Features of the fairy tale genre in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin » Essays, Unified State Examination in Literature 2021

Genre of Saltykov Shchedrin fairy tales

Saltykov-Shchedrin was a successor to the satirical traditions of Fonvizin, Griboedov, and Gogol.
Shchedrin's gubernatorial activities allowed him to better discern the “evils of Russian reality” and made him think about the fate of Russia. He created a kind of satirical encyclopedia of Russian life. The tales summed up the writer’s 40-year work and were created over four years: from 1882 to 1886. Saltykov-Shchedrin willingly used traditional techniques of folk art. His fairy tales often begin, like folk tales, with the words “once upon a time,” “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state.” Proverbs and sayings are often found. “The horse runs - the earth trembles”, “Two deaths cannot happen, but one cannot be avoided.” The traditional method of repetition makes Shchedrin’s fairy tales very similar to folk tales. The author deliberately emphasizes one particular trait in each character, which is also characteristic of folklore.

But, nevertheless, Saltykov-Shchedrin did not copy the structure of a folk tale, but introduced something new into it. First of all, this is the appearance of the author’s image. Behind the mask of a naive joker is hidden the sarcastic grin of a merciless satirist. The image of a man is drawn completely differently than in a folk tale. In folklore, a man has intelligence, dexterity, and invariably defeats the master. In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the attitude towards the peasant is ambiguous. Often it is he who remains the fool, despite his cleverness, as in the fairy tale “How one man fed two generals.” The guy showed himself to be a great guy: he can do everything, he can even cook a handful of soup. And at the same time, he obediently carries out the order of the generals: he makes a rope for himself so that he does not run away!

The writer essentially created a new genre - a political fairy tale. The life of Russian society in the second half of the 19th century is captured in a rich gallery of characters. Shchedrin showed the entire social anatomy, touched upon all the main classes and strata of society: the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia.

Using hyperbole, Shchedrin makes the images unusually vivid and memorable. The wild landowner, who had always dreamed of getting rid of the obnoxious men and their servile spirit, was finally left alone. I. went wild: “All of him. overgrown with hair. and his claws became like iron.” And it becomes clear: everything rests on the work of the people.

In “The Wise Minnow,” Shchedrin paints an image of the intelligentsia that succumbed to panic and abandoned active struggle into the world of personal concerns and interests. The common gudgeon, fearing for his life, walled himself up in a dark hole. Outwitted everyone! And the result of his life can be expressed in the words: “He lived - he trembled, he died - he trembled.”

“The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin and their impact on the development of Russian literature”

Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are usually defined as the result of his satirical creativity. And this conclusion is to some extent justified. Fairy tales chronologically complete the satirical work of the writer. As a genre, Shchedrin's fairy tale gradually matured from the fantastic and figurative elements of his satire. There are also a lot of folklore headpieces in them, starting from the use of the form of a long-past tense (“Once upon a time”) and ending with an abundant number of proverbs and sayings with which they are peppered. In his fairy tales, the writer touches on many problems: social, political and ideological. Thus, the life of Russian society is depicted in them in a long series of miniature paintings. Fairy tales present the social anatomy of society in the form of a whole gallery of fairy-tale images.

The tale “Crucian the Idealist” is distinguished by a system of ideas that corresponded to the worldview of Shchedrin himself. This is a belief in the ideal of social equality and a belief in harmony, in universal happiness. But, the writer reminds: “That’s why the pike is in the sea, so that the crucian carp doesn’t sleep.” Karas acts as a preacher. He is eloquent and beautiful in preaching brotherly love: “Do you know what virtue is? — The pike opened its mouth in surprise. She automatically sipped the water and... swallowed it.” This is the nature of all pikes - to eat crucian carp. In this tiny tragedy, Shchedrin presented what is characteristic of every society and every organization, what constitutes the natural and natural law of their development: there are strong who eat, and there are weak who are eaten. And social progress is the usual process of devouring some by others. Of course, such pessimism of the artist caused controversy and criticism in democratic circles. But time passed, and Shchedrin’s rightness became historical rightness.

But it was not only the intelligentsia who suffered in fairy tales. The people are also good in their slavish obedience. The writer drew terrible pictures in “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.”

Here is a portrait of a peasant. “The biggest man”, a jack of all trades. And he got apples from the tree, and he got potatoes from the ground, and he prepared a snare for the hazel grouse from his own hair, and he made fire, and he baked provisions, and he collected swan fluff. And what? The generals get a dozen apples, and for themselves “one, sour.” He himself made a rope so that the generals would keep him on a leash at night. Moreover, he was ready to “please the generals because they favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant labor!” No matter how much the generals scold the peasant for parasitism, the peasant “rows and rows and feeds the generals with herring.”

It is difficult to imagine a more vivid and clear image of the moral state of the peasants: passive slave psychology, ignorance. Shchedrin seems to see the Russian people through the eyes of Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He directly called the man a foreigner, the way of thinking, behavior and morality of the Russian people was so inaccessible to him.

For Shchedrin, such an attitude towards his people acquired a parable-like and accessible form.

Shchedrin admires the man’s strength and endurance, which are as natural to him as his unparalleled obedience, which reaches the point of idiocy.

In this context, the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” is uncharacteristic, where the men still lose patience and put the bear on a spear. However, Toptygin 2nd in this tale is not so much an exploiter as an ordinary robber, a sort of Manyl Samylovich Urus-Kugush-Kildibaev from “The History of a City.” But robbers were never favored in Rus' - hence the spear.

In his fairy tales, Shchedrin is full of sarcasm. He does not favor anyone in them. It goes to everyone: right and wrong, crucians and pikes, Russian liberals, the autocracy, and Russian peasants.

Let us remember the moral code of dried roach: “The slower you go, the further you will go; a small fish is better than a big cockroach... Ears don’t grow higher than the forehead” - that’s what Shchedrin especially disgusts, the neat grayness. There is a protest against it, a caustic satire of fairy tales.

