The state of modern folklore.

Many young people, living in our age of rapid development of science and technology, ask themselves the question "What is modern folklore?"

Folklore is folk art, most often oral. It implies the artistic collective creative activity of the people, which reflects their life, views, ideals. And they, in turn, are created by the people and exist among the masses in the form of poetry, songs, as well as applied crafts, fine arts.

Fairy tales, epics, legends, proverbs and sayings, historical songs are the heritage of the culture of our distant ancestors. But, probably, modern folklore should have a different look and other genres.

Modern people do not tell each other fairy tales, do not sing songs at work, do not cry or lament at weddings. And if they write something "for the soul", then they immediately write it down. All works of traditional folklore seem incredibly distant from modern life. Is it so? Yes and no.

In our time, there are different genres of folklore. We conducted a survey among students of different ages. The following questions were asked:

1. What is folklore?

2. Does it exist now?

3. What genres of contemporary folklore do you use in your life?

All respondents were divided into three age groups: junior schoolchildren, middle schoolchildren, senior schoolchildren.

The first question could be fully answered by 80% of junior schoolchildren, 70% - by middle schoolchildren, 51% - by senior schoolchildren.

The second question was answered positively by 90% of all respondents.As for the use of folklore in everyday life, unfortunately, almost all of the surveyed children, namely 92%, answered that they do not use folklore. The rest of the respondents indicated that they rarely use riddles and proverbs.

Folklore, translated from English, means "folk wisdom, folk knowledge." Thus, folklore should exist at all times, as the embodiment of the consciousness of the people, their life, ideas about the world. And if we do not encounter traditional folklore every day, then there must be something else, close and understandable to us, what will be called modern folklore.

The survey showed that students are aware that folklore is not an unchanging and ossified form of folk art. It is constantly in the process of development and evolution: Chastooshkas can be performed to the accompaniment of modern musical instruments on modern themes, folk music can be influenced by rock music, and modern music itself can include elements of folklore.

Often the material that seems frivolous to us is the “new folklore”. Moreover, he lives everywhere and everywhere.

Modern folklore is the folklore of the intelligentsia, students, students, bourgeoisie, rural residents. [2 , p. 357]

Modern folklore has taken almost nothing from the genres of classical folklore, but what it has taken has changed beyond recognition. “Almost all the old oral genres, from ritual lyrics to fairy tales, are becoming a thing of the past,” writes Professor Sergei Neklyudov (a leading Russian folklorist, head of the Center for Semiotics and Typology of Folklore at the Russian State University for the Humanities). [3]

Of course, modern life makes its own adjustments. The fact is that a modern person does not associate his life with the calendar and the season, since in the modern world there is practically no ritual folklore, we are left with only signs.

Today, a large place is occupied by non-ritual folklore genres. And here there are not only changed old genres (riddles, proverbs), not only relatively young forms ("street" songs, anecdotes), but also texts that are generally difficult to attribute to any particular genre. For example, now there are urban legends (about abandoned hospitals, factories), fantastic "historical and regional studies" (about the origin of the name of a city or its parts, about geophysical and mystical anomalies, about celebrities who visited it, etc.), stories about incredible incidents, legal incidents, etc. Rumors can also be included in the concept of folklore.

Sometimes, right before our eyes, new signs and beliefs are formed - including in the most advanced and educated groups of society. Who has not heard of cacti supposedly "absorbing harmful radiation" from computer monitors? Moreover, this sign has a development: "radiation is absorbed not by every cactus, but only with star-shaped needles."

At present, the structure of the distribution of folklore in society has also changed. Modern folklore no longer has the function of self-awareness of the people as a whole. Most often, the bearers of folklore texts are not residents of certain territories, but members of some socio-cultural groups. Tourists, Goths, paratroopers, patients of one hospital or students of one school have their own omens, legends, anecdotes, etc. Each, even the smallest group of people, barely realizing their community and difference from all others, immediately acquired their own folklore. Moreover, the elements of the group may change, but the folklore texts will remain.

For example, once finding myself in field conditions, I was faced with such a sign. During the campfire hike, many joked that if the girls dried their hair by the fire, it would be bad weather. The entire campaign of the girls was driven away from the fire. Having got on a hike after a while with completely different people and even instructors, I discovered that the omen is alive and people believe in it. The girls are also driven away from the fire. Moreover, new opposite signs appear: if you dry your clothes by the fire, then the weather will improve, even if one of the ladies still broke through with wet hair to the fire. Here, not only the emergence of a new folklore text in a certain group of people is evident, but also its development.

The most striking and paradoxical phenomenon of modern folklore is network folklore. The main and universal feature of all folklore phenomena is oral existence, while all network texts are written by definition.

Folklore is an example of human existence and development in society. Modern life cannot be imagined without it. Let everything change around, but without creativity a person cannot exist, which means that folklore also develops, albeit in forms that are unusual for us.

Literature

1. Cherednikova M.P. Contemporary Russian children's mythology in the context of the facts of traditional culture and child psychology. - Ulyanovsk, 1995, 392c

2. Zhukov B. Folklore of our time.Modern people do not tell each other fairy tales, do not sing songs while they work. // "What's new in science and technology" No. 3, 2008

The diversity of views of researchers of folk art on the problems of genesis, nature and socio-cultural functions of mythology and folklore gave rise in the 19th century, both in Russia and in foreign countries, a number of original research schools. Most often they did not replace each other, but functioned in parallel. There were no unshakable boundaries between these schools, and their concepts often crossed. Therefore, the researchers themselves could classify themselves as one or another school, clarify and change their positions, etc.

The history of scientific schools is interesting for us today, first of all, because it clearly demonstrates the dynamics of research positions, it shows well how the science of folklore was formed, what achievements or, conversely, miscalculations were encountered along this thorny path.

The mythological school played an important role in the development of the historical and theoretical foundations of folklore. In its Western European version, this school was based on the aesthetics of F. Schelling, A. Schlegel and F. Schlegel and received its detailed embodiment in the widely known book by the brothers J. and F. Grimm "German Mythology" (1835). Within the framework of the mythological school, myths were viewed as "natural religion" and the sprout of artistic culture as a whole.

The founder and most prominent representative of the mythological school in Russia was F.I. Buslaev. His views are detailed in the fundamental work Historical Sketches of Russian Folk Literature and Art (1861), and especially in the first chapter of this work, General Concepts of the Properties of Epic Poetry. The emergence of myths was explained here by the deification of natural phenomena. From myths, according to Buslaev's theory, fairy tales, epic songs, epics, legends and other folklore genres have grown. It is characteristic that the researcher tries to connect even the main heroes of Slavic epics with certain myths. Moreover, sometimes this was done in evidence, and sometimes with certain strains.

Another typical representative of the Russian mythological school is A.N. Afanasyev. The mythological position is very typical for his books: "Russian folk tales" (1855), "Russian folk legends" (1860), and especially for the three-volume work "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature" (1865-1868). It is here that the quintessence of his mythological views is presented, in the context of which myths are considered as the basis for the development of various genres of folklore at subsequent stages.

