Page 51 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes
Unit 5: The Spark Neglected Burns the
House by Leo Tolstoy

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
5.1 Stories for the People
5.2 Popular Drama

5.3 Introduction to the Author
5.4 The Spark Neglected Burns the House
5.5 Summary

5.6 Keywords
5.7 Review Questions
5.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this unit, you will be able to:
• Know about Leo Tolstoy;
• Weigh and consider the story The Spark Neglected Burns the House.

Introduction

In Tolstoy’s time the phrase “popular literature” (narodnaia literatura, “literature for or of the
common people”) subsumed a variety of related products. It included, first, the literature of
the people, especially the narrative forms of folklore: heroic songs, fairy tales, religious legends,
and the like. Produced and orally perpetuated among the common people themselves, usually
by quasi-professional performers, this category of popular literature assumed written or printed
form only through the efforts of folklorists and other transcribers of its oral performance. Once
such works became known it was not long before stylizations of them followed. These are
clearly not “of the people” but imitate as closely as possible the spirit and forms of their
models. Stylizations, particularly of the skazka (the Russian fairy tale, or wonder tale), are well
represented in 19th-century Russian literature. Well-known examples are Pushkin’s “Tale of
the Fisherman and the Fish” (“Skazka o rybake i rybke”), VF Odoevsky’s “Moroz Ivanovich,”
ST Aksakov’s “The Little Crimson Flower” (“Alen’kii tsvetochek”), and PP Ershov’s “The
Little Humpbacked Horse” (“Konek-gorbunok”). Tolstoy wrote many works, in particular his
score or so of “Stories for the People” (narodnye rasskazy) which may be assigned to this
category, but, as will appear below, not exclusively to it.
The life and customs of the common people was the subject of a second category of popular
literature, produced by and for the educated sectors of society. Motivated in part by the
penetration into Russian intellectual life of German philosophy and particularly Herder’s
ideas about the unique genius of the nation (Russian narod), this sort of writing originated in

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