What is drama as a literary genre. Dramatic genres of literature

22.04.2019

One of the founders of Russian literary criticism was V. G. Belinsky. And although serious steps were taken in antiquity in the development of the concept of literary gender (Aristotle), it is Belinsky who owns the scientifically based theory of three literary genera, which you can get acquainted with in detail by reading Belinsky's article "Division of poetry into genera and types."

There are three kinds fiction: epic(from the Greek. Epos, narration), lyrical(a lyre was a musical instrument, accompanied by which verses were chanted) and dramatic(from Greek Drama, action).

Presenting a particular subject to the reader (meaning the subject of conversation), the author chooses different approaches to it:

First approach: can be detailed tell about the subject, about the events associated with it, about the circumstances of the existence of this subject, etc.; at the same time, the position of the author will be more or less detached, the author will act as a kind of chronicler, narrator, or choose one of the characters as the narrator; the main thing in such a work will be precisely the story, narration about the subject, the leading type of speech will be exactly the narrative; this kind of literature is called epic;

The second approach: you can tell not so much about events, but about impression, which they produced on the author, about those feelings that they called; image inner world, experiences, impressions and will refer to the lyrical genre of literature; exactly experience becomes the main event of the lyrics;

Third approach: you can portray item in action, show him on stage; introduce to the reader and viewer of it, surrounded by other phenomena; this kind of literature is dramatic; in the drama itself, the voice of the author will be the least likely to sound - in remarks, that is, the author's explanations for the action and replicas of the characters.

Consider the following table and try to memorize its contents:

Genres of fiction

EPOS DRAMA LYRICS
(Greek - narration)

story about the events, the fate of the heroes, their actions and adventures, the image of the external side of what is happening (even feelings are shown from the side of their external manifestation). The author can directly express his attitude to what is happening.

(Greek - action)

image events and relationships between characters on the stage(a special way of writing text). The direct expression of the author's point of view in the text is contained in the remarks.

(from the name of the musical instrument)

experience events; image of feelings, inner world, emotional state; feeling becomes the main event.

Each type of literature in turn includes a number of genres.

GENRE is a historically formed group of works united common features content and form. These groups include novels, stories, poems, elegies, short stories, feuilletons, comedies, etc. In literary criticism, the concept of a literary type is often introduced; this is a broader concept than a genre. In this case, the novel will be considered a type of fiction, and genres - various varieties of the novel, for example, adventure, detective, psychological, parable novel, dystopian novel, etc.

Examples of genus-species relations in the literature:

  • Genus: dramatic; view: comedy; genre: sitcom.
  • Genus: epic; view: story; genre: fantasy story etc.

Genres being categories historical, appear, develop and eventually "leave" from the "active reserve" of artists, depending on historical era: ancient lyricists did not know the sonnet; in our time, an ode born in antiquity and popular in the 17th-18th centuries has become an archaic genre; nineteenth-century romanticism gave rise to detective literature, and so on.

Consider the following table, which lists the types and genres related to the different kinds of word art:

Genera, types and genres of fiction

EPOS DRAMA LYRICS
Folk Author's Folk Author's Folk Author's
Myth
Poem (epos):

Heroic
Strogovoinskaya
fabulous-
legendary
Historical...
Fairy tale
Bylina
Thought
Legend
Tradition
Ballad
Parable
Small genres:

proverbs
sayings
puzzles
nursery rhymes...
epic novel:
Historical.
Fantastic
Adventurous
Psychological
R.-parable
Utopian
Social...
Small genres:
Tale
Story
Novella
Fable
Parable
Ballad
Lit. fairy tale...
A game
rite
folk drama
Raek
nativity scene
...
Tragedy
Comedy:

provisions,
characters,
masks...
Drama:
philosophical
social
historical
social-philosophical.
Vaudeville
Farce
Tragifarce
...
Song Oh yeah
Hymn
Elegy
Sonnet
Message
Madrigal
Romance
Rondo
Epigram
...

Modern literary criticism also highlights fourth, an adjacent genre of literature, combining the features of the epic and lyrical genera: lyrical-epic to which it refers poem. Indeed, by telling the reader a story, the poem manifests itself as an epic; revealing to the reader the depth of feelings, the inner world of the person who tells this story, the poem manifests itself as a lyric.

