book, and an oral journal, and an oral newspaper, and a form of amateur art, and a way of consolidating and transmitting historical, legal, meteorological, medical and other knowledge” [K.V. Chistov. Folklore and modernity //S.I. Mints, E.V. Pomerantsev. Russian folklore. Reader. M.: Vys. school 1965. p. 453].

We see the reasons for the approaches listed above in defining folklore in the difference in the methodological, philosophical and professional principles of researchers.

Folklore is characterized by a complex interweaving of artistic and non-artistic principles: with some properties it enters the sphere of art, with others it leaves it. Folklore is genetically related to myth in many ways. In addition, the cognitive, aesthetic, ritual and everyday functions in it constitute one syncretic whole, enclosed in a figurative and artistic form.

It is clearly insufficient to look at folklore as merely an oral tradition. The first recorded literature was always or almost always folklore, wrote V.Ya. Propp. Such are the ancient Greek "Iliad" and "Odyssey", the Indian epics "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana", etc. Medieval writers recorded the ancient German epic "The Song of the Nibelungs", the Old English "Beowulf", Celtic folk tales about King Arthur, Icelandic sagas; The epic “Song of Sid”, “Song of Roland”, etc. are the fruit of knightly creativity. With the spread of literacy, “folk” handwritten books appeared, which were distributed and processed (“The Romance of the Fox”, “The Tale of Doctor Faust”, etc. ).

The first Russian chronicles are associated with folklore traditions and legends. One can note the use of folklore symbols, images, etc. in chronicle sources. Such is the epic "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", discovered in a manuscript in 1792. Count Musin-Pushkin in one of the monasteries. (For Russian culture, the problem of his authorship is no less important than the famous question about the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.)

The writing of medieval Rus' (“the golden age of folklore”) was represented mainly by Christian literature, and only chronicles and folklore performed secular cultural functions. The chroniclers included both historical legends and folklore, even buffoons (for example, "The Prayer of Daniel the Sharpener"). Photius's Moscow annalistic code (XV century) included epics of the Kyiv cycle.

In Rus', a popular popular print was signed, for example, depicting a performance of buffoons: “a bear and a goat are chilling, they are amused by their music,” etc. By the 17th century. include handwritten stories "The Tale of Grief of Misfortune", "The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn", "Shemyakin Court" and others that did not retain the names of the authors, and in essence, are handwritten folklore. In Russia, such a genre of folklore as spiritual poetry was recorded, and this tradition was preserved until the 20th century. Old Believers. Thus, in addition to oral transmission, the first recordings of Russian folklore arose.

This applies even more to the content of Russian folklore of the 18th-19th centuries, since, starting from the second half of the 18th century, peasant folklore was not only recorded, but also published, thanks to which it became widespread in the urban environment. Without limiting folklore to the peasant tradition, it should be recognized that at this time the genres of urban, soldier, etc. folklore were intensively developing.

In Russian folklore, along with the oral tradition, the collective nature of its creation was emphasized. However, talking about both the collective and individual nature of folklore creativity, or the absence of authorship, is a rather difficult problem. “The concept of collectivity, if we take into account real facts, writes K.S. Davletov, can only be applied to the content of folk art, to its quality, specificity, while the question of the dialectics of the individual and the collective, characteristic of folklore, inevitably arises.

Collective nature folk art does not exclude the personal creativity of ancient rhapsodists, bards, akyns, ashugs, storytellers, such Russian storytellers of epics as T.G. Ryabinin and others. Entire families of folk storytellers were found by M.K. Azadovsky in 20-30s. XX century in the villages of Siberia.

M.K. Azadovsky considered folklore creativity not as a relic of antiquity, a tradition of the past, but as a process of living individual creativity, developing within the framework of folk group. He noted that the literacy of storytellers is not an obstacle to the development of folklore, but, on the contrary, is a new stimulus for their creativity: “We break with impersonal ethnography, and enter the circle of master artists, where common work is marked by the seal of the bright individuals who create and lead it” . So is K.S. Davletov writes that folklorists have established the existence of quite definite authors for a number of songs, ditties, etc., “whose nationality cannot be denied by any theoretical bias.”

