The current state of folklore. Traditions of modern folklore
Introduction
Folk culture, being very firmly rooted in the past, now looks quite blurred, permeable to the most different directions a modern, very multi-layered culture that widely assimilates their elements and traditions and therefore does not have a clear, generally accepted understanding.
The concept " folk culture“are associated with a variety of everyday associations, mostly value concepts, sometimes of a purely populist nature. In the very general view we can say that with folk culture in public consciousness many concepts and objects are correlated, the name of which contains the definition “folk”. They are represented very widely in culture and language: folk art, folklore, folk art, folk wisdom, rumor, folk traditions, legends, beliefs, songs, dances, proverbs, etc. Let us consider in more detail a part of folk culture - folklore.
The purpose of the work is to describe the phenomenon modern folklore.
The object of the study is modern folklore.
The subject of the study is the types, genres and features of modern folklore.
The objectives of this study are as follows:
1. Consider the theoretical features of folklore in folk art;
2. Identify the features of modern folklore;
3. Study the types and genres of modern folklore.
this work consists of an introduction, 3 chapters, a conclusion and a list of sources used.
Chapter 1. Theoretical basis modern folklore.
Folklore (eng. folklore) - folk art, most often oral; artistic collective creative activity people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; poetry created by the people and existing among the masses (legends, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epics), folk music(songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theatre), dance, architecture, fine and decorative arts.
The term folklore was first introduced into scientific use in 1846 by the English scientist William Toms. Literally translated, “Folk-lore” means: folk wisdom, folk knowledge. This term at first denoted only the subject of science itself, but sometimes it began to be used to refer to the scientific discipline that studies this material; however, then the latter began to be called folkloristics.
What is "folklore" for modern man? These are songs, fairy tales, proverbs, epics and other works of our ancestors, which were created and passed on from mouth to mouth once upon a time, and now remain in the form of beautiful books for children and the repertoire of ethnographic ensembles.
Modern people They don’t tell each other fairy tales, they don’t sing songs while they work. And if they compose something “for the soul,” then they immediately write it down.
Recently, in one of the discussions, it suddenly became clear that everywhere (and especially in the cities) a new generation has grown up, to whom the ancient oral culture is known only in meaningless fragments or is unknown at all.
The response to this was an explosion of collecting and publishing examples of folk art.
In the 1810s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began publishing collections of German folk tales. In 1835, Elias Lenrot published the first edition of Kalevala, which shocked cultural world: it turns out that in the most remote corner of Europe, among a small people who never had their own statehood, there still exists heroic epic, in volume and complexity of structure comparable to ancient Greek myths! The collection of folklore (as the English scientist William Toms called the entire body of folk “knowledge” existing exclusively in oral form in 1846) grew throughout Europe. And at the same time, the feeling grew: folklore is disappearing, its speakers are dying out, and in many areas nothing can be found. (For example, not one of the Russian epics has ever been recorded where their action takes place, or indeed in the historical “core” of Russian lands. All known recordings were made in the North, in the lower Volga region, on the Don, in Siberia, etc. e. in the territories of Russian colonization of different times.) You need to hurry, you need to have time to write down as much as possible.
In the course of this hasty collection, more and more often something strange was found in the records of folklorists. For example, short chants, unlike anything that was previously sung in the villages.
Precise rhymes and the correct alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables made these couplets (the folk performers themselves called them “ditties”) related to urban poetry, but the content of the texts did not reveal any connection with any printed sources. There were serious debates among folklorists: whether to count ditties in in every sense Are the words folklore or is it a product of the decomposition of folk art under the influence of professional culture?
Oddly enough, it was this discussion that forced the then-young folklore studies to take a closer look at the new forms of folk literature emerging right before our eyes.
It quickly became clear that not only in villages (traditionally considered the main place of folklore), but also in cities, a lot of things arise and circulate that, by all indications, should be attributed specifically to folklore.
