Folklore
The concept and subject of folklore
Syncretism, orality, collectivity, traditional character and variability of folklore.
UNT genre system
General characteristics of archaic folklore
Typology of calendar rites, their genres
Poetry of the wedding ceremony
funeral lamentations
Proverbs, sayings, riddles
The problem of defining the genre of a fairy tale. Fairy tale classification problems
Tales about animals. The origin and development of the genre. Origin of fiction. ancient structure. Plots of fairy tales about animals
Magic tales. The character of the fantastic. art space and time. The structure of a fairy tale
Household, novelistic fairy tales. Structural originality of the genre. The social nature of the genre
Unfathomable prose. Legends, bylichki, legends
Definition and genesis of epics
Poetics of epics
Epics of the Kyiv cycle, plots and images.
epics Novgorod cycle, plots and images
historical songs
Game, round dance songs
Lyrical non-ritual songs
People's Theatre. Dramas "Boat", "Tsar Maximilian"
Late genres of folklore
Folklore - folk art, oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses of the people (legends, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epics), folk music(songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theatre), dance, architecture, fine and decorative arts. Some researchers also refer to folk art all types of non-professional art (amateur art, including folk theaters).
Folklore is art
collective
traditional
Only all 3 of these factors present at the same time are a sign of folklore and distinguish it from literature.
In a literal translation, Folk-lore means: folk wisdom, folk knowledge, was introduced into scientific use in 1846 by the English scientist William Thoms. At first, this term covered the entire spiritual (beliefs, dances, music, woodcarving, etc.), and sometimes material (housing, clothing) culture of the people. From the beginning of the 20th century the term is also used in a narrower, more specific sense: oral folk art.
NT, which originated in ancient times, is the historical basis of the entire world artistic culture, the source of national artistic traditions, and the spokesman for people's self-consciousness. The oldest species verbal art arose in the process of the formation of human speech in the era of the Upper Paleolithic. Verbal creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected religious, mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. Ritual actions through which primitive sought to influence the forces of nature, fate, were accompanied by the words: spells, conspiracies were pronounced, various requests or threats were addressed to the forces of nature. The art of the word was closely connected with other types of primitive art - music, dance, decorative art. In science, this is called "primitive syncretism." Traces of it are still visible in folklore.
The Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky believed that the origins of poetry are in the folk ritual. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a song of the choir, accompanied by dance and pantomime. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythm and facial expressions. The text was improvised according to the performance, until it acquired a traditional character.
As humanity accumulated more and more significant life experience that needed to be passed on to the next generations, the role of verbal information increased. Selection verbal creativity into an independent art form is the most important step in the prehistory of folklore.
Rise time impossible to find out. The roots are in historical times, when general consciousness and the language of oral speech arose. K. Marx: "Language is as ancient as consciousness." Center.of.the.important.world.ideological.phenomena. myth and ritual. Mythology - syst. The worldview, embracing the life of a primitive person, consciousness ascribes to things qualities that are not characteristic of them. The first person did not distinguish himself from the environment; humanization of the environment
Animism from lat.-soul; faith in spirit beings, in the animation of living and tender nature.
Anthropomorphism from Greek man + form; assimilation of something in appearance to a person. Straw effigies of Maslenitsa and Kupala had a human (usually female) appearance.
totemism- an ancient form of religion, belief in a supernatural connection and blood closeness of people with a totem (animal or plant-ancestor, object of religious honor in a generic community). in many elements of the wedding, you can see the cult of the bear: dressing up in it, fur clothes; bear is a symbol of wealth and fertility. Primitive thought is not connected with the laws of logic, it is interested in the mystical. properties, and with the forces of objects and things (zak.participation-mystical participation, etc.).
With the help of the myth-creator, the first people. analyzed the world, total. and himself.
The science.
The first direction of young science was the so-called mythological school. Its representatives, including the most famous Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Russian scientists F. I. Buslaev, A. N. Afanasiev, O. F. Miller.
Created on the basis of the views of D. Taylor "anthropological theory" was popular in the West. T. Benfey expressed the idea of K borrowings in folklore, which replaced the notion of the ascent of similar plots to common sources. The theory of supremacy in folklore until the end of the 20th century. In Russia, at the end of the 19th century, 2 origins were born. for example, the theory of Academician Veselovsky, and the so-called historical school, based. mainly on the works of Academician Miller, who departed from the theory of borrowing. In Finland - the Finnish school or the geographic-historical method, osn. Yu. Kron, his son K. Kron and A. Aarne - attention to geographical. linking the przvd of folk TV-va compiling indexes of plots of fairy tales and runes.
T. n. Russian school - attention to the personality of the UNT performer. Its adherents looked for Naib. outstanding storytellers, published folklore productions, grouping them by performers.
First: V.N. Tatishchev (18th century), Slavophiles P.V. Kirievsky, N.M. Yazykov, V.I. Dahl and others; 1850-60s: F.I. Buslaev, A.N. Afanasiev, A.N. Veselovsky, V.F. Miller; the beginning of the Soviet era: B.M. and Yu.M. Sokolov, D.K. Zelenin, M.K. Azadovsky, N.P. Andreev. Second floor. 20 in: V.I. Chicherov, V.Ya. Propp, N.N. Veletskaya, V.K. Sokolova, L.N. Vinogradova, I.E. Karpukhin, V.P. Anikin, E.V. Pomerantseva, E.M. Meletinsky, V.A. Bakhtin, V.E. Gusev, A.F. Nekrylova, B.N. Putilov, etc.
Folklore types
Archaic - Folklore takes shape among peoples at the primitive stage of development. There is no written language yet, culture is oral. The folklore of people with mythological thinking covers the entire culture of the ethnic group.
Classic - folklore takes shape in an era when states are formed, writing and literature arise. Here artistic fiction is formed, a genre system is formed.
Modern - post-folklore that developed in Russia after the abolition of serfdom. His element is the city. The epic, fairy tales and traditional lyrical songs are being replaced by songs of a new formation, ditties, anecdotes.
Kinds of folklore:
epic(legends, fairy tales, legends, epics - genres) Lyric-epic genre (transitional) - romance
Lyrics(songs, ditties)
Drama(folk theater)
2. Syncretism - fusion, inseparability of various types of art, characteristic of the early stages of its development. Artistic creativity is not separated from other types of activity and, together with them, is directly included in practical life. Syncretism is an undeveloped state of early traditional folklore.
F- (according to V.E. Gusev) - verbally - musically - choreographically - dramatic part folk art(spiritual component of folk culture) - not material art. Materially expressed (DPI) - folk art. F - syncretic and synthetic art, because. combines different types of arts.
signs of folklore
Orality ( not only the form of distribution, but the form in which the pr-e has the most aesthetic. air-e)
traditional(works are invested on the basis of traditions)
variability(various options in different territories)
Improvisation
Tradition - stable schemes, artistic techniques and means used by a community of people for many generations, and transmitted from generation to generation. Tradition is understood as the most general principles of creativity, and in folklore - a set of stable plot forms, types, heroes, poetic forms.
3. Genres of folklore
The folklore genre is a set of works united by a common poetic system, everyday purpose, forms of performance and musical structure. (V.Ya. Propp) Genre is a unit of folklore classification
F-r is divided into childbirth (epos, lyrics, drama), childbirth - on kinds (eg, songs, fairy tales, etc.), and views of genres. If the classification is based on the mode of existence of works, then f-r will be divided into ceremonial and non-ceremonial .
epic reproduces reality in narrative form in the form of objective pictures. Divided into
Song (poetic)
spiritual verses
prose
Fairy tale prose
Animal Tales
Fairy tales
jokes
Novels
Fairy tale prose
lore
legends
Bylichki (demonological stories)
In epic folklore genres, the main artistic feature is plot. It is based on conflict, which is based on clash of the hero with supernatural or real opponents. The plot can be both simple and complex, events can be perceived as real or fictional, and the content can be related to the past, present and future.
Lyrics– the lyrics poetically depict the inner, state of mind person, his subjective experiences
Songs (ritual, non-ritual)
Chastushki (ritual, non-ritual)
Lamentations (ceremonial only)
Dramaturgical genres of folklore have a spectacular and playful nature, and convey an attitude to reality in a playful action
Ritual games (turned into bear fun)
drama games
Late theatrical genres(folk theater)
Theater of live actors (folk drama)
Puppet theater (nativity scene, Petrushka)
Rayok (Picture Theatre)
By way of existence of works folklore is divided into
Ritual
Ritual calendar
Ritual family
Extra-ceremonial
In addition, distinguish small genres of folklore: proverbs
Proverbs and sayings
Also, types such as children's folklore.(lullabies, teasers, horror stories, incantations, etc., workers' folklore(songs, ditties, prose), WWII folklore(chastushkas, f-r front, rear, driven into the occupation, Victory, etc.) Each folklore genre has its own circle of characters, their plots and style techniques, however, all together folklore genres in their natural existence are interconnected, form a system. In this system, obsolete f.zh. and on their basis new ones are born.
4 Archaic. F. primitive society, when there was no written language and all K was oral. F of this type appeared thousands of years ago, long before the formation of the Russian people. Many f motifs found in the RNT are older than the Russian people in their origin and came to our F from the primitive era.