To one degree or another, the mythological positions of F.I. Buslaeva and A.N. Afanasyev corresponded with the views of A.A. Kotlyarovsky, V.F. Miller and A.A. Have fun.

The area that caused a lot of controversy and discussion in Russia was the school of borrowing or migration theory, as it was also called. The essence of this theory is the fact of recognition and justification of wandering folklore plots that spread around the world, moving from one culture to another.

Of the works of Russian researchers, the first edition written in this vein was the book by A.N. Pypin "Essays on the literary history of old stories and fairy tales of Russians" (1858). Then the works of V.V. Stasov "The origin of Russian epics" (1868), F.I. Buslaev "Passing Stories" (1886) and the voluminous work of V.F. Miller's "Excursions into the field of Russian folk epic" (1892), where a huge array of Russian epics was analyzed, and their connections with historical facts and folklore plots of other cultures were established. To a certain extent, the influence of migration theory affected the views of the author of "Historical Poetics" A.N. Veselovsky, who successfully researched fairy tales, epics, ballads and even Russian ritual folklore.

It should be noted that the adherents of the school of borrowing had their pros and cons. To the pluses, in our opinion, it is legitimate to include the relatively folkloristic work done by them. Unlike the mythological school, where everything was limited to the genesis of folk culture, the borrowing school went beyond a purely mythological framework and focused not on myths, but on works of folklore. As for the disadvantages, here it should be noted, first of all, a large number of obvious exaggerations in proving the main thesis concerning the decisive role of ethnographic migrations.

The so-called anthropological school or the school of spontaneous generation of plots had many adherents in Russian folklore. In contrast to the mythological theory, this theory explained the similarities that were really often found in the folklore of different peoples, which grew out of the objective unity of the human psyche and the general laws of cultural development. The activity of the anthropological school has noticeably intensified in connection with the strengthening of general anthropology (E.B. Taylor, A. Lang, J. Fraser, and others). A Dietrich (Germany), R. Marette (Great Britain), S. Reinach (France) worked in the European folklore studies in line with this school; in our country, the author of "Historical Poetics" A.N. Veselovsky, who in his research quite successfully supplemented anthropological attitudes with certain provisions taken from migration theory. This unusual approach turned out to be really productive, because it allowed avoiding dangerous extremes and brought the researcher to the "golden mean". Somewhat later, this tradition in Russia was continued by V.M. Zhirmunsky and V.Ya. Propp.

The so-called historical school has become very significant in terms of the further development of Russian folklore.

Its representatives strove to purposefully investigate folk art culture in connection with national history. They were interested, first of all, where, when, under what conditions, on the basis of what events a certain folklore work arose.

The head of this school in Russia after his departure from the adherents of the school of borrowing was V.F. Miller is the author of a very interesting three-volume work "Essays on Russian Folk Literature" (the work was published in 1910-1924). "I am more concerned with the history of epics and the reflection of history in epics" - this is how Miller characterized the essence of his approach to the study of Russian folklore. V.F. Miller and his associates are Hell. Grigoriev, A.V. Markov, S.K. Shambinago, N.S. Tikhonravov, N.E. Onchukov, Yu.M. Sokolov - made a huge contribution to the formation of the Russian science of folk art. They collected and systematized an exceptionally large amount of empirical material, identified historical parallels to many mythological and folklore texts, for the first time built the historical geography of the Russian heroic epic, etc.

The works of the prominent ethnographer and specialist in folk art culture A.V. Tereshchenko (1806-1865) - the author of a large-scale study in 7 parts of Life of the Russian People.

The development of this problematic turned out to be especially relevant due to the fact that the emerging science of folk art had to overcome the purely philological bias that narrowed it down. As already noted, folklore has never developed as a "stage art" and in its realities was directly linked to the festive and ceremonial culture. Actually, it was only in this incrossing that it was possible to understand its essence, nature and features.

A.V. Tereshchenko has done a tremendous and very useful job. This work was generally appreciated by the public. However, it was also not without criticism. In 1848, the Sovremennik magazine published a detailed and rather sharp review of the famous critic and publicist Ph.D. Kavelin. Kavelin, as an ardent advocate of the so-called "professorial culture," reproached Tereshchenko for the fact that, although he had collected really rich empirical material, he had not been able to find the key to its scientific analysis and interpretation. Holidays, rituals and other everyday phenomena, according to Kavelin, are inappropriate to consider only in the "domestic aspect": these are powerful mechanisms of a wider social life and they can be truly analyzed only in its context. In our opinion, there was indeed much that was fair in this criticism.

Ivan Petrovich Sakharov (1807-1863) can also rightfully be considered one of the important figures in the field of Russian ethnography and folklore. After graduating from the medical faculty of Moscow University, he worked for a long time as a doctor at the Moscow City Hospital and at the same time taught at Moscow lyceums and colleges paleography, which is not at all similar to the main profession - the history of writing on Russian monuments. Sakharov was an Honorary Member of the Geographical and Archaeological Societies and knew well the work of his contemporaries who dealt with the problems of folk art culture. He was actively supported by V.O. Odoevsky, A.N. Olenin, A.V. Tereshchenko, A.Kh. Vostokov and others, as he said, "good people." Among Sakharov's main books are Songs of the Russian People, Russian Folk Tales, Travels of Russian People to Foreign Lands. A special place in this series is occupied by the major two-volume work "Legends of the Russian people about the family life of their ancestors", published in 1836. The two-volume book was reprinted in 1837, 1841, 1849, and later was again published by the publisher A.V. Suvorin. One of the most important parts of this popular book is the first systematic collection of the Russian folk calendar for all its holidays, customs and rituals.

At the same time, it should be noted that I.L. Sakharov was a representative of the early stage of Russian folklore studies, where, along with undoubted achievements, there were many annoying miscalculations. He was often reproached (and, judging by all, rightly) for some folkloristic liberties, when, in the absence of data on the place and time of recording in many cases, the texts were "corrected", and especially dialects into the modern common language, in reckless mixing of gathering with literary writing ... In this sense, Sakharov was clearly inferior to his main opponent I.M. Snegirev, whose works were distinguished by much greater punctuality, evidence and reliability. But I.L. Sakharov had his own merits: losing to other researchers in accuracy and analyticism, he surpassed many in terms of the beautiful figurative and poetic language, and also won readers over to himself with selfless admiration for the greatest talents of the Russian people.

Among the folklorists of the mid-19th century, the colorful figure of the already mentioned Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev (1826-1871) stands out. He began publishing his ethnographic and ethnographic articles in the journals Sovremennik, Otechestvennye zapiski, as well as in the Vestnik of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities, while still studying at Moscow University. Since 1855, his "Russian folk tales" began to be published. In 1860 the book "Russian folk legends" was published. In 1860-69. his main three-volume work "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature" was published. Afanasyev himself called his works "the archeology of Russian life." Emphasizing the Indo-European origins of Russian folk art, he highly appreciated Slavic mythology and qualified it as the basis for all further folklore.

