Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin dedicated his life to his native literature, and, above all, to such a difficult area as satire.
Satire is the work of inquisitive and courageous people. She sees a challenge to common sense in what almost everyone around seems reasonable. In the familiar and the ordinary, he distinguishes between the outlandish and the ugly. In the ingrained, it invites us to discern deviations from the norms of human society.
Satire is a centuries-old weapon of class struggle in literature. Satirical art, with merciless laughter, executes the evil of life in its most harmful, socially dangerous manifestations.
Satirical genres have always been integral integral part folklore
Saltykov-Shchedrin is able to really help develop social activity, civic maturity and responsibility in a teenage student, and turn him away from political gullibility, infantile carelessness and apathy.
Saltykov-Shchedrin’s noble goal is to awaken an inquisitive, courageous beginning in his serenely resting contemporary. And he does this, as befits a satirist, with a word of negation. But for all its harsh mercilessness, Shchedrin’s satire never leaves a feeling of dead end, disarming, sorrowful confusion. His works are a constant conversation with the reader, full of caustic sarcasm and heartfelt lyricism, honest and trusting, witty and wise...
Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales are funny, full of irony and sarcasm, and were created with the mass reader in mind (like Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'?", hence their folklore fairy-tale form). But the entire powerful arsenal of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satirical techniques is put in the service of revolutionary agitation and propaganda.
Relevance of the work: the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are widely known throughout the world. Many literary scholars have been engaged in research and study of the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, as many researchers as there are as many opinions about the uniqueness of the writer’s fairy tales. Therefore, our task is to study the experience of famous literary scholars, analyze it and draw certain conclusions.
When writing this course work, we set ourselves the following GOAL:
Studying the genre uniqueness of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
This goal involves solving the following tasks:
Define the concepts of “genre”, “fairy tale”;
Consider the connection between Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore traditions;
Identify the distinctive features of the writer’s fairy tales.
SCIENTIFIC NOVELTY lies in the study of the genre originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales, in an attempt to present our own version between folk tales and Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales.
STRUCTURE OF THE WORK: introduction, 3 sections, conclusions, 15 sources in the list of used literature.
AREA OF APPLICATION: school and university teaching of literature.
RESEARCH METHODS: comparative method, system analysis method.
1. THE CONCEPTS OF “GENRE”, “FAIRY TALE” IN LITERARY STUDIES
Literary genre (from the French Genre - genus, type) - this definition, first of all, has a general meaning, uniting all literary taxonomy, classification literary works behind different types their poetic structure.
Literary genres, formed as a result of a long historical development verbal art, with minor changes, pass from one era to another. Traditional identical genre forms can be used for works of different content and different ideological directions.
Thus, each writer introduces into his works some individual characteristics in the development of a particular genre. Moreover, every famous work has some kind of genre feature that must be determined in historical and literary research. It is in the original works of famous masters that changes in genre forms begin.
2. FAIRY-TALE WORLD OF SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN
2.1 The connection between fairy tales and folklore traditions
Shchedrin's tales are most often created with a reader in mind who has already gone through famous school Aesopian allegory, familiar with the writer’s periodic magazine conversations, with the world of his concepts and ideas.
There are signs in Shchedrin’s fairy tales that truly confirm the satirist’s search for a new addressee, indicating the artist’s conscious desire to expand his audience, his intention to attract the attention of new reading circles.
Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales, at first glance, are more simple-minded and obvious than his satirical essays and novel creations. The author's cherished idea is outlined in them with a more definite, visible outline. And if we talk about their closeness to folklore, then this parallel is possible only in the most general, large and fundamental sense.
Shchedrin's tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological quest of the satirist. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements, traditional beginnings (“Once upon a time there were”; “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state”; “Once upon a time there was a newspaperman, and there was a reader”), numerals with non-numerical meaning (“far away kingdom”, “from distant lands”), typical sayings (“neither to describe with a pen, nor to say in a fairy tale”, “at the behest of a pike”, “soon the tale will tell”, “how long, briefly li"), constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions (“honey-fed”, “fierce millet”, “rolling snores”, “fierce animals”), borrowed from folklore of proper names (Militrisa Kirbityevna, Ivanushka the Fool, Tsar Pea), characteristic of folk poetry synonymous combinations (“on the road”, “judged and judged”), idiomatic expressions going back to folklore (“to breed on beans”, “you can’t lead with your ears”, “grandmother said in two”), oral poetic vocabulary, numerous proverbs and sayings etc.
Stable folk-fairy tale images and details are satirically modernized by Saltykov-Shchedrin not only in the fairy tale genre.
More than once in Shchedrin's essays the names of fairy-tale heroes flash: Ivanushka, Ivanushka the Fool, Ivan Tsarevich, Baba Yaga - the bone leg. The name of one of Foolov’s mayors, Vasilisk Wartkin, means the fabulous “serpent who kills with his gaze.” Numerous fairy-tale elements are found in “The History of a City,” especially in the description of the “origin of the Foolovites.”
In Saltykov-Shchedrin, once found images, details, and sketches often did not disappear later, but were used in other cycles. The research literature has systematized many examples of such an evolution of images, including folklore ones, which served as one of the first impulses in the creation of fairy tales.
Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are noticeably different from folk tales, and the search for parallels, and even more so for direct plot borrowings, always turned out to be untenable.
Saltykov-Shchedrin the storyteller used various genres of folk art: fairy tales about animals, fairy tales, satirical tales, folk puppet theater, popular prints, proverbs and sayings. It is obvious that the writer’s fairy-tale world does not dissolve in the folk poetic element, that “Shchedrin’s fairy tale arose independently according to the type of folk tales, and the latter contributed to its formation.”