The problem of collective authorship in folk art is manifested in the following way. In folklore creativity, the personal, authorial principle dissolves in the general flow of folk art, when the individual work of a singer, poet, etc., which is transmitted, as folk, to the next generations. The essence of the folklore-creative process is that the new, most often, merges into traditional forms as processing, alteration of old material and then varied by other performers. In this way, folklore reflects the collective consciousness of the people. Collective national consciousness, as a community of "spirit" and subconscious artistic and creative impulses, prevail and therefore in the process of creativity are not divided into personal and general. The identity of the author, therefore, is anonymous, and his creation expresses the very "spirit of the people."

V.Ya. Propp noted that the historical development of folklore shows that there is folklore that arose in prehistoric times in the system of some ritual and survived in oral transmission to the present day, and has variants on an international scale, and folklore that arose in modern times as an individual creativity. , but circulating as folklore.

Of course between ritual folklore, originating from pagan times, and a tourist song, literally transmitted "by ear", there is a significant difference. In the first case, we see the earliest genres of folklore associated with mythological culture, in the second case, we see the modern folklore of amateur poets.

There are such examples of collective creativity as fairy tales, in which the individuality of the author is expressed in the skill of the narrator, his ability to vary, improvise, and perhaps, even in a new way, present its content to the audience.

Calendar and agricultural songs of Russian folklore are an example of collective creativity, historical songs are an example of the anonymity of an author or a group of authors, and lyrical songs, ditties are an example of an author's creative individuality.

Today, many popular songs among the masses, which we consider “folk” (folklore), can often turn out to be a reworking of the poems of one of the little-known (and even well-known) authors of the 19th century, which are set to music by the people and circulated as folklore, and follows them and being.

Genres such as the author's song, which are clearly gravitating towards folklore, reveal their authors when searching. For example, in 40-60 years. 20th century among the students, the songs “Brigantine” (poems were written by the young poet P. Kogan who died in the war) and “Globe” (only three initial stanzas belong to M. Lvovsky, the rest are anonymous authors) spread among the students. The music for these songs was composed by an amateur musician G. Lepsky. These songs were closely associated with self-consciousness and, of course, became the folklore of the 20th century. They are not forgotten today. (“When the soul sings.” The most popular songs of the twentieth century. Compiled by Yu.G. Ivanov. Smolensk, 2004).

The very idea of ​​descending into the folklore of the "higher" cultural strata is not new. At one time in Russian folklore, the idea of ​​Vs. Miller about the creation of epics by princely retinue singers and supporting this idea in the 20-30s. 20th century V.A. Keltuyalu. However, this process still takes place in folklore, both European and domestic. P.G. also paid great attention to this circumstance. Bogatyrev in the article "Folklore as a special form of creativity" (27, p. 369-383). We would call this cultural process “folklorization” of everyday cultural material, as V.Ya. Propp.

One of the specific features of folklore is its connection with everyday culture and national professional art.

The problem of tradition in folklore process and innovations in folklore and means that an unambiguous solution to this issue is also impossible.

As we can see, the problem of the specificity of folklore "orality", as well as the "collectivity" of creativity, is closely related both to the problem of authorship and the problem of "folklorization" of literary and other sources. Literary works can also enter the sphere of folklore circulation. For example, children can be told and “played out” the fairy tale “Cinderella” by Ch. Perrault, which children read, and possibly saw in the cinema. The authorship of poems by N.A. is almost lost. Nekrasov, to which the people composed the song “Korobochka”, etc. But as soon as such fairy tales, songs, etc., begin to change among the people, are performed in different ways, variants are created, they already become folklore if they are fixed in folk practice. A characteristic sign of Russian folklore in the XX century. began the "folklorization" of mass choral songs (M. Zakharov, I. Dunaevsky, B. Mokrousov, M. Blanter, etc.), which were sung by the whole people.

Obviously, Russian historical songs, based on factual material and having many specific historical names (including Pugachev, Suvorov, Ataman Platov, and many others), initially had their own authors. It is possible that when writing a song, these authors wrote down their text. But later, as a result of oral transmission, acquiring changes, variants, such a song became folklore. However, the self-awareness of the authors of these songs is characterized by the use of the plural - “we will intercede”, “we will win”, etc., and in relation to the historical personality - “he said”, etc. Collectivity is reflected in the very nature of the consciousness of folk authors .

