Economic ideas in folklore

The aim of the article is to reveal the dependence of social and economic representations of the "uneducated" class (peasants) on the sociocultural conditions of their life during a specific period of the European history. For this purpose, it is necessary to find out what a human being is and what connects people with each other; to describe the living conditions of society; to find out which circumstances initiate people's activity in society; to define what the purpose of public life is. The combination of hermeneutic, dialectic, and phenomenological methods allows to understand the place and role of a person who represents the "uneducated" class in the structure of the European society in the 17th- 18th centuries. Peasants' views on the world in general, the society organization, their standards of living, socio-economic ideas found reflection in folklore. Studying European (German, French, Scandinavian, Russian) fairy tales collected by Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Alexander Afanasyev, and works of Fernand Braudel and Robert Darnton allow to draw a conclusion that for ordinary people fairy tales served as means of communication, education, transmission of traditions and cultural schemes. Harmonious communication with nature is found when characters of fairy tales work on land and hunt. Their dearest wish is to get a magic object as a gift and not to need food any more, which reflects the agrarian orientation of economy, the natural reasons of deficiency of means for life. Images of silly, greedy, lazy rich men and of poor people who are forced to work to earn a living, not to get rich, indicate not only the understanding of the unfair social structure by an ordinary person, but also offer available means of maintenance of the socio-economic balance: cunning, wit, resourcefulness, and also theft, deception. Financial interest is a common condition for people's activity in European fairy tales. The image of a fool in Russian folklore discloses the non-economic value of human life in harmony with nature. Society ignores the contemplative activity of a person as it does not lead to a change of the surrounding space, but can call into question the bases of the social fabric in which financial interest acts as a condition of society's existence, and human activity is a condition of its functioning.

Keywords

Authors

References