A. N. Afanasyev was one of the first among Russian folklorists who exceptionally boldly invaded the previously untouched layers of the so-called Russian "mischievous" folklore. This attempt received an ambiguous assessment at that time. The collections "Russian Folk Tales", which we have already mentioned, were produced with very serious friction. A ban was imposed on the second edition of the collections, and the third book of the collector's cycle "Russian cherished tales" was published only abroad (1872) and after the collector's death. The content of some of the fairy tales and folk stories presented by him came into serious conflict with the official state ideas about the religiosity of the Russian people. Some critics saw in them a clear distortion of the traditional image of a Russian clergyman. Others made claims to the moral side of the published texts, etc. The assessment of "cherished fairy tales" remains ambiguous even today. However, in any case: one cannot fail to note the commendable desire of Afanasyev in his collecting and publishing activities to show Russian folklore as it is, without outbursts and embellishments.

A major step forward was made by Russian folklore studies at the stage when the talented philologist, art critic and folklorist, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev joined the active scientific and creative activity. The undoubted merit of Buslaev's scientific research was his attempt to competently analyze the richest array of folklore works accumulated by that time, to classify it, to streamline the conceptual apparatus used in folklore studies of that period. In terms of the number of references to them in subsequent years, the books of Academician Buslaev, without a doubt, are in one of the first places. He is rightfully considered the creator of the university's science of folklore.

F.I. Buslaev became one of the first domestic researchers who seriously dealt with the issues of periodization of the processes of development of folk culture. Each of the periods highlighted in this case - mythological, mixed (dual faith), properly Christian, received a detailed qualitative description in his works.

The peculiarity of Buslaev's methodological position was that he, in essence, did not adhere to either the Slavophiles or the Westernizers, and in his own views he always remained on that desired strip, which is called the "golden mean".

Buslaev surprisingly preserved the romantic views formed in his youth and at the same time became the initiator of a new critical trend in ethnography, folklore and literature, different from romantics. It was far from always understood and accepted by the readership. There have been many sharp collisions with magazines. At the same time, the undoubted advantage of Buslaev always remained the ability to look closely at new views, concepts, assessments and never turn into a person who was conserved in his once developed postulates. Suffice it to note the serious interest shown by him in the work of such different views of researchers as Mangardt Benfey, Taylor, Paris, Kosken, the Grimm brothers, etc.

In his works on culture, F.I. Buslaev addressed not only questions of folk literature. The circle of his interests was much wider. We find here publications on general aesthetics, literature, history. Excellent erudition helped the researcher to approach the study of ethnographic and folklore phenomena of Russian life from a variety of positions. Readers of his works are always amazed at the variety of topics developed by this author. Here we find essays on the heroic epic, spiritual poems, domestic and Western mythology, "wandering" stories and stories, Russian life, beliefs, superstitions, peculiarities of the language, etc.

F.I. Buslaev was one of the first in Russian folklore who began to make interesting comparisons of Russian folklore with the folklore of other countries. For example, when analyzing the epics of the Kiev-Vladimir cycle, he uses many references to such artistic samples as "Odyssey", "Iliad", romances and Side, songs of Hellas, etc. In this sense, Buslaev is a connoisseur of the highest class.

F.I. Buslaev was able to place the idea of ​​forming a national worldview at the center of the study of folk art. A new stage in the development of Russian ethno-artistic knowledge is undoubtedly associated with the publication of two of his fundamental studies - "Historical Essays on Russian Folk Literature and Arts" (St. Petersburg, 1861) and "Folk Poetry. Historical Essays" (St. Petersburg, 1887).

In his folkloristic research F.I. Buslaev very successfully used the methodological device, according to which "native epic poetry" (Buslaev's term) is analyzed in constant comparison with what he called "artificial epic poetry". At the same described object, in his expression, there are two types of epic, which look as if with different eyes, and thus they are valuable as sources of historical and cultural knowledge. Within the framework of folklore, the "leading singer", according to Buslaev, being a wise and experienced storyteller, narrates about the old times empirically, without getting hot ... He is "simple-minded" like a child, and tells about everything that happened without further ado. In ancient Russian songs, fairy tales, epics, descriptions of nature do not occupy a self-sufficient place, as we often see in novels and stories. Here the focus of the whole world for the folk author and performer is the man himself.

Folk poetry always gives first place to man, touching nature only in passing and only when it serves as a necessary complement to the affairs and character of the person. These and many other judgments of Buslaev about Russian folklore clearly testify to the outstanding ability to consider the object under study in an original and original way.

A very important role in the development of Russian folklore was played by the historian, writer, corresponding member of St. Petersburg AN Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov, the author of two truly remarkable books "On the Historical Significance of Russian Folk Poetry" and "Slavic Mythology".

The fascination of this talented person with folklore began in his student years. Growing up at the junction of two great cultures - Russian and Ukrainian, from a young age he was fond of the books of Sakharov, Maksimovich, Sreznevsky, Metlinsky and other Russian-Ukrainian researchers of folk art. As a novice historian, folklore attracted Kostomarov with its juiciness, vitality, spontaneity, and the official history with which he got acquainted surprised with annoying indifference to the life and aspirations of the common people.

“I came to this question,” he later wrote in his Autobiography, “why is it that in all stories they talk about outstanding statesmen, sometimes about laws and institutions, but they seem to neglect the life of the masses? as if it did not exist for history; why does history tell us nothing about his life, about his spiritual life, about his feelings, the way of manifesting his joys and seals? Soon I came to the conviction that history should be studied not only from dead chronicles and notes, but also in a living people. It cannot be that the centuries of the past life are not imprinted in the life and memories of the descendants: you just need to start looking - and there will surely be much that has been missed by science until now. "

In his research N.I. Kostomarov skillfully used the method that many Russian folklorists later resorted to. Its meaning lies in the movement from the essence of folklore images to the system of folk thinking and folk way of life embedded in them. "True poetry," Kostomarov wrote in this regard, "does not allow lies and pretense; minutes of poetry are minutes of creativity: the people test them and leave monuments, - he sings; his songs, the works of his feelings do not lie, they are born and formed then, when people don't wear masks. "

Kostomarov's folkloristic research was not devoid of certain shortcomings. He was known, as he was called, one of the "last romantics", and the influence of the romantic approach was felt in all of his works. His idols were Schlegel and Kreutzer. Actually, the very key Kostomarov concept of "symbolism of nature" also came from these idols. According to his ideological and political ideas, Kostomarov was a consistent monarchist, for which he more than once suffered from representatives of the democratic community. The works of this researcher are characterized by deep religiosity. She is especially noticeable in his "Slavic Mythology" (1847). Here N.I. Kostomarov set his main goal to show mythology as an anticipation of Christianity that came to Russia later. For him, in essence, there was not what others called "dual faith." In the context of a religious sense of reality, he perceived everything as a whole and harmoniously. And this left an indelible imprint on his understanding of ethnography and folklore studies.