So, the problem of collective creativity in folklore should be considered not so much as a problem of personal authorship, but as a problem of collective consciousness of the people. The collective nature of consciousness in folklore does not in any way exclude the presence of personal creativity of individual storytellers, singers, on the contrary, it presupposes it. Ancient legends speak of the creative power of Orpheus, Ossian, Boyan and other singer-poets.

At the same time, the creative power of folklore lies precisely in its collectivity. For example, unlike any theatrical performance, where on the one hand there is the author of the text, actors - performers, etc., and on the other - the audience, in such a folklore action as a traditional wedding ceremony, such a division does not and cannot have such differentiation . Despite the obvious distribution of the social roles of the groom, bride, matchmakers, boyfriends, numerous relatives, as well as the villagers present, they are not spectators, but participants in one traditional folk ritual. On it, the performance of songs, dances, etc., as a rule, is massive.

The French scientist Arnold van Genner noted that folklore is a universal object with a specific element, which is the definition of "folk" (Le folrlore. Raris, 1924, p. 21). The national image of the world reflects the people's mentality, which is the result of the ethnic group's heredity (genetic inclinations in the psyche) and the development of culture (established folk traditions, customs, the preferred choice of a particular religion), which include the historical experience of the ethnic group that has developed in the process of its long formation.

We do not deny the role of the development of social relations, material factors in the formation of the social psychology of the masses, the emergence of differentiated forms of social consciousness as culture develops, because even with respect to the “archetypes” and “symbols” that lie as the “collective unconscious” at the very foundation of culture, K. Jung believed that “only social experience reveals them, makes them visible” (270, p. 92).

K. Jung spoke about the "archetypes" and "symbols" that give rise to the myth, as a single psychobiological foundation that arose at the dawn of human history. The origin of such genres of folklore as a fairy tale, folk rituals and some other genres goes back to the problems of myth, magic and the preservation of the rudiments of mythological consciousness in folklore, paganism, which determine the design features of these folklore forms.

We note a long period of development of culture, and a significant difference in the manifestations of the national character of culture, already noted by ancient thinkers. With the similarity of myths among many peoples of the world (in particular, among the Indo-European peoples), we note that the most characteristic manifestation of the national principle in folklore is music, songs, dances, etc., since each ethnic group differs only in one inherent combination of temperament, such as thinking and worldview.

It seems to us that the entire nation, in the aggregate of its classes, estates, etc., is the bearer and custodian of its language, its folklore and original artistic culture, because only in the "ethnic field" does a constant process of folklore artistic creativity take place, which is preserved in the historical the memory of the people as having the specific features of their language, which differs from the folklore language of other peoples.

At the same time, the musical and other non-verbal components of folklore do not lag behind historically unchanged. For several centuries, the Negro population of America has so much transformed and synthesized both European and African elements in music, singing, and dance that this folklore began to be perceived as nationally significant for each of the peoples of those countries of America where they live.

V.Ya. Propp brings folklore genetically close not to literature, but to language, “which is also not invented by anyone” and has no authors. It arises and changes quite naturally and independently of the will of people, wherever appropriate conditions have been created for this in the historical development of peoples” (186, p. 22). We can talk about the metaphorical, artistic figurativeness of the folklore language (A.N. Afanasiev, A.N. Veselovsky and others), the specifics of the reflection in the language of folklore and fairy-tale time and space (D.S. Likhachev).

It should be noted that the artistic language of folklore in many cases, to one degree or another, is syncretic and has not only a verbal (verbal), but also a non-verbal sphere of its “I”, which reflects the specificity of the folk spirit within the boundaries of the artistic reflection of the world.

The concept of "language" can in no way be reduced to the oral and written speech of a person, to the word. It also includes various other ways and forms of receiving, fixing and transmitting non-verbal information (for example, the languages ​​of music, dance, facial expressions, gestures, colors, etc. in folklore), as well as the ability of a person to reproduce it. In the language of folklore, we mark both the verbal sphere (word) and non-verbal (music, dance, game, ritual, folk festival, etc.). A particularly striking ethnic dominant in folklore is its non-verbal linguistic sphere, which reflects the peculiarities of the national temperament, etc. as a result of the subconsciously sensory assimilation of the world. There is even a sensual-unconscious feeling of the Motherland, and a person’s stay in a foreign land causes “nostalgia”, including due to the lack of the usual sound of folk music, songs, dances, etc.