“In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner, he lived and looked at the light and rejoiced” - the opening, setting up the usual fairy-tale mood, is immediately neutralized by subsequent lines, and the indefinitely past folklore time switches to Shchedrin’s present: “And there was that The landowner is stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” Landowner stupidity, which results in reading the terry-serf newspaper “Vest”, and landowner stupidity, are both a farcical-comic rapprochement in the folklore spirit, and a social-satirical characteristic. Further, in a comic vein, the story of the very real relations between landowners and peasants after the abolition of serfdom is presented.
The stupid landowner is full of fear that the men will take all his goods. The “liberated” peasants “no matter where they look, everything is impossible, not allowed, and not yours!” The man died. The completely desperate peasants prayed: “Lord! It’s easier for us to perish even with small children than to toil like this all our lives!” . The next phrase is very important in the overall compositional structure of the fairy tale: the peasants’ wish came true, “the merciful God heard the orphan’s tearful prayer, and there was no more peasant throughout the entire domain of the stupid landowner.” From these lines, readers become living witnesses to a fantastic, fairy-tale “experiment” proposed by the satirist: what could happen to the landowner if he was deprived of the peasants, left alone with himself, in complete, so to speak, self-sufficiency.
Comic scenes and dialogues unfold in which all the transformations happening to the stupid landowner are explored: episodes with the actor Sadovsky, with four generals, with the police captain. Each of these passages represents, as it were, a completed anecdotal plot, all the comedy of which is revealed in the general context of the fairy tale. Gradually, from time to time, more and more new “readiness” of the landowner are revealed, which are fully manifested in the final part (complete savagery, transformation into a “bear-man”).
Fantastic changes happen to Shchedrin’s hero: “He stopped blowing his nose a long time ago, he walked more and more on all fours and was even surprised how he had not noticed before that this way of walking was the most decent and most convenient. He even lost the ability to utter articulate sounds and adopted some kind of special victory cry, a cross between a whistle, a hiss and a roar.”
It is interesting in this regard to compare the fairy-tale plots of “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner.” In the first case, the stupid, helpless, but accustomed to rule generals, who miraculously find themselves on a desert island, are triggered by the instinct of self-preservation, and they look for, unknown how, a man who got to the island, who drinks and feeds them, saves them from starvation and transports them by boat across the “ocean.” -sea" to St. Petersburg. In the second tale, a stupid and arrogant landowner, on the contrary, dreams of freeing himself from the peasants (“Only one thing is unbearable to my heart: there are too many peasants in our kingdom!”), and they, in turn, pray to God to get rid of the oppression of the landowner. And the entire further course of the tale is, as it were, another probable continuation of the story with the generals (this is what would have happened to them if the man had not been found; they would have gone completely wild, brutalized). Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Wild Landowner” seems to bring his fabulously satirical assumptions to their logical conclusion.
Subsequent situations, sarcastically depicted, bright grotesque images are also inseparable from elements of folklore: constant epithets (“white body”, “printed gingerbread”, “wild animals”), troecracy (three people “honor” the landowner as a fool), sayings (“and began he lives and lives"), etc. And behind all this, the main, no longer fairy-tale hint appears: Russia lives as a peasant, with his labor and worries; forced male labor preserves the landowner's plumpness.
Of course, we can only talk about a special stylistic aura of Shchedrin’s fairy tales, close to folklore, which continues the constant themes and images of his satirical and journalistic cycles. Abundantly using typical folklore elements, the writer sought to capture the attention of a new mass audience, well, first-hand, familiar with folk poetry.
But there is also no doubt that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are connected with folklore not only by the presence in them of certain oral poetic details and images that significantly influence the narrative syllable. Dependence on folklore experience is not always literal or quotable. There is something more important in Shchedrin’s fairy tales, which brings them closer to folk poetry: there is a truly folk understanding of the world. It is expressed in the very pathos of fairy tales for the people, in the author’s ideas about good and evil, about poverty and wealth, about right and wrong, about the decisive predominance of forces hostile to the people and at the same time about the inevitable triumph of reason and justice. Let conscience be banished from everywhere, let the pitiful drunkard, the innkeeper, the quarterly overseer, and the financier turn away from it - a “little child” has already appeared in the world, and conscience grows in him along with him. And the little child will be a big man, and he will have a big conscience. And then all untruths, deceit and violence will disappear, because the conscience will not be timid and will want to manage everything itself” [4;23].
Even where evil clearly and unequivocally prevails over defenselessness, timidity, fear, good-naturedness, passivity (cf. fairy tales “The Selfless Hare”, “Virtues and Vices”, “The Deceiver Newspaper Man and the Gullible Reader”, “Crucian Crucian Idealist” and etc.). the author puts him on trial, pronounces a harsh, non-appealable, satirical verdict, making it clear that along with evil he condemns all his free and unconscious indulgers.
Saltykov-Shchedrin is in no hurry to portray those who maintained commanding heights in life as defeated. On the contrary, he strongly emphasized the absurd, inhumane nature of resolving the overwhelming majority of life’s conflicts.
The audience for Shchedrin's fairy tale is, of course, more massive than for many other works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, but the nature of this mass audience is completely special, fickle, changeable within the entire fairy tale cycle. Either the readership intended by the author is noticeably expanding, freely and naturally including peasants, otkhodniks, and artisans in its probable composition, then it would seem to be again almost exclusively represented by the former Shchedrin reader-intellectual, although understood within the broad framework of the general democratic movement in Russia. The internal multi-genre nature of Shchedrin’s fairy tales (the variety of the author’s definition of the genre: “Neither a fairy tale, nor a true story”, “Conversation”, “Teaching”, “Tale-elegy”, simply “Fairy Tale”), a wide range of themes, ideas, images allow talk about a different reader-addressee for each individual fairy tale.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the nature of satirical imagery, the features of artistic speech directly point to an intelligent reader, to a city dweller who has the opportunity and habit of following newspapers every day, distinguishing between them, living up to date with the latest political news, having general cultural training, a relatively high educational qualification (numerous socio-historical, socio-political, literary and other realities, clericalisms, Latinisms, often found in Shchedrin’s fairy tales).