The creative activity of N.I. Kostomarova became another example of the active involvement of Russian historians in the development of problems of the development of folk culture. On this path, he successfully continued the wonderful tradition of N.K. Karamzin and his followers.

The talented Russian historian Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin (1820-1892) made a major contribution to the further multiplication and systematization of materials on leisure, everyday life, and folk art. He began his career as an employee in the Armory, then worked in the archives of the Palace Office, then transferred to the Imperial Archaeological Commission. In 1879 Zabelin became Chairman of the Society for History and Antiquities. In 1879 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1892 - an honorary member of this Academy. IE Zabelin is the author of such unique books as "History of Russian life since ancient times", "Big boyar in his patrimonial economy", "Experiments in the study of Russian antiquities", "Household life of Russian tsars and queens". His undoubted merit is that, based on the analysis of the richest archival manuscripts and other previously unknown materials, he was able to show the leisure and everyday environment of Russian society with exceptional scrupulousness and reliability. This is what domestic ethnography and folklore was so lacking at that time.

During the period under review, the creative activity of another prominent representative of Russian science, Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Alexander Nikolayevich Pypin, was widely developed. By his ideological convictions, Pypin remained a man of democratic views throughout his life.

A close relative of N.G. Chernyshevsky, for many years he was a member of the editorial board of the Sovremennik magazine and took an active part in its activities. Professionals in the field of philology highly value the fundamental work of A.N. Pypin - the four-volume History of Russian Literature, where, along with philological issues, much attention is paid to the problems of folk art, and in particular to the issues of the relationship and mutual influence of folklore and ancient Russian literature. His book "An Outline of the Literary History of Old Novels and Fairy Tales of Russians" was written in the same vein.

In essence, Pypin was able to confirm in his works a largely updated interpretation of folklore. Following Buslaev, whom he highly valued and respected, A.N. Pypin fiercely opposed everyone who tried to squeeze folk art out of the cultural field and saw this creativity as a kind of primitive of little art. Folklore, in his opinion, very importantly complements the history of the nation, making it more specific, detailed and reliable, helps to see the true tastes and interests, preferences of a working person. It can rightfully be argued that excellent knowledge of folk art helped A.N. Pypin to lay the foundations for a factually updated Russian ethnography.

Most valuable in the works of Pypin was, first of all, the fact that folklore theory and practice were presented here as a kind of history of the development of national consciousness. The author managed to connect the problems under consideration with real issues of Russian social life. For the first time, within the framework of national ethno-artistic knowledge, folk art was analyzed in close connection with the development of production and labor, social, household and leisure spheres of Russian society.

Largely thanks to the works of Pypin, Russian science was able to overcome the original, purely philological approach to folklore. He was one of the first to show the organizing role of production and ceremonial culture, within the framework of which most of the ethno-artistic works were born and functioned.

A contemporary of F.I. Buslaeva, Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky. A well-known philologist, representative of comparative literary criticism, an expert on Byzantine Slavic and Western European culture, he devoted all his life to the most close attention to the problems of the development of world and national folklore.

In his approaches to folk art, Veselovsky persistently contrasted the mythological theory with the method of rigorous historical research. He was convinced that the epic was wrongfully deduced directly from myth. The dynamics of epic creativity is closely related to the development of social relations. Compared with the archaic culture of primitive society, where myth really stands at the center of worldview structures, the epic is a new form of the emerging national identity. It is on these initial principles that A.N. Veselovsky's research "On the Mother of God and Kitovras", "Tales of Ivan the Terrible", and especially his main work "Historical Poetics" are based.

A characteristic feature of the scientific work of A.N. Veselovsky, his consistent patriotism. Veselovsky's "Notes and Works" contains a very sharp criticism of V.V. Stasov on the origin of Russian epics. He himself did not exclude certain borrowings that take place in the folklore of any people. However, Veselovsky placed his main emphasis on an even more important factor in the creative adaptation of someone else's experience. For Russian folk literature, in his opinion, this phenomenon is especially characteristic. Here, the processes of not elementary borrowing, but of creative processing of "wandering themes and plots" were gradually taking place.

"Explaining the similarity of myths, fairy tales, epic plots among different peoples," Veselovsky emphasized, "researchers usually disagree in two opposite directions: the similarity is explained either from the general foundations to which similar legends are supposedly built, or by the hypothesis that one of them borrowed its content In essence, none of these theories are individually applicable, and they are only conceivable jointly, for borrowing in the perceiver presupposes not an empty space, but counter currents, a similar direction of thinking, analogous images of fantasy. " Veselovsky became the author of a new research principle, according to which the basis of the study of folk art is the study of the soil that directly gave rise to folklore works. He introduced into Russian folklore studies a productive historical and genetic approach to the analysis of artistic culture. Veselovsky's works had a very important methodological significance - they answered many controversial questions and, to a large extent, determined the main path for the further development of national folklore.

The research activity of the Russian folklorist and ethnographer, professor of Moscow University and academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Vsevolod Fedorovich Miller gained wide popularity, and in the second half of the 19th century. Miller is famous for the fact that he, by all accounts of folklorists, made a very important contribution to the study of the bygone epic. This is the main meaning and content of his main works - "Excursions into the field of Russian folk epic" and "Essays on Russian folk literature".

Along with constant attention to national folklore, Miller all his life showed keen interest in the epic, literature and languages ​​of the Indo-European East - Sanskrit, Iranian linguistics, etc. It is very significant that he simultaneously considered his teachers, on the one hand, F.I.Buslaev, and on the other - A.D. Kuhn, who once had a two-year internship abroad. He was unique as a linguist, literary critic and folklorist. However, as often happens, his abundant erudition sometimes generates in his writings a clear overload of hypotheses, risky parallels, a noticeable "change of milestones" in each successive book. In this sense, in our opinion, he was quite rightly criticized by A.N. Veselovsky and N.P. Dashkevich.

Even more (and, in our opinion, justifiably) went to V.F. Miller for the unexpectedly put forward concept of the aristocratic origin of the Russian epic epic. For clarity, we present several excerpts from his "Sketches of Russian Folk Literature": "Songs were composed by princely and squad singers where there was a demand for them, where the pulse of life beat faster, where there was wealth and leisure, where the color was concentrated nation, i.e. in rich cities, where life is more free and fun ...

Singing to the princes and warriors, this poetry was of an aristocratic nature, was, so to speak, the elegant literature of the highest, most enlightened class, more than other strata of the population imbued with national identity, a sense of the unity of the Russian land and political interests in general. "Sometimes, Miller thinks, something from what was written in princely and squad circles it reached the common people, but this poetry could not develop in a "dark environment", "just as modern epics are distorted in the Olonets and Arkhangelsk common people, who came to him from among the professional petaries who performed them earlier for a richer and more cultured class. "Specific examples related to the scientific work of VF Miller clearly indicate that the development of Russian folklore studies was a rather complex process with an inevitable collision of very contradictory trends. This becomes especially noticeable at subsequent stages.

