A PARODIC RETHINKING OF ROMANTIC AND FOLKLORE GENRES AND MOTIFS (MEDIEVAL BALLAD, GOTHIC STORY) IN THE SHORT STORY BY V. IRVING

Abstract

1. Irving’s novella “The Ghost Bridegroom,” as it may seem, is not of serious interest to researchers of folklorism of his works, and indeed of his work in general, in comparison with other texts. This text could be regarded as nothing more than an elegant light trifle, ironically stylizing, parodying a folk ballad, legend, tradition, which in its very title carries an allusion to early romantic, epigone-romantic or pseudo-romantic poetry. At the same time, this is a very indicative phenomenon, reflecting an interesting process of transformation in the use of folklore material in literature in the first half of the 19th century. “In the artistic world of V. Irving’s prose, the integration of folklore and “book” principles, the integration of folklore and literary (as well as journalistic, essay) aesthetics, poetics and stylistics occurs naturally and organically”. Some researchers paid attention to V. Irving’s rethinking of a very common plot in folklore and literature. Indeed, throughout the last few decades of the 18th and the first decades of the 19th century, there was a significant evolution in the attitude of public and individual consciousness to mythology, mysticism and similar things.