Old Russian literature and folklore. Oral folk art What is Russian oral folk art
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Folklore Every nation is unique, just like its history and culture.
Russian folklore- these are works of Russian folk art, a cultural heritage that was passed down through generations “by word of mouth.” Folklore works did not belong to a specific writer; the Russian people themselves were both the author and performer of various songs, dances, legends, fairy tales, epics, proverbs, charms, ditties and traditions. All of them had all-Russian features, and at the same time they could differ in their regional characteristics.
Folklore belongs to the title of the most ancient phenomenon of artistic culture. It originated even before the advent of writing and was closely connected with the work and life of the Russian people. Works of folk art colorfully reflected the spiritual development of society, its worldview and religious traditions.
Played the most important role folklore in the social life of Ancient Rus'. Ritual folklore, which reflected pagan beliefs, was especially developed. To this view folklore included calendar holidays, family customs, magical ritual songs, spells, round dances, etc.
It is impossible not to note the diversity of the epic genre, which included epics, mythical legends, fairy tales, legends and sayings.
Merry folk festivals, fairs with musical and theatrical performances, mummers and buffoons are also part of the ancient Russian folklore.
With the adoption of Orthodoxy and the establishment of Russian statehood, the repertoire of folk art expanded. The reaction of the Russian people to historical events was clearly reflected in epic and historical songs, romances and anecdotes, and folk dramatic works.
In the process of historical development of society and professional art, there was a gradual withering away of traditional Russian folk art. Folklore transformed and experienced the influence of mass culture, but still embodied various facets of the social and personal life of the ordinary Russian people.
Folklore, translated, means “folk wisdom, ethnic knowledge.” Folklore is ethnic creativity, artistic collective work of the people, reflecting their life, views and standards, i.e. folklore is the ethnic historical cultural heritage of every state in the world.
Works of Russian folklore (fairy tales, legends, epics, songs, ditties, dances, tales, applied art) can help recreate the characteristic features of the ethnic life of one’s own time.
Creativity in ancient times was closely connected with the working work of man and reflected fantastic, historical ideas, as well as the embryos of scientific knowledge. The art of the text was closely connected with other forms of art - music, dancing, decorative art. In science this is called “syncretism”.
Folklore was an art organically characteristic of the ethnic setting. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their different themes, types, and manners. In the ancient stage, most peoples had tribal legends, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and plots. The decisive event that laid the boundary between mythology and folklore was the emergence of fairy tales, the plots of which were based on dreams, wisdom, and ethical invention.
In ancient and knightly society, a heroic epic was formed (Irish sagas, Russian epics and others). Legends and songs also appeared, reflecting all kinds of beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later, historical songs were noticed, imitating real historical events and heroes, as they were preserved in ethnic memory.
Genres in folklore are also distinguished by the method of execution (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and different combinations of words with melody, intonation, movements (singing and dancing, storytelling and acting).
With changes in the social life of society, new genres appeared in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The rise of industry and human settlements brought to life: romances, funny stories, proletarians, student folklore.
At the moment, fresh Russian ethnic fairy tales are not being noticed, but old ones are still being told and cartoons and feature films are being made based on them. They sing almost all the old songs. But epics and historical songs are literally no longer heard performed live.
For 1000 years, folklore has been a single form of creativity among all peoples. The folklore of every nation is individual, for example, as is its situation, customs, and civilization. And some genres (not just historical songs) reflect the situation of the people left behind.
Russian ethnic musical civilization
There are a number of points of view that interpret folklore as an ethnic artistic culture, as oral poetic creativity and as a collective verbal, musical, gaming or artistic form of ethnic creativity. With all the abundance of regional and local forms, folklore is characterized by common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close association with work, environment, and the passing of works from generation to generation in oral tradition.
Ethnic musical art arose a long time before the advent of professional music in the Orthodox church. In the social life of ancient Rus', folklore played a much larger role than in later eras. Unlike knightly Europe, Old Rus' did not have secular professional art. In its musical culture, ethnic creativity of oral traditions developed, including all sorts of “semi-professional” genres (the art of storytellers, guslars, etc.).
By the time of Orthodox hymnography, Russian folklore already had a long-standing situation, an established system of genres and means of musical expression. Ethnic music and ethnic creativity have firmly entered into the environment of people, reflecting the various boundaries of public, home and personal life.