A caveat must be made here. In fact, the concept of “folklore” refers not only to verbal works (texts), but in general to all phenomena of folk culture that are transmitted directly from person to person. A traditional embroidery pattern on a towel that has been preserved for centuries in a Russian village or the choreography of a ritual dance of an African tribe is also folklore. However, partly for objective reasons, partly due to the fact that texts are easier and more complete to record and study, they became the main object of folkloristics from the very beginning of the existence of this science. Although scientists are well aware that for any folklore work, the features and circumstances of performance are no less (and sometimes more) important. For example, a joke necessarily includes a telling procedure - for which it is absolutely necessary that at least some of those present do not already know this joke. A joke known to everyone in a given community is simply not performed in it - and therefore does not “live”: after all, a folklore work exists only during the performance.
Chapter 2. Types and genres of modern folklore.
Types of modern folklore.
Let's return to modern folklore. As soon as researchers took a closer look at the material, which they (and often its bearers and even creators themselves) considered “frivolous”, devoid of any value, it turned out that “new folklore” lives everywhere.
A ditty and a romance, an anecdote and a legend, a rite and a ritual, and much more for which there were no suitable names in folklore. In the 20s of the last century, all this became the subject of qualified research and publications. However, already in the next decade, a serious study of modern folklore turned out to be impossible: real folk art categorically did not fit into the image of “Soviet society.” True, a certain number of folklore texts themselves, carefully selected and combed, were published from time to time. (For example, in the popular magazine “Crocodile” there was a column “Just an Anecdote”, where topical jokes were often found - naturally, the most harmless ones, but their effect was often transferred “abroad” just in case.) But Scientific research modern folklore actually resumed only at the end of the 1980s and especially intensified in the 1990s. According to one of the leaders of this work, Professor Sergei Neklyudov (the largest Russian folklorist, head of the Center for Semiotics and Typology of Folklore of the Russian State University for the Humanities), this happened largely according to the principle “if there was no luck, but misfortune helped”: without funds for normal collecting and research expeditions and student practices, Russian folklorists transferred their efforts to what was nearby.
Collected material First of all, I was amazed by its abundance and diversity. Each, even the smallest group of people, barely realizing their commonality and difference from all others, immediately acquired their own folklore. Researchers were already aware of the folklore of individual subcultures: prison, soldier, and student songs. But it turned out that their own folklore exists among climbers and parachutists, environmental activists and adherents of non-traditional cults, hippies and “goths,” patients of a particular hospital (sometimes even a department) and regulars of a particular pub, kindergarten students and primary school students. In a number of such communities personnel changed rapidly - patients were admitted and discharged from the hospital, children entered and graduated from kindergarten - and folklore texts continued to circulate in these groups for decades.
Today the following types of modern folklore are distinguished:
1. Urban folklore;
3. Network folklore.
Urban folklore is part of the folklore heritage, which includes, in addition to commonly used types and genres of folk poetry, their specifically urban “modifications.” For example: city folk festivals, city romance, city game songs and dances.
Urban folklore differs from the oral traditions of the rural peasantry that preceded it. First of all, it is ideologically marginal, since the basic ideological needs of townspeople are satisfied in other ways that are not directly related to oral traditions (mass literature, cinema and other entertainment, media products). In addition, urban folklore is fragmented in accordance with the social, professional, clan, age stratification of society, with its disintegration into loosely interconnected cells that do not have a common ideological basis.
Children's folklore - created on the basis of living spoken language. In them one can note the peculiarities of the poetics of the corresponding genres of adult folklore. For example, in the composition of children's fairy tales, as in adult fairy tales about animals, dialogue is widely used. In children's songs, one can note such compositional forms as the form of monologue, dialogue, etc.
Network folklore is a type of modern folklore, which also has all the main features of folklore texts: anonymity and collectivity of authorship, polyvariance, traditionality. Moreover: online texts clearly strive to “overcome writing” - hence the widespread use of emoticons (which allow at least to indicate intonation) and the popularity of “padon” (intentionally incorrect) spelling.
To answer the question: “Modern folklore and its forms”
Alekseevsky M.D.
On the question of defining modern folklore // Modern folklore. Reference publication. Materials for discussion. M., 2012
(Alekseevsky M.D., Ph.D. in Philology, Head of the Sector of Modern Folklore of the State Rep. Center of Russian Folklore).