First, traces of the first. represented in the everyday life of religion, the language of civilized peoples. Secondly, many peoples of Africa, Oceania, South America, Far North by the 19th century were (and some are still) on Pervob. stages of development.
Roots F - in the first. ideology, much in it is conditioned by an archaic worldview, which is qualitatively different from the modern one. Pervob.Ch was in the power of invisible forces, the action of which he constantly felt. The representations of these forces were not quite distinct, colored with fear. One of the main tasks facing the original team was to neutralize hostile forces. For this, from the first H required "strict observance of a number of rules that showed their salvation in the days of their ancestors." If these rules are not observed, turmoil will begin in nature, and life will become impossible. "The totality of rites is the only effective guarantee against all kinds of bad influences that inspire fear and fear."
There are two central concepts associated with the life of the first. society and its ideology, - rite (ritual) and myth. myths usually referred to as ancient stories of religious content. Modern science believes that mythology– this is not just a meeting of occupants. stories about the gods, and the system of worldview, covering and expressing the whole life of the first. Ch, including his religious beliefs. Claude Levi-Strauss distinguished between "implicit" mythology (representations) and "explicit" mythology (mythological stories).
Mythology is the whole sphere of spiritual activity of the primitive, "a way of conceptualizing the surrounding reality and human essence." This means that it is expressed in a variety of forms - from language to narrative. “Myth is not a genre, not a specific form, but the content, as it were, regardless of the form in which it is expressed. A myth is a work whose original form can never be established” (Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky). “A real, living myth is by no means a collection of stories: it is not told, they live in it, reproducing it in action, i.e. in a rite, in the rhythmic magic of dance and singing, and in general in any generally significant human act ”(Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev).
Mythology reflects the most primitive level of H-th thinking, which has not yet learned the laws of cause and effect, has not learned to generalize and has not developed abstract concepts, has not separated the cosmic from the biological, the human from the animal. Mythological consciousness ascribes to things qualities that are not characteristic of them.
A special, diffuse state of primitive thinking, when different concepts are mixed, manifests itself primarily in language. The modern language is full of unexpected personifications (for example, “the sun has risen”), but most clearly mythology finds direct expression in the primitive languages: they not only lack abstract concepts, but there are few words in general. Linguists believe that in the era of the formation of languages, each word had a plurality of meanings, which were connected with each other not logically, but associates. In the interpretation of the world and the classifiers of life and phenomena, having traced his own. Mythological logic, the main law of which is binary opposition: concepts of one semantic. a number of counter-concepts of the other semantic series. So, in ancient Slavic mythology, the opposition "earth - water" contacted the opposition "life death", "male - female". Death is presented in the form of a woman, most often an old woman (and here is another opposition: "young - old"). The unity of water, death and woman is realized in the image mermaids.
Mythology is primarily a specific type of thinking. Mythology is a kind of philosophy, which determines the “rules” of behavior in the first place. H and found a conc., practical. incarnate in rite (ritual). In the primitive society, there was a complex system of ritual actions that had magic. value: with help. ceremonies were supported by the establishment. order in nature and society, ensuring success in the land. and on the hunt. Malinovsky: "a myth that is not embodied in a ritual is just grandmother's or grandfather's tales." The rites were a reproduction of the mythological. stories and included dancing, singing, masquerading.
Specificity first mythological the story is that ideas about the structure of the world are transmitted in the form of stories about the origin of certain of its elements - from cosmogony to explaining why the hare does not have a tail. For the first H myths were not only paramount. scientific and religious, but also social meaning: they explained and justified the world order - and in + the reproduction of myth in magic and ritual helped to maintain this order. "The transformation of chaos into space is the main meaning of mythology, and space from the very beginning includes a value, ethical aspect." With the help of myth-making, primitive man modeled, classified, interpreted the world, society and himself.
5Rites divided into 2 cycles:
Life (maternity, wedding, funeral)
The section "family and ritual folklore" includes rituals of the "life cycle":
Birth Wedding Funeral Initiation rite
A. van Gennep. Rites of passage. Wrote about existence of a certain strk, properties. all ritual cycles. Comparing the rituals of different countries and peoples, I came to the conclusion that it is possible to single out a general formula.
He identified three phases:
1st separation phase. Preliminal.
a person, in order to enter into something new, must give up what was before. The bride before the wedding does not work with other girls, does not communicate with strangers.
2. liminal phase.
Isolation, acquisition of new knowledge Some strong emotional experience that prepares: Physical pain. Ritual humiliation. Use of psychotropic drugs, etc. Liminality is often likened to death, uterine existence, invisibility, darkness, bisexuality, desert, an eclipse of the sun and moon, and shows features of some alternative to the structure known to us, as “a moment in time and beyond it”
3. postliminal phase. Turning on.
Phase of adaptation to a new status. Certain symbolic forms of expression. vestment in new clothes, empowerment, etc.
"Pregnancy and childbirth", "Birth and childhood"
First, the rites of separation, their meaning is to isolate the pregnant woman from society. The gestation period is an intermediate period. Rites associated with childbirth, their purpose is to facilitate the return of a woman to her former community, to provide her with a new position as a mother.
Unclean is usually considered not only the mother, but also the child --- and he is subjected to numerous. taboo. The first interim period in a child's life coincides with the last of a woman's. Various protections from the evil eye, demons, spoilage, diseases are equally important for both.
Newborn is sacred. In relation to a newborn, the collective applies the same tactics as to a stranger - defense tactics .. that is, at first the child must be separated from the environment in which he is, that is, from the mother. Rites of separation usually include actions, in which something is cut off - cutting hair (first), shaving the head, first dressing. The following rites of incorporation: naming, ritual breastfeeding, baptism, rites for the first tooth, etc.
Ceremony of passing through the door: to leave the world of childhood and enter into the world of adolescence.
Naming. Thanks to these rites, the child is individualized and included in the community.
Calendar (everything is included in one annual circle (winter, spring, autumn, summer cycles) signs, stoneflies, dragging, laudatory songs)
The rhythm of life of our ancestors is dependent on the alternation of the seasons and production cycles, the harvest is directly dependent on nature, on the air of the natural elements. Kalenda - the first day of the month (Latin, in ancient Rome) The other Slavs developed their own calendar with very large and rather small ones - from "age" to "day, night, twilight." The essence of the calendar depended on the lifestyle of its compilers.
Winter-spring border
The winter-spring cycle is incantatory (for the harvest)
Winter cycle - winter in different regions different
December 19 - St. Saint Nikolai (Nikolshchina - clubbing - they brewed beer from grains of a new crop. Matchmaking began. They began to prepare for Christmas time)
Christmas time began after Vespers. Christmas time has always been accompanied by divination. Guessing mostly girls. The mummers were typical representatives of Christmas time. The mummers represent people from that world. They are always strangers (animals, gypsies, soldiers). The goat mask was especially popular. Main dishes: kutia, pancakes, beer, uzva (dried fruit compote)
Caroling - (went with the sun) carols - songs that were sung by windowsills. We went caroling 3 times: - Christmas Eve - New Year's Eve (Vasilevsky) January 13 - Epiphany Christmas Eve from January 18 to 19
The carol ended with the demand for a gift.
The Slavs had holidays at this time, because. there is a funeral meal (kutya, pancakes, beer. The demand for a gift was not begging (I sing praise to you and you must pay)
Carols were in the nature of congratulatory incantation chants.
On Vasiliev evening, there should be a piglet on the table.
christian christmas comes to replace other holidays and their original meaning is lost. (caroling, divination)
Maslenitsa- a week before Lent (cheese week). You can't eat meat, but you can eat dairy products. Each day had its own name:
Monday - meeting; Tuesday - a game; Wednesday - gourmet (mother-in-law treated her son-in-law with pancakes); Thursday - wide; the middle of the fun. The youth rode down the hills, a winter review of brides was held; Friday - mother-in-law evenings (son-in-law treated mother-in-law); Saturday - hall gatherings (seeing off); Sunday - seeing off (forgiveness day) bonfires were burned, straw was hung on a pole and set on fire. Or they burned the image of the carnival or rode with it, then they took it to bury it, sometimes they threw it into the river. They jumped over the fires. A mockery of the carnival. Buried and laughed.
Maslenitsa drunk the ancient traditions of the Slavs. Transition period from winter to spring. New Harvest Spell. O antiquity says:
memorial food
Invocation chants. Riding from the mountains also had an incantatory character.
Funeral carnival under the snow
Maslenitsa was perceived as an opportunity to take a walk before Lent.
Autumn-summer cycle- gratitude.
Healing herbs are collected. The earth reached its greatest strength, so the herbs are more beneficial. Yves symbol. Kupala is a fern. Find a fern flower. That night they jumped over the fire. Doused with water. Purifying power of fire and water. They led round dances, walked barefoot in the dew, wove wreaths, guessed from them.
Ivan Kupala was depicted as a female effigy. Also, this day was considered the day of the witches and it was necessary to be wary of evil spirits. After Ivan Kupala, rites were resumed only on the day of harvest. June 15 - Holy Trinity Day.
Mermaid Week (2nd half of Christmas time). Rites with mummers. Mermaid costumes.
