What is the difference between an epic and a folk tale? What is the difference between an epic, a short story and a folk tale?
Bylina- special song epic genre, which developed in Russian folklore at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries. As in a folk tale, the epic contains ethnic elements everyday life and myth-making, however, its distinctive feature is not the entertaining or moralizing plot on which the fairy-tale narrative is based, but the description of the historical significant events, who embodied folk performance about heroic strength and valor.
IN fairy tale characters have lost direct connection with real heroes and acquired an abstract meaning, expressed in the confrontation between good and evil. The plot of fairy tales is fiction, created as a transformation of reality into a wonderful image associated with the mystical ideas of a certain ethnic group about the world around us.
The epic specifies the characters who played important role in historical events or who became famous among their fellow tribesmen for special merits and military merits.
The style of narration in fairy tales and epics is also significantly different. The content of the tale is conveyed in the usual narrative manner, close to colloquial speech. Epic poems are performed with a solemn recitative to string accompaniment, thanks to which the narrator is able to preserve the rhythm of syllabic-tonic verse inherent in the epic text.
Means characteristic of epics artistic expression also differ from the traditional tropes used in the tale. Hyperbole, repetition of stable phrases, intensification of synonymous words, abundance of epithets, antithesis - all these form-building techniques are used in epics to emphasize solemnity and preserve storyline. For example, similar situations in heroic epics the Kyiv cycle is repeated three times; "valiant strength" "glorious" hero Ilya Muromets resists deceit “the kingdom of the filthy”; in Novgorod epics Vasily Buslaevich has incredible strength, and Sadko is able to sink to the bottom of the sea and come out unscathed.
Fairy tales were created as instructive and entertaining stories at the same time. They were told among family members and could have an ending with the subtext: “The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it - good fellows lesson".
Epics glorified heroic heroes. They were performed in front of large crowds of people, in squares and near city walls.
Bylina about beautiful Vasilisa Mikulishnu
Conclusions website
- The epic is a folk epic song, and the fairy tale belongs to the small narrative epic genres.
- The plot of fairy tales is fiction, epics always have historical background And real prototype hero.
- The tale uses a conversational style of narration; the epic is performed in recitative.
- Fairy tale - prose works of oral folk art, the epic has a poetic meter.
- The main technique of the epic is hyperbole, repetition, stable formulas and speech patterns.
Dictionary of Russian folklore terms
Course compiler Nikita Petrov about what an epic is, whether Ilya Muromets really existed and how Stalin became the hero of the epic / Course No. 14 “Russian Epic”
How does a fairy tale differ from an epic, who is the storyteller and what is an invariant? A dictionary of terms without which Russian folklore cannot be understood. Also in course #14: to be continued...
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Nikita Petrov - folklorist, anthropologist, candidate philological sciences, Associate Professor at the Center for Typology and Semiotics of Folklore, Russian State University for the Humanities, senior researcher School of Current Humanitarian Research RANEPA. He became interested in the comparative study of the epic at the university after lectures by the researcher of epics Yu. A. Novikov, continued his studies in epic studies at the Institute of Higher Humanitarian Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities (now IVGI named after E. M. Meletinsky), then defended his dissertation at the Center for Typology and Semiotics of Folklore under the guidance of S. Yu. Neklyudova. Sphere scientific interests today - folklore and mythology, anthropology of the city, epic studies, plot and motive indicators, narratology, anthropology of memory.
Author of the monograph “Bogatyrs in the Russian North” (Moscow, 2008), one of the compilers of collections of texts folklore prose“Kargopolye: a folklore guide (traditions, legends, stories, songs and sayings” (M., 2009), “Experts, sorcerers and warlocks: witchcraft and everyday magic in the Russian North” (M., 2013), author of articles in the encyclopedia “ Myths of the peoples of the world" (OLMA; St. Petersburg, Moscow, 2014).
Heroic tales - archaic heroic epic, preceding the epics. The plot is based on the collisions of a “heroic biography” (a miraculous birth, a heroic childhood, heroic matchmaking, the loss and re-finding of a bride/wife, and so on). Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp called such a tale a “pre-state epic.”
