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The use of folk elements in Marshak’s dramas for children : The kitten’s house and The twelve months

University of British Columbia

Samuil Iakovlevich Marshak (1887-1964), the virtual founder of children's drama in Soviet Russia, made wide and frequent use of folk elements in the seven plays that he wrote for children. The> two plays studied here, Koshkin dom (The Kitten's House) and Dvenadtsat' mesiatsev (The Twelve Months), are close to folktales in form as well as in the world view that they present. The Kitten's House, a verse play, is a dramatization of the typical animal tale of folk-literature. The Twelve Months, a play mainly in prose with some verse in it, is a mixture of animal lore, magic and fantasy, with a more involved plot. This study attempts to identify the folk elements in these plays and to show how the plays are linked with folk-literature in general and Russian folk-literature in particular. Furthermore, The Twelve Months is seen to be derived from a Czech folktale. An attempt is also made to show how Marshak uses folk elements to project certain social values. Seen against the background of his life, especially his sustained endeavour to improve children's education, Marshak"s plays can be readily understood to be deliberately designed instruments of social instruction.

Text

2010-02-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21096

European Studies

University of British Columbia

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