2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Folklore as oral folk art is the artistic collective thinking of the people, which reflects its basic idealistic and life realities, religious worldviews. Such creativity is created by the whole people and is reflected in poetry, folk theater, architecture, dance, as well as in arts and crafts and art.
Examples of folklore are found in many areas of modern human life, from singing lullabies to creating clothing collections.
Examples of folklore in oral speech are mostly ditties, proverbs, sayings, in a word, speech turns used by people in everyday life.
Main Russian folk genres
Folklore is divided into three types, each of which is systematized according to its subjective and objective orientation, as well as ways of artistic expression.
The first type of folklore is the epic, which is a work that reflects the objective assessment of the surrounding world, denounced in a narrative form. Poeticexamples of folklore of this kind are various epics, ballads, historical songs and spiritual poems.
Prose epic is divided into fabulous and non-fairytale prose, the first includes fairy tales about animals and magic, anecdotes; to the second - bylichki, legends and traditions.
The second type is lyrics, reflecting subjective experiences and the inner world of a person. These are works of folklore, examples of which are revealed in lamentations, ditties and songs. All these works can be divided into ritual and non-ritual texts according to their purpose.
The third type of folklore is dramatic works that convey attitudes towards reality through game actions. Examples are theatrical performances, puppet theater, picture theater, ritual and dramatic games.
The fourth type is the folklore of speech situations - sayings, proverbs, curses, good wishes, teasers, tongue twisters and riddles.
Russian ritual folklore
It is divided into calendar and family. The calendar type is a huge layer of traditional practical rituals and beliefs designed to help a person, ensure the survival of the clan and village, and increase productivity in animal husbandry and agriculture. Calendar folklore was formed and reproduced throughout the year. An example is Shrovetide, following the rules of which took a Russian person a week.
Examples of folklore focused on family ritual type -lamentations, charm songs, divination, as well as magical ritual actions aimed at attracting future spouses and love. Any action related to the wedding and wedding ceremony was also accompanied by a whole set of ritual folklore elements - handshaking, collusion, matchmaking and others.
Features of folklore theater
Examples of Russian folklore can also be cited in the field of theater. Researchers divide dramatic folk art according to its temporary evolutionary stages into pre-theatrical and theatrical.
Vivid examples of Russian folklore can be seen in calendar rituals and games, for example, in the processes of dressing up, making dolls of Maslenitsa, Yarila, Kupala, and acting out actions with them. These elements of pre-theatrical action are also present in family wedding ceremonies, such as bride price or girlfriends acting out her role.
Theatrical forms of folk art developed in Russia only by the middle of the 17th century. This is, in fact, dramatic theatrical creativity in its modern sense.
Buffoons - comedians, trainers, dancers and musicians should be attributed to a separate group of representatives of folk art, which is part of the pre-theater game folklore.
Characteristics of folklore poetry
Poetic works of folklore, examples of which are numerous, are included in the Russian school curriculum on literature and native speech. Such folk works are epics, spiritual poems, historical songs, literaryfables, ballads, ditties and children's poetic songs. All these examples of folklore of oral folk art, passed down from generation to generation, form the basis of folk ideology and mythology. For example, in epics the image of a national hero is described, in a historical song his strategic and tactical talents are revealed; ditties and children's songs form a sense of humor and situational resourcefulness; in fables, in a playful and comic form, the negative qualities of heroes are ridiculed.
Fairy tale folk prose
This genre is a written and oral form of prose that emerged from myth and tells about fictional events that happened to real heroes. Folklore tales are found among all peoples of the world. They represent several typical lines - fairy tales about animals, about objects and inanimate nature, about fooling evil spirits, about magic. This folklore genre also includes tall tales, anecdotes, and cumulative chain tales. It is worth saying that the fairy-tale genre can both follow from the genre of mythological poetry, and transform back into it.
Examples of fairy-tale folklore in oral speech are more variable than in written, due to the subjective perception of the narrator. These are variants of the cumulative chain fairy tale "Gingerbread Man" and "Turnip", "Fox and Crane", "Cat, Rooster and Fox", "Fox and Wolf". Among the tales of evil spirits, one can recall Geese-Swans, Koschey the Immortal.