Epics- “sung with a voice”, usually poetic works(sometimes they could be told in prose). In epics, events take place around a hero, or an epic ruler, or a city (Kyiv, Novgorod). Epics are based on the opposition between “friends and strangers” and on a mythical or quasi-historical past. In some epics, heroes of extraordinary physical strength defeat ethnic or historical enemies (“Ilya Muromets and Kalin the Tsar”, “Alyosha and Tugarin”). Such epics are called heroic. IN fairy tale epics the heroes do not defeat anyone, but, like the heroes of a fairy tale, descend into the underground or underwater kingdom (“Mikhailo Potyk”, “Sadko”). Another type of epic is ballad texts (“Alyosha and the Petrovich brothers”, “Churilo Plenkovich”, “Stavr Godinovich”). In them, heroes commit ordinary (often unseemly) actions, or their wives turn out to be heroes, using cunning to rescue their husbands from trouble.
The term "epic" began to be used first explorers in the 1840s. Apparently, the term is the result of an incorrect reading of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “Let these songs begin according to the epics of this time, and not according to the plans of Boyan” (“the epics” here are what actually happened). The performers of epics called these works “antiquities” or “starinki”; in handwritten collections of the 17th - early XIX centuries, texts such as epics were called “histories” or “tales” about heroes, “ancient Russian poems”; critics also called them “fairy tales in verse”, “poems in a fairy tale kind”.
The epics existed in the oral environment until the second half of the 20th century. Most epics (about 3000 texts) were recorded in the 19th–20th centuries in the Russian North (Arkhangelsk region, Karelia), in Siberia, the Urals and the Volga.
The chorus of the epic - the beginning of a text that is not directly related to the plot, but reveals the internal logic of the narrative.
The beginning of the epic - a fragment of text that introduces the listener to the setting of the action and the circle of characters.
Invariant of epic - a text that brings together all the common elements for one epic plot. This is not a real existing text, but a speculative construct created by folklorists. A specific performance (or recording) of an epic based on this plot is called a variant.
News- pseudo-folklore, but in fact original works, imitation of epics. The authors of new songs are not traditionalist storytellers singing canonical epics, but improvisational storytellers. Novins were created in the 1930s–1960s either by storytellers on their own, after reading news about the “heroic present” of Soviet times, or as a result of the joint work of storytellers and folklorists who came to villages and brought Chapaev’s biography, newspaper clippings about CPSU congresses, and so on. In place of heroes, Lenin, Stalin, Voroshilov, Papanin, Chkalov and others appeared in novelties. soviet characters. Unlike epics, new stories are unproductive: they were not repeated by other storytellers. In all likelihood, the term “novina” was invented by the White Sea storyteller Marfa Kryukova, who could sing in the form of an epic and a history textbook. In total, more than 600 novel texts are known.
Epic characters. Story roles: epic hero and his environment, enemy (antagonist); epic lord; messenger and helper/savior; servant/squire; a messenger conveying a message/prediction/warning; bride. The main characters of the classical epic are heroes who usually do not use magic and sorcery, but who win with extraordinary strength and desperate courage, who have an overactive, willful, “frantic” character, sometimes even overestimating their strength. But there are also “heroes” who in some cases do not fall under these characteristics: Volkh Vseslavyevich, Churilo Plenkovich, Sadko and others. This is due to the fact that the epic does not create “pure” character schemes and each character can be assigned any, even cameo role. So, there is a hero who appears for one action - to count the incorrect force:
The old elder and Ilya Muromets spoke here:
“You are a goy, son of Peresmet Stepanovich!
You should go with your and your nephew,
Just go to the open field, where the sholomya is dripping,
Now take a spyglass,
How can you recount and recount this great power,
Great unfaithful power."
