Unfabulous prose. Tradition: definition, concept, meaning What is historical tradition

"The tradition of deep antiquity, deeds of bygone days ..." These lines from childhood hears, sees, reads every Russian-speaking person. This is how Alexander Pushkin began his work "Ruslan and Lyudmila". Are his tales really legends? To know for sure, you need to understand the concepts.

Poetry poetry, fairy tales, fairy tales, but what does the word "legend" mean? We will consider the definition and special features of this phenomenon in our article.

Tradition as a genre

We will begin our acquaintance with the world of folk legends with the definition of the concept itself. So, various sources give us the following.

Tradition is a prosaic folklore genre, the plot of which is historical facts in the folk interpretation. The legends of the people are not associated with the genre of fairy tales, although sometimes events resemble mythical or fabulous.

Traditions in literary theory are usually divided into two large groups by plot type: historical and toponymic.

Legends are part of oral folk prose

We learned what tradition is. The definition gave us general idea... Let's talk about one feature of this genre. It is noteworthy that legends are a genre of oral folk art. This means that the stories heard today were created hundreds of years ago and passed from mouth to mouth. By the time the legend was recorded on an information medium, tens or even hundreds of transformations of the plot and images could have occurred.

Creations famous poet Homer's Greek Iliad and Odyssey, which are incredible in size, were also transmitted orally. They also described historical events, embellished and somewhat altered. This shows some similarity of these creations with newer legends.

As a genre of oral prose, legends are admired for their long history. Fortunately, or maybe not, distribution in recorded form is much easier these days. We should appreciate every word, tradition, which gives important spiritual knowledge about ancestors.

Comparison with other folklore prose genres

Tradition can sometimes be mistakenly defined as a legend or an epic. To avoid this, let us call the following pattern: the plots of legends are aimed at explaining the origin of some cultural or natural phenomenon... They often give a certain moral assessment of the events described. And the legend is a retelling of history in a folk way with the participation of well-known or famous heroes in the local area.

The legends of the people differ from the epics in content, actors(historical figures: robbers, rulers, simple people, artisans), with the participation of real personalities known in a certain area, who have become mythological heroes.

A characteristic of this genre of folklore prose is a third-person narration about events related to the past. The narrator of the legends was not an eyewitness to the events, but conveys a story heard from third parties.

Historical legends

Collective folk memory created ancient legends from real facts, about which we can read in a slightly different light in history textbooks. This is how historical legends were created.

Historical legends include the legends about Joan of Arc, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Ataman Mazepa and others.

This also includes the biblical stories about the creation of the world, the exit of the Israelites from Egypt in search of their land, and many others.

V this group includes such legends that absorb people's ideas about the creation of their world. All folklore units create a single historical and mythological world that reflects a broad picture of the people's view of the surrounding reality.

The time frame covered by the legends is difficult to determine: this is information from the most biblical antiquity to the present.

Toponymic traditions

The toponymic legends are those that record the events that became the basis for the origin of a particular name. Their heroes are, respectively, local famous characters and events that are meaningful only there. Studying local stories like this is an interesting part of toponymic and ethnographic research.

Toponymic are short legends about the Serpent Shafts (from the Serpent), the city of Kiev (about Kiev, his brothers and sister), the city of Orsha (Prince Orsh and his daughter Orshitsa), the city of Lvov and many other toponymic objects.

Research perspective

In every city, every village there are such short stories about where some local name came from. Collections of such legends can be compiled endlessly. There is still a field for research today. Therefore, everyone who has discovered legends and found them to be an interesting object of activity has a job.

Publishing a collection of legends collected in a specific area is a very real prospect. New names are still appearing today, right at this moment. Also, in remote corners of Russia, there are settlements in which folklore is actively developing. This means that new boundaries appear for ethnographic and folklore work.

It is noteworthy that at the present time there are more topographic legends. Historical ones are preserved from previous eras, since for some time all facts are fixed immediately after their appearance.

Legends, myths and their historical basis

The legend, which we have already defined, is sometimes associated with mythology. So, the stories about the exploits of the Greek hero Hercules, according to the researchers, could not have arisen without real historical facts... Those mythical events and heroes with which the probable real story the adventures of Hercules, appeared over time.

