What is oral folk art literature. List of books that can be placed at the exhibition of oral folk art

Since ancient times, the younger generation has studied the oral folk art of their ancestors, drawing from it the most important knowledge, primarily concerning morality, human relationships and spirituality. Much has changed since then, but the very essence of gaining knowledge through generations has remained the same...

Oral folk art is a collected and systematized experience received from previous generations, which clearly reflects the essence of the life of these generations. Oral folk art appeared long before people mastered written language. People passed on their creativity to the next generation by word of mouth, and this is how the corresponding name came about. Also, oral folk art is often called folklore.

Folklore includes folk songs, jokes, fairy tales, ditties, plays, dramas, dances and much more. Thanks to oral folk art, the language gains additional brightness and expressiveness. For example, some proverbs help tactfully hint people about their mistakes without causing feelings of resentment.

It is believed that folklore works are not the work of a specific author. They are created by groups of people, reflecting their way of life, traditions, customs, morals and ideas about life in general. Each nation has its own folklore with its own characteristics and character.

Oral folk art influenced the activities of many poets and writers. For example, according to some experts, Charles Perrault has tales from the collection “Tales of My Mother Goose” that relate to folklore. Researchers believe that the writer simply processed them on his own, subsequently presenting them to the reader in a new light. Among the Russian poets and writers who used folklore in their work, one can name A.S. Pushkina, N.A. Nekrasova, N.V. Gogol, A.N. Tolstoy and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Oral folk art expresses the people's dream of joyful and creative working days, of man's conquest of nature; people believed that goodness and justice would win, they pinned their hopes on the inexhaustible power of folk heroes, considering them defenders of their native land. The people changed previously published works, remaking and supplementing them. Despite the obvious fantastic nature of many plots, Russian folklore for the most part is quite realistic.

Over time, folklore works have noticeably lost their original appearance, but their meaning has not changed - to convey to the next generation the traditions, morals and customs of their people.

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.

• What is oral folk art? Tell us using supporting words.
  author-people, word of mouth, dream of happiness, small folklore works, fairy tales (about animals, everyday life, magic), magical objects, fairy-tale transformations.

Oral folk art is small folklore works created by nameless authors and passed on from mouth to mouth. A fairy tale is one of the oldest types of oral folk art. Fairy tales are divided into magical, everyday, and about animals. Since the storytellers were ordinary people, they saved and passed on to each other only those stories that corresponded to their ideas about beauty, goodness, honesty, justice and nobility of soul, and carried a dream of happiness. Events in the fairy tale occur in such a way as to repeatedly test the hero: his strength, courage, kindness, love for people and animals. Therefore, the hero is often rescued by fairy-tale objects and miraculous transformations.

• Complete your statement. Find the information you need in a reference book, encyclopedia or the Internet.

Oral folk art - works created by nameless authors and passed on from mouth to mouth. Songs, fairy tales, epics, proverbs, sayings, riddles - these are all works of oral folk art. In ancient times, they were composed by talented people from the people, but we do not know their names, because beautiful songs, fascinating tales, wise proverbs were not written down, but were passed down orally from one person to another, from one generation to another. When telling a fairy tale or performing a song, each storyteller or singer added something of his own, omitted something, changed something, so that the fairy tale became even more entertaining and the song even more beautiful. That is why we say that the author of songs, epics, fairy tales, proverbs, ditties, riddles is the people themselves. Getting to know the treasures of folk poetry helps us get to know our Motherland more deeply.

• What types of folk art do you know?

Fairy tales, riddles, chants, fables, epics, tales, songs, tongue twisters, nursery rhymes, proverbs, sayings.

• With a friend, make a list of books that can be placed in the Folk Art exhibition.

Russian folk tales. Proverbs and sayings. Puzzles. Nursery rhymes and jokes. Folk lyrical songs. Legends. Epics. Spiritual poems. Ballads. Jokes. Ditties. Tales. Tongue Twisters. Lullabies.

• Prepare a story about one of the folk crafts of Russia (Gzhel, Khokhloma, Dymkovo toy). Perhaps in the place where you live, some other type of folk art is developed. Prepare a message about him, first draw up a plan for your story.