But another Shchedrin fairy tale turns out to be quite accessible and understandable to a single word to the most mass, peasant, working reader.
The author's voice does not contrast with the speech of his characters. However, the author himself prefaces the dialogue with a short exposition and then reveals himself only in a few remarks to the conversation. It is curious that there is no actual dialogical separation, much less a noticeable confrontation between the characters in the fairy tale. In essence, this is one common peasant, nationwide speech, divided into replicas distributed to two heroes. The characters do not argue, they think out loud, correcting and supplementing each other, looking for more convincing explanations for incomprehensible, confusing issues, and come to a common ending, significantly interrupted by the author:
“Look, Fedya,” said Ivan, laying down and yawning, “there’s so much space in all directions!” There is a place for everyone, but for us...”
In other tales, he deliberately addresses everyone: both the people and the intelligentsia who have not lost their “living soul.” The focus on the heterogeneous reader's consciousness makes itself felt not only within the boundaries of the entire fairy tale cycle, but in the text of each individual fairy tale.
One and the same Shchedrin fairy tale requires different reading levels and preparation. This finds its explanation in the aesthetic views of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which are quite transparently indicated in many of the satirist’s judgments about the peculiarities of reader psychology. It's about First of all, about the category “reader-friend”, which is difficult for a writer. For all its, at first glance, clarity, it is extremely vague and difficult to grasp. Saltykov-Shchedrin throughout his life does not lose hope that “a reader-friend undoubtedly exists.” There are moments when this reader “suddenly opens up, and direct communication with him becomes possible. Such moments are the happiest that a convinced writer experiences on his difficult path.”
But the voice of this reader is too weak, his share in the total mass of the public is too small, his social experience is small, his practice, in which literary, satirical, journalistic, poetic ideas and words would be melted into a living, concrete, socially significant matter, would be found direct, without concealment or circumspection, sympathy would awaken civic honesty and courage.
Thus, Shchedrin’s tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the satirist’s ideological quest. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements are noted:
Traditional beginnings;
Typical sayings;
Oral-poetic vocabulary;
2.2 Universal sound of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales
Working on fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin poetically realizes his favorite ideas about literature as effective propaganda, as a school of civic education. And like any real school, Shchedrin’s
a fairy tale (“a lesson to good fellows!”) has several ascending “steps”, focused on different levels of reader understanding and stimulating the reader’s growth and transition from “class” to “class”, from “stage” to “stage”.
First of all, in many fairy tales there is a series of external plot points:
Legendary (“Christ’s Night”);
Household (“Village Fire”);
Close to the fable (Shchedrin’s tales about animals, “Virtues and Vices”, “Kisel”);
Fantastic (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”, etc.).
In principle, it is understandable and accessible to everyone: both morality and socio-psychological generalizations of it, without much difficulty, are independently deduced by the reader, who is not alien to the world of folk tales, parables, proverbs and sayings.
Shchedrin's tales about animals are like detailed poetic fables in the spirit of the nationality bequeathed by Krylov, much more densely populated and enriched with stable, but always unexpected in Saltykov-Shchedrin's works, carrying a comic charge with folklore, folk-fairy tale elements. Each of characters, both traditional and new, are given scope for complete self-discovery. The duel, intense and complex dialogue, and conflict characteristic of Krylov’s fables are written out in detail and meticulously, with the addition of details, details, and clarifications that are completely alien to the poetically compressed world of the fable. And at the same time, in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the inherent conceptuality, purposefulness and significance of the fable are preserved.
Shchedrin's fairy tale is perceived on a par with a fable-lesson, a moral, a maxim, and the satirical writer certainly and seriously takes this level of everyday understanding into account.
The author leads the reader into the depths of the plot, getting him interested in the development of the action, focusing on the struggle of antagonistic life principles. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are not so much designed for an already established worldview, but are capable of awakening the growth of civic, class consciousness. They gradually lead to difficult questions that cannot be solved simply by being guided by truisms.
Intelligence is one of the revered human virtues, but people tend to introduce a wide variety of, often mutually exclusive, contents into this concept. And Saltykov-Shchedrin, an educator, a champion of reason, a bright mind alien to dogmatic inertia, puts into the title of the tale a telling, unambiguously evaluative epithet: “The Wise Minnow.” At first, one retains faith in the certainty of this definition: both the gudgeon’s parents “were smart,” and they did not ignore his parental advice, and the hero of the fairy tale himself, it turns out, “was smart.” But step by step, tracing the course of the gudgeon’s conclusions, conveyed in the form of improperly direct speech, the author arouses in the reader a sly mockery, an ironic reaction, finally a feeling of disgust, and in the end even compassion for the everyday philosophy of a quiet, voiceless, moderately neat creature.
The tenacious morality of crickets who know their nest. Saltykov-Shchedrin, with almost every tale of his, strives to expose it in the eyes of the readership majority: “But after a quarter of an hour it was all over. Instead of the hare, all that remained were scraps of skin and his sensible words: “Every beast has its own life; for a lion - lion's, for a fox - fox's, for a hare - hare's."
Shchedrin’s tales reveal what Pushkin noted in Krylov’s fables as “a distinctive feature in our morals”: “... some kind of cheerful cunning of the mind, mockery and a picturesque way of expressing ourselves.”
A folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.
To comprehend direct and barely hidden hints at “complacent modernity,” one already needs a certain amount of experience in communicating with newspapers and magazines, awareness of current events in domestic and international life, and a certain political sensitivity. Shchedrin’s Ivanushka the Fool, at the behest of his parents, ended up “in the institution” and studied, “but as the volume of supposed knowledge increased, Ivanushka’s case became more complicated. He did not understand most sciences at all. He did not understand history, jurisprudence, or the science of accumulation and distribution of wealth. Not because he didn’t want to understand, but because he truly didn’t understand. And to all the teachers’ admonitions he answered with one thing: “This cannot be!” . It was assumed that the reader would sense a mockery of the philistine well-intentioned official “sciences” serving the interests of the ruling classes.