Several facts from the Book of Enoch were confirmed, in which the giants were mentioned. In the same way, architectural monuments were found that could have witnessed the events that became the basis of the legend about the Flood.

conclusions

Thus, we learned that tradition is a faithful, word-of-mouth folk tale of historical events. In the process of transmission, carriers tend to embellish the tradition. The definition and features of this folklore genre are now known to us. We can easily distinguish it from legends and fairy tales.

Ancient legends are a reflection of the deepest layers of the culture and history of a particular people. Studying and comparing them with the facts of the history of certain nationalities, one can draw conclusions about the worldview of the people who lived at that time. The value of retellings for ethnology is also extremely high.

Folk legends, historical and toponymic, were heard by everyone, but he could not pay attention to this diamond, cut during the years of transmission from mouth to mouth. Now we can appreciate what we know and what we hear about the environment. cultural world... May our article be useful to you and give you the opportunity to look at the work of the people from the other side.

What is "Tradition"? How the given word is spelled correctly. Concept and interpretation.

Tradition Tradition TRADITION (Ukrainian - information, German - Sage, French and English - tradition, Greek - paradosis, in folk terminology - "dosyulschina", "true", "past") - "folk legend", more precisely those stories and memories that are not included in the circle of genres that are clearly distinguished: epics, historical songs, spiritual poems, fairy tales, legends and anecdotes. P. is a term applied to works oral creativity and, by analogy, transferred to the corresponding works of literature (monuments of ancient writing, setting out little reliable events). The purpose of folklore is to consolidate the past in the offspring, therefore, in the appropriate environment, it is usually treated with a certain degree of trust (in contrast, for example, from a fairy tale and anecdote, which one does not believe). The number of folk P. is limitless, but according to their content they can be divided into several groups: 1. P. mythical (see "Mythology"). In addition to stories about gods, these are stories about heaven and its manifestations, about the soul and body, about the struggle of spirits, about evil spirits, about the souls of the dead, about folk saints like Frol and Laurus, Friday, etc. 2. P. naturalistic: etiological legends about the origin of plants, animals, birds, fish, objects or their properties, about fantastic animals (Phoenix bird, Firebird, Leviathan), about wonderful peoples (one-eyed people, psoglavtsy, gogs and magogs), etc. 3. P. historical, especially numerous. These include geographical (about the names of localities, cities, tracts: Kiev from Kyi, Paris from Paris, etc.), about material monuments (treasures, monasteries, burial grounds, temples, etc.), about customs ( initiation rites among primitive peoples, marriage, funeral rites, etc.), about truly historical events (about the Tatars, about wars), about various historical figures (about Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Attila, Belisarius, Columbus, Joan of Arc), about the genealogy of peoples or heroes (Franks from Trojans, Danes from Odin, Rurik from Augustus, etc.), P. about minerals (for example, Herodotus wrote about the wealth of the north in gold and amber off the coast of the North Sea). The class struggle captured historical legends in its whirlpool, making them either a weapon of enslavement and deception of the oppressed classes (feudal legends about the Monomakh hat, the white hood, the nobility of kings), or the focus of attraction of sympathies, aspirations for liberation and a bright future among the oppressed classes (for example peasant P. about Stepan Razin, about Pugachev and other heroes of popular uprisings). The October Revolution gave rise to a number of revolutionary legends about heroism civil war, about red partisans, about the leaders of the revolution, about communists (Baku commissars, Chapaev, Dzerzhinsky, etc.), counterrevolutionary P. (about the birth of the devil, the antichrist, updated icons, etc.) also spread in a hostile class environment. The heroic personality of V.I. People's P., reflecting the features of production, everyday, social, and class relations of different stages of the past, represent the richest historical source... Folk artefacts are kept in broad strata of the population, but there are special experts in them, people who sometimes have a huge memory. The very narration of folk P. is not an end in itself, but occurs at a suitable occasion at gatherings, gatherings, etc. The existence of folk P. occurs in waves: either P. dies down, then under the influence of a socio-political impulse it revives again. There are P., wandering around the globe (about the flood, etc.), there are narrow-local P. The creative process of creating P. is going on to this day. Our ancient historical (chronicles, chronographs, palei, etc.) and literary monuments (apocrypha, legends, stories, novels) are saturated with P. P. serves as a rich source of plots and images of the world fiction(for example " The Divine Comedy"Dante," Decameron "by Boccaccio," A Dream on Midsummer's Night "by Shakespeare," Faust "by Goethe," Pan Tadeusz "by Mitskevich," Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka "by Gogol and many others. etc.). Bibliography: I. Texts of Russian P. are scattered in collections of fairy tales, legends, for example: Sadovnikov DN, Tales and legends of the Samara region, St. Petersburg, 1884; Afanasyev A. N., People's Russian legends, M., 1859, and Kazan, 1914; Shein P.V., Materials for the study of everyday life and language of the Russian population of the North-West. edge, t. II, St. Petersburg, 1893; Dobrovolskiy VN, Smolensk ethnographic collection, part 1, St. Petersburg, 1891. A large material of texts and research on the P. of the peoples of the USSR is in folklore magazines and collections: "Living antiquity", "Siberian living antiquity", "Ethnographic review" , "Ethnographic Visnik", "Materials for the description of localities and tribes of the Caucasus", "Ethnographic zbirnik", "Izvestia Mosk. society of lovers of natural science, anthropology and ethnography "and others. II. People's P. were collected and studied unevenly. Original editions: Grimm, Br., Deutsche Sagen, 2 Teile, Berlin, 1816-1818, 4 Aufl., 1906; Danhardt O., Natursagen, eine Sammlung naturdeutender Sagen, Marchen, Fabeln und Legenden, Lpz., I-IV, 1907-1912; Wehrhan K., Die Sage, Lpz., 1908; Paul H., Grundriss der germ. Philologie, Bd II, 2 Aufl., Strasburg, 1901-1905. See also Mythology. III. There is no bibliography of Russian P. They must be searched for in general bibliographies of folklore, for example: Brodsky H., Gusev H., Sidorov H., Russian oral literature, L., 1924.