E. Sapir and B. Whorf, who put forward the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, spoke about the conditioning of perception and thinking by the specific structuralization of language (107, p.163). They believe that the language skills and norms of the unconscious determine the images (pictures) of the world inherent in the speakers of a particular language. The difference between these images is the greater, the further the languages ​​are separated from each other. The grammatical structure of the language imposes a way of articulating speech and a description of the surrounding reality. The role of language here is formative. The absence in the language of words to express a number of concepts does not mean the impossibility of their presence in the mind. O national images the world writes and G.D. Gachev (42).

Thus, in the communicative and information sphere of folklore creativity, ethnic features manifest themselves in a noticeable and recognizable shell, and one can note not only the verbal side of folklore, but also the specifics of the non-verbal one. Therefore, it is impossible to translate folk dance, music into “another” language (they can only be reproduced, stylized), just as inadequate is the translation of the verbal text of a folk song into another language, which will change its national specificity.

In connection with the above, the interpretation of folklore as oral folk art, with the syncretism of artistic elements and everyday functions of folklore, seems to us unjustified. In folklore, the word appears in synthesis with other elements, the word itself is poetic-rhythmic, musical-intonational, even if it is a narrative (epic recitative, fairy tale, etc.). In historical, drawn-out, lyrical Russian folk songs, the word is combined with a musical melody, a clear rhythm, and often instrumental accompaniment. In fast and dance songs, ditties, the word is all the more connected with motor rhythm, movement, dance, active facial expressions. The artistic syncretism of folklore is also present in ornamentation. folk clothes, the symbolism of colors, in decorations that are associated with traditional national psychological attitudes. At the same time, syncretism should not be considered a specific feature of the artistic sphere of folklore, the combination of the verbal and non-verbal nature of its language. Folklore syncretism should be understood in a special "totality" of folklore phenomena with folk traditions, holidays, rituals, in which it manifests itself fully as a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon. Nevertheless, in the folk festival, the folklore "accurate" word is the leading component of the action. This is both a proverb and a saying, said at the right time. The word is also organically combined with music in song genres, a ditty, which is certainly associated with dance, in game genres. In addition to the word, expressive facial expressions, a successful gesture, as well as the observance of traditions are just as important.

For folklorists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as mentioned above, it is typical to oppose some kind of “pure” peasant folklore, patriarchal folk culture to “corrupting and corrupting” urban influence folklore. They sought to record such disappearing genres as epics and ritual folklore. Folklore theater "Petrushki", folk booths, petty-bourgeois ballad, everyday, gypsy and "cruel" romances, they considered the ditty to be phenomena of the "degeneration" of folklore. Recognizing the aesthetic value of only peasant traditional folklore, folklorists declared the historically inevitable connections with urban creativity and literature to be “disastrous” for it. However, the people loved both booths and puppeteers' rhymes, as the return of "buffoonery".

Folklore, despite long-term contacts with literature and other types of art, exists as a form of mass creativity, quite independently, forming through its specificity, reflecting through the features of folk psychology the “core” of artistic forms and traditions, which also constitutes its specificity, which distinguishes it from other forms of social consciousness, including art. It should be noted that the development of folklore artistic consciousness reproduces not only the former forms and genres of folklore, closely related to folk life, but it also gives rise to innovation as a reflection of changing forms of world perception.

At present, there are several forms of existence of folklore. There is a living form, and there is historical form its existence (what functioned traditionally in the recent past) and remained for us in the form fixed by folklorists - records, books, notes, objects of material and artistic culture. There is also such a form of today's functioning of folklore as reproduction, which has passed into concert halls, processed by professionals, including in folk choirs, etc.

Less noticeable and we study the folklore of the 20th century proper: the development of amateur creativity of the masses - amateur poetry and song (for example, student, army folklore), new ditties, amateur holidays of laughter, for example, humor, KVN, April 1 holiday, etc., anecdotes, bylichka stories - about poltergeists, drummers, folklorization of bard and mass songs, tourist songs, historical legends, memories of the heroes of the Civil and Great Patriotic War, etc. Obviously, in this case, one should say about a certain time distance necessary for so that this or that new genre, the plot of folklore enters organically into the people's self-consciousness as a blood-native one, and is artistically polished among the masses.