In the general mainstream of domestic folkloristic research, a special place is occupied by numerous publications devoted to the problems of the development of buffoonery art in Russia. Among the most significant publications of the 19th century, it is legitimate to mention the books of such researchers as P. Arapov "Chronicle of the Russian Theater" (St. Petersburg, 1816), A. Arkhangelsky "Theater of pre-Petrovskaya Rus" (Kazan., 1884), F. Berg " Shows of the 17th century in Moscow (Sketch) "(St. Petersburg, 18861, I. Bozheryanov" How the Russian people celebrated and celebrate Christmas, New Year, Epiphany and Shrovetide "(St. Petersburg, 1894), A. Gazo" Jesters and buffoons of all times and peoples "(St. Petersburg, 1897), N. Dubrovsky" Maslenitsa "(M., 1870), S. Lyubetsky" Moscow old and new festivities and amusements "(M., 1855), E. Opochinin" Russian theater, its beginning and development "(St. Petersburg, 1887), A. Popov" Pies of the Brotherhood "(M., 1854), D. Rovinsky" Russian Folk Pictures "(St. Petersburg, 1881-1893), N. Stepanov Holy Russia "(SP b., 1899), A. Famitsyn" Skomorokhi in Russia "(St. Petersburg, 1899), M. Khitrov" Ancient Russia in the great days "(St. Petersburg, 1899).

As emphasized in many of these studies, the main feature of buffoonery was that in its context, features of non-professional and professional art were intricately intertwined. Many authors believe that in the history of buffoonery we see the first and rather rare attempt to achieve creative interaction between two artistic streams. Due to certain circumstances, such interaction remained nothing more than an attempt, but this does not diminish its historical, cultural and socio-artistic value of buffoonery.

Judging by the documents that have come down to us, professionalization among Russian buffoons was rare and appeared clearly in very weak, rudimentary forms. The bulk of the buffoons were, according to our today's concepts, typical amateur artists. In this sense, one cannot but agree with the talented specialist in the history of Russian buffoonery A.A. Belkina, who believes that in the villages and villages he felt the need for buffoons, mainly on holidays, of which folk games were an integral part. The rest of the time the buffoons were not much different from the rest of the village inhabitants. Some part of the buffoons who lived in cities led a lifestyle similar to the rural one, engaging in activities typical of the townspeople during the periods between holidays - crafts, trade, etc. But at the same time, the conditions of city life provided more opportunities for professional buffoons.

Indeed, life itself produced here the selection of the most talented people and pushed them onto the stage. There was still no special training for artistic personnel. People learned the skill either in the family, or learned from each other. In essence, an ordinary folklore process was going on, traditionally based on "cultural and everyday synergy".

An important feature of buffoonery artistic creativity is, according to many researchers, its entertaining and playful and satirical and humorous orientation. This life-affirming art was one of the popular forms of folk laughter culture.

There is every reason to believe that buffoons took an active part in both the performance and the composition of folklore works. They performed, taking advantage of what had already been created by the people, what the people liked and what they themselves could take part in, as it was supposed to be in all festive games, brothers, weddings and other traditional entertainments. But, apparently, a lot of new things were included in the context of such amusements from buffoons. After all, these were the most talented people in the artistic sense, who had a higher creative and performing experience. Through them and with their help there was a noticeable enrichment of the content and forms of folklore in general.

Unfortunately, the problem of such influence is rather poorly reflected in our folklore studies. Meanwhile, there is every reason to assert that many of the most ancient works of Slavic and Russian folklore were born in a clownish environment. Buffoons in Russia bylinas are only active participants in rural festivities and merrymaking. Up to the well-known tsar's decree of 1648, these cheerful people took the most direct part in liturgical performances, for example, in such as "Walking on a donkey", "Cave performance" and other performances of biblical and gospel stories. It is difficult to overestimate the buffoonery contribution to the development of folk music. It is about them, as the excellent masters of playing the domra, harp, bagpipes, horns, is often mentioned in the ancient Russian chronicles. In general, buffoonery performances were quite rightly regarded by many researchers as a kind of transitional step from free and, in fact, very poorly organized folklore to performances already made according to a certain textual outline, subjected to a certain staging and, to some extent, pre-rehearsed. Such representations, although the principles of active involvement of the public in developing actions, were realized here also in a pronounced form, to a greater extent than purely everyday forms of artistic performance, presupposed the presence of artists and spectators.

Date of publication: 2014-11-02; Read: 2055 | Page copyright infringement | Order writing a work

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What is "folklore" for a modern person? These are songs, fairy tales, proverbs, epics and other creativity of our ancestors, which was created and passed from mouth to mouth once upon a time, and now remains 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 came there.

Modern people do not tell each other fairy tales, do not sing songs while they work. And if they write 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 of a school teacher, who discovered that the name of Cheburashka, did not say anything to his students. The teacher was prepared for the fact that the children did not know either Tsar Saltan or the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. But Cheburashka ?!

All educated Europe experienced about the same feelings two hundred years ago. That which had been passed down from generation to generation for centuries, which seemed to be dissolved in the air and which, it seemed, was impossible not to know, suddenly began to be forgotten, to crumble, to go into the sand.

It was suddenly discovered that everywhere (and especially in cities) a new generation had grown up, who knew the ancient oral culture only in meaningless fragments or did not know 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 publishing collections of German folk tales. In 1835, Elias Lenroth publishes 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 who never had their own statehood, there is still a heroic epic, comparable in volume and complexity of structure to ancient Greek myths! The collection of folklore (as in 1846 the English scientist William Thoms called the whole body of folk "knowledge" that exists exclusively in oral form) grew throughout Europe. And at the same time, the feeling grew: folklore was leaving, speakers were dying out, nothing could be found in many areas. (For example, none of the Russian epics have ever been recorded where their action takes place, and indeed in the historical "core" of Russian lands. All known recordings were made in the North, in the lower Volga region, on the Don, in Siberia - i.e. 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 hasty gathering, more and more strange things appeared in the recordings of folklorists. For example, short tunes, unlike anything that was previously sung in the villages.

Accurate rhymes, correct alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables made these couplets (the folk performers themselves called them "ditties") with urban poetry, but the content of the texts did not reveal any connection with any printed sources. There were serious debates among folklorists: should ditties in the full sense of the word be considered folklore, or is it a product of the decomposition of folk art under the influence of professional culture?

Oddly enough, it was this discussion that forced the then young folklore studies to 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 emerge and circulate that, by all indications, should be attributed to folklore.

A caveat should be made here. In general, the concept of "folklore" refers not only to verbal works (texts), but in general to all phenomena of folk culture, transmitted directly from person to person. A traditional, centuries-old pattern of embroidery on a towel in a Russian village or the choreography of a ritual dance of an African tribe is also folklore. However, partly for objective reasons, partly due to the fact that texts are easier and more fully amenable to recording 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 more) important. For example, an anecdote necessarily includes a telling procedure - for which it is absolutely necessary that at least some of those present do not know this anecdote. The 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 performance.