First moment, which he stipulates in the article, is associated with a generalization of research practice: what is meant by modern folklore today? Trying to answer this question, researchers usually contrast traditional peasant folklore with modern urban folklore, noting it distinctive features. For example, N.I. Tolstoy believed that urban folklore is “a kind of anti-folklore, capable of having both oral and written form, but maintaining, as a rule, anonymity" (Tolstoy N.I. From A.N. Veselovsky to the present day // Living Antiquity. 1996. No. 2. P. 5). About fundamental the differences between classical folklore and modern neoplasms wrote S.Yu.Neklyudov, who proposed using the term “ post-folklore"(Neklyudov S.Yu. Folklore modern city// Modern urban folklore. M., 2003. P.5-24; aka. After folklore//Living antiquity. 1995. No. 1.S.2-4). V.P.Anikin sharply criticized the term “post-folklore”,<…>this concept “excludes the existence of folklore in general, in best case scenario involves its replacement with something else,” the scientist proposed the term to denote new phenomena in folklore "neo-folklore"(Anikin V.P. Not “post-folklore”, but folklore (to raise the question of its modern traditions) // Slavic traditional culture And modern world: Collection of materials of the scientific and practical conference. Issue 2.M., 1997. P.224-240). Nihilistic criticism of all of these terms was made by A.A.Panchenko, who drew attention to the conventionality of the concept of “classical folklore”: “I believe that when maintaining a certain analytical distance, the peasant culture of the New Age turns out to be a little more “folklore” or “traditional” than Mass culture modern city<…>"(Panchenko A.A. Panchenko A.A. Folklore as a science // First All-Russian Congress of Folklorists. Collection of reports. M., 2005. T.1. P.3-5).
Second point article is related to the consideration of the actual criteria« modernity" in relation to folklore. M.D. Alekseevsky believes that there can be no sharp transition from “old” folklore to “new”: many phenomena and traditions that are archaic in their origin actively exist and develop today, and some modern folklore new formations, upon closer examination, turn out to be not so new. Without setting a strict time frame, one should focus on “modernity” in its essence as a basic starting point. literally this word, as in what is happening here and now. If this or that folklore phenomenon actively exists and develops today before our eyes, then it is right to classify it as “modern folklore”, regardless of when it arose. A typical example is conspiracies: although the conspiracy tradition and the texts of many conspiracies are very archaic in origin, currently the popularity of the practice of using conspiracies is extremely high in both rural and urban environments. At the same time, the focus on “here and now” should not be absolute; it is just a guideline. Let’s face it, jokes about M.S. Gorbachev during Perestroika are practically non-existent at the present time and certainly are not being developed, so in the strict sense of the word they cannot be called “modern folklore”. At the same time, they are one of the stages in the evolution of the political joke, folklore genre, which currently continues to be a relevant and “living” genre, so if we consider jokes about Gorbachev in this context, they can easily be classified as modern folklore, albeit with certain reservations.
Third point in the article correlated with criterion "folklore". When working with peasant folklore, researchers identified the following basic characteristics: traditionality, collectivity, anonymity, variability, orality, presence creativity. However, in reality, as practice shows, folklorists do not require strict adherence to all of these characteristics in order to call a certain cultural phenomenon “folklore” and begin to study it. For example, the same conspiracies also exist in written form, that is, they do not meet the criterion of orality, but folklorists continue to study them. At the same time, it is obvious that what more The phenomenon corresponds to the listed parameters, the more effective the folkloristics methodology turns out to be for its analysis. Thus, by modern folklore we will mean existing in modern times cultural phenomena, for which the indicated characteristics of “classical folklore” are more or less typical: traditionality, collectivity, anonymity, variability, orality, the presence of creativity.
Main areas of modern folklore:
1.Ritual culture. Lyrics:
Maternity rituals
Wedding rituals (bride ransom, visiting wedding attractions)
telnosti, wedding toastmaster). Wedding script
Calendar rituals (Christmas and Christmastide, Maslenitsa, Easter, Trinity).
