The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin can rightfully be called highest achievement social satire of the 1860–1880s. It is not without reason that Shchedrin’s closest predecessor is considered to be N.V. Gogol, who created a satirical and philosophical picture modern world. However, Saltykov-Shchedrin sets himself a fundamentally different creative task: expose and destroy as a phenomenon. V. G. Belinsky, discussing Gogol’s work, defined his humor as “calm in its indignation, good-natured in its slyness,” comparing it with others “formidable and open, bilious, poisonous, merciless.” This second characteristic deeply reveals the essence of Shchedrin's satire. He removed Gogol's lyricism from the satire and made it more explicit and grotesque. But this did not make the works simpler or more monotonous. On the contrary, they fully revealed the comprehensive “bungling” of Russian society in the 19th century.
"Fairy tales for children of considerable age» created in last years life of the writer (1883–1886) and appear before us as a certain result of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work in literature. And in terms of the richness of artistic techniques, and in terms of ideological significance, and in terms of the variety of recreated social types this book can fully be considered an artistic synthesis of the writer’s entire work. The form of a fairy tale gave Shchedrin the opportunity to speak openly on issues that concerned him. Turning to folklore, the writer sought to preserve its genre and artistic features, with their help, draw the reader’s attention to the main problem of your work. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales, by their genre nature, represent a kind of fusion of two different genres of folklore and original literature: fairy tales and fables. When writing fairy tales, the author used grotesque, hyperbole, and antithesis.
Grotesque and hyperbole are the main ones artistic techniques, with the help of which the author creates the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” The main characters are a man and two slacker generals. Two completely helpless generals miraculously ended up on a desert island, and got there straight from bed in their nightgowns and with orders around their necks. The generals almost eat each other because they cannot not only catch fish or game, but also pick fruit from the tree. In order not to starve, they decide to look for a man. And he was found right away: he was sitting under a tree and shirking work. The “huge man” turns out to be a jack of all trades. He took apples from the tree, and dug potatoes from the ground, and prepared a snare for the hazel grouse from his own hair, and got fire, and prepared provisions. And what? He gave the generals a dozen apples, and took one for himself - sour. He even twisted a rope so that his generals could tie him to a tree. Moreover, he was ready to “please the generals for the fact that they, a parasite, favored him and did not disdain his peasant work.”
The man collected a swan's fluff to deliver his generals in comfort. No matter how much they scold the man for parasitism, the man “keeps rowing and rowing and feeding the generals with herring.”
Hyperbole and grotesque are evident throughout the narrative. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooks a handful of soup. Stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour. A hungry general swallows his friend's order. An absolute hyperbole is that the man built a ship and took the generals straight to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya.
Extreme exaggeration of individual situations allowed the writer to turn funny story about stupid and worthless generals in a furious denunciation of the existing order in Russia, which contributes to their emergence and carefree existence. There are no random details in Shchedrin's tales and unnecessary words, and the heroes are revealed in actions and words. The writer draws attention to the funny sides of the person depicted. Suffice it to remember that the generals were in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging around their necks.
The uniqueness of Shchedrin’s fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic, thereby creating comic effect. On the fabulous island, the generals find the famous reactionary newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. From the extraordinary island it is not far from St. Petersburg, to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya.
These tales are a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era. Many images have become household names, denoting social phenomena Russian and world reality.
Target: acquaintance with the features of the satire genre.
Literary theory: allegory, hyperbole, fantasy, grotesque.
Preliminary task: find fairy tale devices in the text; repeat the meaning of allegory in the dictionary of literary terms (find in the text).
Draw illustrations for a fairy tale; prepare a dramatization.
I. introduction teachers.
“The story of how one man fed two generals” Saltykov-Shchedrin opens his cycle of fairy tales.
What did the writer call the age for which they are intended?
II. Vocabulary work.
The meanings of unclear words are clarified (some students receive this task in advance).
Occasion –
1. A convenient occasion for sending something with someone.
2. Rare unusual case(colloquial)
Registration is a department of an institution where someone or something is registered.