Storytellers- professional and non-professional performers of the Russian epic, those who perform the text in a unique manner - they say using 24 chants of a recitative nature. The term began to be used in folklore starting from mid-19th century after its mention in the works of the first collectors of Russian epic, Rybnikov and Hilferding. The storytellers themselves called themselves “old-timers”, “storytellers”. The old-timers were mostly peasants, often Old Believers, both men and women. Men preferred to sing heroic epics(“Ilya and Idolishche”, “Alyosha and Tugarin”, “Ilya Muromets and Kalin the Tsar” and others), and the women are “old women” (“Churilo and Katerina”, “Dobrynya and Alyosha”). Folklorists have noticed that some storytellers strive for an extremely accurate reproduction of what they have learned - these are “transmitters”. Others - “interpreters” - create their own editions and versions of the plot. And the “improvisers” present the epic in a new way every time.
A fairy tale (and its difference from an epic). Hero fairy tale acts in personal interests or in the interests of his family; having defeated his opponent, he always receives some kind of reward: he marries the princess, gets material goods. The hero of the epic song defends the interests of the people and the state. If a hero saves a brother or sister, then this happens by chance; relatives recognize each other after defeating the enemy (“Kozarin”, “Dorodovich Brothers”), while fairy tale hero From the very beginning he sets himself exactly this goal. The hero of a fairy tale wins with the help of magical power, in contrast to the epic, where the feat is achieved thanks to heroic exertion of strength. At the same time, some epic stories (“The Healing of Ilya Muromets”, “Sadko at the Sea King”, “Potyk”, “Dobrynya and Alyosha”) are based on collisions similar to fairy tales.
The plot of the epic. Usually revolves around the biography of the hero and is divided into the following episodes: I. Heroic childhood. II. Gaining power/wealth/recruiting a squad. III. Military collisions. IV. Conflicts. V. Rivalry. VI. Matrimonial conflicts. VII. Adventures. VIII. Death of a hero. The plot of the epic is characterized by two main epic collisions: military (the hero is opposed to the enemy) and marriage (the hero is opposed to the bride).
Researchers have different opinions about how many main epic plots there are: some put the figure at 100–130 plots (as Propp believed, in particular), others, including the compilers of the Code of Epics in 25 volumes, believe that there are about sixty.
Orality in the epic- a system of rules that the storyteller uses to sing the epic. The concept of orality emerged from the study of Homer: according to the conclusions of some scholars, the Iliad and the Odyssey are of folklore origin, and their texts were formed as a result of repeated performances by storytellers. The narrator, focusing on the plot, examples of style and poetic vocabulary known to him, composed an epic song by substituting formulas in a certain metrical position and combining themes. Formulas and themes formed the so-called epic knowledge and epic memory, the essence of which came down not only to the ability to memorize thousands of poems.
Epic cyclization - plots grouped around the figure of the main character: epics from one cycle can reflect different episodes of his life. There is also a cyclization of events and characters around a certain epic center (Kyiv) and an epic sovereign (Prince of Kyiv).
The epic and fairy tale are folklore genres, in contrast to the story, which is a strictly literary genre. This means that neither an epic nor a fairy tale has an author as such. The author in this case is considered to be consciousness; This is a kind of generalized image of the author. The author invariably accompanies the story. For example, Chekhov’s “The Bishop” or Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Mask of the Red Death”.
The story and tale are epic. The epic, despite the epic plot, still does not lose touch with the lyrics, since it is presented in poetic form.
The time depicted in the epic is always the past. The story allows the plot to be placed at any time. The space of a fairy tale is timeless and universal.
The hero of the epic is a hero. But this is a collective image, it captures the appearance of the entire people. The heroes of a fairy tale are also collective images. This may be evidenced by the absence of any precise indication of the time and place (chronotope) of the action that is described. In addition, the names of the heroes “wander” from the fairy tale to, the names of the heroes of fairy tales about animals are accompanied constant epithets. That is, the heroes of a fairy tale are simply transferred by the popular consciousness from one plot space to another. The hero of the story is unique (mostly), an episode from his specific life becomes plot-forming.
The epic reflects certain historical events and even heroes (mainly the figure of the prince), but with a predominant share of fiction, because, despite the seemingly historical background, this component real story people are being rethought. Here the epic partially intersects with the story, which can also be reflected real facts(both modern and distant in time), familiar to the author. Otherwise, the story, being a genre of literature as special type art is fiction, another reality, intersecting, of course, with reality, but rather weakly (otherwise the essence of art as a type of activity disappears). In this, it is joined by a fairy tale, which represents unreality in its purest form and which is opposed to the epic, which admits “reality” into itself.