Fortune telling. Conspiracies
Funeral and memorial rites (veneration of places of death)
Rites of passage and initiation (children, teenagers, students,
army, professional, subcultural)
2.Religious ritual practices. Spiritual poems. Legends. Prayers.
Saints/circular letters
3. Holiday culture:
March 8
Twelfth of June
Day of the city, town, village
Peter and Fevronia Day
Victory Day and days of remembrance
Birthday
Valentine's Day
April first
may Day
Fourth of November
Corporate holiday
Professional holiday
equator/meridian
Skit
Halloween
4. Genres/texts of “classical folklore” and new formations:
Anecdote and its varieties (children's, political, subcultural, etc.)
Bylichka
tease
Mystery
Game (calendar, children's, yard, salon)
Legend and its varieties (urban, family, about miracles, toponymic
Children's deceptions
Proverbs
Songs and their varieties (bardic, urban, student, adaptations)
Legends and their varieties (historical, toponymic)
Signs and their varieties (calendar, professional, student)
Poems (sadistic, “pies”, etc.)
Children's horror stories
Ditty
Freebie/ball
5. Written folklore:
Albums and their varieties (girlish, demobilization, prison, etc.)
Naive literature
Modern standard
Handwritten songbook
Warning letters
Chain letters
Congratulations are clichéd
Lists
Videolor
SMS-ENT
8. Internet folklore:
Demotivators
Fanfiction
8. Street and other actions:
Demonstrations
Tales where main character- a wizard, involving magical animals or objects, - this is, for example, “Finist Yasen Falcon”, “Ivan Tsarevich and Gray wolf", "By pike command"Plants and natural phenomena that have their own magic are found in almost every fairy tale - talking apple trees, rivers and the wind, trying to hide the main character from pursuit, to save him from death.
Folklore prose is the key to Russian demonology
The second layer of folklore prose is non-fairy tale. It is represented by stories or incidents from life telling about human contacts with representatives of otherworldly forces - witches, devils, kikimoras, spirits, and so on.
It should be noted that all these creatures came to modern times in unconscious images from the depths of centuries and have pre-Christian pagan origin.
The category of non-fairy tale prose folklore also includes stories about shrines, miracles and the saints who perform them - here the theme of communication between higher powers and a person who has come to the Christian faith is revealed.
Prose examples of folklore belonging to the non-fairy tale layer are quite diverse - these are legends, tales, tales, and stories about dreams.
Modern Russian folklore
It consists of two layers that coexist and periodically flow into each other.
The first layer consists of folk traditions and beliefs, transferred to modern realities. They are sayings, religious and daily rituals, and signs that are still relevant today. Examples of Russian folklore characteristic of modern life, can be observed as in everyday life (positioning a broom with a broom up to attract material goods), and on holidays. Ritual holiday folklore elements include carols performed at Christmas time.
The second layer of modern urban folklore is much younger and represents a belief in man-made scientific theories, designed according to human beliefs and fears.
Contemporary urban folklore
He acts as an egregor collective images fears and beliefs of people living in cities dates back to the period of industrialization, when harsh living conditions and technical progress turned out to be superimposed on the ancient layer of old Russian beliefs.
Examples of folklore reflecting modern Russian realities, for the most part, are focused on several types of human fears. Most often these are songs, rituals and gestures intended to evoke otherworldly forces (“ Queen of Spades"gnomes, etc.): ghosts, various spirits historical figures, as well as for the manifestation of Divine providence and various entities.
Certain elements of folklore creativity are included in scientifically oriented theories of an industrial nature.
Examples of urban folklore used in modern legends, have filled the Internet - these are stories about stations and metro lines that are closed to the public, about abandoned bunkers and various unfinished buildings with accompanying stories about mysterious rooms, devices and living beings.
Literary folklore - from chronicles to modern times
Russian literature, replete with folklore elements, is divided into two layers: that which has come down to us from the period of the 12th-16th centuries, which is the basis for the construction of some later symbolic images; created from the 17th to the 19th centuries, using these images in its plots. Accordingly, examples of folklore in literature are found in the works of both periods. Let's look at 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 Stribozh’s grandchildren. The author’s address to the Great Horse is also recorded.