Calligraphy is the art of beautiful and clear writing.
Rendezvous - date (French)
III. Dramatization of the beginning of a fairy tale - page 223 (to the end of the page).
IV. Conversation.
1. Find words in the text that resemble Russian folk tale(compositional, event-fantastic, linguistic, lexical).
- Once upon a time there were two generals, and since both were frivolous, they soon , at the behest of the pike, at my will, found ourselves on a desert island.
- No sooner said than done. One general went to the right and saw trees growing, and all sorts of fruits on the trees...
- How much fear the generals gained during the journey from storms and from different winds, how much they scolded the man for his parasitism - this neither can I describe it with a pen, nor tell it in a fairy tale.
- It turned out that the man even knows Podyacheskaya, because he was there, I drank honey-beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth!
- They went to the treasury, and how much money they raked in - that I can’t say it in a fairy tale, I can’t describe it with a pen!
2. What events do not fit into the fairy tale plot?
3. How did the generals live before they got to the island?
4. How do the generals feel on the island? What feelings do they have?
5. Let us read again the scene of the “frenzy of the generals” (p. 225). It is known that the author tried several versions of this scene. In one of them, the general bit off another’s finger, in another, an ear. And finally, the order.
Why do you think the satirist chose the latter option?
This technique is called grotesque - depiction of people and phenomena in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form.
Write down the definition of grotesque in your notebook.
6. The generals found a newspaper on the island. What do they write about in this newspaper? How does this affect hungry generals?
The carefree life of the generals suddenly ended. They had to seriously think about who this “villain” is, through whose fault they have to experience such hardships.
7. What way out of this situation did the generals come up with?
8. Find in the text the scene when the generals found the man - page 228.
9. What feelings come over the generals when they find a man?
10. How was the man able to feed the generals?
11. Look at the pictures in the textbook. What episodes did the artists depict?
12. What episode is depicted in Yana’s drawing? Is this how you imagined the episodes and characters that Shchedrin spoke about? What do artists draw our attention to?
13. Why did the man, with all the abundance of everything good on the island, take for himself one apple, and even a sour one?
14. Why didn’t he eat himself, at least after he had prepared a lot of everything, but waited for the generals to come up with the idea: “Shouldn’t I give the parasite a particle”?
Teacher: This is called a low level of self-awareness, the inability to stand up for oneself.
15. Now the generals have eaten and drunk... What words do the generals use to address the peasant? (Find in text)
16. Are these good words? Do the generals pronounce them sincerely? And why?
Did the guy give in? Why? What did he do?
He is filled with servile joy from the knowledge that he managed to please the generals, that these nonentities, who almost ate each other amid the abundance of food, now allowed him, a craftsman and a hard worker, to work for them, to please them. A similar psychology, the psychology of a slave, will later be condemned by Nekrasov in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”
18. What human vices does the author ridicule?
19. Let us repeat the definition from the dictionary of literary terms allegories, hyperboles (write these terms on the board).
Allegory - (Greek Allegoria - allegory) - an allegorical image of an object, phenomenon, in order to most clearly show its essential features.
Hyperbole - (Greek Hyperbole - exaggeration) - excessive exaggeration of the properties of the depicted object.
21. Find the use of these literary devices in the fairy tale. For example:
Allegory - the general cannot pick apples from the tree himself, that is, he is not at all adapted to life, he does not know how to do anything on his own.
Hyperbole - the generals were sure that food would be born in the same form in which it was served to the table.
22. For what purpose are these techniques used in the text?
21. How does the fairy tale end? Does the ending follow the tradition of the fairy tale?
V. Lesson summary.
Criticism of any phenomena in life through ridicule is called satire. And the fairy tale that serves this purpose is called satirical tale.
Grotesque, hyperbole, allegory are satirical methods.
Satire – (Latin Satira – literally “mixture, all sorts of things”) – merciless, destructive ridicule, criticism of reality, person, phenomenon.
Write down the definition of satire in your notebook.
