The Tale Heard and the Tale Lived: Folklore Heritage in the Child Image of Russian and Uzbek Prose

Abstract

Folklore  is  one  of  the  earliest  cultural  environments  of  a  child,  and  childhood prose in both Russian and Uzbek literature draws on it extensively. This  paper compares how the two traditions use folklore heritage in constructing the child  image.  The  material  includes  Lev  Tolstoy's  Childhood,  Sergei  Aksakov's  Childhood  Years  of  Bagrov's  Grandson,  G'afur  G'ulom's  The  Mischievous  Boy,  Xudoyberdi  To'xtaboyev's  Riding the Yellow Giant  and Erkin A'zam's  Farewell to the Fairy Tale.  Drawing  on  Propp's  morphology  of  the  folktale,  studies  of  the  trickster  and  the  typological method of comparative literature, the paper argues  that the Russian texts  present  folklore  mainly  as  something  heard  and  remembered,  an  element  of  the  child's  perception  and  inner  world,  whereas  the  Uzbek  texts  present  it  mainly  as  something lived, a model of action through which the child is tested