Folklore exists as an unshakable foundation of the people's mentality, a collective cultural and aesthetic experience, which is characterized by a special, sensual knowledge of the surrounding world and nature. The artistic specificity of folklore allows us to consider it in the context of the key categories of folk ethics and aesthetics.

All of the above allows us to draw the following preliminary conclusions about the phenomenon that we see behind the concept of "folklore":

Folklore is a manifestation of everyday artistic consciousness and is characterized by the following level features: syncretism (connection with other forms of social consciousness - myth, religion, art, etc.), active and practical nature, close connection with collective social psychology, wide mass existence, traditional character of the main images and forms.

In this regard, it is necessary to see, first of all, the national identity of folklore artistic consciousness as a whole, which distinguishes it from other forms of social consciousness, including art as a specialized professional, supranational, "reference" form of social consciousness. If in art the forms of artistic expression (creation and reading of the text) are secondary and subject to aesthetic comprehension, then in folklore these two sides are more equivalent, inversion in their semantic interaction is possible.

The main features of the difference between folklore and art as a form of everyday consciousness are the ethnic principle, its qualitatively higher level of artistic and everyday syncretism, etc. In folklore, an aesthetic rethinking of many aspects of everyday consciousness and life is carried out, all of them are designed in the form of a traditional specific folklore text. In part, this circumstance makes folklore related to ritual-ritual, syncretic forms of magic and myth. Speaking about folklore consciousness, it is important to emphasize the special, transformative, formative role of the aesthetic function.

The specificity of folklore consciousness is determined by the regularities of the ordinary level of social consciousness. The identification of folklore artistic consciousness as a special form of social consciousness is possible only in connection with the recognition of the plurality of its aspects behind ordinary consciousness.

The question of the non-differentiation of folklore as a form of social consciousness should be reviewed in connection with the historical development of society, the emergence of class states, etc., therefore, the development of differentiated levels and forms of social consciousness among which it exists. Folklore, having actually arisen in a tribal-patriarchal society (which is evidenced by the creation of myths, fairy tales, heroic-epic genres, etc.), gradually differentiates from myth, then from other forms of social consciousness, while maintaining its connection with them. It continues to develop and exist in new socio-cultural conditions (for example, antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times and our days).

Speaking about the specifics of folklore, it is worth dwelling on such a feature of it as social consciousness, in which the collective consciousness prevails over the personal-individual. This allows us to include in the methodological aspect of the study such a phenomenon of social psychology as collective consciousness.

The essence of folklore can be considered not only as a social phenomenon (social consciousness), but also through the knowledge of the individual human psyche, in which there is a layer of the subconscious and the "collective unconscious". This may explain its genetic connection with myth and some of the unconscious impulses in folkloric activity.

It seems to us that folklore consciousness is a wider phenomenon than folklore itself (with its system of types and genres). Folklore consciousness as an artistic consciousness is manifested in all other forms of folk art: arts and crafts, folk crafts, folk architecture, etc.

Folklore is not only "cultural texts" (forms, genres), but also a way of creative people's activities according to their creation, existence (traditions, rituals, etc.), mechanisms for their transmission from generation to generation (peculiar singing "schools", craft artels, etc.). Folklore should be considered in the context of folk culture as an integral system, comprehended and regulated by folklore artistic consciousness as a whole.

In the XX century. for several decades, creative thought was fettered by ideological dictates. Simplistic sociological research was encouraged. For folkloristics, the ideas of Marxist theorists were recognized as obligatory. In Soviet science in the 30-50s. dominated by dogmatic concepts. The term "Marxist folkloristics" appeared, denoting the direction that developed the problems of the history and theory of folklore, taking into account the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Lunacharsky and other Marxists. His followers were interested in the connection of folklore with the liberation movement, the expression of a class reflex in folk works, etc. The achievements of domestic and foreign "non-Marxist" science were hushed up, downplayed or denied. Outstanding scientists of the "pre-Marxist" period (F. I. Buslaev, A. N. Veselovsky, V. F. Miller, and others) were subjected to criticism. Under these conditions, an attempt was made to create a general history of Russian folklore1 and a history of Russian folklore2.