Fairy tales where the main character is a wizard, with the participation of magical animals or objects, is,for example, "Finist Yasen Sokol", "Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf", "By the Pike's Command". Plants and natural phenomena with their own magic are found in almost every fairy tale - talking apple trees, rivers and the wind, seeking to hide the main character from the chase, save from death.
Folklore prose is the key to Russian demonology
The second layer of folklore prose is not fabulous. It is represented by stories or cases from life that tell about a person's contacts with representatives of otherworldly forces - witches, devils, kikimors, spirits, and so on.
It should be noted that all these creatures came into modern times as unconscious images from the depths of time and have a pre-Christian pagan origin.
The category of non-fabulous prose folklore also includes stories about shrines, miracles and saints who perform them - here the theme of communication between higher powers and a person who has come to the Christian faith is revealed.
Prosaic examples of folklore related to the non-fabulous layer are quite diverse - these are legends, and legends, and tales, and stories about dreams.
Modern Russian folklore
It consists of two layers, coexisting and periodically flowing into each other.
The first layer is made up of folk traditions and beliefs transferred to modern realities. They are sayings, religious and daily rituals, signs that are relevant to this day. Examples of Russian folklore, characteristic of modern life, can be observed both in everyday life(placement of a broom with a broom up to attract material we alth), and on holidays. Ritual festive folklore elements are, among other things, carols performed at Christmas time.
The second layer of modern urban folklore is much younger and represents belief in man-made scientific theories, framed according to human beliefs and fears.
Modern urban folklore
It acts as an egregore of collective images of fears and beliefs of people living in cities, originates from the period of industrialization, when harsh living conditions and technological progress were superimposed on the ancient layer of old Russian beliefs.
Examples of folklore reflecting modern Russian realities are mostly focused on several types of human fears. Most often, these are songs, rituals and gestures intended to call otherworldly forces ("Queen of Spades" of dwarves, etc.): ghosts, spirits of various historical figures, as well as for the manifestation of Divine Providence and various entities.
Some elements of folk art are included in scientifically oriented theories of an industrial nature.
Examples of urban folklore used in modern legends flooded the Internet - these are stories about closed to the public stations and subway lines, about abandoned bunkers and various kinds of unfinished buildings with accompanying stories about mysterious rooms, apparatus and living beings.
Literary folklore - from chronicles to the present
Russian literature, replete with folklore elements, is divided into two layers: which has come down to us from the period of the 12th-16th centuries, which is the basis for the construction of any later symbolic images; created from the 17th to the 19th centuries, using these images in their subjects. Accordingly, examples of folklore in literature are found in the works of both periods. Consider the most famous of them below.
Examples of folklore in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" consist mainly in metaphorical comparisons of the main characters with pagan gods, for example, Boyan is called the grandson of Veles, the princes are called the grandchildren of Dazhdbog, and the winds are called Stribog's grandchildren. Also recorded is the author's appeal to the Great Horse.
In modern literature, folklore elements are used by the main characters in the course of their daily lives.
Examples of folklore in the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" come from the field of small and lyrical folklore genera, including sayings, ditties, sayings ("praise the grass in a haystack, and the master - in a coffin"), an appeal to folk signs (the chapter "Peasant Woman", where Matryona's fellow villagers see the reason for the crop failure in the fact that she "… She put on a clean shirt at Christmas …"), as well as inserts into the text of Russian folk songs ("Corvee", "Hungry") and the use of sacred digital symbols (seven men, seven owls).
Small folk genres
They make a type of small folkloreworks that are part of a person's life from birth. These are small genres of folklore, examples of which can be observed in the communication of a mother with a child. So, in pestushkas (chants of a poetic form), nursery rhymes (songs-sayings using the gestures of the fingers and toes of the child), jokes, invocations, counting rhymes, tongue twisters and riddles, the necessary rhythm of body movement is set and simple storylines are transmitted.
The first folklore genres in human life
Lullabies and pestles are of ancient origin. They are part of the so-called maternal poetry that enters the life of a child from the moment of his birth.
Pestushki are rhythmic short sentences that accompany the activities of the mother and newborn. Rhythm is important in them along with the content.
The lullaby with its text and melody is focused on the child's reaching the state of sleep and does not require the use of any musical instrument. In this genre, there are always elements of a talisman that protects the newborn from hostile forces.
Small genres of folklore, examples of which are given above, are the most ancient layer of folk art.
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