Scientists believe that the pre-state stage
(that is, before Old Rus' was formed), the Eastern Slavs already had a fairly developed calendar and family folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
With the adoption of Christianity, pagan (Vedic) knowledge began to be eradicated. The significance of the magical actions that gave rise to this or that picture of ethnic work was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays turned out to be unusually stable, and some ritual folklore continued to exist, as if outside the connection with the ancient idolatry that gave rise to it.
The Christian church (not only in Rus', but also in Europe) had a very negative attitude towards classical ethnic songs and dances, believing them to be a manifestation of sinfulness and devilish seduction. This assessment is enshrined in many chronicle sources and in canonical church orders.
Provocative, cheerful ethnic celebrations with theatrical performances and the irreplaceable role of music, the origins of which are found in the footsteps of ancient Vedic rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays.
The most vast region of ethnic musical creativity of Ancient Rus' is shaped by ritual folklore, testifying to the highest artistic talent of the Russian people. It appeared in the depths of the Vedic picture of the world, the deification of natural elements. Calendar-ritual songs are considered more ancient. Their table of contents is related to ideas about the cycle of nature and the agricultural calendar. These songs reflect all kinds of milestones in the lives of grain growers. They were part of winter, spring, and summer rituals that correspond to turning factors in changing the years of the year. By performing this natural ritual (songs, dances), people believed that the mighty gods, the forces of Love, Family, Sun, Water, Mother Earth would hear them and healthy babies would appear, a good harvest would appear, livestock would be born, life in love would develop and consent.
In Rus', marriage has been played since ancient times. In every territory there was a personal custom of wedding actions, lamentations, songs, sentences. But with all the inexhaustible abundance, marriages were played according to the same laws. Poetic wedding reality modifies what is happening into a fantastic fairy-tale world. As in a parable, all the images are diverse, for example, the ritual itself, poetically interpreted, becomes a specific fairy tale. Marriage, being one of the most significant events of human life in Rus', sought a festive and solemn frame. And if you feel all the rituals and songs, delving into this mythical wedding world, you can feel the aching beauty of this ritual. What will remain “behind the scenes” are very beautiful clothes, a wedding train rattling with bells, a polyphonic choir of “singers” and mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of waxwings and buzzers, accordions and balalaikas - but the poetry of marriage itself restores the pain of leaving the parental home and the highest joy of the solemn state of mind - Love.
One of the most ancient Russian genres is round dance songs. In Rus', round dances were held throughout almost the entire year - on Kolovorot (New Year), Maslenaya (farewell to winter and welcoming spring), Green Week (round dances of young women around birches), Yarilo (sacred bonfires), Ovsen (harvest festivals). They were widespread. round dances-games and round dances-processions. At first, round dance songs were part of agricultural rituals, but over the centuries they became independent, but images of labor remained in many of them:
And we sowed and sowed millet!
Oh, Did Lado, they sowed, they sowed!
The dance songs that have survived to this day combined male and female dances. Men's - personified power, courage, courage, ladies' - tenderness, commitment, stateliness.
Over the centuries, the musical epic begins to be replenished with fresh themes and types. Epic tales appear telling about the struggle against the Horde, about travel to distant states, about the emergence of the Cossacks, and ethnic uprisings.
Ethnic memory has preserved almost all the magnificent ancient songs for a long time over the centuries. In the 18th century, during the development of professional secular genres (opera, instrumental music), ethnic art for the first time became the subject of research and creative implementation. The educational attitude towards folklore was clearly expressed by the excellent writer and humanist A.N. Radishchev in the heartfelt lines of his own “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Whoever understands the voices of Russian ethnic songs admits that there is something in them, a spiritual pain that means... In them you will find the education of the soul of our people.” In the 19th century, the assessment of folklore as the “education of the soul” of the Russian people became the basis for the aesthetics of composition in secondary educational institutions from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, to Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Kalinikov, and ethnic song itself was considered one of the sources of the formation of the Russian state thinking.
Russian ethnic songs of the 16th-19th centuries - “like the golden mirror of the Russian people” Ethnic songs recorded in various regions of the Russian Federation are considered a historical monument to the life of the people, but also a documentary source that captures the formation of the ethnic creative thought of their time.
The fight against the Tatars, village putschs - all this left a mark on ethnic song traditions in any given territory, starting with epics, historical songs and up to ballads. Like, for example, the ballad about Ilya Muromets, which is associated with the Nightingale River, which flows in the territory of Yazykovo, there was a struggle between Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, who lived in these parts.
