UNKNOWN PAGES OF RUSSIAN FOLKLORE STUDIES: B. L. ROSENFELD’S REPORT "PRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL STUDY OF FOLKLORE"

The article provides information on the transcript of the report by B. L. Rosenfeld's "Principles of Historical Study of Folklore" at a meeting of the Literature Section of the Institute of Literature and Art of the Communist Academy of the CEC of the USSR, dated May 8, 1934. The report consists of two parts: methodological background; historical and stylistic classification of Russian oral poetry. In the first part, the task is to reorganize folklore as a discipline: in place of abstract-theoretical constructions of old folklore, starting with the mythological school and ending with the historical, the principle of studying specific facts and works of verbal folklore in their artistic integrity and lively aesthetic efficacy is foregrounded. At the same time the science of oral poetry must clearly establish its tasks, delineate the boundaries of its competence and define the object of its study, selecting it from its own complex point of view from a complex set of phenomena called folklore. In the second part of the report, the scientist suggested starting the study of Russian verbal folklore from the pre-class society on the basis of cultural history data and analysis of the relevant material. The tradition of the poetic heritage of the pre-class society in subsequent formations (up to our era) comes in two forms: in the form of experiencing (preserving) figuratively embodied primitive ideas and in the form of processing, rethinking elements of pre-class poetry in the styles of class society, including these recycled, rethought elements in new ideological style systems.