DRAMA - special kind literary creativity. The drama, in addition to its verbal, textual form, also has a second "life" following the text - staging on stage in the form of a performance, a spectacle. In addition to the author, directors, actors, costume designers, artists, composers, decorators, make-up artists, illuminators, stage workers, etc. participate in the organization of the spectacle. Their common task breaks down into two stages:

2) to give the director's interpretation, a new interpretation of the author's intention in the stage production of the work.

Since a dramatic work is designed for the obligatory (albeit in most cases "posthumous in absentia") cooperation of the author with the theater, the text of a dramatic work is organized in a special way.

Let's read fragments of the first pages of the text of A. Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm":


STORM
Drama in five acts
Persons:
S avel P ro k o f i ch D i k o i, merchant, significant person in the city.
B o r i s G r i g o r e v i h, his nephew, a young man decently educated.
M a rf a Ignatievn a K a b a n o v a (K a b a n i h a), wealthy merchant, widow.
Tikhon Ivanych Kabanov, her son.
K a terina, his wife.
V a r v a r a, Tikhon's sister.
K u l i g i n , a tradesman, a self-taught watchmaker, looking for a perpetual motion machine.
(…)

The action takes place in the city of Kalinov, on the banks of the Volga, in the summer. Between the 3rd and 4th actions 10 days pass.
All persons, except for Boris, are dressed in Russian.
STEP ONE
Public garden on the high bank of the Volga; beyond the Volga, a rural view. There are two benches and several bushes on the stage.

The first phenomenon

Kuligin sits on a bench and looks across the river. Kudryash and Shapkin are walking.
K u l i g i n (sings). "In the midst of a flat valley, at a smooth height..." (Stops singing.) Miracles, truly it must be said, miracles! Curly! Here, my brother, for fifty years I have been looking at the Volga every day and I can’t see enough.
K u d r i sh. And what?
K u l i g and n. The view is extraordinary! Beauty! The soul rejoices!
(…)
B o r and s. Holiday; what to do at home!
D i k o y. Find a job if you want. Once I told you, twice I said to you: "Do not dare to meet me"; you get it all! Is there enough space for you? Wherever you go, here you are! Pah you damned! Why are you standing like a pillar! They tell you, al no?
B o r and s. I'm listening, what else can I do!
D i k o y (looking at Boris). You failed! I don't even want to talk to you, to the Jesuit. (Leaving.) Here it is imposed! (Spits and leaves.)

Did you notice that, unlike the author of the epic ( narrative work), the author does not tell a lengthy history of the heroes, but indicates them in a "list", giving brief necessary information about each, depending on his own plan: what is their name, how old is who, who is who in that place and in that society where action, who is related to whom, etc. This "list" of actors is called poster.

Ostrovsky further pointed out, Where action takes place how much time passes between certain moments of action, how they are dressed characters; in the notes to the first act it says, who is on the stage, what are you doing characters, what is he doing Each of them. In the following fragments of the text, the author briefly states, in parentheses, to whom heroes apply with a speech, what are they gestures and postures from which intonation they say. These explanations are made primarily for the artists and the director and are called remarks.

What is happening is divided into compositional parts - actions(or acts), which in turn are also subdivided into phenomena(or scenes, or paintings). This is explained by the fact that the stage action is strictly limited in time: the performance usually lasts 2-3 hours, and during this time the author and actors need to express everything for which the work was written and staged.

All phenomena, as you can see, are also divided into small (or sometimes large!) Fragments, which are words - monologues and dialogues - characters. At the same time, the author always indicates which of the heroes they belong to, calling the hero by name, as if giving him a "microphone". These words of the characters in the drama are called replicas. As you have already noticed, the words of the heroes are often accompanied by remarks.

So,
The organization of the text of a dramatic work and the necessary terms:

POSTER- this is a list of actors with author's explanations;

REPLICA- these are the words of the characters of a dramatic work; replicas organize stage dialogues of characters;

PHENOMENON(or a picture, or a scene) is a plot-complete fragment of the text of a dramatic work; each phenomenon (or scene, or picture) is a separate completed moment of stage action, in other words, an episode.

