Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 14
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In folklore, a diminutivesupernatural creature, generally in human form, live in an imaginaryregion called fairyland and go through magic transformations sometimesin mortal affairs.54The fairy tales circulated in England in oral form and like ballads manyof them unfortunately have been lost to history. One of the oldest printedfairy tales in England was Tom Thumb which appeared in 1621 in achapbook.
Tom Thumb is born in answer to the wish of a childless poorcouple, who desire a son even if he should be no bigger than his father’sthumb. Magician Merlin answers their wish and the Fairy Queen nameshim and gives him a hat made of oak leaf and a shirt of spider’s web.Tom then encounters many adventures. The last of them is being eaten bya fish which is then caught for King Arthur’s table; Tom becomes aknight and when he dies is mourned by the whole Arthur’s court.In 1711 there appeared the first printed version of Jack the GiantKiller, a popular English folk tale.
The English fairytales were mostlyhumorous ones (Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant-Killer, TomThumb), except for the more magical Three Heads in the Well. LaterVictorian collectors found some other oral examples, including Tom TitTot and Cap o' Rushes from Suffolk, the Small-Tooth Dog fromDerbyshire, and the Rose Tree from Devon.
The great majority offairytale texts recorded in Britain were found either in Scotland andWales or among Gypsy storytellers. The typical English narrative genresare the jocular anecdote, the horrific anecdote (e.g., Mr. Fox), and thelocal legend. A fairy tale as a particular type of folktale, part of the oralnarrative tradition flourished until the 17th century in England. However,this genre nearly disappeared when French and German fairy tales gainedpopularity there.
In the 18th century French fairy tales were publishedmainly by Perrault. Selections from these were quickly translated andcheaply printed. Such fairy tales as Cinderella, Bluebeard, SleepingBeauty, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, RedRiding Hood, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, The Tinder Box,and The Little Mermaid were totally absorbed into English culture,together with a few items from the Arabian Nights, notably Aladdin.However, in the 19th century, often described as the golden age of thefairy tale, folklorists such as Andrew Lang and Joseph Jacobs begancollecting folk and fairy tales throughout Britain, thus reclaiming theuniquely English oral narrative characterized by its humour andhomespun quality.
At the same time, many British authors began writingliterary fairy tales, among them George Cruikshank, who sermonized thetales; a number of women such as Mary Louisa Molesworth and JeanIngelow modernized traditional folktales. George MacDonald, foremost55of the fairy tale writers infused his tales with a spiritual quality. The bestcollection of fairy tales was made by Jacobs, 1890/1968, with texts oftenreworked. At our time there was another full collection by Philip, 1992,with accurate texts and valuable introduction and comments by AndrewLang, e.g.
The Blue Fairy Tale Book and The Red Fairy Fairtale Book;and representative collections of Irish stories such as Legends andTraditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker and IrishFairy Tales by William Butler Yeats. Croker has described fairies asbeing "a few inches high, airy and almost transparent in body; so delicatein their form that a dewdrop, when they chance to dance on it, trembles,indeed, but never breaks."LiteratureLike many other world literatures English literature grew up from therich and diverse folklore heritage of the nations constituting this country.Rich narrative traditions of ballads, songs and tales come to us throughliterature, writings of English authors ranging from Chaucer, Shakespeareand Ben Johnson, to William Yeats, Burns and BernardShaw.
The traditional characteristics of fairies aredepicted in English literature in such works asShakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream andRomeo and Juliet (in Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech);The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser; L'Allegro andComus by John Milton. The collector of Scottishfolklore Walter Scott used many folklore elements inhis wonderful historical novels. Scottish poet RobertBurns grew up on the folklore traditions of his land.British literature is so rich that it is absolutely impossible to describe itshistory and its main writers, poets and dramatists in any detail. Everyonein the childhood read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731),Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Oliver Twist andDavid Copperfield by one of the greatest English writers of the 19thcentury Charles Dickens (1812-1870).The Bronte sisters were exceptional writers of poetry as well as fiction.Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Jane Eyre by CharlotteBronte are read and enjoyed even now.
Thomas Hardy’s and JaneAusten’s novels reflected different sides of English life of the 19thcentury. It was not easy for 19 century women writers to sell their booksunder their real names. Many of them used male pseudonyms: George56Eliot (1819-1880) never used her real name which was Mary Ann Evans.Her books show a detailed picture of provincial Victorian society withhumour and feeling.
A Scottish writer Robert Stevenson (180-94) wrotefamous adventure novels, and an English novelist William Thackeray(1811-63) in his brilliant satire Vanity Fair became the master of greatindividuality. Jerome, K. Jerome (1859-1927) wrote two humorousbooks, one of which Three Men in a Boat is favourite with the Russianstudents.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) wrote a lot of poems, stories andtales, which children of all the countries still enjoy today. His storiesabout Mowglii and finest animal stories inspired Walt Disney to create awonderful cartoon film. He was the first English writer to be awarded theNobel Prize in 1907. An Irish-born author Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)created novels, stories and plays, still staged in Russian theatres. The Warof the World by H.
Wells (1866-1946) became the first great works ofscience fiction.There were many wonderful poets in Britain.Romantic poets Baron and Shelly influenced thepoetry of Alezander.Pushkin. Many great writers andpoets are commemorated by statues at their birthplaces or in big cities like London. Robert Burns(1759-1796) is regarded by the Scottish people as theirnational poet. Burns’s poems and songs, known to usthrough translations of Samuel Marshak, were writtenin a very expressive Northern dialect. R.Burns grew upin a farm and managed to combine in his simple poems all tenderness,rich humour, lyric and love for freedom of the Scottish folklore heroes.His birthday is celebrated in Scotland in cities, towns and villages as thenational holiday and his statue and tiny house in Dumfries are the places,visited by his numerous admirers.The 20th century gave a great number of talented British writers, poetsand dramatists: poet Thomas Eliot (1888-1965), novelist and dramatistJohn Galsworthy (1867-1933), David Lawrence, satirist AldousHuxley (1894-1963), Sean O’Keisi, Richard Oldington, novelist,dramatist and essayist John Priestly (1894-1984), Evelyn Waugh(1903-66), Graham Green (1904-91), Irish novelist James Joyce(1882-1941) and many others.
Joyce’s novel Ulysses started thedevelopment of modernist literature in Britain. In this novel and later inEinnegan’s Wake Joyce revolutionized the techniques of fiction –57writing, introducing the “stream of consciousness,” inventing words, andexperimenting with syntax. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in her novelsalso experimented with the stream-of-consciosness narrative technique.An Irish playwright Sean O’Casey wrote a number of tragicomedies,blending realism with symbolism and poetry with vernacular speech. Thewritings of Irish poet William Yeats (1865-1939), marked with theNobel Prize in 1923, had a great influence on the development of theBritish poetry of the 20th century.
All his books of verses were full of theCeltic spirit, brilliant vigorous technique, the combination of westernviewpoint with national philosophy and traditions. The Irish people arealso proud of their countryman – playwright Bernard Show, (1856-190)whose satirical, witty and psychological plays became well known notonly in Britain, but also all over the world, including Russia. AmongShaw’ best-known plays are Heartbreak House, Saint Joan andPygmalion, based on a Greek myth about a sculptor who carved a statueof a woman and fell in love with her.
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