"The Tale of Shemyakin's Court": plot, artistic features

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

The work we are interested in is perhaps the most popular monument of the 17th century. Its name later even became a proverb: “Shemyakin Court” means an unfair trial, a parody of it. Known are poetic and dramatic adaptations of The Tale of Shemyakin's Court, as well as its lubok reproduction. It also spawned the famous tale of the poor brother and the rich brother.

Authorship issues, sources

The author of "The Tale of Shemyakin's Court" is unknown, because it is of folk origin. Researchers searched for works similar in content in Indian and Persian literatures. It is also known that the well-known writer Mikołaj Rey, who lived in the 17th century and received the honorary title of "father of Polish literature", worked with a similar plot. In some lists it is directly stated: “The Tale of the Shemyakin Court” was written out “from Polish books”. Questions about her sources, however, remained unresolved. There is no conclusive evidence aboutconnections of the Russian monument with a specific work of foreign literature. The identified roll calls indicate the presence of so-called wandering plots, nothing more. As is often the case with folklore monuments, jokes and anecdotes cannot belong to one people. They successfully roam from one area to another, since everyday conflicts are essentially the same everywhere. This feature makes it especially difficult to distinguish between translated and original monuments of literature of the 17th century.

"The Tale of Shemyakin Court": content

The first part of the story tells about incidents (at the same time hilarious and sad) that happened to a poor peasant. It all starts with the fact that his rich brother gives him a horse, but forgets about the collar. The protagonist ties firewood to the tail, and it breaks. The next misfortune happened to the peasant when he spent the night at the priest's bed (that is, on a lounger). Naturally, the greedy priest did not invite him to have dinner. Looking at the table bursting with food, the protagonist accidentally knocks a baby, the son of a priest. Now for these offenses the poor fellow will face trial. Out of desperation, he wants to take his own life and throws himself off the bridge. And again - failure. The peasant himself remains intact, but the old man, on whom the main character landed, went to the forefathers.

So, the peasant will have to answer for three crimes already. The climax awaits the reader - the cunning and unfair judge Shemyaka, having taken a stone wrapped in a scarf for a generous promise, decides the case in favor of the poor peasant. So, the first victim had to wait until the horse grew a new tail. The priest was offered to give his wife to a peasant, from whom she should bear a child. And the son of the deceased old man, as compensation, must himself fall off the bridge and hurt the poor peasant. Naturally, all the victims decide to pay off such decisions.

Composition specifics

"The Tale of Shemyakin Court" is divided into two parts. The first part consists of the three episodes described above. By themselves, they are perceived as ordinary funny anecdotes that perform the function of a tie. Here they are, as it were, taken out of the framework of the main narrative, although this is not observed in the classical examples of court narratives. In addition, all the events described there are narrated in the past tense. And not in the present, which is the difference between The Tale of Shemyakin's Court. This feature gives dynamism to the plot of the ancient Russian monument.

The second component of the composition is more complex: Shemyaka's actual sentences, which are a mirror reflection of the poor peasant's adventures, are preceded by a frame - a scene where the defendant shows the "reward" to the judge.

Traditions of satire

Satire was very popular in 17th century literature. The fact of its demand can be explained based on the specifics of the social life of that time. There was an increase in the role of the trade and craft population, but this did not contribute to the development of their civil rights. In satire, many aspects of the life of society of those times were condemned and denounced.– unfair trial, hypocrisy and hypocrisy of monasticism, extreme social inequality.

"The Tale of Shemyakin's Court" fits into the established tradition. The reader of that time would undoubtedly understand that the story was a parody of the Code of 1649 - a set of laws that proposed choosing a measure of punishment depending on what the offender's crime was. So, for the murder was supposed to be executed, and the production of counterfeit money was punished by filling the throat with lead. That is, "The Tale of the Shemyakin Court" can be defined as a parody of ancient Russian legal proceedings.

Ideological level

History ended happily for the poor peasant, he wins over the world of injustice and arbitrariness. "Truth" turns out to be stronger than "falsehood". As for the judge himself, he learned a valuable lesson from what happened: "The Tale of Shemyakin's Court" ends with the hookmaker learning the truth about the "message". Nevertheless, he even rejoices in his own judgments, because otherwise, this stone would have knocked the spirit out of him.

Artistic Features

"The Tale of Shemyakin's Court" is notable for the speed of action, the comical situations in which the characters find themselves, and also the emphatically dispassionate manner of narration, which only enhances the satirical sound of the ancient Russian monument. These features indicate the closeness of the story to magical and social folk tales.