Since drama is a stage action, a theatrical spectacle, it is designed not so much for the communication of one reader with the author's text (like novels, stories, poems, poems, where the reader and the work "communicate" tete-a-tete, alone with each other ), how much for the mass contact of the work with the audience. Hundreds and thousands of people come to theaters. And keeping their attention is very, very difficult. Therefore, the foundation of any performance - the author's literary work - should be based on the audience's interest and tenaciously "keep" it. The dramatist helps the playwright in this intrigue.

INTRIGUE(from lat. Intricare, "to confuse") - 1) intrigues, hidden actions, usually unseemly, to achieve something; 2) the correlation of characters and circumstances, which ensures the development of action in a work of art. (Dictionary foreign words, 1988.)

In other words, intrigue is a kind of mystery, a riddle, often organized by one of the characters for their own purposes, the solution of which is the basis of the dramatic action. Not a single play can do without intrigue, because otherwise it will not be interesting to readers and viewers.

Now let's turn to content dramatic works . It is first of all associated with the type and genre of drama. There are three types of dramatic works: tragedy, comedy and drama (do not get confused, the name of the type is the same as the name of the genre of literature, but these are different terms).

Tragedy Comedy Drama
Era and culture of appearance: Ancient Greece.
Arose from ritual priestly festivities dedicated to the gods and heroes of myths
Ancient Greece.
It arose from folk calendar festive processions.
Western Europe,
XVIII century. It became a kind of "intermediate" genre between tragedy and comedy.
Plot basis: Initially: mythological and historical subjects. Later - turning, culminating, moments in the history and fate of man Everyday stories related to the daily life of a person and relationships in the family, with neighbors, colleagues, etc. Can use storylines, character and tragedies and comedies
Main characters: Initially: gods, heroes of myths, historical figures; Later - strong, non-trivial personalities, powerful characters, carrying some idea, in the name of which they agree to sacrifice everything. Ordinary people, townspeople, villagers with their daily worries, sorrows and joys, tricks, successes and failures. Any heroes.
Conflict: Tragic, or irresolvable. It is based on the great "eternal" questions of being. Comic, or resolvable in the course of the correct (from the point of view of the author) actions of the characters. Dramatic:
The depth of contradictions is close to tragic, but the characters are not carriers of the idea.
Creative Goals: Show the struggle of man and circumstances, man and fate, man and society in the sharpness of contradictions, the power of the human spirit in rightness or error. To ridicule vice, to show its impotence and loss in front of the true life values ​​of the common man. Show the complexity and inconsistency of human life, the imperfection of society, the imperfection of human nature
Examples: Sophocles. Oedipus rex
W. Shakespeare. Hamlet
V. Vishnevsky. An optimistic tragedy
Aristophanes. Clouds
Molière. Tartuffe
N. Gogol. Auditor
A. Ostrovsky. Our people - let's count!
M. Bulgakov. Ivan Vasilievich
H. Ibsen. Dollhouse
A. Ostrovsky. Storm
M. Gorky. At the bottom

An important aspect of a dramatic work is composition. There are several types of composition of drama as a kind of literature. Let's consider some of them:

Story composition- This the totality of all character relationships, a system of their speech-gestures and deeds-actions, connected by a single authorial goal, that is, the main theme of a dramatic work. This set is aimed at revealing the characters' characters, the reasons for their dependence on everyday and psychological characteristics.

Dynamic composition- organized by the author linking all sharp points of dramatic action(exposure --> increase in action --> conflict --> resolution --> increase --> climax --> decline, etc.). Dynamic composition is characteristic both for the whole work and for its individual components: actions, acts, phenomena, scenes, paintings, etc.

Dialogic composition- This techniques for creating dramatic dialogue, which can be many:
  • Each hero leads his own theme and has his own emotional mood(a variety of topics);
  • Topics change periodically: from cue to cue, from episode to episode, from action to action (topic change);
  • The theme is developed in the dialogue by one character and picked up by another (theme pickup);
  • The theme of one hero in the dialogue is interrupted by another, but does not leave the dialogue (interruption of the topic);
  • Characters move away from the topic, and then return to it;
  • A theme abandoned in one dialogue is revisited by the characters in another;
  • The topic can be interrupted without completion (topic break).