Rite of Kostroma. The funeral of Kostroma made of straw. The funeral was held to laughter. Kostroma was buried or thrown into a river or field. The last summer holiday, which is still remembered and observed by all its traditions, is Ilyin's Day. Among the people, Ilya is considered harsh, formidable, punishing, in his submission rains, thunder, lightning; on the other hand, Ilya is generous, endowing, as he sends fertility to the earth. On this day in Rus', they baked bread from new rye and brought it to the church for blessing, and also baked the first kolobs and donuts from the grain of the new crop, brought a sheaf from the fields and put it in the "red corner" of the hut. On Ilyin's day, all evil spirits turn into various animals - hares, foxes, cats, dogs, wolves, etc. In this regard, a custom was established on the day of Elijah not to let dogs and cats into the house, so as not to bring thunder and lightning to the hut.
Works of calendar and family ritual poetry were collected from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century. and are available in numerous collections, archival records. Rituals occupied an important place in the life of the people. They evolved from century to century, accumulating the experience of many generations. The rituals had a ritual and magical significance. They are usually divided into labor and family ones. Russian rituals are genetically related to the rituals of other Slavic peoples and have a typological similarity with the rituals of many peoples of the world. Ritual poetry of interaction. with folk rituals, contained elements of a dramatic game. Songs are especially important. In many rituals, they occupied a leading place. Folk calendar rites were created in ancient Rus' on the basis of human labor activity. They were performed on precisely established holidays, closely related to the work of the peasant, due to the change of seasons of the year: the winter solstice, the onset of spring, summer, autumn season harvesting. Poetry of the winter cycle. The time from the Nativity of Christ to the Epiphany was called Svyatki. Winter Christmas time was divided into holy and terrible evenings. On holy evenings, they glorified Christ, and on terrible evenings, mummers were obligatory. Zoomphoric masks had magical significance. Passive rite - divination. Active - caroling. Both of these were accompanied by Christmas ritual songs of two varieties, respectively - singalongs and carols. According to their function, the obscene songs had a divinatory, rather than incantatory character, but the ending of the songs, affirming, conjuring fate,. brings them closer to conspiracies and carols, which have the meaning of the magical effect of Carols. Caroling is the walking of young people around the huts, with special songs that have three names according to the refrain called out by carolers: carols (“Oh, Kolyada!”), Ovsen (“Oh, Ovsen, Tausen!”) And grapes (“Grapes, red- my green!"). Carols are very archaic in content, which was determined by their purpose. The main goal of the carolers was to wish the owners good, wealth, prosperity. Some carols have the appearance of greatness, they ideally describe the wealth and well-being of a peasant family. A distinctive feature of carols of the grandiose type is their generalized character. Another obligatory topic associated with the appointment of carols is a request for a treat or reward. In many carols, a request or demand for food is its only content. Another theme of carols is the description of walking, searching for Kolyada, the magical actions of carolers, ritual food, i.e. elements of the ceremony itself. The composition of the carol: 1) an appeal to Kolyada, the search for her by carolers. 2) magnification, description of the rite or a request for reward 3) a wish for well-being, a request for alms. In the center of the Maslenitsa holiday there is a symbolic image of Maslenitsa. The holiday itself consists of seven parts: Mon - meeting, Tue - flirting, Wed - revelry, Thu - Thursday, Fri - mother-in-law gatherings, Sat - seeing off, Sun - forgiveness day. Songs for Shrovetide can be divided into two groups. The first - meeting and honoring, has the form of greatness. They glorify the wide, honest Maslenitsa, its dishes and entertainment. The songs accompanying the farewell to M. are somewhat different. They talk about the upcoming post. Singers regret the end of the holiday. Maslenitsa was usually interpreted primarily as a celebration of the victory of spring over winter, of life over death.
Folklore as a special kind of art is a qualitatively unique component of fiction. It integrates the culture of a certain society ethnic background on a special track historical development society.
Folklore is ambiguous: it manifests both boundless folk wisdom, and folk conservatism, inertia. In any case, folklore embodies the highest spiritual forces of the people, reflects the elements of the national artistic consciousness.
The term "folklore" itself (from the English word folklore - folk wisdom) is a common name for folk art in international scientific terminology. The term was first introduced in 1846 by the English archaeologist W. J. Thomson. As an official scientific concept, first adopted by English folklore society(Folklore Society), founded in 1878. In 1800-1990, the term entered into scientific use in many countries of the world.
Folklore (English folklore - "folk wisdom") - folk art, most often it is oral; artistic collective creative activity of the people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses of the people (tradition, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epic), folk music (songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theater), dance, architecture, visual and arts and crafts.
Folklore is creativity that does not require any material and where the person himself is the means of embodying the artistic concept. Folklore has a clearly expressed didactic orientation. Much of it was created specifically for children and was dictated by the great people's concern for young people - their future. "Folklore" serves the child from his very birth.
folk poetry reveals the most significant connections and patterns of life, leaving aside the individual, special. Folklore gives them the most important and simple concepts about life and people. It reflects the general interest and the vital, what affects everyone and everyone: the work of a person, his relationship with nature, life in a team.
The value of folklore as an important part in education and development in the modern world is well known and generally recognized. Folklore always responds sensitively to people's requests, being a reflection of the collective mind, accumulated life experience.
The main features and properties of folklore:
1. Bifunctionality. Each folklore work is an organic part of human life and is conditioned by practical purpose. It is focused on a certain moment of people's life. For example, Lullaby- it is sung to calm, lull the child. When the child falls asleep, the song stops - it is no longer needed. This is how the aesthetic, spiritual and practical function lullaby song. Everything is interconnected in the work, beauty cannot be separated from benefit, benefit from beauty.
2.Polyelement. Folklore is polyelemental, since its internal diversity and numerous interconnections of an artistic, cultural-historical and socio-cultural nature are obvious.
Not every folklore work includes all artistic and figurative elements. There are also genres in which their minimum number. The performance of a folklore work is the integrity of a creative act. Among the many artistic and figurative elements of folklore, they are distinguished as the main verbal, musical, dance and mimic. Polyelementity is manifested during the event, for example, “Burn, burn clearly so that it does not go out!” or when studying a round dance - the game "Boyars", where row-by-row movements occur. In this game, all the main artistic and figurative elements interact. Verbal and musical are manifested in the musical and poetic genre of the song, performed simultaneously with the choreographic movement (dance element). This manifests the polyelement nature of folklore, its original synthesis, called syncretism. Syncretism characterizes the interconnection, integrity of the internal components and properties of folklore.
3. Collectivity. Absence of the author. Collectivity is manifested both in the process of creating a work and in the nature of the content, which always objectively reflects the psychology of many people. Asking who wrote a folk song is like asking who wrote the language we speak. Collectivity is due to the performance of folklore works. Lead some components of their forms, for example, the chorus, require the mandatory inclusion in the performance of all participants in the action.
4. Lack of writing. Orality in the transmission of folklore material is manifested in the absence of writing in the forms of transmission of folklore information. Artistic images and skills are transmitted from the performer, the artist to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student. Folklore is oral art. It lives only in the memory of people and is transmitted in a live performance "by word of mouth". Artistic images and skills are transmitted from the performer, the artist to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student.
5. Tradition. The variety of creative manifestations in folklore only outwardly seems spontaneous. Over a long period of time, objective ideals of creativity have evolved. These ideals became those practical and aesthetic standards, deviations from which would be inappropriate.
6.Variability. Variation of the network is one of the incentives for constant movement, "breathing" of a folklore work, and each folklore work is always, as it were, a variant of itself. The folklore text turns out to be unfinished, open to each subsequent performer. For example, in the round dance game "Boyars", children move "row by row", and the step may be different. In some places it is a regular step with an accent on the last syllable of the line, in others it is a step with a footstep on the last two syllables, in the third place it is a variable step. It is important to convey to the mind the idea that in a folklore work, creation-performance and performance-creation coexist. Variation can be thought of as variability works of art, their uniqueness in performance or other form of reproduction. Each author or performer supplemented traditional images or works with his own reading or vision.
7. Improvisation is a feature of folk art. Each new performance of the work is enriched with new elements (textual, methodical, rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic). brought by the performer. Any performer constantly contributes to famous work own material, which contributes to the constant development, change of the work, during which the reference artistic image crystallizes. Thereby folklore performance is the result of many years of collective work.
In modern literature, the broad interpretation of folklore as a combination of folk traditions, customs, views, beliefs, and arts is common.
In particular, the famous folklorist V.E. Gusev in the book "Aesthetics of Folklore" considers this concept as artistic reflection reality, carried out in verbal-musical, choreographic and dramatic forms of collective folk art, expressing the worldview of the working masses and inextricably linked with life and life. Folklore is a complex, synthetic art. Often in his works elements of various types of arts are combined - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnography. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scholars took a broad approach to folklore, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life.
The main aspects of the content of folk culture include: the worldview of the people, folk experience, housing, costume, work, leisure, crafts, family relationships, folk holidays and rituals, knowledge and skills, artistic creativity. It should be noted that, like any other social phenomenon, folk culture has specific features, among which it is worth highlighting: an inextricable connection with nature, with the environment; openness, educational nature of the folk culture of Russia, the ability to contact with the culture of other peoples, dialogue, originality, integrity, situationality, the presence of a purposeful emotional charge, the preservation of elements of pagan and Orthodox culture.