And yet Shchedrin’s fairy tales are still relevant today, and therefore, our society is stable: crucian carp are swallowed, generals are fed, roach preaches, a sensible hare plays with a fox - in general, everything is the same: “Every beast has its own life: for a lion, a lion’s, for a fox - fox, for a hare - hare."

A number of reasons prompted Saltykov-Shchedrin to turn to fairy tales. The difficult political situation in Russia: moral terror, the defeat of populism, police persecution of the intelligentsia - did not allow us to identify all the social contradictions of society and directly criticize the existing order. On the other hand, the fairy tale genre was close to the character of the satirical writer. Fantasy, hyperbole, irony, common in fairy tales, are very characteristic of Shchedrin’s poetics. In addition, the fairy tale genre is very democratic, accessible and understandable to a wide range of readers and people. The fairy tale is characterized by didacticism, and this directly corresponded to the journalistic pathos and civic aspirations of the satirist.

Saltykov-Shchedrin willingly used traditional techniques of folk art. His fairy tales often begin like folk tales, with the words “once upon a time there lived,” “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state.” Proverbs and sayings are often found. “The horse runs - the earth trembles”, “Two deaths cannot happen, but one cannot be avoided.” The traditional method of repetition makes Shchedrin’s fairy tales very similar to folk tales. The author deliberately emphasizes one particular trait in each character, which is also characteristic of folklore.

The writer essentially created a new genre - a political fairy tale*. The life of Russian society in the second half of the 19th century is captured in a rich gallery of characters. Shchedrin showed the entire social anatomy, touched upon all the main classes and strata of society: the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia.

Thus, in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” the rudeness and ignorance of the highest authorities and hostile attitude towards education are immediately striking. Another Toptygin, having arrived in the voivodeship, wants to find some institute to “burn it down.” The writer makes the Donkey, the embodiment of stupidity and stubbornness, the main sage and adviser to Leo. Therefore, violence and chaos reign in the forest.

Using hyperbole, Shchedrin makes the images unusually vivid and memorable. The wild landowner, who had always dreamed of getting rid of the obnoxious men and their servile spirit, was finally left alone. And... he went wild: “He... was all overgrown with hair..., and his claws became like iron.” And it becomes clear: everything rests on the work of the people.

Thus, starting from the fantasy of a folk tale, Shchedrin organically combines with a realistic depiction of reality. Extreme exaggeration in the description of characters and situations allows the satirist to focus attention on the dangerous aspects of the life of Russian society.

The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin had a great impact on the further development of Russian literature and especially the genre of satire.

Ticket 31 Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

Dear readers! All the works I have posted are not any kind of lyrical explorations or creative works. These are stupid tickets on medieval literature that need to be distributed for the course. In such a stupid way. Please don’t worry about the prozara administration: as soon as the exam is over, all this nonsense will be deleted)

A fairy tale is one of the epic genres of literature, which is characterized by deep subtext. That is why Saltykov-Shchedrin turned to this genre. His fairy tales are a separate, independent stage of his work, which contains everything that the writer accumulated over four decades of his creative path. He himself addresses his fairy tales to “children of a fair age,” that is, adults. And the author addresses them quite harshly, intelligently, ridiculing human shortcomings and vices. Shchedrin's tales are distinguished by their true nationality. Raising in them the most pressing issues of Russian reality, the writer acts as a defender of the people and an exposer of the ruling class. Saltykov's tales indeed contain some borrowings from folk tales. These include magical transformations, a free form of presentation, and the main characters are representatives of the animal world. Shchedrin's fairy tale is, of course, a very special variation of the fairy tale form. The writer for the first time filled it with acute social meaning, made it reveal the dramas and comedies of human life. A master of Aesopian language, in fairy tales written mainly during the years of severe censorship, Shchedrin uses the technique of allegory. Under the guise of animals and birds, he depicts representatives of various classes and social groups. Moreover, the author angrily ridicules not only the omnipotent masters, but also ordinary hard workers with their slave psychology. Saltykov-Shchedrin mercilessly criticizes the patience and irresponsibility of the ordinary Russian people. I would like to dwell on the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” which is written very sarcastic and witty. It contrasts representatives of various social strata - the people and the nobles. With caustic irony, the author writes: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner, he lived and looked at the light and rejoiced. He had enough of everything: peasants, grain, livestock, land, and gardens. And that landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” Of course, this landowner did not know how to do anything and only dreamed of getting rid of the “servant spirit.” One day God heeded his prayers, and finally the peasant world disappeared. And the “Russian nobleman Prince Urus-Kuchum-Kildibaev” was left alone. The unusual surname attracts attention. Such “multi-story” surnames with a Turkic sound belonged to ancient, highest aristocratic families, but under Shchedrin’s pen it takes on an absurd and very funny sound. The landowner was left alone. Initially, he appears to us in the guise of a “firm-hearted” unshakable serf owner, convinced of the natural, natural superiority of the upper circles over simple, ordinary people who irritate him even with their presence. But gradually he became wild: “. He was all overgrown with hair, from head to toe, like the ancient Esau, and his nails became like iron. He walked more and more on all fours. He even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds. But I haven’t acquired a tail yet.” The hint is quite clear - the peasants live by their labor, and therefore they have a lot of everything: bread, meat, and fruit. And it turns out that deep down the supposedly noble personality is not even a savage, but a primitive animal. The “prince” looks like a person only as long as he feeds him, washes him and gives him clean clothes, in a word, keeps him in the human form of Senka - a collective image of a peasant. But without “slaves” it is not only the landowner who suffers. Things are going badly for the city (the supply of food from the estate has stopped) and even for the state (there is no one to pay taxes). The author is convinced that the creator of basic material and spiritual values is the people, it is they who are the drinker and breadwinner, the support of the state. But at the same time, Shchedrin sincerely complains that the people are too patient, downtrodden and dark. He hints that the dominant forces standing over the people, although cruel, are not so omnipotent, and if desired, they can be defeated.

