Исследовательская работа “RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH FAIRY TALES”

БОУ ТР ОО «Никольская средняя общеобразовательная школа» 

Исследовательская работа “RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH FAIRY TALES”

 Рабочая группа:

Ермакова Анастасия

 Погонялова Кристина

Дементьева Юлия

 Руководитель:

Кононыхина Елена Сергеевна 

2012 год

PLAN

∙ What do we know about fairy tales?

∙ There is difference in the viewpoint of each culture towards the nature of fairy tales.

 ∙ All folk tales take place in some past period and begin with a definite cliché.

∙ Tales about Animals.

 ∙ Magical tales.

∙ Tales of everyday life.

 ∙ The main motive of English fairy tales is avoiding of failure.

∙ Most of the folk tales teach children to obey their parents, respect the older ones, help those who are weak and need their help.

∙ Our tales are different in plots but they teach children all over the world the same things in a tactful and entertaining manner.

What do we know about fairy tales? Do we remember this forgotten world? Folk tales carry the history, knowledge, beliefs, and morals of a people for centuries before their societies develop literature. Folk tales exist in almost every society, but few have such a rich tradition of storytelling as do the people of Russia and England. Full of witches, talking animals, foolish yet lucky men, and wise people of all ages, folk tales entertained and enlightened many generations.

 In English, we call them fairy tales. This term comes from the French “contes des fees”, which can be translated as “tales of the fairies”, otherwise, tales which the fairies themselves might have cared to tell. In Russian, the designation for stories concerning the marvelous is skazka, meaning simply “story.” However, in Russian, there is no onus of falsehood attached to the term, as there is to the English “fairy tale.”

As we said folk tales from Europe are often called Fairy Tales because many stories, such as Cinderella, use fairies as characters. In Russia, on the other hand, there is no tradition of fairy people who occasionally appear and help humans. Instead of unreal people, characters in Russian tales are more often assisted by magical animals or objects. Russian stories are more likely to be filled with things people see every day than with fantasy creatures.

 Given this difference in the viewpoint of each culture towards the nature of fairy tales, it is unsurprising that there are differences between the nature of the messages put forth by the variants of Russian and English folklore.

But many folk stories have the same theme: the main character has problems with his/her family or in some way separated from them. The situation becomes worse during the story. The main character faces many difficulties, often with supernatural or fantasy element. He is usually young, attractive, kind, and ready witted. The evil characters are usually powerful but stupid. Very often the main character is helped by some supernatural person.

All folk tales take place in some past period and begin with a definite cliché: "Once upon a time "or ": давным-давно:" or:"В некотором царстве, в некотором государстве:" Such beginnings help a child feel the atmosphere of a wonderful world where miracles can happen.

Fairy tales can be separated into numerous categories— magical tales, tales about animals, and tales of everyday life.

Tales about Animals 

Among the central characters of  Russian fairy tales there is Fox, Wolf, Bear, Hare, She-Goat and He-Goat, Bull, Horse, Dog, Raven, and Rooster. Most frequent personages of animal tales are Fox and Wolf.

Just like the epos of Western Europe, Russian folk tales present Fox as a sneaky, crafty and treacherous creature that using its slyness gains the upper hand over stronger animals, such as Wolf and Bear. Wolf is characteristic for different human features: as a rule he is angry, greedy, voracious, and stupid; Fox has a special pleasure in playing tricks on him. Far less definite is the image of Bear, yet one of his most peculiar features is slow-wittedness.

We have analyzed "The Cock-Golden Crest" ("Пeтушок - Золотой Гребешок") and "The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen". The plots of the tales are very similar. The evil character in both tales is a cruel, cunning and greedy Fox who wants to eat up a stupid and naive Cock (in Russian folk tale), a lazy and rude Mouse and a Cock (in English folk tale). Positive characters who rescue the weakest are: English Little Red Hen who is very hard-working, wise, ready-witted and bald and Russian Cat and Blackbird, loyal and courageous friends of the silly Cock. In our opinion the moral of these two folk tales is to teach children to think first then do, to obey the older ones, to be helpful and generous.

 Magical tales

 Magical tales are those which use magical images to depict the struggle of the light and the dark, the good and the evil, or the opposite powers of nature.

The heroes in these fairy tales are in quest of the stolen beauties; they are destined to save and return them, or else to bring them back to life, if they are in dead sleep, or stiff, or the like, to revive nature. The task is achieved with the help of special wonderful artifacts or creatures, like golden apples, a horse with a golden mane, a deer with golden antlers, a fiery bird, seven-league boots, the flying carpet, the waters of Death and Life that can bring the dead back to life, and so on.

 The major representatives of the dark powers are usually Baba-Yaga and Koshchei the Deathless.

Baba-Yaga appears in Russian tales in two ways: she is whether a horrifying and wicked witch and a man-eater, or a supportive and just wise woman that helps the hero in his quest. She lives alone deep in the forest; her hut can move on its large chicken legs. Or else, Baba-Yaga lives in a tower-chamber surrounded with a vile fence made of human bones and skulls, the miserable remains of her victims.

Koshchei the Deathless is a sorcerer who kidnaps and imprisons the beauty hoping she would yield to his wicked will. However, we have a hero who must save the beauty, and in every tale he happens to learn about where to find the death of the Deathless! Faraway in the sea there is a secret island, in the island an oak is growing, under the oak a trunk is buried, in the trunk a hare is hidden, in the hare there is a duck, in the duck there is an egg, and in that egg is the death of the deathless villain Koshchei.