Tradition- COMMITMENT, Qia, cf. Passing from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, a story about the past, a legend. Naro ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ozhegov

Tradition- in folk poetry, a narrative containing information about real persons and events ...

Tradition is something that has come down to our days directly from the depths of centuries and therefore preserved the spirit of that time. “Legends of deep antiquity ...” - this is how A.S. Pushkin about the events described in Ruslana and Lyudmila.

The word "legend" in mind modern man even more connected with fiction, a frankly implausible story that embellishes reality.

But in scientific literature about folklore, these concepts have a different, clearer meaning. Legends and legends are genres of oral folk art... Legends - stories of historical content, folk and historical prose. Legends are stories of religious content. The popular consciousness does not distinguish between traditions and legends. And modern science is not always able to draw a clear line between them.

The name "legend" quite accurately reflects the essence of this genre. This is a story that is passed by word of mouth, passed from generation to generation.

Literacy and books were available to few. And almost every person wanted to know their place in history, to understand the events. And up to the 19th century, legends replaced the common people with historical literature, telling about the past in their own way. Legends do not reflect the entire course of events. They focus on specific highlights in history.

Legends often highlight the origin of a particular people. Usually we are talking about some ancestor, ancestor, with whom the name of a tribe or people (ethnonym) is associated.

There are many things in legends that cannot be read about in books. The past is usually embellished in legends. Thus, it is said that in former times there lived not ordinary people, but giants; therefore, human bones found at the site of past battles between Russians and Lithuanians or Chudyu (one of the Finnish tribes) seem to be striking in their size. Robber or Cossack chieftains in the past also possessed some magical properties: for example, Ermak, according to legend, is invulnerable to bullets, Razin is a sorcerer, etc.

Of course, real circumstances also found their reflection in the legends.

About their own kings and generous robbers.

In almost all legends, one bright personality always stands at the center of any event: a prince, a robber. Ataman, general, etc. This personality determines everything that happens.

Legends about historical figures can describe events that are widely known: for example, the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, etc. But along with this, there are many plots in which various actions of famous people are depicted, which are not known from archival documents or other sources.