It is known that Ivan Surov’s conquest of the Kazan Khanate played a role in the development of oral ethnic creativity; Ivan Surov’s campaigns marked the beginning of the final victory over the Tatar-Mongol yoke, which liberated almost all the thousand Russian prisoners from captivity. The songs of this time became the model for Lermontov’s epic “Song on the Theme of Ivan Tsarevich” - a chronicle of ethnic life, and A.S. Pushkin in his own works used oral ethnic creativity - Russian songs and Russian fairy tales.
On the Volga, not far from the village of Undory, there is a cape called Stenka Razin; there were songs from such a time: “On the steppe, the Saratov steppe,” “We had immaculate Rus'.” Historical actions of the late XVII - early XVIII centuries. captured in a compilation about the campaigns of Peter I and his Azov campaigns, about the execution of the archers: “It’s like walking on a blue sea,” “A young Cossack is walking along the Don.”
With the military reforms of the early 18th century, fresh historical songs appeared, these were no longer lyrical, but epic. Historical songs protect the ancient images of the historical epic, songs about the Russian-Turkish War, about recruitment and the war with Napoleon: “The French kidnapper boasted of taking the Russian Federation,” “Don’t make noise, you green oak mother.”
At this time, the epics about “The Severe Suzdalian”, about “Dobrynya and Alyosha” and the rather rare parable of Gorshen were preserved. Even in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Russian epic ethnic songs and tales were used. The ancient customs of ethnic games, mummery and the special performing civilization of Russian song folklore remain.
Russian ethnic theatrical art Russian ethnic tragedy and ethnic theatrical art in general are the most interesting and important emergence of Russian state culture.
Dramatic games and performances at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries formed an organic part of the solemn ethnic atmosphere, be it peasant gatherings, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.
The geography of distribution of ethnic drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have noticed special theatrical “hotbeds” in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals. Ethnic tragedy, in spite of the view of some scientists, is a natural product of folklore tradition. It compresses the creative skill accumulated by dozens of generations of the broadest strata of the Russian people.
At city and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which performances on fairy-tale and national historical themes were performed. The performances seen at the fairs did not have the opportunity to fully influence the aesthetic tastes of the people, but they expanded their magical and song repertoire. Popular and theatrical borrowings largely marked the originality of the plots of ethnic drama. However, they “lay down” on the ancient gaming customs of ethnic games, mummery, i.e. on the special performing culture of Russian folklore.
Generations of developers and artists of ethnic dramas have developed specific ways of plotting plots, character data, and manners. Developed ethnic dramas are characterized by strong attractions and insoluble incidents, continuity and swiftness of actions replacing each other.
A special role in ethnic drama is played by songs performed by the heroes at various times or sung in chorus - as comments on ongoing events. The songs were a specific emotional and psychological component of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the sensory meaning of the scene or the position of the character. Songs at the beginning and end of the performance were indispensable. The song repertoire of ethnic dramas is produced mostly from original songs of the 19th and early 20th centuries known in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The snow-white Russian Tsar rode”, “Malbruk left on a campaign”, “Praise, praise for you, hero”, and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening”, “I’m heading off into the desert”, “What’s clouded, the clear dawn "and almost all others.
Late genres of Russian ethnic creativity - festivities
The heyday of the festivities occurred in the 17th-19th centuries, but certain forms and genres of ethnic art, which formed an obligatory accessory to the fair and city ceremonial squares, were formed and actively existed for a long time before these centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to be present to this day. Such a puppet arena, bear fun, to some extent the jokes of traders, almost all circus acts. Other genres were born at the fairgrounds and died out when the festivities stopped. These are funny monologues of booth barkers, barkers, performances of booth theaters, dialogues of parsley clowns.
As a rule, during festivities and fairs, entire entertainment centers with booths, carousels, swings, and tents were erected in classical spaces, which sold everything from popular prints to songbirds and delicacies. In winter, cold mountains were added, access to which was absolutely free, and sledding from a height of 10-12 m brought incomparable pleasure.
With all its diversity and diversity, the city's ethnic holiday was regarded as something indivisible. This unity was created by the specific air of the solemn square, with its free text, familiarity, unbridled laughter, food and drinks; equality, fun, solemn perception of the world.