IN modern literature folklore elements used by the main characters in the course of their daily life.
Examples of folklore in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” come from the area of small and lyrical folklore, including sayings, ditties, sayings (“praise the grass in a haystack, and the master in a coffin”), an appeal to folk signs(chapter “Peasant Woman”, where Matryona’s fellow villagers see the reason for the crop failure in the fact that she “...put on a clean shirt at Christmas...”), as well as insertions into the text of Russian folk songs (“Corvee”, “Hungry”) and use of sacred digital symbols (seven men, seven eagle owls).
Small folklore genres
There is a type of small folklore works, entering a person’s life from birth. These are small genres of folklore, examples of which can be observed in the communication between mother and child. Thus, in pestushki (tunes of poetic form), nursery rhymes (songs-sayings using gestures of the child’s fingers and toes), jokes, chants, counting rhymes, tongue twisters and riddles, the necessary rhythm of body movement is set and simple story lines are conveyed.
The first folklore genres in human life
Lullabies and pesters have ancient origin. They are part of the so-called maternal poetry, which enters the life of a child from the moment of his birth.
Pestushki are rhythmic short sentences accompanying the activities of mother and newborn. In them, rhythm is important along with the content.
The lullaby with its text and melody is aimed at achieving a state of sleep by the child 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.
Worker folklore
The growth of capitalism in Russia and the associated industrial revolution after the reform of 1861 historically determined a new stage in the development of poetic creativity. Before mid-19th century centuries, peasants were the bulk of the Russian people, they were also the creators of traditional peasant folklore. In the last third of the 19th century, the industrial proletariat began to take shape, where its own conditions of life, work and life were gradually created, its own psychology and its own worldview emerged. The history of the working class, its life and work were reflected in his oral poetry. Two types of changes are taking place in Russian folklore: 1) the genres of old, traditional folklore have changed greatly, 2) new genres have emerged, naturally, on the basis of old ones or on a general folklore basis.
Changes in traditional genres were reflected in the fact that the area of their distribution narrowed, some genres (like historical songs) fell out of use; all genres began to respond more quickly to life changes; the theme of folk poetry was updated, satirical motifs intensified; in many genres the role of improvisation has increased, and the connections between folklore and literature have expanded. New phenomena in folklore include: the formation and rapid spread of genres that did not exist before (ditties); the widespread development of workers' folklore, the emergence and development of individual creativity (the emergence of poets and singers). In many genres there is an increase in realism; this feature can be noted even in fairy tales. The poetics of the fairy tale, although stable, is gradually becoming simpler, fairy tales of an everyday nature are approaching a tale or story, and the style of fairy tales is clearly decreasing.
The song genres of Russian folklore also experienced significant changes at this time. The song as a form was still stable in its poetics; but some groups of songs remained popular, others fell out of use. IN folk songs More and more notes of discontent and protest, social motives are heard. In folk lyrics, the connection with literature, the entry and creative processing of literary songs into the folk environment is becoming more and more noticeable; the so-called “cruel” romances have become widespread.
Not all genres of traditional folklore turned out to be productive when they moved into the working environment: there are no working conspiracies, ritual songs, epics and fairy tales, even everyday tale did not receive development. In workers' folklore the following has developed prose genre like a tale that differs significantly from a fairy tale. If a fairy tale is always based on fiction, then a fairy tale is based on a reliable fact of life. The tale does not have rich fairy-tale rituals, compositional features and style. In its form, it is a story-memoir about events of the relatively recent past. In the working environment, new proverbs and sayings arise; in them, the social and labor experience of the working person has received a certain generalization (“Like the master, so is the work”).
Many songs arise in the working environment, but they are all significantly different from the peasant ones; although they use some techniques of traditional lyrics, they are significantly influenced by book poetry. Regarding the songs of the Ural workers, G. Uspensky wrote: “The song about the life of a working man left a good impression: without any concealment, depicting him bitter situation, his poverty, hard labor, she painted in this a man caught up in black, thankless work - a healthy man, with a healthy spirit, who knows how to do his dark and difficult life illuminate with healthy and light humor.”