Of particular interest for folk historical prose is the private life of a historical person. Bright, outstanding figures, although they differ in legends from ordinary people, but in some ways they look like mere mortals. They have their own personal life, they can do things that are not at all heroic, everyday, communicate directly with the common people, etc. It tells, for example, how Peter I becomes the godfather of the son of a poor peasant, as one of the greatest commanders of the 18th century. Count Rumyantsev is fishing on his estate, and Suvorov jokes with his soldiers.

Legends are often full of irony: even great figures in them can make mistakes, be mistaken, appear in a funny light. This is another important feature legends: they not only consolidate historical events in the people's memory, even embellishing them, but also bring them closer to everyday life. Therefore, in the stories, in addition to famous personalities and high-profile events, there are heroes and circumstances unknown outside the area.

Many legends are devoted to how this or that city was founded and new territories were developed, how certain geographical names arose. These plots are also associated with the activities of one outstanding person.

The names of cities, villages, rivers, lakes are sometimes associated with some local event (which in reality might not have happened).

Among the heroes of legends, robbers and strongmen are often found.

Robbers rob, kill people, hide loot, bury treasures that no one can find. There are stories about whole robber villages: residents lured passers-by to spend the night, and then killed them; or they did their usual work during the day and robbed at night.

However, robbers are not always portrayed as villains in legends. Often we are talking about noble people's defenders giving away the loot to the poor. Among them, Razin and Pugachev are mentioned.

The strongmen in legends are always simple people, representatives of the environment in which they are told about them: among the Cossacks, this is a Cossack, in the burlak stories, it is a barge haule. Such a strong man surpasses everyone in physical power and usually does not have an equal opponent, but in all other respects he is the same as everyone else. But sometimes such heroes are endowed with mythological, magical features. One of the most famous strongman heroes is Rakhta (or Rakhkoy) Ragnozero, so named after the village of Ragnozero in Karelia.

Such characters indicate the connection of legends with other folklore genres, in the center of which is an exceptional personality: with epics, historical songs, fairy tales, folk beliefs.

How Christ Gathered Bread

The word "legend" in Latin literally means "what should be read." Initially, this was the name of the Lives of the Saints, which contained examples of Christian virtue and pious behavior. Later, legends began to be understood as generally instructive and pious stories. And then just stories in which something unusual, wonderful happens, but it is perceived as something that actually happened.

In legends, along with people and animals, God and saints, angels and demons act. If the legend is turned into the past, then the time of the action is not specified in the legend. This is either a sacred time - when God created the world, or we are talking about events that could happen at any time.

Everything that happens in the legends is described and assessed from the point of view of compliance with Christian norms of life - as the folk tradition understands them. In the events depicted in the legends, much is incredible. But the concepts of “plausible” or “improbable” do not apply to them.

In legends, Christ or saints often descend to earth and unrecognized ones walk on it, rewarding the righteous and punishing sinners. Such plots are based on the contrast between what a person thinks of inconspicuous wanderers and who they really are. The punishment or reward follows immediately or is promised in a future life, in hell or in heaven.

It happens that legends have something in common with fairy tales. Their difference is that fairy tales are told for fun, for fun. And the legends, despite the similarity of the plots, are taken quite seriously, as a real case, from which one should draw conclusions, extract morality.

The plots of the legends were drawn not only from the oral, but also from the written culture. Among the written sources, the apocrypha are in the first place. Some biblical events also formed the basis of legends.

Christian images and plots are often superimposed on ancient folk beliefs.

Legendary subjects are reflected not only in literature, but also in icon painting. The most common type of icon of St. George - "The Miracle of St. George about the Serpent" - is associated with a legend, and not with the life of this saint. This image, where Saint George on horseback tramples and pierces a serpent with a spear, was so popular that it became the coat of arms of Moscow Russia, and then Moscow.

Legends and traditions are a living genre. They surround us to this day. Folk culture still counts events in its own way, selecting what seems to be the most important. And the rumors that modern rumor gives rise to and spreads, in the future, may well reach descendants with outlandish stories.