The solemn square itself
ala an unimaginable combination of various details. In accordance with this, outwardly it was a bright, echoing mess. Colorful, motley clothes of strollers, prominent, unusual costumes of “artists”, flashy signs of booths, swings, carousels, shops and taverns, handicrafts sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow and the simultaneous sound of barrel organs, pipes, flutes, drums, exclamations, songs, cries of merchants , a booming smile from the jokes of “boothy old men” and clowns - everything merged into a single fair fireworks display that hypnotized and made people laugh.
The large, familiar festivities “under the mountains” and “under the swings” attracted many guest performers from Europe (many of them were owners of booths, panoramas) and including southern countries (magicians, animal tamers, strongmen, acrobats and others). Foreign speech and foreign wonders were commonplace at Namoskov festivities and huge fairs. It is clear why the city’s spectacular folklore often appeared as a mixture of “Nizhny Novgorod and French” of its own family.
The base, heart and soul of Russian state culture is Russian folklore, this is a treasure, this is what has filled Russian people from the inside since time immemorial, and this internal Russian ethnic civilization gave birth in the 17th-19th centuries to an integral constellation of great Russian writers, composers, designers , scientists, warriors, philosophers, whom the whole world understands and honors: Zhukovsky V.A., Ryleev K.F., Tyutchev F.I., Pushkin A.S., Lermontov M.Yu., Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. ., Bulgakov M.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S., Fonvizin D.I., Chekhov A.P., Gogol N.V., Goncharov I.A., Bunin I.A., Griboedov A.S., Karamzin N.M., Dostoevsky F.M., Kuprin A.I., Glinka M.I., Glazunov A.K., Mussorgsky M.P., Rimsky-Korsakov N.A., Tchaikovsky P.I., Borodin A.P., Balakirev M.A., Rachmaninov S.V., Stravinsky I.F., Prokofiev S.S., Kramskoy I.N., Vereshchagin V.V., Surikov V. .I., Polenov V.D., Serov V.A., Aivazovsky I.K., Shishkin I.I., Vasnetsov V.N., Repin I.E., Roerich N.K., Vernadsky V.I. ., Lomonosov M.V., Sklifosovsky N.V., Mendeleev D.I., Sechenov I.M., Pavlov I.P., Tsiolkovsky K.E., Popov A.S., Bagration P.R., Nakhimov P.S., Suvorov A.V., Kutuzov M.I., Ushakov F.F., Kolchak A.V., Solovyov V.S., Berdyaev N.A., Chernyshevsky N.G., Dobrolyubov N. .A., Pisarev D.I., Chaadaev P.E., there are thousands of them, of whom, for example or in another way, the whole earthly world understands. These are universal pillars that grew up on Russian ethnic culture.
But in 1917, the second attempt was made in the Russian Federation to break the association of times, to break the Russian cultural heritage of ancient generations. The first attempt was made back in the years of the baptism of Rus'. But it did not work out in full, for example, how the power of Russian folklore was based on the life of the people, on their Vedic natural worldview. But already in some places by the sixties of the twentieth century, Russian folk folklore began to be gradually replaced by the popular pop genres of pop, disco and, as is customary at the moment, chanson (prison-thieve folklore) and other forms of Russian arts. But a definite blow was dealt in the 90s. The text “Russian” was secretly not allowed to be pronounced, as if this text meant inciting state hatred. This state is still preserved.
And the only Russian people disappeared, they were scattered, they were made drunk, and they began to exterminate them at the genetic level. At the moment in Rus' there is a non-Russian spirit of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and all other inhabitants of Asia and the Middle East, and in the Far East there are Chinese, Koreans, etc., and everywhere the functional, mass Ukrainization of the Russian Federation is being carried out.
Introduction
Folklore is a type of folk art that is very necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days.
Folklore includes works that convey the basic, most important ideas of the people about the main values in life: work, family, love, social duty, homeland. Our children are still being brought up on these works. Knowledge of folklore can give a person knowledge about the Russian people, and ultimately about himself.
Folklore is a synthetic art form. His works often combine elements of various types of art - verbal, musical, choreographic and theatrical. But the basis of any folklore work is always the word. Folklore is very interesting to study as an art of words. In this regard, the study, knowledge and understanding of the poetics of folklore is of paramount importance.
The purpose of this course work is to study the poetic heritage of the folk artistic culture of the Russian people.