Traditions and folklore are wealth developed by generations and transmitted in an emotionally figurative form. historical experience, cultural heritage. In the cultural and creative conscious activity of the broad masses, folk traditions, folklore and artistic modernity merge in a single channel.
The main functions of folklore include religious - mythological, ritual, ritual, artistic - aesthetic, pedagogical, communicative - informational, social - psychological.
Folklore is very diverse. There is traditional, modern, peasant and urban folklore.
Traditional folklore is those forms and mechanisms of artistic culture that are preserved, fixed and transmitted from generation to generation. They capture universal aesthetic values that retain their significance outside of concrete - historical social changes.
Traditional folklore is divided into two groups - ritual and non-ritual.
Ritual folklore includes:
calendar folklore (carols, carnival songs, stoneflies);
family folklore (wedding, maternity, funeral rites, lullabies, etc.),
occasional folklore (charms, incantations, incantations).
Non-ritual folklore is divided into four groups:
Folklore of speech situations (proverbs, sayings, riddles, teasers, nicknames, curses);
Poetry (chastushkas, songs);
· folklore drama (Petrushka theatre, crib drama);
prose.
Folklore poetry includes: epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyric song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs (poetry parodies), sadistic rhymes. Folklore prose is again divided into two groups: fabulous and non-fabulous. Fairy tale prose includes: a fairy tale (which, in turn, is of four types: a fairy tale, a fairy tale about animals, a household fairy tale, a cumulative fairy tale) and an anecdote. Non-fairytale prose includes: tradition, legend, bylichka, mythological story, dream story. The folklore of speech situations includes: proverbs, sayings, good wishes, curses, nicknames, teasers, dialogue graffiti, riddles, tongue twisters and some others. There are also written forms of folklore, such as chain letters, graffiti, albums (for example, song books).
Ritual folklore is folklore genres performed within the framework of various rituals. The most successful, in my opinion, was the definition of the rite by D.M. Ugrinovich: “The rite is certain way transmission to new generations of certain ideas, norms of behavior, values and feelings. The rite is distinguished from other ways of such transmission by its symbolic nature. This is its specificity. Ritual actions always act as symbols embodying certain social ideas, representations, images and evoking corresponding feelings. The works of calendar folklore are timed to coincide with the folk annual holidays, which had an agricultural character.
Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs: carols, Shrovetide songs, stoneflies, Semitsky songs, etc.
Vesnyanki (spring calls) are ritual songs of an incantatory nature that accompany the Slavic rite of calling spring.
Carols are New Year's songs. They were performed during Christmas time (from December 24 to January 6), when caroling was going on. Caroling - walking around the yards with carol songs. For these songs, carolers were rewarded with gifts - a festive treat. The main meaning of the carol is magnificence. Carolers give an ideal description of the house of the magnified. It turns out that before us is not an ordinary peasant hut, but a tower, around which “there is an iron tyn”, “on each stamen there is a dome”, and on each dome “a golden crown”. Match this tower and the people living in it. Pictures of wealth are not reality, but the desired: carols perform to some extent the functions of a magic spell.
Maslenitsa is a folk holiday cycle that has been preserved among the Slavs since pagan times. The rite is associated with the farewell to winter and the meeting of spring, which lasts a whole week. The celebration was carried out according to a strict schedule, which was reflected in the names of the days of the Pancake week: Monday - "meeting", Tuesday - "flirty", Wednesday - "gourmet", Thursday - "revelry", Friday - "mother-in-law evening", Saturday - "sister-in-law gatherings ”, Sunday - “seeing off”, the end of the Maslenitsa fun.
Few Shrovetide songs have come down. By subject and purpose, they are divided into two groups: one is associated with the rite of meeting, the other - with the rite of farewell ("funeral") Maslenitsa. The songs of the first group are distinguished by a major, cheerful character. This is, first of all, a majestic song in honor of Maslenitsa. The songs accompanying the farewell to Maslenitsa have a minor key. The "funeral" of Maslenitsa meant seeing off winter and a spell, a greeting for the coming spring.
Family rituals are predetermined by the cycle of human life. They are divided into maternity, wedding, recruiting and funeral.
Birthing rites sought to protect the newborn from hostile mystical forces, and also assumed the well-being of the infant in life. A ritual washing of the newborn was performed, health was spoken of by various sentences.
Wedding ceremony. It represents a kind folk performance, where all the roles are painted and there are even directors - matchmaker or matchmaker. The special scale and significance of this rite should show the significance of the event, play the meaning of the ongoing change in a person's life.
The rite educates the behavior of the bride in the future married life and educates all the participants of the rite present. It shows the patriarchal nature of family life, its way of life.
Funeral rites. During the funeral, various rituals were performed, which were accompanied by special funeral lamentations. Funeral lamentations truthfully reflected life, everyday consciousness of the peasant, love for the deceased and fear of the future, the tragic situation of the family in harsh conditions.
Occasional folklore (from lat. occasionalis - random) - does not correspond to generally accepted use, is of an individual character.
A variety of occasional folklore are conspiracies.
SPELLS - a folk-poetic incantatory verbal formula to which magical power is attributed.
CHALLENGES - an appeal to the sun and other natural phenomena, as well as to animals and especially often to birds, which were considered messengers of spring. Moreover, the forces of nature were revered as living: they turn to spring with requests, wish it to come soon, complain about the winter, complain.
COUNTERS - a type of children's creativity, small poetic texts with a clear rhyme-rhythmic structure in a playful form.
Genres of non-ritual folklore evolved under the influence of syncretism.
It includes the folklore of speech situations: proverbs, fables, omens and sayings. They contain a person's judgments about the way of life, about work, about higher natural forces, statements about human affairs. This is a vast area of moral assessments and judgments, how to live, how to raise children, how to honor ancestors, thoughts about the need to follow precepts and examples, these are everyday rules of behavior. In a word, their functionality covers almost all ideological areas.
MYSTERY - works with a hidden meaning. They have a rich fiction, wit, poetry, figurative structure of colloquial speech. The people themselves aptly defined the riddle: "Without a face in a disguise." The subject that is conceived, the “face”, is hidden under the “mask” - allegory or allusion, roundabout speech, bluff. No matter how many riddles are invented to test attention, ingenuity, quick wits. Some consist of a simple question, others look like puzzles. It is easy to solve riddles for those who have a good idea of the objects and phenomena in question, and also know how to unravel the hidden meaning in words. If a child looks at the world attentive, keen eyes, noticing its beauty and wealth, then every tricky question and every allegory in a riddle will be solved.
PROVERB - as a genre, unlike a riddle, it is not an allegory. In it, a certain action or deed is given an expanded meaning. By its form folk riddles adjoin proverbs: the same dimensional, colloquial speech, the same frequent use of rhyme and consonance of words. But the proverb and the riddle differ in that the riddle must be guessed, and the proverb is a lesson.
Unlike a proverb, a SAYING is not a complete judgment. This is a figurative expression used in an extended sense.
Sayings, like proverbs, remain living folklore genres: they are constantly found in our everyday speech. The prepositions contain a capacious playful definition of the inhabitants of a locality, city, living in the neighborhood or somewhere far away.
Folklore poetry is epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs.
BYLINA is a folklore epic song, a genre characteristic of the Russian tradition. Such epics as "Sadko", "Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber", "Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich" and others are known. The term "epic" was introduced into scientific use in the 40s of the 19th century. folklorist I.P. Sakharov. The basis of the epic plot is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - "old", "old", implying that the action in question took place in the past).
FOLK SONGS are very diverse in their composition. In addition to songs that are part of the calendar, wedding and funeral rites. These are round dances. Game and dance songs. A large group of songs are lyrical non-ritual songs (love, family, Cossack, soldier, coachman, robber and others).
A special genre of songwriting is historical songs. Such songs tell about the famous events of Russian history. The heroes of historical songs are real personalities.
Round dance songs, like ritual ones, had magical meaning. Round dance and game songs depicted scenes from the wedding ceremony and family life.
LYRICAL SONGS are folk songs that express the personal feelings and moods of the singers. Lyrical songs are original both in content and in art form. Their originality is defined genre nature and specific conditions of emergence and development. Here we are dealing with a lyrical kind of poetry, different from epic in terms of the principles of reflecting reality. ON. Dobrolyubov wrote that in folk lyrical songs "an inner feeling is expressed, excited by the phenomena of ordinary life", and N.A. Radishchev saw in them a reflection of the people's soul, spiritual grief.
Lyric songs - bright pattern artistic creativity of the people. They introduced a special artistic language and samples of high poetry into the national culture, reflected spiritual beauty, ideals and aspirations of the people, the moral foundations of peasant life.
Chastushki is one of the youngest folklore genres. These are small rhyming poems. The first ditties were excerpts from songs of a large size. Chastushka is a comic genre. It contains a sharp thought, apt observation. Topics are varied. Chastushki often ridiculed what seemed wild, ridiculous, nasty.
CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE is commonly referred to as works that are performed by adults for children, as well as those composed by the children themselves. Lullabies, pestles, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters and incantations, teasers, rhymes, absurdities, etc. belong to children's folklore. Modern children's folklore has been enriched with new genres. These are horror stories, mischievous rhymes and songs (funny alterations of famous songs and poems), anecdotes.
Exists different connections folklore and literature. First of all, literature is derived from folklore. The main genres of drama that developed in ancient Greece - tragedies and comedies - date back to religious rites. Medieval romances of chivalry, about journeys through fictional lands, about fights with monsters, and about the love of brave warriors, are based on the motifs of fairy tales. Literary lyric works originate from folk lyric songs. The genre of a small action-packed narrative - a short story - goes back to folk everyday tales.
Very often, writers deliberately turned to folklore traditions. Interest in oral folk art, fascination with folklore awakened in the pre-romantic and romantic eras.
The tales of A.S. Pushkin go back to the plots of Russian fairy tales. Imitation of Russian folk historical songs - "Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilievich ..." by M.Yu. Lermontov. Style features N.A. Nekrasov recreated folk songs in his poems about the difficult peasant lot.
Folklore not only influences literature, but is itself affected in the opposite way. Many author's poems have become folk songs. Most famous example- a poem by I.Z. Surikov “Steppe and steppe all around ..”
folklore drama. It includes: Petrushka theatre, religious drama, crib drama.
Nativity scene drama got its name from a nativity scene - a portable puppet theater that has the shape of a two-story wooden box, resembling a stage platform for the performance of medieval mysteries in architecture. In turn, the name, which came from the plot of the main play, in which the action developed in a cave - a nativity scene. The theater of this type was widespread in Western Europe, and he came to Russia with wandering puppeteers from Ukraine and Belarus. The repertoire consisted of plays of religious themes and satirical skits - interludes, which had an improvisational character. The most popular play is King Herod.
PETRUSHKA THEATER – glove puppet theatre. The main character of the play is a resilient Petrushka with a big nose, protruding chin, with a cap on his head, with the participation of which a number of scenes are played out with various characters. The number of characters reached fifty, these are such characters as a soldier, a gentleman, a gypsy, a bride, a doctor and others. Such performances used the techniques of folk comic speech, lively dialogues with a play on words and contrasts, with elements of self-praise, with the use of action and gestures.
The Petrushki Theater was created not only under the influence of Russian, Slavic, Western European puppet traditions. It was a kind of folk theatrical culture, part of the extremely developed in Russia (spectacular folklore). Therefore, a lot of things unite him with the folk drama, with the performances of farce grandfathers-barkers, with the sentences of the friend at the wedding, with amusing popular prints, with jokes of Raeshnikov, etc.
The special atmosphere of the city's festive square explains, for example, Petrushka's familiarity, his unbridled gaiety and promiscuity as an object of ridicule and shame. After all, Petrushka beats not only class enemies, but everyone in a row - from his own bride to the quarter, often beats for no reason at all (Arapa, a beggar old woman, a German clown, etc.), in the end he hits him too: the dog is merciless pats him on the nose. The puppeteer, as well as other participants in the fair, square fun, is attracted by the very opportunity to ridicule, parody, bludgeon, and the more, louder, unexpected, sharper, the better. Elements of social protest, satire were very successfully and naturally superimposed on this ancient comic base.
Like all folklore amusements, "Petrushka" is stuffed with obscenities and curses. The primordial meaning of these elements has been studied quite fully, and how deeply they penetrated into the folk culture of laughter and what place swearing, verbal obscenity and degrading, cynical gestures occupied in it, is fully shown by M.M. Bakhtin.
Performances were shown several times a day in different conditions (at fairs, in front of the booth, on the streets of the city, in the suburbs). "Walking" Petrushka was the most common use of the doll.
For mobile folklore theater a light screen, dolls, miniature scenes and a curtain were specially made. Petrushka ran around the stage, his gestures and movements created the appearance of a living person.
comic effect episodes were achieved by techniques typical of folk laughter culture: fights, beatings, obscenities, imaginary deafness of a partner, funny movements and gestures, mimicry, fun funerals, etc.
There are conflicting opinions about the reasons for the extraordinary popularity of the theater: topicality, satirical and social orientation, comic character, a simple and understandable game for all segments of the population, the charm of the main character, acting improvisation, freedom of choice of material, the puppet's sharp language.
Parsley is a folk holiday fun.
Parsley is a manifestation of popular optimism, the mockery of the poor over the powerful and the rich.
Folklore prose. It is divided into two groups: fabulous (fairy tale, anecdote) and non-fairytale (legend, tradition, bylichka).
FAIRY TALE is the most famous genre of folklore. This is a kind of folklore prose, the hallmark of which is fiction. Plots, events and characters are fictional in fairy tales. The Modern Reader folklore works reveals fiction in other genres of oral folk art. Folk storytellers and listeners believed in the truth of the bylichki (the name comes from the word "truth" - "truth"); the word "epic" was invented by folklorists; the people called epics "old times". Russian peasants, who said and listened to epics, believing in their truth, believed that the events depicted in them took place a long time ago - in times mighty heroes and fire-breathing kites. They did not believe in fairy tales, knowing that they tell about something that did not exist, does not exist, and cannot be.
It is customary to distinguish four types of fairy tales: fairy tales, household (otherwise - novelistic), cumulative (otherwise - "chain-like") and fairy tales about animals.
MAGIC FAIRY TALES differ from other fairy tales in a complex, detailed plot, which consists of a number of unchanging motifs that necessarily follow each other in a certain order. These are fantastic creatures (for example, Koschei the Immortal or Baba Yaga), and an animated, human-like character denoting winter (Morozko), and wonderful objects (self-assembled tablecloth, walking boots, flying carpet, etc.).
In fairy tales, the memory of performances and rituals that existed in deep, deep antiquity is preserved. They reflect the ancient relationships between people in a family or clan.
HOUSEHOLD TALES tell about people, about their family life, about the relationship between the owner and the farmhand, the master and the peasant, the peasant and the priest, the soldier and the priest. A commoner - a laborer, a peasant who has returned from the service of a soldier - is always smarter than a priest or a landowner, from whom, thanks to cunning, he takes away money, things, and sometimes his wife. Usually, in the center of the plots of everyday fairy tales, there is some unexpected event, an unforeseen turning point that occurs due to the cunning of the hero.
Household tales are often satirical. They ridicule the greed and stupidity of those in power. They do not tell of miraculous things and travels in Far Far Away kingdom, and it is said about things from peasant use. But household tales no more believable than magic. Therefore, the description of wild, immoral, terrible acts in everyday fairy tales does not cause disgust or indignation, but cheerful laughter. After all, this is not life, but fiction.
Household fairy tales are a much younger genre than other varieties of fairy tales. In modern folklore, the heir to this genre is an anecdote (from gr.anekdotos - “unpublished”
CUMULATIVE TALES built on repeated repetition of the same actions or events. In cumulative (from Latin Cumulatio - accumulation) fairy tales, several plot principles are distinguished: the accumulation of characters in order to achieve the necessary goal; a heap of actions ending in disaster; a chain of human or animal bodies; forcing episodes, defiantly unjustified experiences of the characters.
The accumulation of heroes helping in some important action is evident in the fairy tale "Turnip".
Cumulative tales- a very ancient kind of fairy tales. They have not been studied enough.
In TALES ABOUT ANIMALS, the memory of ancient ideas has been preserved, according to which people descended from ancestors - animals. Animals in these tales behave like people. Cunning and cunning animals deceive others - gullible and stupid, and this trickery is never condemned. The plots of fairy tales about animals are reminiscent of mythological stories about heroes - rogues and their antics.
Non-fabulous prose is stories and incidents from life that tell about a person’s meeting with the characters of Russian demonology - sorcerers, witches, mermaids, etc. This also includes stories about saints, shrines and miracles - about the communication of a person who has accepted the Christian faith, with powers of a higher order.
BYLICHKA - a folklore genre, a story about a miraculous event that allegedly happened in reality - mainly about a meeting with spirits, " evil spirit» .
LEGEND (from Latin legenda “reading”, “readable”) is one of the varieties of non-fairytale prose folklore. Written legend about some historical events or personalities. Legend is an approximate synonym for the concept of myth; epic story about what happened in time immemorial; the main characters of the story are usually heroes in the full sense of the word, often gods and others are directly involved in the events supernatural powers. The events in the legend are often exaggerated, a lot of fiction is added. Therefore, scientists do not consider legends to be completely reliable historical evidence, without denying, however, that most of the legends are based on real events. In a figurative sense, legends refer to glorious, admirable events of the past, depicted in fairy tales, stories, etc. As a rule, they contain additional religious or social pathos.
The legends contain memories of the events of antiquity, an explanation of some phenomenon, name or custom.