Tradition is"Oral chronicle", a genre of non-fairy-tale prose with a focus on historical accuracy. Legends are common in folklore different nations ... The main purpose of the legend is to preserve the memory of national history... Historicism is due to the stadial state of folklore this ethnic group... The ancient legends are full of mythological representations, while the later ones depict reality in everyday forms, however, fiction, sometimes even fantasy, is always present in them. Scientists identify different groups legends: historical, toponymic, ethnogenetic, about the settlement and development of the region, about treasures, etiological, cultorological. Legends are often subdivided into historical and toponymic, but all legends are historical (already in their genre essence), therefore, any toponomic legend is also historical. Legends continue to exist in the oral tradition. The theme of legends is always of general significance, the conflict is national or social, the characters are representatives of the state, nation, specific classes or estates. The general, the typical in tradition is depicted by means of the particular, the concrete. Legends are characterized by local confinement to a village, lake, mountain, home. Their authenticity is sometimes supported by material evidence (the hero built a church, donated a thing). Events are centered around historical figures who are often presented in an ideal light. Plots of legends, as a rule, are single-motive. Consolidated (contaminated) plots can develop around the character, and cycles can arise. At the beginning or at the end of the story, direct characteristics and assessments of the hero are allowed, which are necessary for the image to be correctly understood, and acting as a general opinion (about Peter I: “Here it is the tsar - so the tsar didn’t eat bread for free, he worked better than the barge haulers”) ...

Tradition in the Russian repertoire

In the Russian repertoire, one can distinguish the most ancient legends, legends about the "just king", legends about the leaders of popular movements, about robbers and hoards. The oldest legends tell about the settlement of the Slavic tribes and about their ancestors. A large number of legends dedicated to the struggle Ancient Rus with external enemies. Legends about the "just tsar" are associated with the names of Ivan IV (the Terrible) and Peter I. There is a large group of legends about the relationship of Peter I with representatives of different social strata and professions. Legends about the leaders of popular movements (Ermak, Stepan Razin, Emelyan Pugachev) complement the people's utopian dream of a "just king." The legends of robbers and hoards were told throughout Russia. The image of a “noble robber” who robbed the rich and interceded for the poor appeared in numerous local variations (Churkin, Roshchin, Soroka). Legends about the robber Kudeyar are widespread, reflecting the genetic connection between the stories about the treasures and mythology. The ancient layer of the image of Kudeyar goes back to a mysterious and powerful being, the owner of the earth's interior and the values ​​hidden in them. The very word "Kudeyar" means a violent rebel, a magician. The legends about Kudeyar were used by N.A. Nekrasov in the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" (1863-77). There are repetitive toponymic plots (about failed churches, cities). International is the plot about how the tsar pacified the raging water element (he was attributed to the Persian tsar Xerxes, and in the Russian oral tradition the plot began to appear in the legend about Ivan the Terrible and Peter I). In a number of cases, international legends reveal a typological commonality: throughout history, they arose among different peoples independently of each other, generated by similar social and cultural conditions. Such were the legends about noble robbers (Robin Hood, Razin, Schinderhannes, etc.). And yet the event of legends is always portrayed as a single, complete, unique. At the present time, some national catalogs of legends have been compiled and the problem of creating their unified international catalog has been raised.

"The tradition of deep antiquity, deeds of bygone days ..." These lines from childhood hears, sees, reads every Russian-speaking person. This is how Alexander Pushkin began his work "Ruslan and Lyudmila". Are his tales really legends? To know for sure, you need to understand the concepts.

Poetry is poetry, but what does the word "legend" mean? We will consider the definition and special features of this phenomenon in our article.

Tradition as a genre

We will begin our acquaintance with the world of folk legends with the definition of the concept itself. So, various sources give us the following.

Tradition is a prosaic plot in which historical facts appear in the popular interpretation. The legends of the people are not associated with the genre of fairy tales, although sometimes events resemble mythical or fabulous.

Traditions in literary theory are usually divided into two large groups according to the type of plot: historical and toponymic.