FEATURES OF THE FAIRY TALE GENRE BY M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

At that time, due to strict censorship, the author could not fully expose the vices of society, show all the inconsistency of the Russian administrative apparatus. And yet, with the help of fairy tales “for children of a fair age,” Saltykov-Shchedrin

When writing fairy tales, the author used grotesque, hyperbole, and antithesis. Aesopian language was also important. Trying to hide the true meaning of what was written from censorship, one had to use this technique.

The writer loved to come up with neologisms that characterized his characters (for example, words such as “pompadours and pompadours”, “foam dispenser” and others).

Let's look at the features of the writer's fairy tale genre using the example

At first a cultured man, the landowner turns into a wild animal, feeding on fly agarics. Here we see how helpless a rich man becomes without a simple man, how unfit and worthless he is. With this tale, the author wanted to show that an ordinary Russian person is a serious force.

A similar idea is put forward in the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Prosecuted Two Generals.” But here the peasant’s resignation, his humility, and unquestioning submission to the two generals are emphasized. Ori even ties himself with a rope, which once again indicates his downtroddenness and enslavement.

This tale uses both hyperbole and grotesque. Saltykov-Shchedrin prompts the reader to think that it is time for the peasant to wake up, think about his situation, and stop submissively obeying the master.

In “The Wise Minnow” the hero is an everyman, afraid of everything in the world. “The wise minnow” constantly sits locked up, afraid to go out into the street again, to talk to someone, to get to know someone. He leads a closed, boring life. With his life principles, he resembles another hero from A.P. Chekhov’s story “The Man in a Case” by Belikov.

Only before death does the minnow think about his life: “Who did he help? Who did you regret, what good did he do in life? He lived and trembled and died - he trembled.”

And only at the end of a uselessly lived life does the average person realize that no one needs him, no one knows him and no one will remember him.

The writer shows the terrible philistine alienation and self-isolation in “The Wise Minnow.” Saltykov-Shchedrin is bitter and painful for the Russian people.

Reading Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales is quite difficult. Therefore, perhaps many did not understand their meaning. But most “children of a fair age” appreciated the work of the great satirist as it deserved.

Why did Saltykov-Shchedrin turn to the fairy tale genre?

One of those writers who appreciated this seemingly easy and uncomplicated genre was Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin. It was in the fairy tale genre that the ideological and artistic features of Shchedrin’s satire were most clearly manifested: its political sharpness and purposefulness, mercilessness and depth of the grotesque, the sly sparkle of humor. In Shchedrin’s fairy tales, familiar images of old Russia appear before us: tyrant rulers (fairy tales “Poor Wolf”, “Bear in the Voivodeship”), cruel exploiters (“Wild Landowner”, “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”), humble townsfolk (“The Wise Minnow”, “The Selfless Hare”), merciless and stupid rulers (“The Bogatyr”, “The Patron Eagle”) and, finally, the image of the great and long-suffering Russian people (“The Horse”, “The Ram of the Unremembered”, “ Crow the Petitioner" and many others). Animal masks do not hide the true face, the essence of these favorite Shchedrin images, but, on the contrary, emphasize and even expose it. And it is no coincidence that Shchedrin’s fairy-tale genre flourished in the 80s of the 19th century. It was during this period of rampant political passions in Russia that the satirist had to look for a form that was most convenient for circumventing censorship and at the same time the closest and most understandable to the common people. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, as in all of his work, two social forces confront each other: the working people and their exploiters. The people appear under the guise of kind and defenseless animals and birds, the exploiters - in the guise of predators. The symbol of peasant Russia, tortured and destitute, is the image of Konyaga from the fairy tale of the same name. In almost all fairy tales, the image of the peasant people is depicted by Shchedrin with love, breathing with indestructible power and nobility. The man is honest, straightforward, kind, unusually sharp and smart. He can do everything: get food, sew clothes; he conquers the elemental forces of nature, jokingly swimming across the “ocean-sea”. And the man treats his enslavers ironically, without losing his self-esteem. The generals from the fairy tale “How one man fed two generals” look like pathetic pygmies compared to the giant man. To depict them, the satirist uses completely different colors. They “understand nothing,” they are dirty spiritually and physically, they are cowardly and helpless, greedy and stupid. If you are looking for animal masks, then the pig mask is just right for them. All of Shchedrin's fairy tales were subject to censorship persecution and numerous alterations. Many of them were published in illegal publications abroad. The masks of the animal world could not hide the political content of Shchedrin's fairy tales. The transfer of human traits and social functions to the animal world created a comic effect and clearly exposed the absurdity of existing reality. Sometimes Shchedrin, taking traditional fairy-tale images, does not even try to introduce them into a fairy-tale setting or use fairy-tale techniques. Through the mouths of the fairy tale heroes, he directly sets out his idea of social reality. The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist uses not only traditional fairy-tale techniques and images, but also proverbs, sayings, sayings: “If you don’t give a word, be strong, and if you give, hold on!”, “Ears don’t grow higher than your forehead,” “My hut is on the edge,” “Simplicity is worse.” theft." The dialogue of the characters is colorful, the speech depicts a specific social type: an imperious, rude eagle, a beautiful-hearted idealistic crucian carp, a dissolute canary, a cowardly hare, and so on. The characters representing the working people have a special language. Their speech is natural, smart, concise. This is the speech of a person, not a mask, not a doll. They are characterized by deep lyricism, their words come from a suffering and kind heart. Shchedrin's "Fairy Tales" in miniature contain the problems and images of the entire work of the great satirist. If Shchedrin had not written anything other than “Fairy Tales,” then they alone would have given him the right to immortality. Of Shchedrin's thirty-two fairy tales, twenty-nine were written by him in the last decade of his life, and only three fairy tales were created in 1869. Thus, it is this genre that seems to sum up the writer’s forty years of creative activity.

