Genetic Interrelationship of Folklore Genres

Proverb, Aphorism, and Philosophical Lyric Poetry

Abstract

Due to its inherently social nature, isolation is foreign to any branch of art; this is especially true of oral tradition, whose principal specificity is collectivity - the expression of the aspirations of many and the tempering of all social strata within the spiritual furnace of the community. In folklore, this characteristic is manifested in the genetic interrelationship between genres.

Clear examples of genetic connections among genres in folk verbal art include the relationships between the proverb and various forms of poetry, the proverb and the fable, the proverb and proverbial speech material, mowing songs and lament poetry, heroic and historical oral narratives, heroic-historical and lament traditions, as well as the multifaceted traditional interrelations among legend, tale, and oral account, and between myth and legend. These many-sided traditional correlations are revealed in the merging of indi­vidual episodes and motifs within works belonging to genetically related genres.

From the standpoint of genetic interrelations among folklore genres, the issue of the relationship between proverb-aphorisms and folk philosophical lyric poetry is of particular interest, and the present study is devoted to this problem.