Die Versfabel und der Witz: Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede aus stilistisch-synergetischer Sicht
Authors: Pichtownikowa Lydia 
Published: November 2023

Based on the material of German-language texts, the article considers a joke and a poetic fable as related and at the same time different forms of a small genre, if we consider them from opposite poles: as a properly-fable and a properly-joke. Depending on the ratio of stylistic features and their intensity, primarily the features of the comic, transitional forms, mixed texts are formed. With the strengthening of the role of the comic, the fable tends to turn into a joke. All varieties of the comic have always been inherent in the fable. But comicality did not dominate in it, since preference was given to the didactic purpose of the fable. If the comic takes first place, pushing morality into the background, then the fable turns into a joke. On the question of the relationship between fable and joke, the article presents the concept of V. Liebchen, a modern fable theorist and fabulist. In its form, the joke corresponds to the form of Aesop's fable, namely the rhetorical fable. It is based, as well as a joke, on a situational part (expectation) and a heuristic, cognitive part (pointe). The article presents Liebchen's short rhetorical fable “Witz und Fabel”, which is a figurative and symbolic reflection of this concept. It metaphorically and transparently depicts the value of the genre of the fable, its relationship with the joke, its subordination to the ancient fable. In my opinion, the creation of comic effects is based on the discrepancy between form and content: the original form of the object of ridicule is destroyed by a metaphorical comparison of this object with any other object or with the same, but with new characteristics that reduce its significance. The boundaries between a fable and a joke are very flexible: they are determined by the ratio of the comic and the instructive. Actually-joke moralization is not inherent. In this, it fully corresponds to the old form of the fable, which had no interpretation, no explicit morality. The article provides illustrations of the German-language texts of fables, in which the feature of comicality is so enhanced that one can speak of a tendency to turn into a joke (M. Claudius, F. V. Tsakharia, G. K. Pfeffel, V. Bush, V. Liebchen). When determining the relationship or dissimilarity of a fable and a joke, according to my method of analysis, the intensity of style features is taken into account: comicality, which in this case can be understood as the intensity of the alienation effect (pointe), and instructiveness, which must be understood not only in its direct meaning, but also in the meaning of knowledge and statements of certain truth. According to my definition and classification of fables, in addition, one must remember the feature of figurative symbolism associated with allegoricalness and fantasticness, due to which a more or less generalized and globalized image-symbol is formed, which is more associated with the heuristic than with the comic. Therefore this is also one of the main criteria for separating a fable from a joke. The ratio, the advantage of one or another feature moves the text into the zone of influence of the fable or joke. The prospects for further research include the inclusion of jokes in the diagrams of zones of mutual influence of related forms (fables, parables, didactic poems, instructive verses, epigrams, aphorisms), the study of linguistic and stylistic means of expressing the comic, which are implemented in the texts of these genre forms. I also consider the further development of studies of jokes and related forms in the linguosynergetic and pragmastylistic directions as an important perspective.