German literary ballad: on the issue of the genre genesis

The main purpose of the article is to present the main stages of the development of the genre of literary ballades in Europe, which is directly related to the Russian ballade, and the ballads by V.A. Zhukovsky in particular, included in the secondary school Curriculum. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that the article views holistically the experiments of I.W. Goethe’s with folklore, L. Gleim’s with benkelzang; lyric-epic poems in the style of Rococo by L.G.K. Helti’s, the work of I. Leven’s, I.H. Gunter’s and G.A. Burger’s. Thus, when reviewing the main sources that influenced the building of the literary ballad genre in Germany, the folklore, literary, historical, biographical and parody aspects were clearly identified. In the analysis, the principles of cultural-historical, psychological, comparative methods, and the mythological school were used together. The article deals with the German ballade, because it was the poets of Germany of the XVIII century who paid close attention to the genre. The XVIII century for Germany is the time of cultural rise, when writers faced the question, among others, of creating new national literature. The ballad met many requirements for solving this problem, so it interested the poets. When creating a literary version of the genre, the national folklore was taken as the basis, but historical events, the literary situation of the time, and facts from the personal life were not overlooked. As the result, by the 70s of the XVIII century the main criteria of the genre had been developed, being embodied in G.A. Burger’s «Lenore». The latter was recognized by most German poets as the standard of the genre. «Lenore» was very popular in Russia, and was translated and interpreted in an original way by Russian poets, among whom a special role in this matter belongs to V.A. Zhukovsky.