The artistic speech in Shchedrin’s fairy tales is structured in such a way that the person following the external event conflict is simultaneously initiated into some significant and often eluding “secrets of modernity” in life. Most of the heroes of Shchedrin's fairy tales have their own social class “registration”: rich and poor, men and gentlemen, “sirs” and “Ivashki”.
Every now and then the author seems to push the reader into sudden comparisons and unusual analogies. The reader is faced with the need to correlate what is depicted with reality; a world of caustic satirical allegories and topical reminiscences opens up to him. This type of perception, to which many of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales lead, can conditionally be called comparative. What is reported in the fairy tale is involuntarily transferred to the circle of loved ones, acquaintances, experiences and impressions experienced by the reader himself. This is probably one of the inevitable stages on the path to improving reading skills and tastes. Saltykov-Shchedrin,
Of course, he counted on touching the reader’s heart with an interest in the real, concrete political aspects of everyday life and being.
But artistic speech with its semantic and emotional depth and relief, it takes away from overly straightened literal timing. Otherwise, the text turns into a special kind of cipher, and the reader’s task is reduced to guessing it.
Saltykov-Shchedrin was always alien to pamphleteering, and through the fable- or legendary-plot series, through the chain of allusive signs, the satirist’s uninterrupted large universal theme clearly shines through, raising the reader’s consciousness to a new and higher level, when, according to the successful definition of A. S. Bushmin , the evil of the day reaches the evil of the century. The writer does not lead his wise, sensitive reader to a clearly delineated conclusion or outcome, but to a state of anxiety, to a search for truth. Shchedrin's fairy tale becomes for a real reader-friend, as the writer ideally imagined him, moral support, imparts perspective to thought and feeling, infects him with a thirst for the struggle for the reconstruction of this crazy, cruel, unjust world, for the revival of Man.
Through all of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales there are words-leitmotifs that mean to him something more than just words: mind, conscience, truth, history...
Saltykov-Shchedrin connects his hopes for the inevitable future triumph of truth with history, the “call signs” of which every now and then cut through unusual, fairy-tale narratives. History in Shchedrin’s tales is both an unbroken chain of times and fair retribution that overtakes the villains, the “Stoeros Bourbons,” the Majors Toptygins. History preserves the most cherished and wise human traditions: “That evil has never been a founding force - history testifies to this.” History is “a story of liberation, a story about the triumph of good and reason over evil and madness.”
In Shchedrin's tales, History can speed up its course, but it does not interrupt it, does not stop it. The author of fairy tales is convinced that History is the present, preserving the memory of the past and gaining in this considerable strength for discerning the future: “But the time will come when every breath becomes clear the limits within which its life must take place - then the strife will disappear by itself, and along with them, all the little “personal truths” will dissipate like smoke. The real, united and binding Truth will be revealed; will come and the whole world will shine.”
Refuting the vulgar everyday morality, arousing interest in “our social life,” Shchedrin’s fairy tales help the reader gain a free, unbiased attitude to life, a sensitive historical approach to it. In fairy tales there is hope for a young reader with an “unslammed” soul, with an undestroyed conscience, for a “child” who is growing up by leaps and bounds.
Thus, a folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.
CONCLUSIONS
Thus, the following conclusions can be drawn:
· As a genre, the Shchedrin fairy tale gradually matured in the writer’s work from the fantastic and figurative elements of his satire. There are also a lot of folklore themes in them, starting from the use of the form of a long-past tense (“Once upon a time”) and ending with an abundant number of proverbs and sayings with which they are peppered. In his fairy tales, the writer touches on many issues:
Social;
Political;
Ideological.
Thus, the life of Russian society is depicted in them in a long series of miniature paintings. Fairy tales present the social anatomy of society in the form of a whole gallery of zoomorphic, fairy-tale images.
· Shchedrin began his fairy tale cycle in 1869. Fairy tales were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological and creative quest of the satirist. At that time, due to the existence of strict censorship, the author could not fully expose the vices of society, show all the inconsistency of the Russian administrative apparatus. And yet, with the help of fairy tales “for children of a fair age,” Shchedrin was able to convey to people a sharp criticism of the existing order.
· Shchedrin's tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological quest of the satirist. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements are noted:
Traditional beginnings;
Numerals with non-numerical meaning;
Typical sayings;
Constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions;
Proper names borrowed from folklore, synonymous combinations characteristic of folk poetry, idiomatic expressions dating back to folklore;
Oral-poetic vocabulary;
Numerous proverbs and sayings, etc.
· A folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.
LIST OF REFERENCES USED
1. V.V. Prozorov. Saltykov - Shchedrin. – M., 1988. – 170 p.
2. A. Bushmin. Tales of Saltykov - Shchedrin. – L., 1976. – 290 p.
3. A.S. Pushkin. Full collection cit.: In 10 volumes - M., 1964. - T. 7. - 379 p.
4. M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin. collection Op.: In 20 volumes - M., 1965-1977. - T. 10.–320 pp.
5. M. E. Saltykov–Shchedrin. collection Op.: In 20 volumes – M., 1965–1977. – T. 16.–370 p.
6. M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin in Russian criticism. – M., 1959. – 270 p.
7. M.E. Saltykov–Shchedrin in the memoirs of contemporaries. –M., 1975.–430 p.
8. V. Bazanova. Tales of M.E. Saltykova - Shchedrin. – M., 1966. – 347 p.
9. A.S. Bushmin. Satire Saltykov - Shchedrin. – M., 1959. – 280 p.
10. A.S. Bushmin. Tales of M.E. Saltykova - Shchedrin. – M., 1976. – 340 p.
11. V. A. Myslyakov. The art of satirical storytelling: The problem of the narrator in Saltykov-Shchedrin. – Saratov, 1966. – 298 p.