The goal involves solving the following tasks:
Conduct an analysis and summarize materials from educational, scientific, and fiction literature on this topic;
Consider the features of poetic folklore works of the Russian people;
Consider the genre structure and features of the genres of Russian folk poetry.
The theoretical basis of the course work was the works of S. G. Lazutin, V. M. Sidelnikov; T. M. Akimova and other researchers of Russian folklore.
The structure of the course work includes an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.
Oral folk art of the Russian people
Russian folklore: concept and essence
Folklore (English folklore - folk wisdom) is a designation for the artistic activity of the masses, or oral folk art, which arose in the pre-literate period. This term was first introduced into scientific use by the English archaeologist W. J. Toms in 1846. And it was broadly understood as the totality of the spiritual and material culture of the people, their customs, beliefs, rituals, and various forms of art. Over time, the content of the term narrowed.
There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk artistic culture, as oral poetry and as a set of verbal, musical, game types of folk art. With all the diversity of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, everyday life, and the transmission of works from generation to generation in the oral tradition.
Collective life determined the appearance among different peoples of the same type of genres, plots, such means of artistic expression as hyperbole, parallelism, various types of repetitions, constant and complex epithet, and comparisons. The role of folklore was especially strong during the period of predominance of mythopoetic consciousness. With the advent of writing, many types of folklore developed in parallel with fiction, interacting with it, influencing it and other forms of artistic creativity and experiencing the opposite effect.
Researchers believe that even in the pre-state period (that is, before Kievan Rus was formed), the Eastern Slavs had a fairly developed calendar and family ritual folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
People's memory has preserved many beautiful ancient songs for centuries. In the 18th century, folk art for the first time became a subject of study and creative implementation. The educational attitude towards folklore was clearly expressed by the wonderful writer, humanist A.N. Radishchev, in the heartfelt lines of his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Whoever knows the voices of Russian folk songs admits that there is something in them that signifies spiritual sorrow... In in them you will find the formation of the soul of our people.”
As a rule, at the time of creation, a work of oral folk art experiences a period of particular popularity and creative flourishing. But there comes a time when it begins to become distorted, destroyed and forgotten. New times require new songs. The images of folk heroes express the best features of the Russian national character; the content of folklore works reflects the most typical circumstances of folk life.
Living in oral transmission, the texts of folk poetry could change significantly. However, having achieved complete ideological and artistic completeness, works were often preserved for a long time almost unchanged as the poetic heritage of the past, as cultural wealth of enduring value.
Immense oral folk art. It has been created for centuries, there are many varieties of it. Translated from English, “folklore” is “folk meaning, wisdom.” That is, oral folk art is everything that is created by the spiritual culture of the population over the centuries of its historical life.
Features of Russian folklore
If you carefully read the works of Russian folklore, you will notice that it actually reflects a lot: the play of the imagination of the people, the history of the country, laughter, and serious thoughts about human life. Listening to the songs and tales of their ancestors, people thought about many difficult issues of their family, social and work life, thought about how to fight for happiness, improve their lives, what a person should be, what should be ridiculed and condemned.
Varieties of folklore
Varieties of folklore include fairy tales, epics, songs, proverbs, riddles, calendar refrains, magnification, sayings - everything that was repeated passed from generation to generation. At the same time, the performers often introduced something of their own into the text they liked, changing individual details, images, expressions, imperceptibly improving and honing the work.
Oral folk art for the most part exists in a poetic (verse) form, since it was this that made it possible to memorize and pass on these works from mouth to mouth for centuries.
Songs
A song is a special verbal and musical genre. It is a small lyrical-narrative or lyrical work that was created specifically for singing. Their types are as follows: lyrical, dance, ritual, historical. Folk songs express the feelings of one person, but at the same time of many people. They reflected love experiences, events of social and family life, reflections on difficult fate. In folk songs, the so-called technique of parallelism is often used, when the mood of a given lyrical character is transferred to nature.
Historical songs are dedicated to various famous personalities and events: the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, the uprising of Stepan Razin, the peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev, the battle of Poltava with the Swedes, etc. The narration in historical folk songs about some events is combined with the emotional sound of these works.