The words of Odoevsky V.F. sound surprisingly relevant. remarkable Russian, thinker, musician: “We must not forget that from an unnatural life, that is, one where human needs are not satisfied, a painful state occurs ... in the same way, idiocy can occur from the inaction of thought ..., - a muscle is paralyzed from an abnormal state of the nerve, - in the same way, the lack of thinking distorts the artistic feeling, and the absence of an artistic feeling paralyzes thought. At Odoevsky V.F. one can find thoughts about the aesthetic education of children based on folklore, consonant with what we would like to bring to life in our days in the field of children's learning and education: “... in the field of human spiritual activity, I will confine myself to the following remark: the soul expresses itself either through body movements, outlines, colors, or through a series of sounds that form singing or playing a musical instrument”
The theme of oral folk art in Russian literature is extremely diverse, there are numerous genres and types of folklore. All of them were formed gradually, as a result of life and creative activity people, manifested for several hundred years. Currently, there are specific types of folklore in literature. Oral folk art is that unique layer of knowledge on the basis of which thousands of classical works were built.
Interpretation of the term
Folklore is oral folk art, endowed with ideological depth, highly artistic qualities, it includes all poetic, prose genres, customs and traditions, accompanied by verbal artistic creativity. Folklore genres are classified in different ways, but basically there are several genre groups:
- Labor songs - formed in the process of work, for example, sowing, plowing, haymaking. They are a variety of cries, signals, tunes, parting words, songs.
- Calendar folklore - conspiracies, signs.
- Wedding folklore.
- Funeral lamentations, recruiting accounts.
- Non-ritual folklore is small folklore genres, proverbs, fables, omens and sayings.
- Oral prose - legends, bylichki and past stories.
- Children's folklore - pestles, nursery rhymes, lullabies.
- Song epic (heroic) - epics, poems, songs (historical, military, spiritual).
- Artistic creativity - magical, everyday tales and tales about animals, ballads, romances, ditties.
- Folklore theater - raek, nativity scene, disguise, performances with puppets.
Consider the most common types of folklore in more detail.
labor songs
This is a song genre, a distinctive feature of which is the obligatory accompaniment of the labor process. Labor songs are a way of organizing a collective, community service, which sets the rhythm with a simple melody and lyrics. For example: "Wow, let's pull a little closer to make it more fun." Such songs helped to start and finish work, rallied the work team and were spiritual helpers in difficult times. physical labor people.
Calendar folklore
This type of oral folk art belongs to the ritual traditions of the calendar cycle. The life of a peasant working on the land is inextricably linked with weather conditions. That is why a huge number of rituals appeared that were performed to attract good luck, prosperity, a large offspring of livestock, successful farming, etc. The most revered holidays of the calendar were Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, Epiphany and Trinity. Each celebration was accompanied by songs, chants, incantations and ritual actions. Let us recall the famous custom of singing songs to Kolyada on the night before Christmas: “The cold is not a problem, Kolyada is knocking at the house. Christmas is coming to the house, it brings a lot of joy.
wedding folklore
Each separate place had its own types of folklore, but mostly they were lamentations, sentences and songs. Wedding folklore includes song genres that accompanied three main ceremonies: matchmaking, farewell of parents to the bride, and a wedding celebration. For example: "Your product, our merchant, is just a miracle!" The ritual of handing over the bride to the groom was very colorful and was always accompanied by long and short merry songs. At the wedding itself, the songs did not stop, they mourned the bachelor life, wished love and family well-being.
Non-ritual folklore (small genres)
This group of oral folk art includes all types of small genres of folklore. However, this classification is ambiguous. For example, many of the types belong to children's folklore, such as pestles, lullabies, riddles, nursery rhymes, teasers, etc. At the same time, some researchers divide all folklore genres into two groups: calendar-ritual and non-ritual.
Consider the most popular species small genres of folklore.
A proverb is a rhythmic expression, a wise saying that carries a generalized thought and has a conclusion.
Signs - a short verse or expression that tells about those signs that will help predict natural phenomena, weather.
A proverb is a phrase, often with a humorous bias, illuminating a phenomenon of life, a situation.
A sentence is a small verse-appeal to natural phenomena, living beings, surrounding objects.
A tongue twister is a small phrase, often rhymed, with words that are difficult to pronounce, designed to improve diction.
oral prose
Oral prose includes the following types Russian folklore.
Legends - a story about historical events in folk retelling. The heroes of the legends are warriors, kings, princes, etc.
Legends - myths, epic stories about heroic deeds, people, fanned with honors and glory, as a rule, this genre is endowed with pathos.
Bylichki - short stories that tell about the meeting of the hero with some kind of "evil spirits", real cases from the life of the narrator or his friends.
Byvalshchina - summary actually happened once and with someone, while the narrator is not a witness
Children's folklore
This genre is represented by a variety of forms - poetic, song. Types of children's folklore - that accompanied the child from birth to his growing up.
Pestushki - short poems or songs that accompany the very first days of a newborn. With the help of them, they nursed, nurtured children, for example: "The nightingale sings, sings, pretty, but pretty."
Nursery rhymes are small melodious poems designed to be played with kids.
Podushushki,
Rotok - talker,
Handles - grips,
Walker legs.
Calls - poetic, song appeals to nature, animals. For example: "Summer is red, come, bring warm days."
A joke is a short fairy tale poem sung to a child, a short story about the world around him.
Lullabies are short songs that parents sing to a child at night to lull them to sleep.
Riddle - poetic or prose sentences that require a solution.
Other types of children's folklore are counting rhymes, teasers and tall tales. They are extremely popular even today.
Song epic
The heroic epic demonstrates ancient species folklore, he talks about the events that happened once in song form.
Bylina is an old song told in a solemn but unhurried style. Glorifies the heroes and tells about their heroic deeds for the benefit of the state, the Russian fatherland. about Dobryn Nikitich, Volga Buslaivaich and others.
Historical songs are a kind of transformation of the epic genre, where the style of presentation is less eloquent, but the poetic form of narration is preserved. For example, "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg."
Artistic creativity
This group includes epic and song genres created in the spirit of folk art.
A fairy tale is a short or long epic narrative, one of the most common genres of oral folk art about fictional events, heroes. All this is folklore, the types of fairy tales in it are the following: magical, everyday and reflect those ideas about the world, good, evil, life, death, nature that existed among the people. For example, good always triumphs over evil, and there are wonderful mythical creatures in the world.
Ballads are poetic songs, a genre of song and musical creativity.
Anecdotes are a special kind of epic narration about comic situations in people's lives. Originally they did not exist in the form in which we know them. These were stories complete in meaning.
Fiction is a short story about impossible, improbable events, something that was fiction from beginning to end.
Chastushka is a small song, usually a quatrain with humorous content, telling about events, incidental situations.
folklore theater
Street performances were very common among the people, the plots for them were various genres, but most often of a dramatic nature.
Nativity scene - variety dramatic work designed for street puppet theater.
Rayok is a kind of picture theatre, devices in the form of a box with changing patterns, the stories being told at the same time reflect the oral forms of folklore.
The presented classification is the most common among researchers. However, it should be understood that the types of Russian folklore complement each other, and sometimes do not fit into the generally accepted classification. Therefore, when studying the issue, a simplified version is most often used, where only 2 groups of genres are distinguished - ritual and non-ritual folklore.
In the book of N. P. Kolpakova "Russian folk everyday song", among others, "playing" and "lyrical" are named. The term "everyday" is unfortunate because it inspires the idea that, in addition to everyday songs, there are some other, non-everyday songs. The term "everyday" should be generally withdrawn from scientific use as too broad and therefore not having any certain meaning. All songs are decidedly everyday songs, either because they live and are used in everyday life, or because they directly or indirectly reflect the life of the Russian village.
Carols can be called everyday songs to the same extent as soldiers' marching or lullabies; the only difference is which aspects of Russian life are directly or indirectly reflected in it. There are no songs outside of everyday life.
The division into "playful", on the one hand, and "lyrical", on the other, is wrong because lyrics is a broad concept, which includes the most diverse types of non-epic folk songs. This distribution comes from a narrow understanding of "lyrics" as an expression of deeply personal and intimate feelings. For folklore, such an understanding of "lyrics" is inapplicable.
Lyrics, along with epic and grammar, is a kind of poetic creativity that expresses not only personal feelings of sadness, love, etc., but national feelings of joy, sorrow, anger, indignation, and expresses it in the most diverse forms. These forms constitute genres, while "lyricism" is not a genre. "Game" songs are one of the private forms of song performance; to oppose the concept of "lyrical" and "game" songs and to assert their incompatibility is just as wrong as to talk about the incompatibility of the concepts of tree and birch.
The inability to distinguish between genus and species, as well as to apply broader and narrower categories of classification, is generally very common. We can say that this method of distribution dominates in our country. The material is divided into categories without further subdivisions or ramifications, and phenomena of a very broad and very narrow character fall into one row. It turns out an enumeration without any subdivisions, without branching. Meanwhile, many errors could be avoided by applying some features for ranks, others for sub-categories, instead of combining them in one row, where they do not exclude each other.
It is quite obvious that while there are such erroneous ideas about the composition of Russian folklore, about the categories of this composition and about their relationships, the question of the genres of Russian song cannot be resolved.
How to get out of difficulties? We start from two theoretical premises. The first is that in folklore, with the unity or cohesion of content and form, content comes first; it creates its own form, and not vice versa. This position remains true regardless of philosophical disputes about what is meant by form and what is meant by content.