Related materials:

The meaning of the title of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work “The History of a City” — —
“Arina Petrovna and her sons” (based on the novel “The Golovlev Gentlemen” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin) — —
The people and autocracy in the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin — —
What is the enduring value of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales? — —
Written analysis of a fairy tale (based on the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin) — —
Does the hero of the novel by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Judushka Golovlev, evoke pity in the reader? — —
The life path of Judas (the novel by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Golovlev Lords”) — —
Saltykov-Shchedrin’s essay “The Golovlev Gentlemen” as an attempt to create a “family” novel” — —
The Golovlev family (based on the novel “The Golovlev Gentlemen” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin) — —
Images of animals in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin — —

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Genre originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales: features of the genre

Genre originality of the tales of “Saltykov-Shchedrin”: features of the genre

The book of Russian fairy tales left to us by the famous satirist is written differently. It does not have that maternal tenderness and soothing caress that surrounds the wonderful fictions of Romanesque or Scandinavian storytellers. She is harsh and caustic, she judges, calls to account, brands and castigates. It was not written for children and did not strive for magical visions or exciting feats.

Let's look at three dozen “fairy tales”. Shchedrin.

They naturally fall into two main groups: stories of everyday content, sometimes humorous, sometimes deeply dramatic, and fairy tales proper, that is, small satirical essays dressed in the usual forms of a fairy-tale epic.

Let's focus on the first group. We find here a light satirical essay about a modern journalist (“The Deceiver Newsboy”), and a sharp pamphlet on a moderate freedom-loving Russian politician (“Liberal”), and a poignant sketch of the tsar’s dignitaries (“Idle Conversation”), and with deep tragedy developed stories about a peasant woman whose boy burned to death (“Village Fire”), about a tortured work horse (“Horse”), about the bitter life of peasants (“The Way and Way”), about the sad and gloomy fate of a Russian writer (“The Adventure with Kramolnikov” ). All these are deeply real images and themes snatched from life itself.

Such is Saltykov’s extensive batch of “fairy tales”. We find here a feuilleton, an everyday story, a writer’s confession, and a tragic story. It is not for nothing that the author himself, as if feeling the conventional “fabulousness” of all these essays, provided some of them with special subtitles (“conversation”, “elegy-tale”, “teaching”, “neither a fairy tale, nor a true story”, etc. ).

In the free and infinitely varied form of a morally descriptive story, the satirist seems to sum up his long-term thoughts.

Saltykov managed to introduce a new tone into Russian journalistic prose and develop a new genre of social satire in our country. This is the undoubted significance of his fairy tales.”

(L.P. Grossman, “Saltykov the Storyteller”, 1925)

V. N. Baskakov and A. S. Bushmin:

“Looking at fairy tales in the order in which they were written, one can observe a very definite evolution of their genre form.

GENRE OF FAIRY TALES IN THE WORK OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are usually defined as the result of the work of the great satirist. And this conclusion is to some extent justified. Fairy tales chronologically complete the satirical works of the writer.

As a genre, the Shchedrin fairy tale gradually matured in the writer’s work from the fantastic and figurative elements of his satire. There are also a lot of folklore themes in them, ranging from the use of the form of a long-past tense (“Once upon a time”) to a large number of proverbs and sayings cited in fairy tales.

In fairy tales the writer touches

Thus, in the fairy tale “Crucian the Idealist” a system of ideas is presented that corresponded to the worldview of Shchedrin himself. This is a belief in the ideal of social equality and in harmony, in universal happiness. But, the writer reminds: “That’s what the pike is for, so that the crucian carp don’t doze off.” Karas acts as a preacher.

He is eloquent and wonderful in preaching fraternally

Of course, such pessimism of the artist caused controversy and criticism in democratic circles. But time passed - and Shchedrin’s rightness became historical rightness.

Saltykov-Shchedrin did not leave alone the intelligentsia. The people are also “good” in their slavish obedience. The writer painted terrible and depressing pictures in “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” Here is a portrait of a peasant. “Huge man”, a jack of all trades. And he took apples from the tree, and he got potatoes from the ground, and he prepared a snare for the hazel grouse from his own hair, and he took out the fire, and he prepared provisions, and he collected swan fluff.

And what? The generals get a dozen apples each, and for themselves “one sour one.” He himself made a rope so that the generals would keep him on a leash at night. Moreover, he was ready to thank the generals “for the fact that they favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant work!” It is difficult to imagine a more vivid and clear image of the moral state of the peasants: passive slave psychology, ignorance.

Shchedrin seems to see the Russian people through the eyes of investigator Porfiry Petrovich from “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky. He directly called the man a foreigner, the way of thinking, behavior and morality of the Russian people was so inaccessible to him. For Shchedrin, such an attitude towards his people acquired a parable-like and accessible form.

And yet Saltykov-Shchedrin admires the man’s strength and endurance, which, unfortunately, are as natural to him as his unparalleled obedience and complete idiocy. In this context, the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” is quite uncharacteristic, where the men still lose patience and put the bear on a spear. However, Toptygin 2nd in this tale is not so much an exploiter as an ordinary robber.

But robbers were never favored in Rus' - hence the spear.

Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are full of sarcasm. He does not favor anyone in them. It goes to everyone: the right (more precisely, those who consider themselves right) and the wrong, and the wise minnows, and Russian liberals, and the pike, and the autocracy, and Russian peasants. Let us remember the moral code of dried roach: “The slower you go, the further you will go; a small fish is better than a big cockroach.” “Ears don’t grow higher than the forehead” - that’s what Shchedrin especially disgusts - the neat grayness.

There is a protest against it, a caustic satire of fairy tales.

The conclusions from Shchedrin’s work are disappointing, because the tales of the great satirist are still relevant today, and therefore our society is stable: crucian carp are swallowed, generals are fed without complaint, the roach preaches, the sensible hare plays with the fox - in general, everything is the same. “And every beast has its own life: for a lion - a lion’s, for a fox - a fox’s, for a hare - a hare’s.”