12. D. Nikolaev. M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin: Life and creativity: Essay. – M., 1985. – 175 p.
13. E.I. Pokusaev, V.V. Prozorov.M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin: Biography of the writer. – L., 1977. – 200 p.
14. M.S. Olminsky. Articles about Saltykov - Shchedrin. – M., 1959. – 210 p.
15. S. Makashin. Saltykov - Shchedrin. Biography. – M., 1951. – T.1. – 340 s.
The Tale of the Golden Cockerel
Fairy tale as a genre of oral folk art.
Fairy tales are the oldest genre of oral folk art, a classic example of folklore. They teach a person to live, instill optimism in him, and affirm faith in the triumph of goodness and justice. Behind the fantastic nature of fairy-tale plots and fiction, real human relationships are hidden. Humanistic ideals and life-affirming pathos give fairy tales artistic credibility and enhance their emotional impact on listeners.
A fairy tale is a generalizing concept. The presence of certain genre characteristics allows us to classify this or that oral prose work as a fairy tale. Belonging to the epic genus puts forward such features as narrative and plot. A fairy tale is necessarily entertaining, unusual, with a clearly expressed idea of the triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood, life over death; all the events in it are brought to an end; incompleteness and incompleteness are not characteristic of a fairy-tale plot.
The main genre feature of a fairy tale is its purpose, that which connects the fairy tale with the needs of the collective. “In Russian fairy tales that have come down to us in recordsXVIII – XXcenturies, as well as in fairy tales that exist today, the aesthetic function dominates. It is due to the special nature of fairy-tale fiction.”1
Fiction is characteristic of all types of fairy tales of different peoples. The fact that the fairy tale does not pretend to be authentic in its narration is emphasized by the favorite beginnings of Eastern fairy tales: “It happened or it didn’t happen - three apples fell from the sky,” as well as the endings of Russian fairy tales: “The whole fairy tale - you can’t lie anymore” or German ones: “Who believed “The thaler will pay.” This also determines the transfer of the fairy-tale action to the vague “far away kingdom, thirtieth state”, the narrators’ remarks emphasizing the “fabulousness” of what they are telling the story about, and, finally, the listeners’ reviews about the skill of the storytellers: “this one will lie to you like crazy,” "a known liar." “An emphasized, conscious focus on fiction is the main feature of fairy tales as a genre.
The educational function of a fairy tale is one of its genre features. “Fairy-tale didacticism permeates the entire fairy-tale structure, achieving a special effect by the sharp opposition of positive and negative. Moral and social truth- this is the didactic conclusion that the fairy tale clearly illustrates.”2
The history of the emergence of fairy tales as a genre.
The historical roots of the Russian fairy tale are lost in hoary antiquity; each historical stage of the life of the Russian people is reflected in the fairy tale, introducing natural changes into it. The study of these changes, or rather, the generalization of these changes, makes it possible to talk about the specific process of the life of Russian tales, that is, about its history.
Install exactly. When exactly the Russian fairy tale was defined as a genre, when exactly it began to live as a fairy tale, and not a belief or tradition, is impossible.
The first mentions of Russian folk tales date back to Kievan Rus, but its origins are lost in time immemorial. As for feudal Rus', there is no doubt that fairy tales, in our understanding, were in Kievan Rus one of the widespread genres of oral folk art. Monuments of ancient Russian literature have preserved enough references to storytellers and fairy tales not to doubt this.
The earliest information about Russian fairy tales dates back toⅩⅡ century. In the teaching “The Word of the Rich and the Poor,” in the description of a rich man’s going to bed, among the servants around him who amuse him in various ways, those who “bad and blaspheme” are indignantly mentioned, that is, they tell him fairy tales for his coming sleep. This first mention of the fairy tale fully reflected the contradictory attitude towards it that we have observed in Russian society for many centuries. On the one hand, a fairy tale is a favorite entertainment for fun, it has access to all layers of society, on the other hand, it is branded and persecuted as something demonic, not permissible, shaking the foundations of ancient Russian life. Thus, Kirill of Turov, listing the types of sins, also mentions the telling of fables; Metropolitan Photius at the beginningⅩⅤ centuries conjures his flock to refrain from listening to fables; royal decreesⅩⅦ centuries have spoken disapprovingly of those who destroy their souls by “telling unprecedented tales.”
All this gives us reason to believe that in Ancient Rus' The fairy tale has already emerged as a genre from oral prose, demarcated from tradition, legend and myth. Its genre features - “the focus on fiction and entertainment functions are recognized equally by both its bearers and its persecutors. Already in Ancient Rus' they -<сказки небывалые>and it is as such that they continue to live in the popular repertoire in subsequent centuries.”
Tales that throughoutⅩⅡ - ⅩⅦ centuries Russian people told stories that did not mechanically repeat versions that came from ancient times or stories imported from foreign lands; on the contrary, Russian fairy tales responded vividly to events modern life. Tales about Ivan the Terrible speak of pronounced anti-boyar tendencies and, at the same time, the illusions of the people. The tale of the chicken and the fox expresses the anti-clerical sentiments of the time.
"The inner world of manⅩⅧ century, his public face, political sympathies are revealed in a fairy tale that castigates evil, untruth, injustice, bigotry, in a fairy tale that calls for truth and goodness, expressing folk ideals and dreams.”
Researchers about the fairy tale and its genre features.