But back to contemporary folklore. As soon as the researchers looked at the material that they (and often the carriers themselves 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, ceremony and ritual, and much more for which there were no suitable names in folklore. In the 20s of the last century, 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 heading "Just an anecdote", where actual anecdotes were often encountered - of course, the most harmless, but their action was often transferred "abroad", just in case.) But the scientific research of modern folklore actually resumed only in the late 1980s and increased especially 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 University for the Humanities), this happened largely according to the principle “there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped”: without funds for normal gathering and research expeditions and student practices, Russian folklorists transferred their efforts to what was nearby.

Omnipresent and many-sided

The collected material amazed first of all with its abundance and variety. Each, even the smallest group of people, barely realizing their community and difference from all others, immediately acquired their own folklore. Researchers previously knew the folklore of individual subcultures: prison, soldier, student songs. But it turned out that their own folklore exists among climbers and parachutists, nature conservation activists and adherents of nontraditional cults, hippies and goths, patients of a particular hospital (sometimes even a department) and regulars of a particular pub, kindergarten and elementary school students. In a number of such communities, the composition of the population changed rapidly - patients went to the hospital and were discharged, children entered and graduated from kindergarten - and folklore texts continued to circulate in these groups for decades.

But even more unexpected was the genre variety of modern folklore.

(or "post-folklore", as Professor Neklyudov suggested to call this phenomenon). The new folklore took almost nothing from the genres of classical folklore, but what it took was changed beyond recognition. “Almost all old oral genres, from ritual lyrics to fairy tales, are becoming a thing of the past,” writes Sergei Neklyudov. But more and more space is taken not only by relatively young forms ("street" songs, anecdotes), but also by texts that are generally difficult to be attributed to any particular genre: fantastic "historical and local history essays" (about the origin of the name of a city or its parts, about geophysical and mystical anomalies, about celebrities who visited it, etc.), stories about incredible incidents ("one medical student bet that he will spend the night in the dead ..."), legal incidents, etc. In the concept of folklore it was necessary to include both rumors and unofficial toponymy ("we meet at the Head" - that is, at the bust of Nogin at the Kitay-Gorod station). Finally, there is 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 ... "Embroidery" - what needs to be done to neutralize or at least weaken the effect of a "torpedo" (capsule with antabuse) implanted under the skin. 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 of 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: "radiation is absorbed not by every cactus, but only with star-shaped needles."

However, sometimes in modern society it is possible to find well-known phenomena, albeit transformed so much that in order to see their folklore nature, special efforts are needed. Moscow researcher Yekaterina Belousova, having analyzed the practice of dealing with women in labor in Russian maternity hospitals, came to the conclusion: the notorious rudeness and authoritarianism of the medical staff (as well as many restrictions for patients and the obsessive fear of "infection") is nothing more than a modern form of childbirth rite - one of the most important "rites of passage" described by ethnographers in many traditional societies.

Word of mouth on 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 discovered, is the difference between modern folklore and classical folklore so fundamental? 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 formed ones continued to live in the oral tradition until the end of the 19th and even up to 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 a city dweller, perhaps the choice of clothes. Accordingly, folklore is "detached" from the season - and at the same time from the corresponding rituals, it becomes unnecessary.

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 dialectic, and local differences were important for its speakers (“but we do not sing like that!”). However, if earlier this locality was literal, geographic, now it has become more socio-cultural: neighbors on the staircase can be carriers of completely different folklore. They do not understand each other's jokes, they cannot sing along ... The independent performance of any songs in the company today generally becomes a rarity: if a few decades ago the definition of "popularly known" referred to songs that everyone can sing along, now - to the songs that everyone has heard at least once.

But perhaps the most important thing is the marginalization of the place of folklore in human life.

All the most important things in life - and worldview, and social skills, and specific knowledge - a modern city dweller, unlike his not so distant ancestor, does not receive through folklore. Another important function is almost removed from folklore - identification and self-identification of a person. Folklore has always been a means of declaring belonging to a particular culture - and a means of testing this statement (“ours is the one who sings our songs”). Today folklore fulfills this role either in marginal and often opposed to the "big" society subcultures (for example, criminal), or very fragmentarily. 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 the fact that he is a tourist, he is also an engineer, an Orthodox Christian, a parent - and all these hypostases he will manifest 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".

By itself, this sounds like an oxymoron: the main and universal feature of all folklore phenomena is oral existence, while all network texts are written by definition. However, as the deputy director of the State Republican Center of Russian Folklore Anna Kostina notes, many of them have all the main features of folklore texts: anonymity and collectivity of authorship, polyvariety, tradition. Moreover: online texts clearly strive to "overcome writing" - otsbda and widespread use of emoticons (allowing at least to indicate intonation), and the popularity of "Padonskoy" (deliberately incorrect) spelling. At the same time, computer networks that allow the instantaneous copying and forwarding of texts of considerable size offer a chance for a resurgence of large narrative forms. Of course, it is unlikely that something like the Kyrgyz heroic epic "Manas" with its 200 thousand lines will ever be born on the Internet. But the network is already widely circulating merry nameless texts (like the famous "radio communications of an American aircraft carrier with a Spanish lighthouse") - absolutely folklore in spirit and poetics, but unable to live in a purely oral transmission.

It seems that in the information society, folklore can not only lose a lot, but also gain something.

• Specialty VAK RF
• Number of pages 187

Chapter 1. Conceptual and methodological foundations of the study of folklore

1. 1. Folklore in the context of modern research approaches: methodological prerequisites for analysis.

1. 2. The phenomenon of folklore and conceptual facets of its study.

Chapter 2. Regularities of the genesis and evolution of folklore artistic consciousness

2.1. The origins and genesis of folklore activity and folklore consciousness.

2.2. Folklore as a specific phenomenon of artistic consciousness.

Chapter 3. Folklore in the aesthetic culture of society

3.1. -Folklore in the functional field of artistic and aesthetic culture.

3.2. Artistic and aesthetic reflection of reality in the development of forms and genres of folklore.

Dissertation introduction (part of the abstract) on the topic "Folklore as a phenomenon of the aesthetic culture of society: Aspects of genesis and evolution"

Similar dissertations in the specialty "Theory and history of art", 17.00.09 code VAK

• Traditional song folklore of the peoples of Dagestan in amateur art 2002, candidate of philological sciences Mugadova, Mariyan Velikhanovna

• Study of the genre specificity of Yakut folklore in the context of modern literary education of schoolchildren 2010, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences Gogoleva, Marina Trofimovna

• Russian folk song as an ethnocultural concept 2006, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Alekseeva, Olga Ivanovna

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• The role of folklore in the evolution of Chechen prose of the 20th century 2010, Doctor of Philology Dzhambekova, Tamara Belalovna

Conclusion of the thesis on the topic "Theory and history of art", Novikov, Valery Sergeevich

List of dissertation research literature PhD in Philosophy Novikov, Valery Sergeevich, 2002

Please note that the above scientific texts are posted for review and obtained by means of recognition of the original texts of dissertations (OCR). In this connection, they may contain errors associated with the imperfection of recognition algorithms. There are no such errors in PDF files of dissertations and abstracts that we deliver.