Epics
The term "epic" was introduced by I.P. Sakharov in the 19th century. It represents oral folk art in the form of a song of a heroic, epic nature. The epic arose in the 9th century; it was an expression of the historical consciousness of the people of our country. Bogatyrs are the main characters of this type of folklore. They embody the people's ideal of courage, strength, and patriotism. Examples of heroes who were depicted in works of oral folk art: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Mikula Selyaninovich, Alyosha Popovich, as well as the merchant Sadko, the giant Svyatogor, Vasily Buslaev and others. The basis of life, at the same time enriched with some fantastic fiction, constitutes the plot of these works. In them, heroes single-handedly defeat entire hordes of enemies, fight monsters, and instantly overcome vast distances. This oral folk art is very interesting.
Fairy tales
Epics must be distinguished from fairy tales. These works of oral folk art are based on invented events. Fairy tales can be magical (in which fantastic forces are involved), as well as everyday ones, where people are depicted - soldiers, peasants, kings, workers, princesses and princes - in everyday settings. This type of folklore differs from other works in its optimistic plot: in it, good always triumphs over evil, and the latter either suffers defeat or is ridiculed.
Legends
We continue to describe the genres of oral folk art. A legend, unlike a fairy tale, is a folk oral story. Its basis is an incredible event, a fantastic image, a miracle, which is perceived by the listener or storyteller as reliable. There are legends about the origin of peoples, countries, seas, about the sufferings and exploits of fictional or real-life heroes.
Puzzles
Oral folk art is represented by many riddles. They are an allegorical image of a certain object, usually based on a metaphorical rapprochement with it. The riddles are very small in volume and have a certain rhythmic structure, often emphasized by the presence of rhyme. They are created in order to develop intelligence and ingenuity. The riddles are varied in content and theme. There may be several versions of them about the same phenomenon, animal, object, each of which characterizes it from a certain aspect.
Proverbs and sayings
Genres of oral folk art also include sayings and proverbs. A proverb is a rhythmically organized, short, figurative saying, an aphoristic folk saying. It usually has a two-part structure, which is supported by rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and assonance.
A proverb is a figurative expression that evaluates some phenomenon of life. It, unlike a proverb, is not a whole sentence, but only a part of a statement included in oral folk art.
Proverbs, sayings and riddles are included in the so-called small genres of folklore. What is it? In addition to the above types, these include other oral folk art. The types of small genres are complemented by the following: lullabies, nurseries, nursery rhymes, jokes, game choruses, chants, sentences, riddles. Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Lullabies
Small genres of oral folk art include lullabies. People call them bikes. This name comes from the verb "bait" ("bayat") - "to speak." This word has the following ancient meaning: “to speak, to whisper.” It is no coincidence that lullabies received this name: the oldest of them are directly related to spell poetry. Struggling with sleep, for example, the peasants said: “Dreamushka, get away from me.”
Pestushki and nursery rhymes
Russian oral folk art is also represented by pestushki and nursery rhymes. At their center is the image of a growing child. The name “pestushki” comes from the word “to nurture”, that is, “to follow someone, raise, nurse, carry in one’s arms, educate.” They are short sentences with which in the first months of a baby’s life they comment on his movements.
Imperceptibly, the pestles turn into nursery rhymes - songs that accompany the baby's games with his toes and hands. This oral folk art is very diverse. Examples of nursery rhymes: “Magpie”, “Ladushki”. They often already contain a “lesson”, an instruction. For example, in “Soroka” the white-sided woman fed everyone porridge, except for one lazy person, although he was the smallest one (his little finger corresponds to him).
Jokes
In the first years of children's lives, nannies and mothers sang songs of more complex content to them, not related to play. All of them can be designated by the single term “jokes.” Their content is reminiscent of short fairy tales in verse. For example, about a cockerel - a golden comb, flying to the Kulikovo field for oats; about the rowan hen, which “winnowed peas” and “sowed millet.”
A joke, as a rule, gives a picture of some bright event, or it depicts some rapid action that corresponds to the active nature of the baby. They are characterized by a plot, but the child is not capable of long-term attention, so they are limited to only one episode.
Sentences, calls
We continue to consider oral folk art. Its types are complemented by slogans and sentences. Children on the street very early learn from their peers a variety of calls, which represent an appeal to birds, rain, rainbows, and the sun. Children, on occasion, shout out words in chorus. In addition to nicknames, in a peasant family any child knew the sentences. They are most often pronounced one by one. Sentences - appeal to a mouse, small bugs, a snail. This may be imitation of various bird voices. Verbal sentences and song calls are filled with faith in the powers of water, sky, earth (sometimes beneficial, sometimes destructive). Their utterance introduced adult peasant children to the work and life. Sentences and chants are combined into a special section called “calendar children's folklore”. This term emphasizes the existing connection between them and the time of year, holiday, weather, the whole way of life and the way of life of the village.