While studying the fairy tale, scientists have defined its meaning and features in different ways. Some of them, with absolute clarity, sought to characterize fairy-tale fiction as independent of reality, while others wanted to understand how the attitude of folk storytellers to the surrounding reality was refracted in the fantasy of fairy tales. Should any fantastic story be considered a fairy tale in general, or should we distinguish other types of it in oral folk prose - non-fairy tale prose? How to understand fantastic fiction, without which none of the fairy tales can do? These are the problems that have long troubled researchers.
A number of folklore researchers called everything that was “told” a fairy tale. Thus, academician Yu.M. Sookolov wrote: “By folk tale in the broad sense of the word we mean an oral-poetic story of a fantastic, adventurous or everyday nature.” The scientist’s brother, Professor B.Yu. Sokolov also believed that every oral story should be called a fairy tale. Both researchers argued that fairy tales include a number of special genres and types and that each of them can be considered separately.
Yu.M. Sokolov considered it necessary to list all types of fairy tales, and B.M. Sokolov pointed out how entertaining they were.
An attempt to distinguish a fairy tale from other genres of folklore was made more than a hundred years ago by K.S. Aksakov. Speaking about the difference between fairy tales and epics, he wrote: “Between fairy tales and songs, in our opinion, there is a sharp line. The fairy tale and the song are different from the beginning. This distinction was made by the people themselves, and it is best for us to directly accept the division that they made in their literature. A fairy tale is a fold (fiction), and a song is reality, says the people, and its words have a deep meaning, which is explained as soon as we pay attention to the song and the fairy tale.”
Fiction, according to Aksakov, influenced both the depiction of the scene in them and the characters of the characters. Aksakov clarified his understanding of the fairy tale with the following judgments:<<В сказке очень сознательно рассказчик нарушает все пределы времени и пространства, говорит о тридесятом царстве,о небывалых странах и всяких диковинках>>. Aksakov believed that the most characteristic thing about fairy tales is fiction, and conscious fiction at that. The famous folklorist A.N. did not agree with this interpretation of fairy tales. Afanasiev.<< Сказка- складка, песня- быль, говорила старая пословица, стараясь провести резкую грантцу между эпосом сказочным и эпосом историческим. Извращая действительный смысл этой пословицы, поинимали сказку за чистую ложь, за поэттческий обман,имеющий единою целью занять свободный достуг небывалыми и невозможными вымыслами. Несостоятельность такого воззрения уже давно бросалась в глаза>>,” wrote this scientist. Afanasyev did not allow the thought that<<пустая складка>> could be preserved by the people for a number of centuries and over the vast extent of the country, holding and repeating<< один и то жк представления>>. He concluded:<< нет, сказка- не пустая складка, в ней как и вообще во всех созданиях целого народа, не могло быть, и в самом деле нет ни нарочно сочиненённой лжи, ни намеренного уклоднения от действительного понимания сказки.
The feature accepted by Aksakov as significant for a fairy tale narrative was, with some clarifications, used as the basis for the definition of a fairy tale proposed by the Soviet folklorist A.I. Nikiforov. Nikiforov wrote:<< сказки - это устные рассказы, бытовом смысле события (фантастические, чудесные или житейские) и отличающиеся специальным композиционно - стилистическим построением>>. Explaining the meaning of his definition, Nikiforov pointed to three essential features of a fairy tale: the first feature of a modern fairy tale is the goal of entertaining listeners, the second feature is unusual content in everyday life, and finally, the third important feature of a fairy tale is special shape its construction.
The famous Soviet fairytale historian E.Yu. Pomerantseva accepted this point of view:<<народная сказка (или казка, байка, побасенка) - эпическое устное художественное про изведение, преимущественно прозаическое, волшебного, авантюрного или бытового характера с установкой на вымысел. Последний признае отличает сказку от других жанров устной прозы: сказка, предания и былички, то есть от рассказов, преподносимых рассказчиком слушателям как повествование о действительно имевших место событиях, как бы маловероятны и фантанстичны они иногда ни были>>.
Dictionary literary terms gives the following definition of a fairy tale as a genre: A fairy tale is one of the main genres of folk oral and poetic creativity.<<Сказка - преимушественно прозаический художественный устный рассказ фантастического, авантюрного или быового характкра с установкой на вымысел. Термином <<Сказка>> name various types of oral prose: stories about animals, magical stories, adventure stories, satirical jokes. Hence the discrepancy in determining the specific genre features of a fairy tale>>.
Traditionally, there are three types of fairy tales:
Volshevna;
Household;
A tale about animals.
Each of these types has its own characteristics.
Genre originality of fairy tales.
Let us consider the genre uniqueness of each type of fairy tale.
Fairy tales.
The goal of the genre: to evoke admiration good hero and condemn the villain, express confidence in the triumph of good.
According to the type of conflict, fairy tales are:
Heroic: the hero fights with magical powers;
Social and class: the hero fights with the master, with the king;
Family (pedagogical): the conflict occurs in the family or the fairy tale is of a moralizing nature.
Heroes are divided into: intercessors, villains, sufferers, helpers.
General features of fairy tales:
The presence of obvious fantasy, magic, miracle (magical characters and objects);
Encounter with magical forces;
Complicated composition;
Expanded range of visual and expressive means;
Description dominates gialogue;
Multi-episode (the tale covers a fairly long period of the hero’s life).
Examples of fairy tales are:<<Царевна-лягушка>>, <<Крошечка волке>> and others.
Everyday tales.
The purpose of the genre: to make fun of a person’s bad character traits, to express joyful surprise at his intelligence and resourcefulness.
Everyday tales are divided into the following types:
Aecdotal;
Satirical anti-lord, anti-royal, anti-religious;
Fairy tales - competitions;
Fairy tales are ridicule;
General Features:
It is based on an extraordinary incident within the framework of real human relations(fiction is practically absent);
There is a wonderful assumption based on, for example, hyperbole:
The hero is so cunning that he can outsmart everyone in the world and go unpunished;
Instead of magic, ingenuity is used;
Realism is conventional (real life conflicts receive an extraordinary fairy-tale resolution);
The acting characters are antagonists;
The positive hero is an ironic successor;
The semantic emphasis falls on the denouement;
Widespread use of dialosh;
Abundance of verbs.