The second premise is that different social groups produce different, not identical, songs. Both of these premises are closely related. We believe that peasants, farm laborers, soldiers, and workers will create songs of different content, and that as a result of this difference in content, their form will also be different. This means that the division social sign will not contradict the division on the basis of poetics. On the contrary, such a division will make it possible to introduce some system into the motley and diverse world of the song.
Without prejudging the question of what in the field of lyric poetry is called a genre and what is not, we will try to divide songs on the basis of social belonging. From this point of view, it is possible to distinguish three large groups:
- songs of peasants leading agricultural labor;
- songs of peasants who have lost their agricultural labor;
- workers' songs.
Let us first dwell on the songs of the peasants themselves.
The traditional division of peasant lyrics into ritual and non-ritual is logically and factually correct. It is also correct to divide ritual lyrics into calendar and family ritual lyrics.
The word "calendar songs" in the application to the lyrics is not entirely successful. These are songs of great folk holidays, which had a pronounced agricultural character. Therefore, it would be more correct to call the totality of these songs agricultural ritual lyrics.
Songs of this type are easily and naturally divided according to the holidays during which they were performed. Carols were sung at Christmas time - songs that glorified the owners and promised them a rich harvest, multiplication of livestock, health and prosperity. In gratitude for these promises (to which they once attributed spell power), the hosts gave gifts to carolers. On New Year's Eve they sang sing-along songs. These songs were accompanied by divination, which consisted in the fact that several rings were lowered into a dish of water, and then short songs were sung, promising marriage, separation, death, the road, etc. Under the songs, the rings were taken out, and the one who owned the ring attributed song to yourself.
Continuing the review, we can name Shrovetide songs. Their number is very small, they are poorly preserved. These are funny songs about the meeting and seeing off of Shrovetide. On Yegoriev's Day in central Russia, for the first time after winter, cattle were driven out to pasture. On this occasion, special songs were sung, Yegoryev's, the content of which was reduced to spells or conspiracies for the safety of livestock from wolves, cases and starvation. During the vernal equinox, the meeting of spring was celebrated. On the day of this holiday, they baked larks or waders and gave them to children. Children tied them to rods or trees, which was supposed to represent the arrival of birds, and sang special songs called stoneflies.
These songs called for spring and praised it. The birds seemed to bring spring on their wings. The seventh Thursday after Easter was called Semik. On this day, the birch was decorated, danced under it and sang songs to the glory of the birch. The girls played with each other, and songs were also sung about this. These songs are usually called Semitsky songs. In these songs, ritual motifs are intertwined with love ones. We know that special Kupala songs were sung during the summer solstice - on the day of Ivan Kupala, but the Russians did not preserve such songs. Finally, during the harvest, stubble songs so poured were sung.
They sang about the imminent end of work and about the treat that awaits the reapers. Such songs were accompanied by the praising of the owner, on whose field the reapers helped to reap. We could single out carols, podblyudnye songs, Shrovetide songs, vesnyanka, Yegoryev songs, Semitsky songs, stubble songs. All of them belong to the field of ritual agricultural lyrics, but they have different content and different form, are performed in different ways, at different times and differ in their tunes.
Each of these types makes up a genre, that is, it has a common poetic system and is performed at the same time, in the same forms, by the same musical style. Perhaps a more fractional division of them. So, for example, it is possible to install different types of carols, sleazy songs, stoneflies, but these types do not represent new genres.
Another large area of ritual poetry is family ritual songs. These include funeral and wedding songs.
Funeral laments, or lamentations, or, as they are sometimes called by the people, cries, accompany all moments funeral rite: the dressing of the deceased, farewell before removal, immersion in the ground, the moment the relatives return home to the empty hut. Each of these moments can be accompanied by songs that are special in their content, but they can also be mixed.
The metric structure of laments differs from the metric structure of all other types of folk lyrics. In the classical form of laments, the meter is choreic with a dactylic ending, the lines are long, spanning from four to seven feet for different performers. Each line is syntactically complete, after each line there is a long pause, during which the singer sobs and sobs.
Wedding poetry also mainly consists of lamentations. The bride laments or, if she does not know how to do this, the mourner. The main moments of the wedding ceremony, like collusion, bachelorette party, wedding day and others, are each accompanied by their own lamentations. The bride asked not to give her in marriage, to postpone the wedding day, she is afraid of life in a new house, where hard work and unkind treatment awaits her.
All this shows that wedding lamentations are a completely different genre than funeral lamentations. The bride sang mournful songs, while the rest of the youth sang joyful songs. This includes wedding glorious songs for young people, their parents and honored guests. In the address of the friends, matchmakers and matchmakers, on the contrary, mocking songs were sung; to get rid of such ridicule, it was necessary to pay off with money. Druzhka also created fun. But he did not sing, but executed various sentences, the content of which is greetings. These greetings may be accompanied by ridicule of girls, children, or, for example, grouchy old women, who are invited to stuff them on the stove, etc.
Friends' sentences are not songs. They are performed in rhymed prose, interspersed with all sorts of witticisms and jokes. Thus, the lamentations of the bride, glorious wedding songs and the sentences of the bridesmaids and mocking songs constitute the main genres of wedding poetry.
We turn to the consideration of extra-ceremonial lyrics - the richest type of folk songwriting. Having touched on ritual lamentations, we must resolve the issue of non-ritual lamentations. We have in mind those lamentations or laments that are fulfilled in connection with various misfortunes and disasters, with which peasant life was so rich. Do these laments form the same genre as funeral lamentations or not?
One of these disasters is the return of the guy to the recruits, subsequently - the drafting of recruits into the army. This moment was accompanied by lamentations or cries, which are commonly called recruit lamentations. But any other sad moment in the life of a peasant could be accompanied by cries, lamentations: a fire, sending a patient to the hospital; on various occasions lamented about their share of farm laborers, orphans; they wept as they reminisced about their past.
During the Great Patriotic War, women wailed when they received news of the death of their husband, son, brother. Refugees indulged in tears when they returned home, seeing their homes destroyed. It is generally accepted to combine all types of lamentations into one genre, distinguishing three main types of them: funeral, recruiting and wedding. That the bride's wedding lamentations constitute a very special genre, we have seen above.
There are more grounds for combining recruiting and other lamentations with funeral lamentations. Indeed, the verse in both cases is sometimes exactly the same, especially in the mouths of the same performers. So, famous Irina Fedosova performed the funeral and recruiting lamentations in exactly the same way. The difference here seems to be related only to the subject, and this does not yet give grounds to speak of different genres.
From our point of view, the similarity of the metric system does not yet give grounds for combining into one genre. Funeral laments are ritual poetry, with its roots dating back to pagan times. The composition of ritual laments is determined by the course of the rite, and therefore it is uniform, while the composition of non-ritual laments is as diverse as life itself is diverse. The world of representations, images and vocabulary are also profoundly different. They also differ in their everyday use, and this, as we have seen, is one of the hallmarks of the genre.
We come to the conclusion that there are three genres in the field of lamentations: two ritual ones - wedding and funeral ones, and one non-ritual one, which includes recruiting lamentations and others associated with the disasters of wartime, as well as laments associated with various misfortunes of the old peasant life.
V.Ya. Propp. Poetics of folklore - M., 1998
What is "folklore" for modern man? These are songs, fairy tales, proverbs, epics and other works of our ancestors, which were created and passed from mouth to mouth a long time ago, and now remain in the form of beautiful books for children and the repertoire of ethnographic ensembles. Well, maybe somewhere unimaginably far from us, in remote villages, there are still some old women who still remember something. But this is only until civilization comes there.
Modern people do not tell each other fairy tales, do not sing songs at work. And if they compose something “for the soul”, then they immediately write it down.
Very little time will pass - and folklorists will have to study only what their predecessors managed to collect, or change their specialty ...
Is it so? Yes and no.
From epic to ditty
Recently, in one of the LiveJournal discussions, a sad observation flashed school teacher, who discovered that the name Cheburashka does not say anything to his students. The teacher was prepared for the fact that the children were unfamiliar with either Tsar Saltan or the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. But Cheburashka?!
Approximately the same feelings were experienced two hundred years ago by the whole of educated Europe. That which had been passed down from generation to generation for centuries, that was as if dissolved in the air and that it seemed impossible not to know, suddenly began to be forgotten, crumble, disappear into the sand.
It was suddenly discovered that everywhere (and especially in cities) a new generation had grown up, to which the ancient oral culture was known only in meaningless fragments or was unknown at all.
The response to this was an explosion of collecting and publishing samples of folk art.
In the 1810s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began to publish collections of German folk tales. In 1835, Elias Lenrot published the first edition of Kalevala, which shook the cultural world: it turns out that in the most remote corner of Europe, among a small people that never had their own statehood, there is still a heroic epic, comparable in volume and complexity of structure to ancient Greek myths! Collecting folklore (so in 1846 the English scientist William Toms called the entire body of folk "knowledge" that exists exclusively in oral) spread throughout Europe. And at the same time, the feeling grew: folklore is disappearing, carriers are dying out, nothing can be found in many areas. (For example, not one of the Russian epics has ever been recorded where their action takes place, and indeed in the historical “core” of the Russian lands. All known records were made in the North, in the lower Volga region, on the Don, in Siberia - that is, in Siberia. that is, in the territories of Russian colonization of different times.) You need to hurry, you need to have time to write down as much as possible.