The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin can rightfully be called the highest achievement of social satire of the 1860-1880s. It is not without reason that N.V. is considered to be Shchedrin’s closest predecessor. Gogol, who created a satirical and philosophical picture of the modern world. However, Saltykov-Shchedrin sets himself a fundamentally different creative task: to expose and destroy as a phenomenon. V. G. Belinsky, discussing Gogol’s work, defined his humor as “calm in its indignation, good-natured in its slyness,” comparing it with others “formidable and open, bilious, poisonous, merciless.” This second characteristic deeply reveals the essence of Shchedrin's satire. He removed Gogol's lyricism from the satire and made it more explicit and grotesque. But this did not make the works simpler or more monotonous. On the contrary, they fully revealed the comprehensive “bungling” of Russian society in the 19th century.
“Fairy tales for children of a fair age” were created in the last years of the writer’s life (1883-1886) and appear before us as a kind of result of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work in literature. And in terms of the richness of artistic techniques, and in terms of ideological significance, and in terms of the diversity of recreated social types, this book can fully be considered an artistic synthesis of the writer’s entire work. The form of a fairy tale gave Shchedrin the opportunity to speak openly on issues that concerned him. Turning to folklore, the writer sought to preserve its genre and artistic features and, with their help, draw the reader’s attention to the main problem of his work. By their genre nature, Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales represent a kind of fusion of two different genres of folklore and original literature: fairy tales and fables. When writing fairy tales, the author used grotesque, hyperbole, and antithesis.
Grotesque and hyperbole are the main artistic techniques with which the author creates the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” The main characters are a man and two slacker generals. Two completely helpless generals miraculously ended up on a desert island, and got there straight from bed in their nightgowns and with orders around their necks. The generals almost eat each other because they cannot not only catch fish or game, but also pick fruit from the tree. In order not to starve, they decide to look for a man. And he was found right away: he was sitting under a tree and shirking work. The “huge man” turns out to be a jack of all trades. He got apples from the tree, and dug potatoes from the ground, and prepared a snare for the hazel grouse from his own hair, and got fire, and prepared provisions. And what? He gave the generals a dozen apples, and took one for himself - sour. He even made a rope so that his generals could tie him to a tree with it. Moreover, he was ready to “please the generals for the fact that they, a parasite, favored him and did not disdain his peasant work.”
The man collected a swan's fluff to deliver his generals in comfort. No matter how much they scold the man for parasitism, the man “keeps rowing and rowing and feeding the generals with herring.”
Hyperbole and grotesque are evident throughout the narrative. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooks a handful of soup. Stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour. A hungry general swallows his friend's order. An absolute hyperbole is that the man built a ship and took the generals straight to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya.
Extreme exaggeration of individual situations allowed the writer to turn a funny story about stupid and worthless generals into a furious denunciation of the existing order in Russia, which contributes to their emergence and carefree existence. In Shchedrin's fairy tales there are no random details or unnecessary words, and the characters are revealed in actions and words. The writer draws attention to the funny sides of the person depicted. Suffice it to remember that the generals were in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging around their necks.
The uniqueness of Shchedrin's fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic, thereby creating a comic effect. On the fabulous island, the generals find the famous reactionary newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. From the extraordinary island it is not far from St. Petersburg, to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya.
These tales are a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era. Many images have become household names, denoting social phenomena of Russian and world reality.
This work is called a fairy tale because it contains fantastic moments - it is unknown how the men ended up on a desert island, the unexpected appearance of a man there, the appearance of the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper.
1) the fairytale beginning “once upon a time”;
2) set expressions: By pike command, according to my desire; whether long or short; a day passed, another passed; he was there, drinking beer, honey flowing down his mustache, but it didn’t get into his mouth; neither to describe with a pen, nor to tell in a fairy tale; no sooner said than done;
3) fantastic events that we have already talked about.
Hyperbola - a strong exaggeration of certain properties of the depicted. For example:
“Who would have thought, Your Excellency, that human food, in its original form, flies, swims and grows on trees? - said one general.