Genre originality of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

INTRODUCTION

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin dedicated his life to his native literature, and, above all, to such a difficult area as satire.

Satire is the work of inquisitive and courageous people. She sees a challenge to common sense in what almost everyone around seems reasonable. In the familiar and the ordinary, he distinguishes between the outlandish and the ugly. In the ingrained, it invites us to discern deviations from the norms of human society.

Satire is a centuries-old weapon of class struggle in literature. Satirical art, with merciless laughter, executes the evil of life in its most harmful, socially dangerous manifestations.

Satirical genres have always been an integral part of folklore.

Saltykov-Shchedrin is able to really help develop social activity, civic maturity and responsibility in a teenage student, and turn him away from political gullibility, infantile carelessness and apathy.

Saltykov-Shchedrin’s noble goal is to awaken an inquisitive, courageous beginning in his serenely resting contemporary. And he does this, as befits a satirist, with a word of negation. But for all its harsh mercilessness, Shchedrin’s satire never leaves a feeling of dead end, disarming, sorrowful confusion. His works are a constant conversation with the reader, full of caustic sarcasm and heartfelt lyricism, honest and trusting, witty and wise...

Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales are funny, full of irony and sarcasm, and were created with the mass reader in mind (like Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'?", hence their folklore fairy-tale form). But the entire powerful arsenal of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satirical techniques is put in the service of revolutionary agitation and propaganda.

Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales, at first glance, are more simple-minded and obvious than his satirical essays and novel creations. The author's cherished idea is outlined in them with a more definite, visible outline. And if we talk about their closeness to folklore, then this parallel is possible only in the most general, large and fundamental sense.

Relevance of the work: the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are widely known throughout the world. Many literary scholars have been engaged in research and study of the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, as many researchers as there are as many opinions about the uniqueness of the writer’s fairy tales. Therefore, our task is to study the experience of famous literary scholars, analyze it and draw certain conclusions.

When writing this course work, we set ourselves the following GOAL:

— study of the genre originality of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

This goal involves solving the following tasks:

- define the concepts of “genre”, “fairy tale”;

— consider the connection between Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore traditions;

- highlight the distinctive features of the writer’s fairy tales.

SCIENTIFIC NOVELTY lies in the study of the genre originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales, in an attempt to present our own version between folk tales and Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales.

STRUCTURE OF THE WORK: introduction, 3 sections, conclusions, 15 sources in the list of used literature.

AREA OF APPLICATION: school and university teaching of literature.

RESEARCH METHODS: comparative method, system analysis method.

1. THE CONCEPTS OF “GENRE”, “FAIRY TALE” IN LITERARY STUDIES

Literary genre (from the French Genre - genus, type) - this definition, first of all, has a general meaning, uniting the entire literary taxonomy, the classification of literary works by different types of their poetic structure.

Literary genres, formed as a result of the long historical development of verbal art, pass from one era to another with minor changes. Traditional identical genre forms can be used for works of different content and different ideological directions.

Thus, each writer introduces into his works some individual characteristics in the development of a particular genre. Moreover, every famous work has some kind of genre feature, which must be determined in historical and literary research. It is in the original works of famous masters that changes in genre forms begin.

2. FAIRY-TALE WORLD OF SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

2.1 The connection between fairy tales and folklore traditions

Shchedrin's fairy tales are most often created with the reader in mind, who has gone through the already well-known school of Aesopian allegory, is familiar with the writer's periodic magazine conversations, with the world of his concepts and ideas.

There are signs in Shchedrin’s fairy tales that truly confirm the satirist’s search for a new addressee, indicating the artist’s conscious desire to expand his audience, his intention to attract the attention of new reading circles.

Shchedrin's tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological quest of the satirist. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements, traditional beginnings (“Once upon a time there were”; “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state”; “Once upon a time there was a newspaperman, and there was a reader”), numerals with non-numerical meaning (“far away kingdom”, “from distant lands”), typical sayings (“neither to describe with a pen, nor to say in a fairy tale”, “at the behest of a pike”, “soon the tale will tell”, “how long, briefly li"), constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions (“honey-fed”, “fierce millet”, “rolling snores”, “fierce animals”), borrowed from folklore of proper names (Militrisa Kirbityevna, Ivanushka the Fool, Tsar Pea), characteristic of folk poetry of synonymous combinations (“on the road”, “judged and dressed”), idiomatic expressions going back to folklore (“to breed on beans”, “you can’t lead with your ears”, “grandmother said in two”), oral poetic vocabulary, numerous proverbs and sayings, etc.

Stable folk-fairy tale images and details are satirically modernized by Saltykov-Shchedrin not only in the fairy tale genre.

More than once in Shchedrin's essays the names of fairy-tale heroes flash: Ivanushka, Ivanushka the Fool, Ivan Tsarevich, Baba Yaga - the bone leg. The name of one of Foolov’s mayors, Vasilisk Wartkin, means the fabulous “serpent who kills with his gaze.” Numerous fairy-tale elements are found in “The History of a City,” especially in the description of the “origin of the Foolovites.”

In Saltykov-Shchedrin, once found images, details, and sketches often did not disappear later, but were used in other cycles. The research literature has systematized many examples of such an evolution of images, including folklore ones, which served as one of the first impulses in the creation of fairy tales.

Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are noticeably different from folk tales, and the search for parallels, and even more so for direct plot borrowings, always turned out to be untenable.

Saltykov-Shchedrin the storyteller used various genres of folk art: fairy tales about animals, fairy tales, satirical tales, folk puppet theater, popular prints, proverbs and sayings. It is obvious that the writer’s fairy-tale world does not dissolve in the folk poetic element, that “Shchedrin’s fairy tale arose independently according to the type of folk tales, and the latter contributed to its formation” [2;75].