Legends are part of oral folk prose

We learned, The Definition gave us a general idea. Let's talk about one feature of this genre. It is noteworthy that the legends are. This means that the stories heard today were created hundreds of years ago and passed from mouth to mouth. By the time the legend was recorded on an information medium, tens or even hundreds of transformations of the plot and images could have occurred.

The works of the famous Greek poet Homer "Iliad" and "Odyssey", which are incredible in size, were also transmitted orally. They also described historical events, embellished and somewhat altered. This shows some similarity of these creations with newer legends.

As a genre of oral prose, legends are admired for their long history. Fortunately, or maybe not, distribution in recorded form is much easier these days. We should appreciate every word, tradition, which gives important spiritual knowledge about ancestors.

Comparison with other folklore prose genres

Tradition can sometimes be mistakenly defined as a legend or an epic. To avoid this, let us name the following pattern: the plots of legends are aimed at explaining the origin of some cultural or natural phenomenon. They often give a certain moral assessment of the events described. And the legend is a retelling of history in a folk way with the participation of well-known or famous heroes in the local area.

The legends of the people differ from the epics by their content, by the characters (historical figures: robbers, rulers, ordinary people, artisans), by the participation of real personalities known in a certain area, who have become mythological heroes.

A characteristic of this genre of folklore prose is a third-person narration about events related to the past. The narrator of the legends was not an eyewitness to the events, but conveys a story heard from third parties.

Historical legends

Collective folk memory created ancient legends from real facts, about which we can read in a slightly different light in history textbooks. This is how historical legends were created.

Historical legends include the legends about Joan of Arc, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Ataman Mazepa and others.

This also includes the biblical stories about the creation of the world, the exit of the Israelites from Egypt in search of their land, and many others.

This group includes such legends that absorb people's ideas about the creation of their world. All folklore units create a single historical and mythological world that reflects a broad picture of the people's view of the surrounding reality.

The time frame covered by the legends is difficult to determine: this is information from the most biblical antiquity to the present.

Toponymic traditions

The toponymic legends are those that record the events that became the basis for the origin of a particular name. Their heroes are, respectively, local famous characters and events that are meaningful only there. Studying local stories like this is an interesting part of toponymic and ethnographic research.

Toponymic are short legends about the Serpent Shafts (from the Serpent), the city of Kiev (about Kiev, his brothers and sister), the city of Orsha (Prince Orsh and his daughter Orshitsa), the city of Lvov and many other toponymic objects.

Research perspective

In every city, every village there are such short stories about where some local name came from. Collections of such legends can be compiled endlessly. There is still a field for research today. Therefore, everyone who has discovered legends and found them to be an interesting object of activity has a job.

Publishing a collection of legends collected in a specific area is a very real prospect. New names are still appearing today, right at this moment. Also, in remote corners of Russia, there are settlements in which folklore is actively developing. This means that new boundaries appear for ethnographic and folklore work.

It is noteworthy that at the present time there are more topographic legends. Historical ones are preserved from previous eras, since for some time all facts are fixed immediately after their appearance.

Legends, myths and their historical basis

The legend, which we have already defined, is sometimes associated with mythology. So, the stories about the exploits of the Greek hero Hercules, according to the researchers, could not have arisen without real historical facts. Those mythical events and heroes, which overgrown the probable real story of the adventures of Hercules, appeared over time.

Several facts from the Book of Enoch were confirmed, in which the giants were mentioned. In the same way, architectural monuments were found that could have witnessed the events that became the basis of the legend about the Flood.

conclusions

Thus, we learned that tradition is a word of mouth folk story about historical events. In the process of transmission, carriers tend to embellish the tradition. The definition and features of this folklore genre are now known to us. We can easily distinguish it from legends and fairy tales.

Ancient legends are a reflection of the deepest layers of the culture and history of a particular people. Studying and comparing them with the facts of the history of certain nationalities, one can draw conclusions about the worldview of the people who lived at that time. The value of retellings for ethnology is also extremely high.

Folk legends, historical and toponymic, were heard by everyone, but he could not pay attention to this diamond, cut during the years of transmission from mouth to mouth. Now we can appreciate what we know and what we hear about the surrounding cultural world. May our article be useful to you and give you the opportunity to look at the work of the people from the other side.