Bylina - this is Russian folk song about notable cases national history, epic song. Fairy tale - This interesting story O incredible adventures or events.
What are the differences?
The similarities and differences between a fairy tale and an epic exist in specific key points. As a rule, a fairy tale is based on fiction, and an epic, in turn, conveys the realities of a certain time. In other words, an epic differs from a fairy tale in that it tells about ancient times and almost all the information is reliable.
In a fairy tale, the characters do not have a direct connection with real heroes, they have an abstract meaning and the entire plot of fairy tales is a fiction in which there's a story going on about the mystical adventures of the main character, about mysterious world and other performances.
The epic specifies heroes who played an important role in historical events or received great fame due to special merits.
The epic often describes the exploits of heroes, heroes, princes, etc. IN goes like a fairy tale a narrative of a fantastic, magical or everyday nature. It is also worth noting that the fairy tale most often happens in prose work, but the epic is in song and verse form.
Many fairy tales were created as educational and entertaining stories. They were often told among close friends or among household members. Bylinas exalted heroic heroes. They were told in front of large crowds of people, in squares or in the city center.
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What are the similarities?
Fairy tales and epics are a form of Russian oral folk art. These two genres have existed since ancient times, they are very popular and famous to this day.
Initially they existed only orally. They were sung, told and told. The epic and fairy tale reflected the battle between good and evil, the generosity of the heroes and their moral values.
The fairy tale is magical story, which teaches the reader only positive things. Fairy tales are most often written in prose. Fairy tale heroes often become unusual heroes, on the way of which magical evil forces appear. In fairy tales, good always triumphs over evil.
The epic represents folk song about the adventures of heroes. In epics there is often rhyming. Distinctive feature epic is vivid description national color and historical events from the past. The basis of the plot of the epic - heroic deeds and the exploits of heroes.
What is the difference between an epic and a fairy tale?
Bylina is an epic ancient Russian song of the people, which tells about real events in history dating back to the 11th–16th centuries. The main goal epics are to tell the reader about the heroes and heroes of Ancient Rus'.
Examples of epics
A word about Igor's regiment.
Dobrynya and the Serpent.
Kalin the Tsar and Ilya Muromets.
Russian Bogatyrs.
A fairy tale is a fictional story with a fantastic, heroic or everyday character. The plot of a fairy tale, as a rule, never happened in reality. The main purpose of the fairy tale is to teach younger generation and instilling moral and moral standards through a fictional story.
Examples of fairy tales
About the white bull.
The frog princess.
The Tale of the Priest and the Worker Balda.
The difference between a fairy tale and an epic
The style of narration in the epic is poetic, usually read to string accompaniment in a solemn recitative. The words and parts of the verse follow a strict sequence.
« Sat on a white-flammable stone
And plays the spring goosebumps.
How the water in the lake began to shake,
The king of the sea appeared, came out"
The fairy tale is written and narrated usually in a conversational manner and has a free style of presentation.
“My hut is small, small,” says the bunny. - There is nowhere for one to jump. How can I let you go, little fox? The bunny didn't let the little fox into the house. The fox appeared another time and began to walk. I decided to go to the bunny every day.”
In epics, such techniques as triple repetition, hyperbole, synonymous words, and frequent epithets are often used.
For those, for your great deeds, for your game, for your tender, most tender.
Fairy tales usually use traditional tropes. Template beginnings. (Once upon a time. In a certain kingdom. Baba Yaga bone leg. Pull, pull.)
The epic is most often written in the genre of folk epic song.
A fairy tale is usually a narrative epic genre.
In epics, as a rule, the character and event were indeed copied from previously living heroes. (Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich).
A fairy tale always describes a fictional story, event or character. Often a fairy tale has an absolutely fantastic character. (Frog Princess, flying ship, Little Humpbacked Horse.