“In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner, he lived and looked at the light and rejoiced” [4; 143] - the opening, setting one in a familiar fairy-tale mood, is immediately neutralized by subsequent lines, and the indefinitely past folklore time switches to Shchedrin’s present : “And that landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly” [4;145]. Landowner stupidity, which results in reading the terry-serf newspaper “Vest”, and landowner stupidity, are both a farcical-comic rapprochement in the folklore spirit, and a social-satirical characteristic. Further, in a comic vein, the story of the very real relations between landowners and peasants after the abolition of serfdom is presented.

The stupid landowner is full of fear that the men will take all his goods. The “liberated” peasants “no matter where they look, everything is impossible, not allowed, and not yours!” The man died. The completely desperate peasants prayed: “Lord! It’s easier for us to perish even with small children than to toil like this all our lives!” [4;149]. The following phrase is very important in the overall compositional structure of the fairy tale: the peasants’ wish came true, “the merciful God heard the orphan’s tearful prayer, and there was no more peasant throughout the entire domain of the stupid landowner” [4;153]. From these lines, readers become living witnesses to a fantastic, fabulous “experiment” proposed by the satirist: what could happen to the landowner if he was deprived of the peasants, left alone with himself, in complete, so to speak, self-sufficiency.

Comic scenes and dialogues unfold in which all the transformations happening to the stupid landowner are explored: episodes with the actor Sadovsky, with four generals, with the police captain. Each of these passages represents, as it were, a completed anecdotal plot, all the comedy of which is revealed in the general context of the fairy tale. Gradually, from time to time, more and more new “readiness” of the landowner are revealed, which are fully manifested in the final part (complete savagery, transformation into a “bear-man”).

Fantastic changes happen to Shchedrin’s hero: “He stopped blowing his nose a long time ago, he walked more and more on all fours and was even surprised how he had not noticed before that this way of walking was the most decent and most convenient. He even lost the ability to utter articulate sounds and adopted some kind of special victory cry, a cross between a whistle, a hiss and a roar” [4;160].

It is interesting in this regard to compare the fairy-tale plots of “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner.” In the first case, the stupid, helpless, but accustomed to rule generals, who miraculously find themselves on a desert island, are triggered by the instinct of self-preservation, and they look for, unknown how, a man who got to the island, who drinks and feeds them, saves them from starvation and transports them by boat across the “ocean.” -sea" to St. Petersburg. In the second tale, a stupid and arrogant landowner, on the contrary, dreams of freeing himself from the peasants (“Only one thing is unbearable to my heart: there are too many peasants in our kingdom!” [5;144]), and they, in turn, pray to God to get rid of oppression of the landowner. And the entire further course of the tale is, as it were, another probable continuation of the story with the generals (this is what would have happened to them if the man had not been found; they would have completely gone wild, become brutal). Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Wild Landowner” seems to bring his fabulously satirical assumptions to their logical conclusion.

Subsequent situations, sarcastically depicted, bright grotesque images are also inseparable from elements of folklore: constant epithets (“white body”, “printed gingerbread”, “wild animals”), troecracy (three people “honor” the landowner as a fool), sayings (“and began he lives and lives"), etc. And behind all this, the main, no longer fairy-tale hint appears: Russia lives as a peasant, with his labor and worries; forced male labor preserves the landowner's plumpness.

Of course, we can only talk about a special stylistic aura of Shchedrin’s fairy tales, close to folklore, which continues the constant themes and images of his satirical and journalistic cycles. Abundantly using typical folklore elements, the writer sought to capture the attention of a new mass audience, well, first-hand, familiar with folk poetry.

But there is also no doubt that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are connected with folklore not only by the presence in them of certain oral poetic details and images that significantly influence the narrative syllable. Dependence on folklore experience is not always literal or quotable. There is something more important in Shchedrin’s fairy tales, which brings them closer to folk poetry: there is a truly folk understanding of the world. It is expressed in the very pathos of fairy tales for the people, in the author’s ideas about good and evil, about poverty and wealth, about right and wrong, about the decisive predominance of forces hostile to the people and at the same time about the inevitable triumph of reason and justice. Let conscience be banished from everywhere, let the pitiful drunkard, the innkeeper, the quarterly overseer, and the financier turn away from it - a “little child” has already appeared in the world, and conscience grows in him along with him. And the little child will be a big man, and he will have a big conscience. And then all untruths, deceit and violence will disappear, because the conscience will not be timid and will want to manage everything itself” [4;23].

Even where evil clearly and unequivocally prevails over defenselessness, timidity, fear, good-naturedness, passivity (cf. fairy tales “The Selfless Hare”, “Virtues and Vices”, “The Deceptive Newspaper Man and the Gullible Reader”, “Crucian Crucian Idealist” and etc.). the author puts him on trial, pronounces a harsh, non-appealable, satirical verdict, making it clear that along with evil he condemns all his free and unconscious indulgers.

Saltykov-Shchedrin is in no hurry to portray those who maintained commanding heights in life as defeated. On the contrary, he strongly emphasized the absurd, inhumane nature of resolving the overwhelming majority of life’s conflicts.

The audience for Shchedrin's fairy tale is, of course, more massive than for many other works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, but the nature of this mass audience is completely special, fickle, changeable within the entire fairy tale cycle. Either the readership intended by the author is noticeably expanding, freely and naturally including peasants, otkhodniks, and artisans in its probable composition, then it would seem to be again almost exclusively represented by the former Shchedrin reader-intellectual, although understood within the broad framework of the general democratic movement in Russia. The internal multi-genre nature of Shchedrin’s fairy tales (the variety of the author’s definition of the genre: “Neither a fairy tale, nor a true story”, “Conversation”, “Teaching”, “Tale-elegy”, simply “Fairy Tale”), a wide range of themes, ideas, images allow talk about a different reader-addressee for each individual fairy tale.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the nature of satirical imagery, the features of artistic speech directly point to an intelligent reader, to a city dweller who has the opportunity and habit of following newspapers every day, distinguishing between them, living up to date with the latest political news, having general cultural training, a relatively high educational qualification (numerous socio-historical, socio-political, literary and other realities, clericalisms, Latinisms, often found in Shchedrin’s fairy tales).

