Udmurt state university

Modern genres of children's folklore .

In children's folklore, there are both very old works and just-born ones. Both are constantly being updated and redesigned. Like adult folklore, children's folklore reflects history and keeps pace with it.
Scary stories .
Scary stories are short stories with a tense plot and a frightening ending, the purpose of which is to scare the listener.
Literary critic O. Yu. Trykova believes that "at present, horror stories are gradually moving into the" stage of conservation. Children still tell them, but there are practically no new plots, and the frequency of performance also becomes less. Obviously, this is due to a change in life realities: in the Soviet period, when an almost total ban in the official culture was imposed on everything catastrophic and frightening, the need for the terrible was satisfied through this genre. Currently, there are many sources, in addition to horror stories, that satisfy this craving for the mysteriously frightening (from news releases, various newspaper publications savoring the "terrible" to numerous horror films). According to the pioneer in the study of this genre, psychologist M.V. Osorina , fears that a child copes with in early childhood on his own or with the help of his parents become the material of a collective child's consciousness. This material is worked out by children in group situations of telling scary stories, fixed in the texts of children's folklore and passed on to the next generations of children, becoming a screen for their new personal projections. Horror stories are not limited only to the plot, the ritual of storytelling is also essential - as a rule, in the dark, in the company of children in the absence of adults. According to the folklorist M.P. Cherednikova, the involvement of a child in the practice of telling horror stories depends on his psychological maturation. At first, at the age of 5-6, the child cannot hear terrible stories without horror. Later, from about 8 to 11 years old, children are happy to tell scary stories, and at the age of 12-13 they no longer take them seriously, and various parodic forms become more widespread. As a rule, horror stories are characterized by stable motifs: “black hand”, “bloody stain”, “green eyes”, “coffin on wheels”, etc. Such a story consists of several sentences, as the action develops, the tension increases, and in the final phrase it reaches its peak.
"Red spot". One family got a new apartment, but there was a red stain on the wall. They wanted to delete it, but nothing happened. Then the stain was covered with wallpaper, but it appeared through the wallpaper. And every night someone died. And the stain after each death became even brighter. [8].
"Blue Glove" Once upon a time there was a blue glove. Everyone was afraid of her, because she pursued and strangled people who returned home late. And then one day a woman was walking along the street - and this street was dark, very dark - and suddenly she saw that a blue glove was peeking out of the bushes. The woman was frightened and ran home, followed by a blue glove. A woman ran into the entrance, went up to her floor, and the blue glove followed her. She began to open the door, and the key got stuck, but she opened the door, ran home, suddenly - a knock on the door. She opens, and there is a blue glove! (The last phrase was usually accompanied by a sharp movement of the hand towards the listener ).
In our time, one of the main conditions for the prosperity of the genre is gradually being lost - the secrecy of its existence. From the innermost layer of the children's subculture, horror stories are now becoming the subject of the public domain. They are actively used by modern writers (from E. Uspensky to L. Petrushevskaya ), they are told on TV and radio, published in the press. Relations between parents and children are becoming more democratic, who, no longer afraid of misunderstanding, introduce adults to the previously forbidden area of \u200b\u200btheir subculture. Even the word “horror story” itself is gaining extraordinary popularity in everyday speech, not as a definition of a genre, but as a designation for everything terrible and frightening (with a touch of condescending disdain).