Children’s folklore: content, specificity and boundaries of the concept in Soviet and Russian folklore studies

The article summarizes the study of fundamental concepts (content, specificity and boundaries) of one of the original areas of Russian folk literature – children’s folklore, the main achievements in its collection and study in the 20th century. A major role in these developments was played by the outstanding folklorist Georgy S. Vinogradov, who made the first attempt to interpret the concept of “children’s folklore” and thus anticipated world studies of this type of children’s creativity. The “Vinogradov Readings” conference was of great importance in the development of childhood folklore studies in Russia. In the 1970s, children’s folklore texts began to be published in fundamental, specialized academic collections, rather than as part of publications on various types of traditional folklore, as had been the case previously. A significant milestone in the study of children’s folklore was the emergence of scholarly interest in school folklore. This interest was initiated by Alexander F. Belousov, who compiled and published the collection “Russian School Folklore: From the Queen of Spades’ ‘Evocations’ to Family Stories” (1998), which presented school culture in a broad and multifaceted manner. Unlike “classical” children’s folklore, which was primarily prevalent in villages, school folklore is primarily urban. The genres of urban school folklore belong to the phenomena defined by S. Yu. Neklyudov’s term “postfolklore”. The author of the article offers her own definition of the term “children’s folklore” and identifies the specific qualities inherent in this form of creativity. Particular attention is given to the genre of “dreamland games” (a kind of children’s utopia), which has been introduced into scholarly discourse relatively recently.

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