But another Shchedrin fairy tale turns out to be quite accessible and understandable to a single word to the most mass, peasant, working reader.

The author's voice does not contrast with the speech of his characters. However, the author himself prefaces the dialogue with a short exposition and then reveals himself only in a few remarks to the conversation. It is curious that there is no actual dialogical separation, much less a noticeable confrontation between the characters in the fairy tale. In essence, this is one common peasant, nationwide speech, divided into replicas distributed to two heroes. The characters do not argue, they think out loud, correcting and supplementing each other, looking for more convincing explanations for incomprehensible, confusing issues, and come to a common ending, significantly interrupted by the author:

“Look, Fedya,” said Ivan, laying down and yawning, “there’s so much space in all directions!” There is a place for everyone, but for us...” [4;192].

The author is not an observer, not a demonstrator of this speech, he does not in the least degree separate himself from it, on the contrary, he merges, coincides with it, draws closer to the peasant point of view on the world, on the course of things.

In other tales, he deliberately addresses everyone: both the people and the intelligentsia who have not lost their “living soul.” The focus on the heterogeneous reader's consciousness makes itself felt not only within the boundaries of the entire fairy tale cycle, but in the text of each individual fairy tale.

One and the same Shchedrin fairy tale requires different reading levels and preparation. This finds its explanation in the aesthetic views of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which are quite transparently indicated in many of the satirist’s judgments about the peculiarities of reader psychology. We are talking primarily about the category “reader-friend”, which is difficult for a writer. For all its, at first glance, clarity, it is extremely vague and difficult to grasp. Saltykov-Shchedrin throughout his life does not lose hope that “a reader-friend undoubtedly exists.” There are moments when this reader “suddenly opens up, and direct communication with him becomes possible. Such moments are the happiest that a convinced writer experiences on his difficult path” [4;154].

But the voice of this reader is too weak, his share in the total mass of the public is too small, his social experience is small, his practice, in which literary, satirical, journalistic, poetic ideas and words would be melted into a living, concrete, socially significant matter, would be found direct, without concealment or circumspection, sympathy would awaken civic honesty and courage.

Thus, Shchedrin’s tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the satirist’s ideological quest. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements are noted:

- traditional beginnings;

- numerals with non-numerical meaning;

- typical sayings;

- constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions;

— proper names borrowed from folklore, synonymous combinations characteristic of folk poetry, idiomatic expressions dating back to folklore;

- oral and poetic vocabulary;

- numerous proverbs and sayings, etc.

2.2 Universal sound of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales

Working on fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin poetically realizes his favorite ideas about literature as effective propaganda, as a school of civic education. And like any real school, Shchedrin’s

a fairy tale (“a lesson to good fellows!”) has several ascending “steps”, focused on different levels of reader understanding and stimulating the reader’s growth and transition from “class” to “class”, from “stage” to “stage”.

First of all, in many fairy tales there is a series of external plot points:

- legendary (“Christ’s Night”);

— household (“Village fire”);

- close to the fable (Shchedrin’s tales about animals, “Virtues and Vices”, “Kisel”);

- fantastic (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”, etc.).

In principle, it is understandable and accessible to everyone: both morality and socio-psychological generalizations of it, without much difficulty, are independently deduced by the reader, who is not alien to the world of folk tales, parables, proverbs and sayings.

Shchedrin's fairy tales about animals are like expanded poetic fables in the spirit of the nationality bequeathed by Krylov, much more densely populated and enriched with persistent, but always unexpected in Saltykov-Shchedrin's works, carrying a comic charge with folklore, folk-fairy tale elements. Each of the characters, both traditional and new, is given scope for full self-discovery. The duel, intense and complex dialogue, and conflict characteristic of Krylov’s fables are written out in detail and meticulously, with the addition of details, details, and clarifications that are completely alien to the poetically compressed world of the fable. And at the same time, in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the inherent conceptuality, purposefulness and significance of the fable are preserved.

Shchedrin's fairy tale is perceived on a par with a fable-lesson, a moral, a maxim, and the satirical writer certainly and seriously takes this level of everyday understanding into account.

The author leads the reader into the depths of the plot, getting him interested in the development of the action, focusing on the struggle of antagonistic life principles. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are not so much designed for an already established worldview, but are capable of awakening the growth of civic, class consciousness. They gradually lead to difficult questions that cannot be solved simply by being guided by truisms.

Intelligence is one of the revered human virtues, but people tend to introduce a wide variety of, often mutually exclusive, contents into this concept. And Saltykov-Shchedrin, an educator, a champion of reason, a bright mind alien to dogmatic inertia, puts into the title of the tale a telling, unambiguously evaluative epithet: “The Wise Minnow.” At first, one retains faith in the certainty of this definition: both the gudgeon’s parents “were smart,” and they did not ignore his parental advice, and the hero of the fairy tale himself, it turns out, “was smart” [4;30]. But step by step, tracing the course of the gudgeon’s conclusions, conveyed in the form of improperly direct speech, the author arouses in the reader a sly mockery, an ironic reaction, finally a feeling of disgust, and in the end even compassion for the everyday philosophy of a quiet, voiceless, moderately neat creature.

The tenacious morality of crickets who know their nest. Saltykov-Shchedrin, with almost every tale of his, strives to expose it in the eyes of the readership majority: “But after a quarter of an hour it was all over. Instead of the hare, all that remained were scraps of skin and his sensible words: “Every beast has its own life; for a lion - lion's, for a fox - fox's, for a hare - hare's" [4;161].

In Shchedrin’s fairy tales one can see what Pushkin noted in Krylov’s fables as “a distinctive feature in our morals”: “... some kind of cheerful cunning of the mind, mockery and a picturesque way of expressing” [3;32].

A folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.

To comprehend direct and barely hidden hints at “complacent modernity,” one already needs a certain amount of experience in communicating with newspapers and magazines, awareness of current events in domestic and international life, and a certain political sensitivity. Shchedrin’s Ivanushka the Fool, at the behest of his parents, ended up “in the institution” and studied, “but as the volume of supposed knowledge increased, Ivanushka’s case became more complicated. He did not understand most sciences at all. He did not understand history, jurisprudence, or the science of accumulation and distribution of wealth. Not because he didn’t want to understand, but because he truly didn’t understand. And to all the teachers’ admonitions he answered with one thing: “This cannot be!” [4;144]. It was assumed that the reader would sense a mockery of the philistine well-intentioned official “sciences” serving the interests of the ruling classes.

The artistic speech in Shchedrin’s fairy tales is structured in such a way that the person following the external event conflict is simultaneously initiated into some significant and often eluding “secrets of modernity” in life. Most of the heroes of Shchedrin's fairy tales have their own social class “registration”: rich and poor, men and gentlemen, “sirs” and “Ivashki”.

Every now and then the author seems to push the reader into sudden comparisons and unusual analogies. The reader is faced with the need to correlate what is depicted with reality; a world of caustic satirical allegories and topical reminiscences opens up to him. This type of perception, to which many of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales lead, can conditionally be called comparative. What is reported in the fairy tale is involuntarily transferred to the circle of loved ones, acquaintances, experiences and impressions experienced by the reader himself. This is probably one of the inevitable stages on the path to improving reading skills and tastes. Saltykov-Shchedrin,

Of course, he counted on touching the reader’s heart with an interest in the real, concrete political aspects of everyday life and being.

But artistic speech, with its semantic and emotional depth and relief, leads away from overly straightened literal timing. Otherwise, the text turns into a special kind of cipher, and the reader’s task is reduced to guessing it.

Saltykov-Shchedrin was always alien to pamphleteering, and through the fable- or legendary-plot series, through the chain of allusive signs, the satirist’s uninterrupted large universal theme clearly shines through, raising the reader’s consciousness to a new and higher level, when, according to the successful definition of A. S. Bushmin , the evil of the day reaches the evil of the century. The writer does not lead his wise, sensitive reader to a clearly delineated conclusion or outcome, but to a state of anxiety, to a search for truth. Shchedrin's fairy tale becomes for a real reader-friend, as the writer ideally imagined him, moral support, imparts perspective to thought and feeling, infects him with a thirst for the struggle for the reconstruction of this crazy, cruel, unjust world, for the revival of Man.

Through all of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales there are words-leitmotifs that mean to him something more than just words: mind, conscience, truth, history...

Saltykov-Shchedrin connects his hopes for the inevitable future triumph of truth with history, the “call signs” of which every now and then cut through unusual, fairy-tale narratives. History in Shchedrin’s tales is both an unbroken chain of times and fair retribution that overtakes the villains, the “Stoeros Bourbons,” the Majors Toptygins. History preserves the most cherished and wise human traditions: “That evil has never been a founding force - history testifies to this” [5; 81]. History is “a story of liberation, a story about the triumph of good and reason over evil and madness” [5;82].

In Shchedrin's tales, History can speed up its course [5;79], but it does not interrupt it, does not stop it. The author of fairy tales is convinced that History is the present, preserving the memory of the past and gaining in this considerable strength for discerning the future: “But the time will come when every breath becomes clear the limits within which its life must take place - then the strife will disappear by itself, and along with them, all the little “personal truths” will dissipate like smoke. The real, united and binding Truth will be revealed; will come and the whole world will shine” [5;218].

Refuting the vulgar everyday morality, arousing interest in “our social life,” Shchedrin’s fairy tales help the reader gain a free, unbiased attitude to life, a sensitive historical approach to it. In fairy tales there is hope for a young reader with an “unslammed” soul, with an undestroyed conscience, for a “child” who is growing up by leaps and bounds.

Thus, a folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.

CONCLUSIONS

Thus, the following conclusions can be drawn:

As a genre, Shchedrin's fairy tale gradually matured in the writer's work from the fantastic and figurative elements of his satire. There are also a lot of folklore headpieces in them, starting from the use of the form of a long-past tense (“Once upon a time”) and ending with an abundant number of proverbs and sayings with which they are peppered. In his fairy tales, the writer touches on many issues:

- social;

— political;

- ideological.

Thus, the life of Russian society is depicted in them in a long series of miniature paintings. Fairy tales present the social anatomy of society in the form of a whole gallery of zoomorphic, fairy-tale images.

Shchedrin began his fairy tale cycle in 1869. Fairy tales were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological and creative quest of the satirist. At that time, due to the existence of strict censorship, the author could not fully expose the vices of society, show all the inconsistency of the Russian administrative apparatus. And yet, with the help of fairy tales “for children of a fair age,” Shchedrin was able to convey to people a sharp criticism of the existing order.
To write fairy tales, the author used grotesque, hyperbole and antithesis. Aesopian language was also important for the author. Trying to hide the true meaning of what was written from censorship, one had to use this technique.
Shchedrin's tales, according to the unanimous opinion of readers and researchers, were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological quest of the satirist. There are many works on their connection with the oral folk poetic tradition. In particular, all or almost all cases of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s use of folklore elements are noted:

- traditional beginnings;

- numerals with non-numerical meaning;

- typical sayings;

- constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions;

— proper names borrowed from folklore, synonymous combinations characteristic of folk poetry, idiomatic expressions dating back to folklore;

- oral and poetic vocabulary;

- numerous proverbs and sayings, etc.

A folk tale always tells about what happened, a fable always tells about what happens. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale is deliberately turned to today, to the present; in it, signs of a “non-fairy tale” time are constantly revealed.

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