Arts and crafts
In the material and spiritual culture of the ancient Slavs, traces of ancient Greek, Scythian, Sarmatian cultures were preserved, which was reflected in beliefs, clothing, jewelry, household and labor items. Continuity in the depiction of the surrounding world, nature, in love for native land was reflected in the skillful hands of ancient masters, in whom ordinary objects became works of art. Nature provided man with raw materials and itself served as the main source of inspiration. But, embodying in works artistic design, the masters did not copy the world, and filled it with imagination and expressiveness with their creativity. In the territory Ancient Rus' archaeologists discover ironworking objects dating back to the beginning of the first millennium new era. Gradually the craft improved and became more complex, which in general began to represent a special phenomenon of fine folklore in artistic and material performance, covering: artistic processing of wood, stone, metal, bone carving, papier-mâché products (lacquer miniatures), clay products, fabrics etc.
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In modern applied arts comes to the fore aesthetics, which permeates the unique products: Khokhloma, Palekh, Volga crafts, Ural gems and other centers of artistic crafts that have turned into cottage industry, where true professional craftsmen and amateurs work. They skillfully use modern technical equipment, based on the great demand for artistic craft products, combining modern tendencies with truly folk, archaic traditions and the specificity of artistic folklore.
Everyday forms of arts and crafts are often examples neo-folklore– compilative art, functioning in modern life according to the laws of mass artistic creativity, which has lost its sacred ancient meaning, but has retained a truly traditional style.
Folklore – component folk spiritual culture, permeating moral, labor, social, religious, artistic sphere. Historically, folklore has contributed natural selection spiritual values, becoming active agent education, training, bearer of historical, national, emotional memory. And forgetting the best folk traditions and spiritual ideals leads to a crisis in all spheres public life, devaluation of qualities such as mercy, compassion, hard work.
In the early stages social development folklore was the main form of human consciousness (tales, proverbs, labor requirements...), therefore it is generally accepted to consider folklore a common form of life creativity. It has always had a specific historical and symbolic purpose: sacred, ritual, aesthetic, pragmatic. Over time, under the influence of social changes, along with peasant folklore, urban, worker, merchant, and artisan folklore emerged, and later amateur and professional creativity. Modern NHT continues historically established traditions in the use of a variety of types, styles, genres of folklore:
In the figurative presentation of stories
In the nature of communication with the public
Looking for different expressive means and techniques
In preserving national, original elements
The theory of NH culture identifies the following subtypes of modern folklore:
· Authentic folklore is the primary, original folk culture that has retained its relevance, symbolism, locality, characteristic of a particular social group(the original appearance of the Buranovsky grandmothers)
· Neo-folklore - everyday NHT as part of the archaic, but cultivated artistic, manifested in mass singing, ditties, musical plays, fine arts, developing according to the laws mass artistic creativity
· Folklorism is an international phenomenon based on the active development of folk artistic traditions, giving them a certain scenic transformation with a bias towards commercialization, industry leisure and entertainment with elements of theatricalization of the “Russian village” and pleasures
· Amateur artistic activity as a stable genre-type structure, including, along with folklore, modernized areas of creativity, but, unlike other types of folklore, it is a learning process, including certain knowledge, skills under the guidance of a specialist, which today is actual problem, since the novelty and modernization of artistic culture should not automatically reject the truly popular traditions of folklore
Therefore, modern folk art culture must be in full compliance with the basic functions contemporary creativity:
1. Value-oriented – assimilation of national, cultural, original traditions
2. Social and pedagogical – preservation of the centuries-old foundations of coexistence
3. Social and psychological – supporting vitality, strengthening mutual understanding and interpersonal contacts
4. Cultural and creative – promoting cultural and creative search, self-expression, development artistic taste, performing skills
5. Entertaining and gaming, hedonistic – activating individual qualities, abilities that reveal a person’s potential capabilities
6. Utilitarian-pragmatic function – facilitating the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills
7. Socializing
(see below)
IN last years original norms6, life rules, customs associated with traditional medicine, folk cuisine, way of life, morality, attitude towards nature, components common system historical and cultural traditions.