In the course of this hurried gathering, something strange more and more often found its way into the records of folklorists. For example, short chants, unlike anything that was previously sung in the villages.
Precise rhymes, the correct alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables made these verses (folk performers themselves called them "chastushkas") related to urban poetry, but the content of the texts did not reveal any connection with any printed sources. There were serious disputes among folklorists: should ditties be considered folklore in the full sense of the word, or is it a product of the decomposition of folk art under the influence of professional culture?
Strange as it may seem, it was precisely this discussion that made folkloristics, still young then, take a closer look at the new forms of folk literature that were emerging right before our eyes.
It quickly became clear that not only in the villages (traditionally considered the main place of existence of folklore), but also in cities, a lot of things arise and circulate that, by all indications, should be attributed specifically to folklore.
A caveat should be made here. In fact, the concept of "folklore" refers not only to verbal works (texts), but in general to all the phenomena of folk culture that are transmitted directly from person to person. Traditional, centuries-old pattern of embroidery on a towel in a Russian village or choreography ritual dance African tribe is also folklore. However, partly for objective reasons, partly due to the fact that texts are easier and more complete to record and study, they have become the main object of folklore from the very beginning of the existence of this science. Although scientists are well aware that for any folklore work, the features and circumstances of performance are no less (and sometimes even more) important. For example, an anecdote necessarily includes a storytelling procedure - for which it is absolutely necessary that at least a part of those present do not know this anecdote yet. An anecdote known to everyone in this community is simply not performed in it - and therefore, does not "live": after all, a folklore work exists only during the performance.
But back to modern folklore. As soon as the researchers peered into the material that they (and often its carriers and even the creators) considered “frivolous”, devoid of any value, it turned out that
"new folklore" lives everywhere and everywhere.
Chastushka and romance, anecdote and legend, rite and ritual, and much more, for which there were no suitable names in folklore. In the 1920s, all this became the subject of qualified research and publications. However, already in the next decade, a serious study of modern folklore turned out to be impossible: real folk art categorically did not fit into the image of "Soviet society". True, a certain number of folklore texts themselves, carefully selected and combed, were published from time to time. (For example, in the popular magazine "Crocodile" there was a column "Just an anecdote", where topical anecdotes were often found - naturally, the most harmless, but their action was often transferred "abroad" just in case.) But the scientific study of modern folklore was actually resumed only in the late 1980s and especially intensified in the 1990s. According to one of the leaders of this work, Professor Sergei Neklyudov (the largest Russian folklorist, head of the Center for Semiotics and Typology of Folklore of the Russian State Humanitarian University), this happened largely according to the principle “if there were no happiness, but misfortune helped”: without funds for normal collecting and research expeditions and student practices, Russian folklorists shifted their efforts to what was nearby.
Omnipresent and multifaceted
The material collected was striking in its abundance and diversity. Each, even the smallest group of people, barely realizing their commonality and difference from all others, immediately acquired their own folklore. Researchers have known the folklore of individual subcultures before: prison, soldier, student songs. But it turned out that its own folklore exists among climbers and skydivers, nature conservation activists and adherents of non-traditional cults, hippies and “goths”, patients of a particular hospital (sometimes even departments) and regulars of a particular pub, kindergarten students and students lower grades. In a number of such communities, the personal composition changed rapidly - patients went to the hospital and were discharged, children entered kindergarten and graduated from it - and folklore texts continued to circulate in these groups for decades.
But even more unexpected was the genre diversity of modern folklore.
(or "post-folklore", as Professor Neklyudov suggested calling this phenomenon). The new folklore did not take almost anything from the genres of classical folklore, and what it did take was changed beyond recognition. “Almost all the old oral genres are becoming a thing of the past, from ritual lyrics to fairy tales,” writes Sergei Neklyudov. But more and more space is occupied not only by relatively young forms (“street” songs, anecdotes), but also by texts that are generally difficult to attribute to any particular genre: fantastic “historical and local history essays” (on the origin of the name of the city or its parts, about geophysical and mystical anomalies, about celebrities who visited him, etc.), stories about incredible incidents (“one medical student bet that he would spend the night in a dead room ...”), legal incidents, etc. In the concept of folklore I had to include both rumors and unofficial toponymy (“we meet at the Head” - that is, at the bust of Nogin at the Kitai-Gorod station). Finally, there are a number of “medical” recommendations that live according to the laws of folklore texts: how to simulate certain symptoms, how to lose weight, how to protect yourself from conception ... At a time when it was customary to send alcoholics for compulsory treatment, the technique "sewing" - what needs to be done to neutralize or at least weaken the effect of the "torpedo" implanted under the skin (capsule with an antabuse). This rather sophisticated physiological technique was successfully transmitted orally from the old-timers of the "medical and labor dispensaries" to the newcomers, that is, it was a phenomenon of folklore.
Sometimes, right before our eyes, new signs and beliefs are formed - including in the most advanced and educated groups of society.
Who has not heard about cacti, supposedly "absorbing harmful radiation» from computer monitors? It is not known when and where this belief arose, but in any case, it could not have appeared before any widespread use of personal computers. And it continues to develop before our eyes: "not every cactus absorbs radiation, but only with star-shaped needles."
However, sometimes in modern society it is also possible to discover well-known phenomena - however, they are so transformed that in order to see their folklore nature, special efforts are needed. Moscow researcher Ekaterina Belousova, after analyzing the practice of treating women in labor in Russian maternity hospitals, came to the conclusion that the notorious rudeness and authoritarianism of the medical staff (as well as many restrictions on patients and the obsessive fear of “infection”) is nothing more than a modern form of the birth rite - one of major "rites of passage" described by ethnographers in many traditional societies.
Word of mouth over the internet
But if in one of the most modern social institutions under a thin layer of professional knowledge and everyday habits, ancient archetypes are suddenly revealed, is it really so fundamental the difference between modern folklore and classical folklore? Yes, the forms have changed, the set of genres has changed - but this has happened before. For example, at some point (presumably in the 16th century), new epics ceased to take shape in Russia - although the already composed ones continued to live in the oral tradition until the end of the 19th and even until the 20th century - and they were replaced by historical songs. But the essence of folk art remained the same.
However, according to Professor Neklyudov, the differences between post-folklore and classical folklore are much deeper. First, the main organizing core, the calendar, fell out of it. For a rural dweller, the change of seasons dictates the rhythm and content of all life, for an urban dweller, perhaps only the choice of clothing. Accordingly, folklore is “detached” from the season - and at the same time from the corresponding rites, it becomes optional.
Secondly,
in addition to the structure of folklore itself, the structure of its distribution in society has changed.
The concept of “national folklore” is to some extent a fiction: folklore has always been local and dialectal, and local differences were important for its speakers (“but we don’t sing like that!”). However, if before this locality was literal, geographical, now it has become more socio-cultural: neighbors on the landing can be carriers of completely different folklore. They don’t understand each other’s jokes, they can’t sing along to a song ... Independent performance of any songs in a company is becoming a rarity today: if a few decades ago the definition of “popularly known” referred to songs that everyone can sing along, now - to songs that everyone has heard at least once.
But the most important, perhaps, is the marginalization of the place of folklore in human life.
All the most important things in life - worldview, social skills, and specific knowledge - a modern city dweller, unlike his not so distant ancestor, receives not through folklore. Another important function, the identification and self-identification of a person, has almost been removed from folklore. Folklore has always been a means of claiming belonging to a particular culture – and a means of verifying this claim (“ours is the one who sings our songs”). Today, folklore fulfills this role either in marginal and often opposing "big" society subcultures (for example, criminal), or in a very fragmentary way. For example, if a person is fond of tourism, then he can confirm his belonging to the tourism community by knowing and performing the relevant folklore. But besides being a tourist, he is also an engineer, an Orthodox Christian, a parent – and he will manifest all these incarnations of his own in completely different ways.
But, as Sergei Neklyudov notes,
A person cannot do without folklore either.
Perhaps the most striking and paradoxical confirmation of these words was the emergence and rapid development of the so-called "network folklore" or "Internet lore".
In itself, this sounds like an oxymoron: the main and universal feature of all folklore phenomena is the existence in oral form, while all network texts are, by definition, written. However, as Anna Kostina, deputy director of the State Republican Center for Russian Folklore, notes, many of them have all the main features of folklore texts: anonymity and collective authorship, polyvariance, traditionalism. Moreover: the network texts are clearly striving to “overcome writing” - due to both the widespread use of emoticons (allowing at least to indicate intonation), and the popularity of “padonian” (deliberately incorrect) spelling. At the same time, computer networks that make it possible to instantly copy and send texts of considerable size give a chance for a revival of large narrative forms. Of course, it is unlikely that something similar to the Kyrgyz one will ever be born on the Internet. heroic epic"Manas" with its 200 thousand lines. But funny untitled texts (like the famous “radio conversations between an American aircraft carrier and a Spanish lighthouse”) are already widely circulating on the net - absolutely folklore in spirit and poetics, but incapable of living in a purely oral transmission.
It looks like in information society folklore can not only lose a lot, but also gain something.