Heron: ordinary people (priest, soldier, man, woman, king, master).
Examples of everyday tales are:<<Каша из топора>>, <<как мужик с барином обедал>>, <<Кому горшок мыть>> and others.
Tales about animals.
The task of the genre: to ridicule bad character traits and actions, to evoke compassion for the weak and offended.
By conflict, animal tales depict:
The fight between predators;
The fight of a weak animal with a predator;
The fight between man and beast.
Heroes: animals (traits of animals and conditionally humans).
Special subgroups:
Tales of fox tricks;
Cumulative (chain tales).
General Features:
The specific composition of the characters (fairy-tale images - traditional types: fox - cunning, wolf - stupid):
Anthropomorphism (transferring mental properties and character traits inherent in humans to animals);
Conflicts reflect real life relationships between people;
Lightweight composition;
A narrowed set of visual and expressive means;
Extensive use of dialogue;
Abundance of verbs;
Low-episode, fast-acting;
Introduction of small folklore forms.
Examples of fairy tales about animals are:<<Кот, Петух и Лиса>>, <<Лисичка-сестричка и Волк>>,<<Лиса, Заяц и Петух>> ,<<Лиса и Тетерев>> and others.
Thus, we examined the features of each of the three types of folk tales.
The traditions of fairy tales as an oral folk genre did not allow mixing types of fairy tales.
Features of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin
Features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are a fable beginning, a certain fantastic illusoryness of what is happening, allegories, allegories, unexpected transitions from reality to unreality, grotesque sharpness, as well as political acuity, purposefulness and realism of fantasy.
Possessing powerful folk “roots”, going back to the traditions of folk tales, Shchedrin’s tale, at the same time, is not an imitation of examples of folk art. It does not obey any strict rules of the genre at all and, like other works of the satirist, boldly violates them. Refusing external verisimilitude, the author achieves a special comic effect at the intersection of traditional fairy-tale techniques and completely realistic, even everyday details of people’s contemporary lives. Thus, having told in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” how Toptygin the 1st accidentally ate a siskin, the author says: “It’s the same as if someone drove a poor tiny high school student to suicide through pedagogical measures.”
When creating his fairy tales, Shchedrin relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on Krylov’s satirical fables and on the traditions of Western European fables. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tale, which combines fantasy and reality, topical political reality and fiction.
In its form and style Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin associated with the traditions of Russian folklore. The author uses traditional formulas often found in folk tales- “they lived and they lived”, “at the behest of a pike, according to my desire”, “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state.” The form of a fairy tale is used by the author for satirical denunciation. All Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin allegorical, that is, through the relationships between representatives of the animal world, the class relationships of people are reflected. The author uses the technique of allegory as a means of creating images.
Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, as in all of his work, two social forces are opposed: the working people and their exploiters. The people in fairy tales are presented in the images of defenseless and kind animals and birds (and often simply under the name “man”), and the exploiters are represented in the images of predators.
The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is real, it carries a generalized political content and has a satirical orientation. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” it serves as the main means of expressing the author’s satirical indignation towards the landowners. The writer uses the technique of hyperbole to show the stupidity and ignorance of representatives of the ruling class, who all their lives were firmly convinced that “rolls will be born in the same form as they are served with coffee in the morning.” The author uses the same technique to show that a representative of the oppressed class is necessary for the generals, without him they would be completely lost; he can find a way out of the most desperate situation: “He got so clever that he even began to cook soup in a handful.”
Satire Saltykova-Shchedrin is full of journalistic content, the author strives to present reality in extremely contrasting lighting. The main method of depiction in his work becomes realistic grotesque, that is, contrasting exaggeration, giving the images a conventional, implausible, often fantastic quality.
Sky character. When using this technique, the image is often taken beyond the limits of acceptable plausibility.
But Saltykova-Shchedrin Any exaggeration seems realistically motivated; its fiction is a means of revealing the hidden, potential capabilities of a character in unexpected situations. Important feature satirical typification Saltykova-Shchedrin is the ability to create generalized, collective images that reflect social psychology certain groups of people. For example, the “wise squirrel,” the hero of the fairy tale of the same name, personifies wingless and vulgar philistinism. The meaning of his life, the life of an “enlightened, moderately liberal” coward, was self-preservation, avoidance of clashes and struggle, which is why he lived to a ripe old age. But this life consisted of continuous trembling for his own skin: “He lived and trembled - that’s all.”
The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist uses not only traditional fairy-tale techniques and images, but also proverbs, sayings, and sayings. For example, “it’s awkward for a lamb without a lamb” (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”), “living life is not like licking a whorl” (“The Wise Minnow”), “the major will come, then we’ll find out how Kuzka’s mother-in-law’s name” (“Bear in the Voivodeship”).
The tales absorbed Shchedrin's many years of observations and reflections, expressing them in the most refined, concise and accessible form. On several pages he skillfully revealed the essence public relations(“How one man fed two generals”), talked about many events that were repeated with cruel regularity in the history of Russia (about the misadventures of culture and education in the fairy tale “The Eagle the Patron”), characterized the ideological trends of the era (“Crucian carp the idealist”, "Liberal").
Composition
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin in his work chose the satirical principle of depicting reality as the right weapon. He became a successor to the traditions of D. I. Fonvizin, A. S. Griboyedov, N. V. Gogol in that he made satire his political weapon, fighting with its help the pressing issues of his time.
Saltykov-Shchedrin turns to the fairy tale genre several times in his work: first in 1869, and then after 1881, when historical conditions (the murder of the Tsar) led to stricter censorship.