The most interesting plots developed in magical tales include magic transformation of people, pursuit of hard tasks, like saving beauties, magic artifacts, building a palace in a night, etc. Usually the heroes get help from women, whether from wife, or mother, or girlfriend who turns to have secretly some supernatural powers. She calms down the hero with the words: “The morn is wiser than the evening: go to bed, everything will be done”.

Let’s compare such Russian and English folk tales, for example, "Frog-princess" ("Царевна-лягушка") and an English folk-tale "Frog-prince." The main characters of both tales are cursed people doomed to be frogs until a loving person makes them free from the curse. The main idea of these tales is that love can overcome all troubles and difficulties. It's a very curious fact that tales with different plots and characters have the same idea. People all over the world hate cruel and greedy persons despise dishonesty and like such qualities as being kind, patient and ready to help.

 As for English fairy tales magic is traditionally connected with beings from the “other” world: elves, fairies, giants (in The Red Ettin the giant turns the eldest brother into a stone). The heroes don’t have magic power, but they get magical items from fairy-tale donor (magical beans in Jack and the Beanstalk).The main hero of an English fairy tale is usually a peasant, or a farmer, or a hunter, or a fisher. Names of the main fairy-tale heroes are often very simple (Jack, Jane, Mary, Sam), which indicate their simple nature.

Let’s take "Jack the Giant -Killer". It's a story about a very brave guy who defeated all the enemies with the help of his mind as he was clever and ready-witted. At first we could not find any Russian folk tale where the hero is like Jack but suddenly remember about Ivan-The Tsar’s son (Иван-царевич). He defeated such a monstrous creature as Koshchei and made free his bride. Moreover, he helped different animals and they helped him. In Russian tales this idea of assistance to each other is very strong. Evil as a rule is overcome and all the tales end happily.

Tales of everyday life 

These tales reflect the features of the people’s customs, morals and ways of life. They can tell about personified Truth and Lie, about relatives, such as husband and wife, step-daughter and step-mother, the younger brother and the older brothers, and so on.

The Russian tale "By the Pike's Wish" ("По щучьему велению") and the English one "Lazy Jack" are not very alike. The plots are different and the main characters are different too. They are similar in being very lazy; they even have problems in their families because they don't like to work. But both tales have happy ends: Yemelya and Jack become rich, marry beautiful girls and are happy. Why are such guys as Yemelya and Jack rewarded in the end? What for? We are sure Yemelya and Jack are happy because they both have the same traits of characters: they are not wise, may be even simple-minded but they are not cruel, not cunning, they are kind, generous and cheerful. In my opinion common people always appreciate these qualities very high. That's why English and Russian people told such tales to their children. They taught kids to be kind first of all. These folk tales show that people may speak different languages and live far away from each other but they have the same values.

Russian "Kolobok" and English "The Gingerbread Man", these tales are very similar. In both of them the main hero is a creature made by the couple unable to have children. In Russian folk tale the son was made of flour, in English of gingerbread. In both tales they were brave but easy-going and boastful and were punished for that. The moral and the main idea of these folk tales is to teach children to obey their parents, not to boast, to be more serious, not to break the rules.

We noticed that the main motive of English fairy tales is avoiding of failure. The activeness of a hero of an English fairy tale often depends on his duty, but not on his own desire. English fairy tales show us which traits of character English people consider positive and which traits are negative for them. Kind-heartedness is reflected in the deeds of the heroes, such as The Elf-maiden and The Old Man.

 Wisdom is a feature of the heroes of “Wild Edric” and “Jack and the Beanstalk”. These heroes know how they should behave, see and predict ingredients of their success plan their actions, don’t do anything on the spot.

It is very interesting that some of the positive heroes of English fairy tales are a bit selfish, for example. English don’t consider this feature to be negative one. They are very pedantic, purposeful, prudent, provident and far-sighted. They work orderly, properly to achieve their goals. We can notice these traits in the fairy-tale heroes such as Edric, Lady Godiva, and the Old Woman.

On the contrary, negative heroes are greedy, cruel, cunning, mean, imprudent, and foolish. Positive characters of English fairy tales are beautiful, and negative heroes are more often ugly. It proves that beauty is valued highly by English people. They value their traditions, according to which an English person should be reserved, self-confident, optimistic and patriotic.

Most of the folk tales teach children to obey their parents, respect the older ones, help those who are weak and need their help. The difference is very slight: in English folklore main characters are more practical.

As far as we know there are a lot of unique tales in English and Russian folklore. They have very unusual plots and it's impossible to compare them with other stories. For example, "Catskin", "Tom Tit Tot", "Cap of Rushes", "The Fish and the Ring", "Red Ettin", "Snegurochka", "Morozko", "Gusy-Lebedy", and many others.

We have understood that in spite of the great distance between our countries and different political and economic systems, we have the same values in life; we are brought up to be generous, kind, polite, obedient, grateful, good-natured and hardworking.

Our tales are different in plots but they teach children all over the world the same things in a tactful and entertaining manner. That is why we consider the fairy-tales and folk tales to be very important in upbringing children.

We believe our teachers should use folk tales teaching children to grow helpful, loyal, big-hearted, modest and tolerant like our favourite personages from the tales.

Literature: 

1. Н.Н. Мамаева статья “Светлее алмазов горят в небе звёзды” (о жанровой специфике английской литературной сказки) Известия Уральского государственного университета. Екатеринбург, 1999 год.

2. http://zeluna.net/russian-fairy-tale-babayaga-fairy.html 

3. http://www.answers.com/topic/folklore-and-fairy-tales#ixzz1nNFxfc5l 

4. Tatar, Maria. 1994. Is Anybody Out There Listening? Fairy Tales and the Voice of the Child. Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature. Edited by Elizabeth Goodenough, Mark A. Heberle and Naomi Sokoloff. Wayne State University Press. 275-83.