Game sentences and refrains
Genres of oral folk art include playful sentences and refrains. They are no less ancient than calls and sentences. They either connect parts of a game or start it. They can also serve as endings and determine the consequences that exist when conditions are violated.
The games are striking in their resemblance to serious peasant activities: reaping, hunting, sowing flax. Reproducing these cases in strict sequence with the help of repeated repetition made it possible to instill in the child from an early age respect for customs and the existing order, to teach the rules of behavior accepted in society. The names of the games - "Bear in the Forest", "Wolf and Geese", "Kite", "Wolf and Sheep" - speak of a connection with the life and way of life of the rural population.
Conclusion
Folk epics, fairy tales, legends, and songs contain no less exciting colorful images than in the works of art of classical authors. Original and surprisingly accurate rhymes and sounds, bizarre, beautiful poetic rhythms - like lace are woven into the texts of ditties, nursery rhymes, jokes, riddles. And what vivid poetic comparisons we can find in lyrical songs! All this could have been created only by the people - the great master of words.
Old Russian literature appears with the emergence of the state and writing and is based on bookish Christian culture and highly developed forms of oral poetic creativity. The greatest role in its formation is played by folk epic 1: historical legends, heroic tales, songs about military campaigns. Princely squads in Ancient Rus' carried out numerous military campaigns, had their own singers who composed and sang songs of glory in honor of the winners, and called the prince and the warriors of his squad. Folklore for ancient literature was the main source that provided images, plots; through folklore, the artistic poetic means of folk poetry, as well as the people’s understanding of the world around them, penetrated into it.
Folklore genres were part of literature in all periods of its development. Writing turned to such genres of folk art as legends, proverbs, glories and laments. Both in writing and in folklore, especially in chronicle writing, old traditional figurative expressions, symbols, and allegories were used. Many legends in the chronicles are close in their motives to the epics; they use, as in the folk epic, poetic images of giant enemies, terrible monsters with whom heroes enter into combat, and images of wise women. Even in historical genres, calls, glorifications, and laments are close to folk poetry. Literary-folklore connections are also characterized by closeness to the heroic epic. The image of Boyan, the singing of glory to the princes, the songfulness and rhythm of the structure, the use of repetitions, hyperbole, the kinship of the images of heroes with epic heroes, the widespread use of folk poetic symbolism (the idea of a battle as sowing, threshing, a wedding feast) is characteristic of Old Russian literature. Comparisons of heroes with a cuckoo, an ermine, and Bui-Tur are close to symbolic images. Nature in ancient literature, as in folk poetry, grieves, rejoices, and helps heroes. A characteristic motif is the transformation of heroes, as in fairy tales, into animals and birds. The same expressive and figurative means are used: parallelisms 2 (“the sun is shining in the heavens - Prince Igor in the Russian land”), tautology 3 (“pipes are blowing”, “bridges are being paved”), constant epithets (“greyhound horse”, “black land” , "green grass"). The speech of the heroes is allegorical, the pictures of the visions are symbolic. The presence of artistic means in individual works indicates their closeness to the folk poetic system. The connection with folklore is palpable in almost every work of ancient literature, in some places they are more noticeable, in others less so. Some genres are close to the song lyrical genres of folk poetry - these are glories and laments, they contain folk language, folk images and intonation (“oh, bright and red decorated”).
In the 16th and especially in the 17th centuries, ancient literature became increasingly closer to folk art. This is explained both by the general socio-historical factors in the development of the Russian state and by the peculiar nature of the literature of this time. A new democratic reader appears - a peasant, a peasant, a merchant's son, a service man. Literature itself is becoming more democratic and moving away from the canonical norms that constrain its development. The secular principle develops in it. The writer now has greater freedom of artistic creativity, the right to fiction. New genres are appearing: everyday and satirical stories, new themes, new heroes. Ancient scribes used a living spoken language in their works and more widely turned to folklore. Satirical everyday stories represent the treatment of fairy-tale plots and are close to folk poetry in the depiction of characters and comic situations reminiscent of fairy-tale comedy.
