Paper Russian fairy tales proverbs and stories Contents Introduction

Research of use and comparative analysis of proverbs
For definition of more used proverbs, we conducted interrogation among students of our school (Enclosure 1). The most students know what are proverbs and use them about in their life. Especially, the Proverbs about work are the most ordinary. Some students can translate proverbs from English into Russian easily and find Russian equivalents. They are 44%. Some students can translate them from English into Russian hardly. They are 56%.

2.1ENGLISH FAIRY - TALES

A fairy tale is a fictional story that may feature folkloric characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants and talking animals, and usually enchants, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events. Fairy tales are found in oral folktales and in literary form. The history of the fairy is particularly difficult to trace, because only the literary forms can survive. Still the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognized as a genre.
. The genre itself was first marked out by writers of the Renaissance, who began to define a genre of tales, and became stabilized through the works of many writers, becoming an unquestioned genre in the works of the Brothers Grimm. In this evolution, the name was coined when the precieuses took up writing literary stories; Madame d' Aulnoy invented the term contes de fee, or fairy tales. Prior to the definition of the genre of fantasy, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", including Tolkien's " The Hobbit", George Orwell's " Animal Farm" and L.Frank Baum's " The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Although fantasy, particularly in sub-genre fairytales fantasy, draws heavily on fairy tale motifs, the genres are now regarded as distinct.
It's rather interesting that the oral tradition of fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure. The oldest known written fairy tales stem from ancient Egypt, c.1300 BC, and fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literature cultures, as in "The Golden Ass, or the Panchatantra, but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literature forms. What they do show is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the "Arabian Nights" collection of magical tales.
In contemporary literature, many authors have used the form of fairy tales for various reasons, such as examining the human condition from the simple framework a fairytale provides. Some authors seek to recreate a sense of the fantastic in a contemporary discourse. Some writers use fairy tale forms for modern issues; this can include using the psychological dramas implicit in the story, as when Robin McKinley retold" Donkeyskin" as the novel" Deerskin", with emphasis on the abusive treatment the father of the tale dealt to his daughter. Sometimes, especially in children's literature, fairy tales are retold with a twist simply for comic effect, such as "The Stinky Cheese Man "by Jon Scieszka. A common comic motif is a world where all the fairy tales take place, and the characters are aware of their role in the story, such as in the film series "Shrek"
One interesting use of the genre occurred in a military technology journal named "Defense AT and L, which published an article in the form of a fairytale titled "Optimizing Bi- Modal Signal\ Noise Ratios. Written by Maj. Dan Ward (USAF), the story uses a fairy named Garble to represent breakdowns in communication between operators and technology developers. Ward's article was heavily influenced by George MacDona
Fairy tales have been enacted dramatically; records exist of this in commedia dell'arte, and later in pantomime. The advent of cinema has meant that such stories could be presented in a more plausible manner, with the use of special effects and animation; the Disney movie "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs" in 1937 was a ground- breaking film for fairy tales and, indeed, fantasy in general. Disney's influence helped establish this genre as children's movies, despite the fact that "Snow White", as well as the company's other early feature-length films, were originally intented for adults as well, and has been blamed for simplification of fairy tales ending in situations where everything goes right, as opposed to the pain and suffering and sometimes unhappy endings of many folk fairy tales.
Many filmed fairy tales have been made primarily for children, from Disney's later works to Aleksandr Rou's retelling of "Vasilissa the Beatiful", the first Soviet film to use Russian folk tales in a big-budget feature. Others have used the conventions of fairy tales to create new stories with sentiments more relevant to contemporary life, as in "Labyrinth" and the films by Michel Ocelot.
Other works are retold familiar fairy tales in a darker, more horrific or psychological variant aimed primarily at adults. Notable examples are Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Company of Wolves, based on an Angela Carter's retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood". Likewise, "Princess Mononoke" and "Pan's Labyrinth" create new stories in this genre from fairy tale and folklore motifs.

ENGLISH FAIRY - TALES

English fairy - tales give us a chance to get to know about the traditions, culture of this country.
They differ from the tales of other countries as they seem rather simple but they hide some serious problems. Englishmen try to solve these problems with the help of their mythology. Their fairy world is thought thoroughly and looks highly real. It's a distinctive feature of English tales. Their main characters live near them.
One of the most popular characters is a child. This child fights with difficulties and withstands adults who prevent him. There are a lot of fairies about Jack, the son of a poor widow. Sometimes he is lucky and bright ("Jack is a giants' conqueror"), sometimes he is lazy and fool ("Lazy Jack")
Of course, there are well - known plots with animals or birds in tales. They teach people to distinguish kindness from evil, to help weak persons. The representatives of evil are wolves and foxes and the representatives of kindness are cats or hens. Anticharecters are made fun as sometimes they get into some comic situations.
One of the distinctive features of English fairies is appending one episode on another and repeating them many times. This method increases actions and leads to the culmination and denouement.
The absolute consistency of events creates a fairy time where characters overcome difficulties to be happy. There is one special feature as their denouement is often sad. Unlike Russian tales "they lived happily and long" their fairies describe the parting or their ordinary life.
The beginning of tales is different too. Unlike Russian fairies "zhili byli; ya tam byl" English ones describe real situation.

RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES

Russian fairy - tales are a product of a very ancient, pagan time. The talkers of this genre who lived in the 11th, 12th or even in the 17th centuries were persecuted by the clergy. These talkers were called "bayunami", "bayanami, "bakharaymi" The plot, the characters were not the result of people's imagination. The tales reflected the life and manners of that ancient period.
When people went shooting and were busy with cattle - farms to survive there were tales about animals. The struggle with wild animals was very dangerous and a man felt weak himself because of his bad weaponry. So, people imagined those animals very strong and powerful. They believed that a man could turn into a wolf or a bear. To change the position when a man was weaker than an animal, people began composing fairies. The main characters were a fox, a wolf, a bear, a dog, a goat, a bull, a hare, a horse, a cock as people knew them very well. The fox and the wolf were the most popular characters. The fox was cunning, treacherous and these features helped her to be stronger than other animals. People called her" kuma - Lisa, Lisichka- sistrichka,Lisa - Patrikeevna" and so on. As for the wolf, this character was greedy, cruel and foolish.
People of that time could not explain the alternation of night and day, seasons; they could not explain natural phenomenon and they composed tales. For example, in the tale about Ivan Veter, Dozhd, Grom got married to three sisters. Grom taught Ivan to thunder, Dozhd taught him to rain and Veter taught to blow. The changing of seasons (autumn/winter) was represented by monsters such as Zmeya, Moroz, Kashchei, Baba - Yaga. The positive heroes reanimated their girls and it meant that our nature came to life (spring/summer)/ Baba Yaga was a witch who knew the past and the future. She knew where the beauty had been hidden. Sometimes she helped with advice or she gave her magic ball.

RUSSIAN TALES IN COMPARISON WITH ENGLISH ONES

As our aim is to compare Russian and English fairy - tales and the subject of my research is to find common and distinctive features in them we have prepared a table to demonstrate these facts.
I took two tales:"Volk and semero kozlyat" in Russian and" Three pigs" in English to establish the similarity and distinction in them.