For a number of folklorists, the methods of formal research became an alternative to the vulgar sociological approach. In the field of the study of narrative folklore, structural-typological analysis has been developed. Its representatives began to identify invariant models of genres, plots, and motives. They considered the phenomena of typological relations in a synchronous plan (from the Greek synchronos - "simultaneous"), i.e. characterized the state of a particular folklore system for one period of time. Later, structural-semiotic folkloristics appeared, which seeks to establish the general patterns of constructing folklore texts as sign systems3.

With the liberation from dogmatism, science gradually began to return to full-fledged historical research. The historical-typological method has been developed, which considers the phenomena of folklore typology in a diachronic plan (from the Greek dia - "through, through" and chronos - "time"), i.e. at different stages of the historical development of folklore, in its genesis and evolution . At the same time, folklore works are studied in a historical and ethnographic context.

Synchronic and diachronic approaches are dialectically interconnected, because folklore exists both in space and in time. It can be said that in formal studies, interest in the form of works prevails, and in historical studies, in their content. However, it should be noted that form and content are not equal. “In folklore,” wrote the founder of structuralism, V. Ya. The general task of folkloristics can be considered the search for a universal theory that can organically combine the directions of the formal and historical type. This is also expressed by discussions that periodically arise in the press: about the historicism of epics, about the place of folklore in the system of other sciences, etc.

The processes of the history of folklore are explored by historical poetics, created as a special direction by A. N. Veselovsky, and subsequently developed by V. M. Zhirmunsky, E. M. Mele-

tinskiy, V. M. Gatsak and other researchers1. Within its framework, poetic genera, genres, stylistic systems are considered - both in general and in their specific manifestations. Historical poetics explores the connections of oral folk art with written literature, music, and visual arts.

In recent years, there has been a clear trend towards a comprehensive study of folklore, language, mythology, ethnography and folk art as components of a single spiritual culture of the people. Here, in the field of reconstruction of Slavic paganism and mythology, the work of the employees of the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences is especially productive (this work was headed by the ethnolinguist N. I. Tolstoy for many years)2.

Any method involves reliance on facts. Electronic computing and other techniques have entered the life of folklorists, which significantly increases the accuracy of records, simplifies mechanical operations for accounting and systematizing material, searching for the necessary information. "Modern folkloristics," noted N.I. method, constantly improving it theoretically and technically.<...>Along with it, the comparative typological method and the old, tested and at the same time constantly updated and tested on new material comparative historical method are widely used. This method was proposed and successfully applied more than a century ago by the remarkable Russian scientist A. N. Veselovsky ... "3.

In the self-determination of modern folklore as an independent scientific discipline Significant events were the first dictionary of folklore terms and concepts (based on the material of three East Slavic peoples)4, as well as the book by V.P. Anikin "Theory of Folklore"5.

Now the sections of folklore are: the historiography of the science of oral folk art, the theory and history of folklore, the organization and methodology of field work, the systematization of archival funds, and textual criticism.

There are centers for the philological study of Russian folklore, with their own archives and periodicals. These are the State Republican Center of Russian Folklore in Moscow (publishing the journal "Live Antiquity"), the sector of Russian folk art of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (yearbook "Russian Folklore: Materials and Research"), the Department of Folklore State University. M. V. Lomonosov (collections "Folklore as the Art of the Word"), as well as regional and regional folklore centers with their archives and publications ("Siberian Folklore", "Folklore of the Urals", "Folklore of the Peoples of Russia", etc.).

LITERATURE TO THE TOPIC

Sokolov Yu. M. Historiography of folklore // Sokolov Yu. M. Russian folklore. - M., 1941. - S. 34-121.

Azadovsky M.K. History of Russian folklore: In 2 volumes - M., 1958 (vol. 1); 1963 (vol. 2).

Bazanov V. Russian revolutionary democrats and popular science. - L., 1974.

Academic schools in Russian literary criticism / Ed. ed. P. A. Nikolaev. - M., 1975.

Putilov B. N. Methodology of comparative-historical study of folklore. - L., 1976.

Toporkov A.L. The theory of myth in Russian philological science XIX century / Rev. ed. V. M. Gatsak. - M., 1997.