Yes,” answered another general, “I must admit, and I thought that the rolls would be born in the same form as they are served with coffee in the morning.”
“Suddenly both generals looked at each other: an ominous fire shone in their eyes, their teeth chattered, a dull growl came out of their chests. They began to slowly crawl towards each other and in the blink of an eye they became frantic. Shreds flew, squeals and groans were heard; the general, who was a teacher of calligraphy, bit off the order from his comrade and immediately swallowed it.”
“Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything. They didn’t even know any words except: “Accept the assurance of my complete respect and devotion.” The registry was abolished as unnecessary and the generals were released. Left behind the staff, they settled in St. Petersburg, on Podyacheskaya Street, in different apartments; “Everyone had their own cook and received a pension.”
“They began to look at each other and saw that they were in nightgowns, and they had an order hanging on their necks.”
This epithet emphasizes the uselessness and uselessness of this registry.
The generals talk about the change of day and night, about food.
1. “They began to look for where the east is and where the west is... They began to look for the north, stood this way and that, tried all the countries of the world, but since they served in the registry all their lives, they found nothing.”
2. “For example, why do you think the sun rises first and then sets, and not vice versa?
You are a strange person, Your Excellency; but you also get up first, go to the department, write there, and then go to bed?
But why not allow such a rearrangement: first I go to bed, see various dreams, and then get up?
Hm... yes... And I must admit, when I served in the department, I always thought so. “Now it’s morning, and then it’ll be day, and then they’ll serve dinner - and it’s time to sleep!”
Whatever article they read in this newspaper, they come across articles about food.
1. “Yesterday... strawberries.”
2. “They write from Tula...”.
3. “They write from Vyatka...”.
“...the man is everywhere, you just have to look for him! He’s probably hidden somewhere, shirking work!”
Accustomed to living off the labor of the people, they and the entire high society believe that a man should feed them, water them and please them, and he lives only for this. Without wanting to, but to a greater extent not knowing how to work themselves, they accuse him of unwillingness to work, of laziness, calling him a “parasite.”
In fact, the generals themselves can and should be considered one of these, because they are the ones who do nothing and do not want to do anything.
“First of all I climbed a tree and picked the generals ten of the most ripe apples ov, but I took one for myself, sour. Then he dug into the ground and extracted potatoes from there; then he took two pieces of wood, rubbed them against each other, and brought out fire. Then he made a snare from his own hair and caught the hazel grouse. Finally he lit a fire and baked so many different provisions that the generals even thought: “Shouldn’t we give the parasite a piece?”
The guy is a jack of all trades. Whatever work he takes on, he doesn’t care, everything works out for him.
Laughter towards generals is accusatory. The author ridicules the evil in them, the worthlessness of their existence, and greed. Revealing their bestial essence (“...in an instant they went berserk... Shreds flew...").
Ridiculing the man's helpfulness, Shchedrin experiences a feeling of pain. Despite the fact that the man is powerful, he can find a way out of any current situation, he is dexterous, resourceful, although the author exaggerates his dexterity and resourcefulness (hyperbole), and is resignedly submissive, so the writer’s laughter is laughter through tears, mixed with real human pain. The man is not capable of protesting against slavery, which causes indignation among the author and the reader.
“The story of how one man fed two generals.” Peculiarities artistic speech satirical work
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (January 15 (27), 1826 - April 28 (May 10), 1889) ( real name Saltykov, pseudonym N. Shchedrin)
The fairy tale genre has long attracted Shchedrin. More than any of his contemporaries, he understood all the advantages fairy-tale style narrative, and his turn to the fairy tale was caused not only by the conditions of the socio-political life of Russia in those years.
As an independent genre, the fairy tale first appeared in his work in 1869. “The story of how one man fed two generals.” He called his work “Tale...” and not “Fairy Tale...”, because this work is a kind of fairy tale for adults, which depicts the heroes of that time: two generals who embody the autocratic system and a peasant who embodies the Russian oppressed people.
