Fiction is a living folklore and literary genre

For all its seeming simplicity, the genre of fiction raises many questions. Why are fancies for children so attractive? Why is this genre universal for many cultures? Why exactly this genre of oral folk art remains "alive" and claimed in literature? In short, what is the essence of fiction and why does it remain so invariably in demand?

Definition of the genre of fables

If we talk laconically, then the fiction is a short narrative about something that obviously can not be, and this impossibility is exaggeratedly emphasized, and therefore a comic effect is created. "The village was riding past the peasant ...", "There was a giant of short stature in the world ..." - these and many other "meaningless" images are created according to very different, fairly transparent schemes, but invariably cause laughter and interest.

Russian and English roots of fables

In Russia, both Russian folk tales and fables of other peoples are known. First of all, fiction, nonsense, absurdity is associated with English folklore and English literature. In the twentieth century in Russia, this genre was greatly animated by the appearance of translations of English folklore and works of English "nonsense" (literally: "nonsense"). English children's songs, mostly based on the principle of nonsense, were translated as fiction for children by Samuel Marshak and Kornei Chukovsky. Russian readers of many generations love the images from the translated songs "Barabek", "The Scrabble Song" and other poems where the world is known to be "turned upside down" is absurd. Literary examples of English fables - this is, above all, Limerick Edward Lear, who are mostly known in the translations of Grigory Kruzhkov.

The simplicity of adopting the English version of the genre is, first of all, due to the accustomed fiction for the Russian consciousness, because fiction is a genre that existed in Russia long before the "vaccination" of the Russian culture of the English nonsense.

Literary fables

The fiction remains a living genre in both folklore and literature. Russian babies are known as folk tales, and author's. Perhaps, the most famous literary samples of the genre were created by Kornei Chukovsky and Henry Sapgir. First of all, this, of course, is the "Confusion" of K. Chukovsky.

However, his other tales and poems on closer examination are very similar to the nonsense in the genre sense of the word. "Miracle tree", "Joy", "Cockroach" - at the heart of these widely-known children's poems lies a fiction. This, in fact, the author's versions of the development of this genre.

As for the work of Henry Sapgir, few people in Russia know his famous "Fables in the faces". Unexpectedness of combining incompatible images and at the same time lightness of lines, creating the illusion of naturalness and thereby even more emphasizing "unprecedented" - all this is remembered for a long time as a very talented and expressive work.

Tricks as an accessible aesthetic experience

Korney Chukovsky in his book "From two to five" suggested that fiction for children is an opportunity to rejoice in their own ability to see a deviation from the norm. The child, according to Chukovsky, through fiction strengthens in his understanding of the norm, in his orientation in the world around him.

However, apparently, everything is not quite so simple. Fiction is also one of the first available aesthetic experiments. It is when you get acquainted with nonsense that the child develops the perception of artistic convention, because "nonsense" is the most primitive, accessible to the child artistic bias underlying any artistic work. Fables therefore lay the foundation for the perception of artistic metaphor, artistic image, prepare the child for the formation of literary taste.