The proximity to folklore is also reflected in the depiction of the characters. Thus, the name Ersh Ershovich is reminiscent of fairy-tale names - Voron-Voronovich, Sokol-Sokolovich, Zmey-Zmeevich. As in folk tales, ancient literature presents the image of a poor, but resourceful and cunning man who deceived the judge (“The Tale of Shemyakin’s Court”). Also in the literature of this time, the plot of the work is taken from Russian folk lyrical songs (“The Tale of Grief-Misfortune”), where Grief pursues a married woman or a good fellow. The name itself is popular. The images of Woe and Well done are created in the traditions of folk art: the same artistic techniques - parallelisms, constant epithets, comparisons - that are present in folklore works. The verse is close to the epic.
Many ancient writers were very close to the art of the spoken word. Old Russian narrative literature correlated with the genres of folk art.
In the Middle Ages, folklore complemented literature; these were, according to V.P. Adrianova-Peretz, “two closely coupled regions” 4. The system of literary genres was supplemented by a number of folklore genres and existed in parallel with folklore genres. However, there is a deeper connection between folklore and ancient literature: traditional images, comparisons, metaphors go back to common genetic roots.
An essential element of Old Russian literature and many of its genres are ethnographic features. They appear in chronicles, in descriptions of the life of peoples, classes, tribes, their customs, beliefs, as well as in the description of localities and nature using ethnographic signs, terms and concepts (“Russian land is Polovtsian land”, “horses neigh at Suzdal, victories ringing in Kyiv"). In the description of military attributes 5 - banners, banners, banners - military customs, training, preparation for battle, going on a campaign, ethnographic details are also noticeable. Ethnographic elements reflect real historical events, enhance the verisimilitude of what is depicted, and saturate the work of art with everyday and battle paintings of Rus' of the 11th-17th centuries.
The formation of ancient literature was facilitated by oral speech and business writing. They penetrated into the literary texts of ancient literature. Laconism, precision of expressions in oral speech and business writing contributed to the development of plot and style of presentation in the literary monuments of Ancient Rus'.
The main keepers and copyists of books were monks. Therefore, most of the books that have come down to us are of an ecclesiastical nature. Ancient literature combines secular and spiritual principles. In many genres there is often an appeal to God as a “savior”, “almighty”, trusting in his mercy.... Mention of divine providence and purpose, a sense of the world in its dual essence, “real and divine”, is characteristic of this literature. The works of ancient writers include fragments of monuments of book Christian culture, images from the Gospel, the Old and New Testaments, and the Psalter. After the adoption of Christianity, ancient Russian scribes needed to talk about how the world works from a Christian point of view, and they turned to the books of Holy Scripture.
Oral folk art represents a vast layer of Russian culture, formed over many centuries. The works of Russian folklore reflect many of the feelings of the people and their experiences, history, serious thoughts about the meaning of life, humor, fun and much more. Most works of oral folk art exist in poetic form, which made it possible to remember them well and pass them on from generation to generation orally.
Small genres of folklore include works of small volume: ditties, nursery rhymes, jokes, proverbs, riddles, lullabies, fables, tongue twisters. Sometimes they are classified as children's folklore, because in ancient times a person's acquaintance with these works occurred at an age when he did not even speak. These works are interesting for their brightness, accessibility, and form that is understandable to everyone.
Small genres of Russian folklore:
Russian folk proverbs
Russian proverbs and sayings are short, rhythmically organized, figurative folk sayings, often with edifying, instructive content; these are original folk aphorisms. They often consist of two parts, supported by rhyme, have rhythm, characteristic alliteration and assonance.
Russian folk nursery rhymes
Folk nursery rhymes are rhymed short stories, songs and rhymes, combined with simple movements, designed to entertain the child, train his memory, develop fine motor skills and coordination of movements, and harmonious development of the child as a whole, through an unobtrusive form of play.
Russian folk jokes
Jokes or amusements are small, funny, often rhymed works that tell in a bright, entertaining form about interesting events that happened to its heroes. They are distinguished by dynamic content, energetic actions of the characters, designed to interest the child, develop his imagination, and bring positive emotions.
Russian folk tales
Russian folk tales are small-scale fairy tales, sometimes presented in rhymed form, the plot of which is built on meaningless events that defy logic. Their task is to amuse the listener, instill in the child a sense of humor, logic, imagination and develop the entire thinking process as a whole.
Russian folk tongue twisters
Russian tongue twister is a short comic phrase built on a combination of hard-to-pronounce sounds, invented by our ancestors for entertainment and now used to correct problems with speech and diction.