Introduction.

Folklore is artistic folk art, artistic creative activity of the working people, poetry, music, theater, dance, architecture, fine and decorative applied arts created by the people and prevailing among the masses. In collective artistic creation, the people reflect their labor activity, social and everyday life, knowledge of life and nature, cults and beliefs. The folklore that has developed in the course of social labor practice embodies the views, ideals and aspirations of the people, their poetic fantasy, the richest world of thoughts, feelings, experiences, protest against exploitation and oppression, dreams of justice and happiness. Having absorbed the centuries-old experience of the masses, folklore is distinguished by the depth of the artistic assimilation of reality, the truthfulness of the images, the power of creative generalization. The richest images, themes, motives, forms of folklore arise in a complex dialectical unity of individual (although, as a rule, anonymous) creativity and collective artistic consciousness. For centuries, the folk collective has been selecting, improving and enriching the solutions found by individual craftsmen. Continuity, stability of artistic traditions (within which, in turn, personal creativity is manifested) are combined with variability, diverse implementation of these traditions in individual works. It is typical for all types of folklore that the creators of a work are at the same time its performers, and the performance, in turn, can be the creation of options that enrich the tradition; also important is the closest contact of performers with people who perceive art, who themselves can act as participants in the creative process. The main features of folklore include the long-lasting indivisibility, the highly artistic unity of its types: poetry, music, dance, theater, and decorative arts merged in folk ritual actions; in a folk dwelling, architecture, carving, painting, ceramics, and embroidery created an inseparable whole; folk poetry is closely related to music and its rhythm, musicality, and the nature of the performance of most works, while musical genres are usually associated with poetry, labor movements, dances. Folklore works and skills are passed directly from generation to generation.

1. A wealth of genres

In the process of existence, the genres of verbal folklore experience “productive” and “unproductive” periods (“ages”) of their history (emergence, spread, entry into the mass repertoire, aging, extinction), and this is ultimately associated with social and cultural changes in society. The stability of the existence of folklore texts in folk life is explained not only by their artistic value, but also by the slowness of changes in the way of life, worldview, tastes of their main creators and keepers - peasants. The texts of folklore works of various genres are changeable (albeit to varying degrees). However, in general, traditionalism has immeasurably greater power in folklore than in professional literary creativity. The richness of genres, themes, images, poetics of verbal folklore is due to the variety of its social and everyday functions, as well as the methods of performance (solo, chorus, chorus and soloist), the combination of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing, singing and dancing, telling, acting , dialogue, etc.). In the course of history, some genres have undergone significant changes, disappeared, new ones appeared. In the most ancient period, most peoples had ancestral legends, labor and ritual songs, conspiracies. Later, there are magical, everyday tales, tales of animals, pre-state (archaic) forms of the epic. During the formation of statehood, a classic heroic epic took shape, then historical songs and ballads arose. Even later, non-ritual lyric song, romance, ditty and other small lyrical genres and, finally, working folklore (revolutionary songs, oral stories, etc.) were formed. Despite the bright national coloring of the works of verbal folklore of different peoples, many motives, images and even plots in them are similar. For example, about two-thirds of the stories of European peoples' fairy tales have parallels in the fairy tales of other peoples, which is caused either by development from one source, or by cultural interaction, or by the emergence of similar phenomena on the basis of general laws of social development.

2. The concept of children's folklore

It is customary to call children's folklore both works that are performed by adults for children, and those composed by the children themselves. Children's folklore includes lullabies, pestushki, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters and chants, teasers, rhymes, absurdities, etc. Children's folklore is formed under the influence of many factors. Among them - the influence of various social and age groups, their folklore; mass culture; prevailing ideas and much more. The initial sprouts of creativity can appear in various activities of children, if the necessary conditions are created for this. The successful development of such qualities that in the future will ensure the child's participation in creative work depends on upbringing. Children's creativity is based on imitation, which serves as an important factor in the development of a child, in particular his artistic abilities. The task of the teacher is, relying on the propensity of children to imitate, to instill in them the skills and abilities, without which creative activity is impossible, to educate them in independence, activity in the application of this knowledge and skills, to form critical thinking, purposefulness. In preschool age, the foundations of the child's creative activity are laid, which are manifested in the development of the ability to plan and its implementation, in the ability to combine their knowledge and ideas, in the sincere transmission of their feelings. Possibly, folklore has become a kind of filter for the mythological plots of the entire totality of the Earth's society, letting the universal, humanistically significant, and most viable plots into literature.

3. Contemporary children's folklore

They sat on the golden porch

Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry,

Uncle Scrooge and three ducklings

And Ponca will drive!

Returning to the analysis of the current state of traditional genres of children's folklore, it should be noted that the existence of such genres of calendar folklore as chants and sentences remains almost unchanged in terms of text. Still the most popular are the appeals to the rain ("Rain, rain, stop ..."), to the sun ("Sun, sun, look out the window ..."), to a ladybug and a snail. The semi-faith, traditional for these works, is preserved in combination with the playful beginning. At the same time, the frequency of use of chants and sentences by modern children decreases, practically no new texts appear, which also allows us to speak of a regression of the genre. Riddles and teasers turned out to be more viable. Remaining still popular in the children's environment, they exist both in traditional forms (“I went underground, found a red cap”, “Lenka-foam”), and in new versions and varieties (“In winter and summer in the same color” - Negro , dollar, soldier, canteen menu, alcoholic nose, etc.). Such an unusual variety of the genre as riddles with drawings is rapidly developing. Folklore recordings of recent years contain a fairly large block of ditties. Gradually dying off in the adult repertoire, this type of oral folk art is rather readily picked up by children (this is what happened with the works of calendar folklore at one time). Chastushka texts heard from adults are usually not sung, but recited or chanted in communication with peers. Sometimes they "adapt" to the age of the performers, for example:

Girls offend me

They say that he is small

And I'm in the garden Irinku

I kissed him ten times.

Historically established genres such as pestushki, nursery rhymes, jokes, etc., almost completely disappear from oral use. Firmly fixed in textbooks, manuals and anthologies, they have now become a part of book culture and are actively used by teachers, educators, are included in programs as a source of folk wisdom, filtered out for centuries, as a sure means of developing and raising a child. But modern parents and children in oral practice use them very rarely, and if they reproduce, then as works familiar from books, and not passed from mouth to mouth, which, as you know, is one of the main distinctive features of folklore.