Like many writers, Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the fairy tale genre to reveal the vices of man and society. Written for “children of a fair age,” the fairy tales are a sharp criticism of the existing system and, in essence, serve as a weapon denouncing the Russian autocracy.
The themes of the fairy tales are very diverse: the author not only opposes the vices of autocracy (“The Bear in the Voivodeship,” “The Hero”), but also denounces noble despotism (“The Wild Landowner”). The satirist especially condemns the views of liberals (“Crucian carp is an idealist”), as well as the indifference of officials (“Idle Conversation”) and philistine cowardice (“The Wise Minnow”).
However, there is a theme that can be said to be present in many fairy tales - this is the theme of an oppressed people. In the fairy tales “How one man fed two generals” and “The Horse” it sounds especially vivid.
Themes and issues determine the variety of characters acting in these sharply satirical works. These are stupid rulers, striking with their ignorance and tyrant landowners, officials and ordinary people, merchants and peasants. Sometimes the characters are quite reliable, and we find in them the features of specific historical figures, and sometimes the images are allegorical and allegorical.
Using the folklore and fairy tale form, the satirist illuminates the most pressing issues of Russian life, acts as a defender of people's interests and progressive ideas.
The fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” stands out from all others due to its special dynamism and variability of plot. The writer uses a fantastic technique - the generals, as if “at the behest of a pike,” are transported to a desert island, and here the writer, with his characteristic irony, shows us the complete helplessness of officials and their inability to act.
“Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything. They didn’t even know any words.” Because of their stupidity and narrow-mindedness, they almost died of hunger. But a man who is a jack of all trades comes to their aid: he can both hunt and cook. The image of a “hefty man” personifies both the strength and weakness of the Russian people in this fairy tale. Mastery and his extraordinary abilities are combined in this image with humility and class passivity (the man himself weaves a rope to be tied to a tree at night). Having collected ripe apples for the generals, he takes himself sour, unripe ones, and he was also glad that the generals “favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant labor.”
The tale of two generals suggests that the people, according to Saltykov-Shchedrin, are the support of the state, they are the creator of material and spiritual values.
The theme of the people is developed in another tale by Saltykov-Shchedrin - “The Horse”, which was created in 1885. In style, it differs from others in its lack of action.
This tale is called the strongest work in the series dedicated to the plight of the Russian peasantry. The image of a hard-working horse is a collective one. He personifies the entire forced working people, he reflects the tragedy of millions of men, this enormous force, enslaved and powerless.
This tale also contains the theme of the people’s submission, their dumbness and lack of desire to fight. A horse, “tortured, beaten, narrow-chested, with protruding ribs and burnt shoulders, with broken legs” - such a portrait is created by an author who mourns the unenviable lot of a powerless people. Thinking about the future and the fate of the people is painful, but filled with selfless love.
In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the help of Aesopian language, elements of fantasy, folklore traditions and satirical techniques, various themes are heard, political problems are developed, and current issues are resolved. Defending the progressive ideals of his time, the author acted in his works as a defender of people's interests. Having enriched folklore stories with new content, Saltykov-Shchedrin directed the fairy tale genre to instill civic feelings and special respect for the people.
Fairy tales “for children of a fair age” - this is how Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin described his satirical work. The following lines could also be added: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows.”
At a time of strict censorship, the writer, with his satirical tales, gave “good fellows” lessons of truth - exposing the vices of society and the failure of the Russian administrative apparatus.
Censorship missed the tales of the great satirist, failing to understand their purpose, their revealing power, their challenge to the existing order. To write fairy tales, the author used grotesque, hyperbole, and antithesis. Aesopian language was also important for the author. Trying to hide the true meaning of what was written from censorship, one had to use this technique.
The writer loved to come up with neologisms to characterize his characters. For example, words such as “pompadours and pompadours”, “foam remover” and others. Now we will try to consider the features of the writer’s fairy tale genre using the example of several of his works.
In "The Wild Landowner" the author shows to what extent a rich gentleman who finds himself without servants can sink. This tale uses hyperbole. At first a cultured man, the landowner turns into a wild animal, feeding on fly agarics. Here we see how helpless a rich man is without a simple peasant, how unadapted and worthless he is. With this tale, the author wanted to show that a simple Russian person is a serious force.
A similar idea is put forward in the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” But here the reader sees the peasant’s resignation, his humility, unquestioning submission to the two generals. He even ties himself to a chain, which once again indicates the submissiveness, downtroddenness, and enslavement of the Russian peasant. In this tale, the author used both hyperbole and grotesque. Saltykov-Shchedrin prompts the reader to think that it is time for the peasant to wake up, think about his situation, and stop submitting meekly.
In "The Wise Minnow" we see the life of an ordinary man who is afraid of everything in the world. “The wise minnow” constantly sits locked up, afraid to go out into the street again, to talk to someone, to get to know someone. He leads a closed, boring life. With his life principles, he resembles another hero, the hero of the story by A.P. Chekhov's "Man in a Case" by Belikov. Only before his death does the minnow think about his life: “Who did he help? Who did he regret, what good did he do in life? He lived and trembled and died - he trembled.” And only before death does the average person realize that no one needs him, no one knows him and no one will remember him. The writer shows the terrible philistine alienation and self-isolation in “The Wise Minnow.”
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is bitter and painful for the Russian people. Reading Saltykov Shchedrin is quite difficult. Therefore, perhaps many did not understand the meaning of his fairy tales. But the majority of “children of a fair age” appreciated the work of the great satirist as it deserved.
Many writers and poets used fairy tales in their work. With its help, the author identified one or another vice of humanity or society. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are sharply individual and unlike any others. Satire was Saltykov Shchedrin's weapon. At that time, due to strict censorship, the author could not fully expose the vices of society, show all the inconsistency of the Russian administrative apparatus. And yet, with the help of fairy tales “for children of a fair age,” Saltykov-Shchedrin was able to convey to people a sharp criticism of the existing order.
