Fiction is a living folklore and literary genre

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

For all its seeming simplicity, the fiction genre raises many questions. Why are fairy tales so attractive to children? Why is this genre universal across many cultures? Why does this particular genre of oral folk art remain “alive” and in demand in literature? In a word, what is the essence of fiction and why does it remain so invariably in demand?

Fiction genre definition

To put it succinctly, a fiction is a short story about what obviously cannot be, and this impossibility is exaggeratedly emphasized, and therefore a comic effect is created. “A village was driving past a peasant…”, “There lived a giant of short stature in the world…” – these and many other “meaningless” images are created according to a variety of, rather transparent, schemes, but they invariably arouse laughter and interest.

Russian and English roots of fables

In Russia, both Russian folk tales and tales of other peoples are known. First of all, fiction, nonsense, absurdity is associated with English folklore and English literature. In the twentieth century in Russia, this genre was significantly revived by the appearance of translations of English folklore and works of English "nonsense" (literally: "nonsense"). English nursery rhymes, mostly built on the principle of nonsense,were translated as fables for children by Samuil Marshak and Korney Chukovsky. Russian readers of many generations love the images from the translated songs "Barabek", "Twisted Song" and other poems, where the world is obviously "turned upside down", absurd. Literary examples of English fables are, first of all, Edward Lear's limericks, which are mainly known in the translations of Grigory Kruzhkov.

The ease of accepting the English version of the genre is explained, first of all, by the familiarity of the fable for the Russian consciousness, because the fable is a genre that existed in Russia long before the “grafting” of English nonsense into Russian culture.

Literary Fables

Fiction remains a living genre in both folklore and literature. Russian kids know both folk tales and author's ones. Perhaps the most famous literary examples of the genre were created by Korney Chukovsky and Genrikh Sapgir. First of all, this, of course, is "Confusion" by K. Chukovsky.

However, his other fairy tales and poems, upon closer examination, are very close to nonsense in the genre sense of the word. "Wonder Tree", "Joy", "Cockroach" - these well-known children's poems are based on fiction. These are, in fact, the author's options for the development of this genre.

As for the work of Genrikh Sapgir, few people in Russia know his famous "Fabulous Faces". The unexpected combination of incompatible images and at the same time the lightness of the lines, creating the illusion of naturalness and thus further emphasizing"unprecedented" - all this is remembered for a long time as a very talented and expressive work.

Fables as an accessible aesthetic experience

Korney Chukovsky in his book "From Two to Five" suggested that fairy tales for children are an opportunity to rejoice in their own ability to see a deviation from the norm. The child, according to Chukovsky, strengthens through fiction in his understanding of the norm, in his orientation in the world around him.

However, apparently, everything is not quite so simple. Fiction is also one of the first aesthetic experiences available. It is when meeting nonsense that a child develops the perception of artistic convention, because “absurdity” is the most primitive artistic displacement accessible to a child, which underlies any work of art. Fables therefore lay the foundation for the perception of artistic metaphor, artistic image, prepare the child for the formation of literary taste.