A fairy tale without fairy-tale heroes, which does not reflect the realities of Russian folklore, does not resemble a folk tale, neither in composition nor in plot does it repeat traditional folklore schemes, which is why it is called “The Tale ...”, in which the author laconically, clearly and clearly reveals an aspect of Russian autocratic reality.
“What Mr. Shchedrin calls fairy tales does not at all correspond to its name,” one of the censors indignantly reported to the censorship committee, “his fairy tales are the same satire, and caustic, tendentious satire, more or less directed against our social and political system.”
Shchedrin's brilliant miniatures were a merciless satire of the autocratic system and the reactionary government policies of the 1980s.
Shchedrin laid the principle of depicting the life of the people “without any embellishment” as the basis for all creative activity, truthfully reflecting in it the deep contradictions of peasant life.
Shchedrin's punishing laughter did not leave alone the representatives of mass predation - the nobility and bourgeoisie, who acted under the auspices of the ruling political elite and in alliance with it.
Using the techniques of witty fairy-tale fiction, Shchedrin shows that the source of not only material well-being, but also the so-called noble culture is the work of the peasant.
The order that one of the generals snatched from another is a grotesque detail. You can bite off a part of the body (finger, ear...). Violation of the semantic compatibility of words gives rise to associations between the award and a part of the body: the order, as it were, became an accessory to the general’s flesh. The phrase about flowing blood, immediately following the news about the bitten order, seems to reinforce these associations: it can be understood that blood flowed from the wound that remained exactly at the site of the bitten order.
But in natural world desert island, insignia, indications of a place in the hierarchy of power lose all meaning, and you won’t be satisfied with the bitten order...
The fate of the generals abandoned on a desert island would have been sad if they had not remembered in time that somewhere nearby there must certainly be a man “there is a man everywhere, you just have to look for him!” He's probably hidden somewhere, shirking work! This thought encouraged the generals so much that they jumped up as if disheveled and set off to look for the man.”
“They wandered around the island for a long time without any success, but finally the pungent smell of chaff bread and sour sheepskin put them on the trail. Under a tree, with his belly up and his fist under his head, a huge man was sleeping and was shirking work in the most impudent manner. There was no limit to the generals' indignation.
Sleep, couch potato! - they attacked him, - probably you wouldn’t even know that two generals here have been dying of hunger for two days! Now go to work!
The man stood up: he saw that the generals were strict. I wanted to give them a scolding, but they just froze, clinging to him.”
With great sympathy, Shchedrin draws this man full of strength, intelligence and ingenuity.
“First of all, he climbed the tree and picked ten of the ripest apples for the generals, and took one sour one for himself. Then he dug into the ground and pulled out potatoes from there; then he took two pieces of wood, rubbed them together, and brought out fire. Then he made a snare from his own hair and caught the hazel grouse. Finally, he lit a fire and baked so many different provisions that the generals even thought: “Shouldn’t we give the parasite a piece?”
He is capable of any task, but this character evokes more than one admiration from the author and readers. At the same time, Shchedrin makes you think about why a man unquestioningly, sparing no effort, works for parasite generals? Together with Saltykov-Shchedrin, we grieve over the bitter fate of the people, who are forced to shoulder the care of parasite landowners, quitters and slackers who can only push others around and force them to work for themselves.
In "Fairy Tales" Saltykov embodied his many years of observations on the life of the enslaved Russian peasantry, his bitter thoughts about the fate of the oppressed masses, his deep sympathy for working humanity and his bright hopes on people's strength.
The source of the writer’s constant and painful thoughts was the striking contrast between the strong and weaknesses Russian peasantry. Showing unparalleled heroism in work and the ability to overcome any difficulties in life, the peasantry at the same time resignedly, meekly tolerated their oppressors, passively endured oppression, fatalistically hoping for some kind of external help, nurturing a naive faith in the coming of good leaders.