4. Modern genre of children's horror stories.

Children's folklore is a living, constantly renewing phenomenon, and in it, along with the most ancient genres, there are relatively new forms, the age of which is only a few decades old. As a rule, these are genres of children's urban folklore, for example, horror stories. Horror stories are short stories with a tense plot and a frightening ending, the purpose of which is to scare the listener. According to the researchers of this genre O. Grechina and M. Osorina, "the horror story merges the traditions of a fairy tale with the actual problems of a child's real life." It is noted that among children's horror stories, one can find plots and motifs, traditional in archaic folklore, demonological characters borrowed from bylikas and exes, however, the prevailing group is a group of plots in which objects and things of the surrounding world turn out to be demonic creatures. Literary critic S.M. Leuter notes that under the influence of a fairy tale, the children's horror stories acquired a clear and uniform plot structure. The predestination inherent in it (warning or prohibition - violation - retribution) makes it possible to define it as a "didactic structure". Some researchers draw parallels between the modern genre of children's horror stories and older literary types of scary stories, for example, the works of Korney Chukovsky. The writer Eduard Uspensky collected these stories in the book "Red Hand, Black Sheet, Green Fingers (Scary Stories for Fearless Children)".

Horror stories in the described form, apparently, became widespread in the 70s of the XX century. Literary critic O. Yu. Trykova believes that “at present, horror stories are gradually passing into the“ stage of conservation ”. Children still tell them, but practically no new plots appear, and the frequency of performance is also decreasing. Obviously, this is due to a change in life realities: in the Soviet period, when an almost total ban in official culture was imposed on everything catastrophic and frightening, the need for the terrible was satisfied through this genre. Currently, many sources have appeared, in addition to horror stories, satisfying this craving for the mysteriously frightening (from news releases, various newspaper publications savoring the "scary" to numerous horror films). According to the psychologist M.V. Osorina, a pioneer in the study of this genre, the fears that a child copes with in early childhood by himself or with the help of his parents become the material of the collective consciousness of children. This material is worked out by children in group situations of telling scary stories, is recorded in the texts of children's folklore and passed on to the next generations of children, becoming a screen for their new personal projections.

The main character of the horror stories is a teenager who encounters a "pest object" (stain, curtains, tights, a rolling coffin, piano, TV, radio, record, bus, tram). In these items, color plays a special role: white, red, yellow, green, blue, blue, black. The hero, as a rule, repeatedly receives a warning about the impending disaster from the object-pest, but does not want (or cannot) get rid of it. His death most often comes from strangulation. The hero's assistant is a policeman. Horror stories are not reduced only to the plot, the ritual of storytelling is also essential - as a rule, in the dark, in the company of children in the absence of adults. According to folklorist M.P. Cherednikova, the child's involvement in the practice of telling horror stories depends on his psychological maturation. At first, at the age of 5-6, a child cannot hear scary stories without horror. Later, from about 8 to 11 years old, children happily tell scary stories, and at the age of 12-13 they no longer take them seriously, and various parody forms are becoming more common.

As a rule, horror stories are characterized by stable motives: "black hand", "blood stain", "green eyes", "coffin on wheels", etc. Such a story consists of several sentences, as the action develops, the tension increases, and in the final phrase it reaches its peak.

"Red Spot". One family got a new apartment, but there was a red spot on the wall. They wanted to erase him, but nothing happened. Then the stain was pasted over with wallpaper, but it showed through the wallpaper. And every night someone died. And the stain became even brighter after each death.

"The black hand punishes theft." One girl was a thief. She stole things and one day she stole a jacket. At night, someone knocked on her window, then a hand in a black glove appeared, she grabbed her jacket and disappeared. The next day, the girl stole the bedside table. At night, the hand appeared again. She grabbed the nightstand. The girl looked out the window, wanting to see who was taking things. And then the hand grabbed the girl and, pulling her out the window, strangled her.

Blue Glove. Once upon a time there was a blue glove. Everyone was afraid of her because she stalked and strangled people who returned home late. And then one day a woman was walking down the street - and this was a dark, dark street - and suddenly she saw a blue glove peeking out of the bushes. The woman got scared and ran home, and behind her was a blue glove. A woman ran into the staircase, went up to her floor, and the blue glove was behind her. She began to open the door, and the key got stuck, but she opened the door, ran home, suddenly there was a knock on the door. She opens, and there is a blue glove! (The last phrase was usually accompanied by a sharp movement of the hand towards the listener).

"Black House". In one black, black forest stood a black, black house. In this black, black house there was a black, black room. In this black, black room there was a black, black table. On this black, black table is a black, black coffin. In this black, black coffin lay a black, black man. (Up to this point, the narrator speaks in a muffled monotonous voice. And then - abruptly, unexpectedly loudly, grabbing the listener's hand.) Give me my heart! Few people know that the first poetic horror story was written by the poet Oleg Grigoriev:

I asked the electrician Petrov:
"Why did you wind a wire around your neck?"
Petrov doesn't answer me,
Hangs and only shakes with bots.

After him, sadistic rhymes appeared in abundance in both nursery and adult folklore.

The old woman did not suffer for long
In high-voltage wires
Her charred carcass
Scared the birds in the sky.

Horror stories are usually told in large companies, preferably in the dark and in a frightening whisper. The emergence of this genre is associated, on the one hand, with the craving of children for everything unknown and frightening, and on the other, with an attempt to overcome this fear. As they grow older, horror stories cease to scare and cause only laughter. This is evidenced by the emergence of a kind of reaction to horror stories - parody anti-scarecrows. These stories start out in an equally terrifying way, but the ending turns out to be funny:

Black-black night. A black-black car was driving along the black-black street. On this black and black car, it was written in big white letters: "BREAD"!

Grandfather and woman are sitting at home. Suddenly the radio said: “Throw away the cabinet and refrigerator! A coffin on wheels is coming to your house! " They threw it away. And so everything was thrown away. They are sitting on the floor, and they are broadcasting on the radio: "We have broadcast Russian folk tales."

All these stories end, as a rule, with no less terrible endings. (These are only "official" horror stories, in books, for the sake of the publisher, combed hair, they are equipped with happy ends or funny endings.) And nevertheless, modern psychology considers creepy children's folklore to be a positive phenomenon.

“A children's horror story affects different levels - feelings, thoughts, words, images, movements, sounds,” psychologist Marina Lobanova told NG. - It makes the psyche, with fear, not to get up with tetanus, but to move. Therefore, a horror story is an effective way to deal with depression, for example. " According to the psychologist, a person is able to create his own horror film only when he has already completed his own fear. And now Masha Seryakova passes on her valuable psychic experience to others - with the help of her stories. “It is also important that the girl writes using emotions, thoughts, images that are characteristic of the children's subculture,” says Lobanova. "An adult will never see it and will never create it."

Bibliography

"Mythological stories of the Russian population of Eastern Siberia." Compiled by V.P. Zinoviev. Novosibirsk, "Science". 1987.

Dictionary of literary terms. M. 1974.

Permyakov G.L. "From a saying to a fairy tale." M. 1970.

E.A. Kostyukhin "Types and forms of animal epic". M. 1987.

Levina E.M. Russian folklore fiction. Minsk. 1983.

Belousov A.F. "Children's folklore". M. 1989.

V.V. Mochalova "The World Inside Out". M. 1985.

Lurie V.F. “Children's folklore. Younger adolescents. " M. 1983