Dymkovo toy

Dymkovo toy is one of the Russian folk clay art crafts. It arose in the trans-river settlement of Dymkovo, near the city of Vyatka (now in the territory of the city of Kirov). This is one of the oldest crafts in Russia, which arose in the 15th-16th centuries. For four centuries, Dymkovo toys reflected the life and lifestyle of many generations of craftsmen. The appearance of the toy is associated with the spring holiday of Whistling, for which the female population of the Dymkovo settlement sculpted clay whistles in the form of horses, rams, goats, ducks and other animals; they were painted in different bright colors. Later, when the holiday lost its significance, the craft not only survived, but also received further development. Dymkovo toy is a handmade product. Each toy is the creation of one master. Making a toy from modeling to painting is a creative process that is never repeated. There are not and cannot be two absolutely identical products. To produce the Dymkovo toy, local bright red clay is used, thoroughly mixed with fine brown river sand. The figures are sculpted in parts, individual parts are assembled and sculpted using liquid red clay as a binding material. Traces of molding are smoothed out to give the product a smooth surface. Over four hundred years of existence and development of the Dymkovo craft, traditional themes, plots and images have developed in it, the expressive means inherent in very plastic red pottery clay, simple (geometric design) painting patterns, in which red, yellow, and blue predominate, have been displayed and consolidated. , green colors. Halftones and imperceptible transitions are generally alien to the Dymkovo toy. All of it is an overflowing fullness of the feeling of the joy of life. The bright, elegant Dymkovo toy does not like “loneliness”. Often the craftswomen of the Dymkovo craft create entire thematic compositions in which there is a place for both people and animals, both animate and inanimate objects. Not only a person, a horse, a dog or a deer can appear before the audience, but also a tree, a decorative fence, a carriage, a sleigh, a Russian stove... In the 19th century, from 30 to 50 families of toymakers lived and worked in the settlement of Dymkovo. Entire dynasties were formed - Nikulins, Penkins, Koshkins... The shape and proportions, color and ornament of their products had their own characteristics. At this time, Dymkovo toys were single figures of people, animals, birds, whistles, carrying ancient images - people’s ideas about the world. The Dymkovo toy has become one of the symbols of the Kirov region, emphasizing the originality of the Vyatka region and its ancient history.

Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Toms. Literally translated, it means “folk wisdom”, “folk knowledge” and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.

Other terms have also become established in Russian science: folk poetry, folk poetry, folk literature. The name “oral creativity of the people” emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name “folk poetic creativity” indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1

Folklore is complex, synthetic art. His works often combine elements of various types of art - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnology (ethnography) 2. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a unique area of ​​national studies 3 .

The science that studies folklore is called folkloristics. If literature is understood not only as written artistic creativity, but as verbal art in general, then folklore is a special branch of literature, and folkloristics is thus part of literary criticism.

Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of words. In this way he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.

The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. The ancient art of words was characterized utility- the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.

The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of unity, indivisibility. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity; it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity, along with other types of social consciousness, into an independent field of spiritual activity.

Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no “famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the internal and external life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. And he moves on a song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and then poems come out of the songs, of which only the people can call themselves the author." 4

Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work not only because information about him, if he existed, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, a storyteller, a storyteller, but there is no author or writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.

Traditional succession covers large historical periods - entire centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebny, folklore arises “from memorable sources, that is, it is transmitted from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory lasts, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of popular understanding” 5 . Each bearer of folklore creates within the boundaries of generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, and supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. “Works of folklore always bear the stamp of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or “existed.” For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It has no individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators who are perfect mastering generally accepted traditional techniques of speaking and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in the thoughts and feelings expressed in it. Folklore is also folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying the content. Folklore is folk in origin, in all respects and the properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms." 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. Traditionality- the most important and basic specific property of folklore.

Any folklore work exists in large quantities options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile, variable nature.

A characteristic feature of a folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (Italian improvvisazione - unforeseen, suddenly) - the creation of a folklore work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and crying. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic boundaries.

Taking into account all these signs of a folklore work, we present an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: “folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other visual arts, both to ancient creativity and to new ones created in modern times and created in our days.” 7

Folklore, like literature, is the art of words. This gives grounds to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are usually called childbirth. Each genus covers a group of works of a certain type. Genre- type of artistic form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, by genus we mean a way of depicting reality, by genre - a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of changes in its genres. They are more stable in folklore compared to literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore do not arise as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, and are replaced by others. So, for example, epics arise in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die out. As living conditions change, genres are destroyed and consigned to oblivion. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.

What is the relationship between reality and its reflection in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. “Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself; convention is allowed.” 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, and symbolism.