The nature culture of popular laughter and the phenomenon of low culture (the baroque period) in Ukraine

Abstract

The article deals with the connections of the Ukrainian low culture literature during the Baroque period with the specific culture of popular laughter of Ukrainians. The Aim of the Study is to show the influence of the popular laughter culture traditions on features of humorous satirical works of the Baroque period. The observations of M. Bakhtin on the nature of funny and spectacular rituals of the Middle Ages, which are projected onto the folk ceremonial events of Ukrainians, are analyzed. In the results of the study it is established that for folk ritual of laughter, such features as festivity, nationality, universality, ambivalence, life-affirmation are characteristic. The features of the folklore worldview which affected the works of low culture during the Baroque period are found out. A burlesque creativity is seen as an artistic expression of a specific Burlesque worldview, identical to the culture of popular laughter. In folk culture, laughter serves as a universal unifying source, an expression of a full-fledged worldview, an alternative to a serious outlook. Its purpose is not destruction, but a push to self-improvement. Laughter serves as a core of the folk and the burlesque worldview and finds expression both in the works of folklore, and in literary burlesque creativity. A special imagery of laughter that influenced the low culture during the Baroque period is analyzed. Its leading feature is reduction of all high and spiritual needs to material and physical. That is why the category of holiness, the material and physical needs are analyzed. It is proved that the display of bodily needs in the folk art and the low culture is comic, hyperbolized, although generally positive, life-affirming. The study originality is connected with an attempt to analyze the burlesque heritage in two aspects: in the projection on the main structural components of the Ukrainian popular laughter culture and in view of the burlesque worldview specifics. The practical significance is in illustration the connections between the academic Burlesque culture and the culture of popular laughter during the Baroque period.