Английский язык спецтексты для филологов
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Lesson 11. Folk TalesThe collection and interpretation of folk tales has always been an important part of folklore studies and at one time seemed likely to overshadow all other sec- tions of the work. Here again, the problems of diffusion or independent creation, of age and of literary borrowings were fruitful sources of controversy. That some tales are very old and embody in their incidents conditions of an archaic state of society is obvious, but that such conditions actually prevailed in the regions where the tale is found at the time of its first telling is not so certain. The striking simi- larity of many stories found in different parts of the world suggests that they were carried from place to place by travelers, and J. Jacobs (in his article in Folklore, vol. 5, 1894) pointed out that some of their more primitive elements may have been introduced into a particular country only after they had already become sur- vivals. On the other hand, it has been argued that if men have passed through the same stages of development everywhere they are likely to have embodied the de- tails of that development in stories that are essentially the same. In this, as in other parts of the folklore field, there is no single formula which can be used unfailingly for interpretation, and individual tales, like superstitions and folk customs, will only yield secrets to detailed and scientific investigation. The stories told by early peoples, handed down from generation to generation or carried by migrating tribes, merchants, sailors and other travelers from one country to another, fall into three main classes – those of myth, of legend and popular tales intended mainly for amusement. Myths are sacred narratives with a practical purpose. They deal principally with past events of cosmic and permanent significance, like the creation of heaven and earth or the coming of death into the world or with such everlasting mysteries as the struggle between good and evil or life beyond the grave. By recounting what is believed to have happened in prime- val ages they provide supernatural sanction and precedent for existing rituals, tra- ditional behaviour and custom and the accepted pattern of tribal society. In so far as they account for what now is by what was in the beginning, they have etiologi- cal significance, but the true function of a myth, so long as it remains a living force, is not to provide explanations but to stabilize and unify the community or tribe to which it belongs. Its business, as R.R. Marett says in his Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion (Oxford University Press, 1932), “is not to satisfy curiosity, but to confirm the faith … cater, not for the speculative man with his Why, but for the practical man with his How if not thus?” Legends of the saga type, like those of Arthur or the Homeric heroes, and the many stories of lands overwhelmed by the sea can perhaps be best described as twisted and broken fragments of history. They preserve traditions of heroic per- sonages and of real or supposed historical happenings and contain a nucleus of true fact, heavily embellished, as a rule, by magical or romantic accretions or by borrowings from similar tales told elsewhere. Since they are concerned with par- ticular places or individuals, their central themes have a distinct character and may be supposed to have originated in the regions whence the tales were collect- ed, but in their later embroideries they usually resemble saga-legends in other parts of the world. Heroes, for instance, are credited with attributes common to giants, fairies and supernatural beings in many different areas; flood and other disasters occur as the result of curses or tabu violations of a stock type or at at- tached to the wrong place or period and so on. The third and largest class of popular tales are those told purely or mainly for the entertainment of their hearers. Unlike legends and myths, they are not con- cerned with history, ritual practices, or explanations of the natural world but are simply good stories, the fiction of unlettered peoples. They deal with situations familiar to the listeners and sometimes reflect in the setting of their incidents con- ditions of life long since vanished, like matriarchy, primitive birth and marriages customs and old forms of inheritance. The fairy tales collected by Charles Per- rault, the brothers Grimm, P.C. Asbjørnsen and J.E. Moe and others from a varie- ty of sources are of this nature. Their most usual theme is the triumph over diffi- culties, with or without supernatural aid, of the good or the oppressed and quite frequently of the merely cunning. Such ideas are, of course, common to almost all peoples and might occur to any storyteller anywhere, but the appearance of almost identical incidents, and even entire plots, in widely separated regions suggests dif- fusion rather than separate and independent invention. This is the type of story most likely to travel easily, and all the evidence points to its having done so from an early period. European folk tales also seem to have been influenced in some cases by Persian and Arabic translations of Indian literary collections of stories, first heard, perhaps, and repeated at home by crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land.
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