With bitter irony, Saltykov depicted the slavish obedience of the peasant, presenting here a picture of a screaming contradiction between the enormous potential strength and class passivity of the peasant. A huge man, a jack of all trades, whose protest the generals could not resist if he were capable of it, submits to them without complaint. The generals depend entirely on the peasant, but he does not depend on them at all. But the man submits, and the gentlemen dominate. Generals are also generals on a desert island.
“Are you satisfied, gentlemen generals?”
“Won’t you allow me to rest now?”
He himself made a rope so that the generals would keep him on a leash at night so that he would not run away. Moreover, he was grateful to the generals: “how could he please his generals for the fact that they favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant work!” It is difficult to imagine a more vivid depiction of the strength and weakness of the Russian people in the era of autocracy.
The fabulous flavor of a desert island is freely combined with “pensions”, “uniforms”, “Babylonian pandemonium”.
“A day passed, another passed; The man became so adept that he even began to cook soup in a handful. Our generals became cheerful, loose, well-fed, and white. They began to say that here they live on everything ready, but in St. Petersburg, meanwhile, their pensions keep accumulating and accumulating.
What do you think, Your Excellency, was there really a Babylonian pandemonium or is it just that, just an allegory? - one general used to say to another after having breakfast.
I think, Your Excellency, that it really happened, because otherwise how can one explain that there are different languages in the world!
So there was a flood?
And there was a flood, because, otherwise, how could the existence of antediluvian beasts be explained? Moreover, the Moskovskie Vedomosti tells..."
The combination of everyday and comical is achieved by the presence of such details in the text. A “cultural” conversation between well-fed generals about the origin of languages (whether the Babylonian pandemonium was the reason for the division of languages) and about reality global flood presented as meaningless chatter, as empty “philosophizing.”
Thus, in the fairy tale, two voices are heard first - the ironic voice of the author and the pathetic voices of the generals, and then a third voice joins, the voice of a man symbolizing the voice of the people.
Along with a satirical denunciation of the nobility, Saltykov-Shchedrin depicted the slavish behavior of a peasant with a feeling of sorrow and sad irony.
Satire techniques used in the work by the author:
Allegory - an allegorical expression of something abstract in a specific image
(The general cannot pick apples from the tree).
Hyperbole is an exaggeration.
(Food will be born in the same form in which it is served to the table).
Fantasy - we fell asleep and found ourselves on a desert island.
Grotesque is a combination in a fantastic form of the terrible and the funny, the ugly and the sublime.
(scene of the generals' frenzy).
The fairy tale ends with the words: “Have fun, man.” This phrase can be said by three characters: directly by the author, and it expresses deep sympathy for the Russian peasant and pain because the peasant is still poor, and for all his labors, “they sent him a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver.”
The phrase may belong to the generals and then it is a bitter irony. A mockery of the people. “They went to the treasury, and how much money they raked in here - it’s impossible to say in a fairy tale, not to describe with a pen! However, they didn’t forget about the guy.”
The phrase may belong to the peasant himself and depicts the passivity of the masses, their obedience and political darkness, the “unconsciousness” of the peasantry.
Conclusion: Saltykov-Shchedrin was a great master of irony - subtle, hidden ridicule, clothed in the form of praise, flattery, feigned solidarity with the enemy (together with the generals, he was indignant at the behavior of the parasite peasant. The specific power of irony, which, according to Shchedrin, “spreads in the form the subtlest ether" (v, 231), lies in the fact that, while hurting the enemy, she herself remains invulnerable and formally elusive. It is not for nothing that the satirist said: "...a terrible weapon is irony."
By mockingly ridiculing the carriers of social evil, portraying them in a funny way, the satirist aroused a feeling of active hatred towards them in society, inspired the people to fight them, raised their spirits and faith in their strength, and taught them to understand their role in life.
List of used literature
1. Bazanova V.I. “Tales” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. L., -1966
2. Bushmin A.S. "Saltykov-Shchedrin. The art of satire." M., 1976
3. Goryachkina M.S. “The Satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin” M., 1965.
4. Bushmin A.S. “The Satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin” M., 1959.