Since a dramatic work is designed to be staged in a theater where hundreds of spectators come, the range of life phenomena considered by the author ( subject matter) must be relevant to the viewer - otherwise the viewer will leave the theater. Therefore, the playwright chooses for the play themes determined either by the era or by eternal human needs, primarily spiritual, Certainly. The same can be said about issues, that is, about those issues that bother the author and which he brings to the reader's and viewers' court.

A.N. Ostrovsky he turned to topics from the life of the Russian merchants, small and large officials, townspeople, creative, first of all, theatrical public - that is, those sections of Russian society that were well known to him and studied both from positive and negative sides. And the problems raised by the playwright also concerned public spheres:

  • How to break through in the life of a young smart, talented person, but who, due to poverty and origin, does not have the strong support of a rich and influential relative or acquaintance? ("There is enough simplicity for every wise man")
  • Where did the conscience of the Russian merchants go? How did it happen that in the pursuit of profit, both the daughter and the son-in-law are ready to rob the father-in-law and leave him in a debtor's prison, so as not to pay his debts? ("Own people - let's settle!")
  • Why does a mother sell her daughter's beauty? ("Dowry")
  • What should a beautiful, but poor and unprotected girl do, so that her love and honor are not ruined? ("Dowry")
  • How can a person who feels, loves and longs for freedom live among the "dark kingdom" of ignoramuses and tyrants? ("Thunderstorm"), etc.

A. Chekhov dedicated his plays to people of other circles: the Russian intelligentsia, the last "fragments" of noble families and people of art. But Chekhov's intellectuals get too deeply entangled in "eternal" questions that deprive them of the ability to make decisions; his landlords, idolizing the cherry orchard as an all-Russian treasure, do nothing to save it and are preparing to leave just when the orchard is being cut down; and Chekhov's actors, artists and writers on the stage are completely different from the "stars", "idols" who are applauded by the public: they are petty, stingy, swear over the ruble, quarrel with loved ones, cowardly endure the already extinct and now not at all loving, but a boring and burdensome connection... And the problems of Chekhov's plays are also largely due to time:

  • Is it possible to save the passing life and how to do it? ("Uncle Ivan", " The Cherry Orchard")
  • But will it be so reverently expected by Chekhov's heroes "tomorrow", "later", "someday"? ("Three sisters")
  • Why does time pass, but the person does not change? ("The Seagull", "Three Sisters", "Uncle Vanya")
  • Will there ever be a happy end to that path, those wanderings that fall to the lot of a born person? ("The Cherry Orchard")
  • What is happiness, glory, greatness? ("Gull")
  • Why does a person have to suffer in order to free himself from delusions and reveal his own talent? ("Gull")
  • Why does art require such terrible victims? ("Gull")
  • Is a person able to get out of that routine rut into which he has driven himself? ("Three Sisters", "The Cherry Orchard", "The Seagull")
  • How to preserve the beautiful "cherry garden" - our Russia - the way we love and remember it? ("The Cherry Orchard"), etc.

Chekhov's plays introduced a new specificity of stage action into Russian dramaturgy: no special events, "adventures" take place on the stage. Even out-of-the-ordinary events (for example, the suicide attempt and Treplev's suicide in The Seagull) occur only "behind the scenes". On the stage, the characters only talk: they quarrel over trifles, sort out relationships that are already clear to everyone, talk about meaningless things, get bored and discuss what happened "behind the scenes". But their dialogues are filled with a powerful energy of internal action: behind insignificant remarks lies heavy human loneliness, awareness of one's own restlessness, something not done, but very important, without which life will never get better. This property of Chekhov's plays made it possible to consider them as plays of internal dynamics and became a new step in the development of Russian dramaturgy.

Many people often ask: why when posing such problems and developing the plots of the play "The Cherry Orchard" and "The Seagull" are comedies? Do not forget that they were not defined by critics, but by the author himself. Return to the table. What is creative task comedy?

That's right, ridicule vice. Chekhov, on the other hand, makes fun of, or rather, chuckles - subtly, ironically, beautifully and sadly - not so much over the vices, but over the incongruities, "irregularities" of the life of a contemporary person, be it a landowner, a writer, a doctor or someone else: a great actress - greedy; famous writer - henpecked; "to Moscow, to Moscow" - and we will spend our whole lives in the provincial wilderness; a landowner from a noble and wealthy family - and is going to go to the bank as an ordinary employee, knowing nothing about banking; there is no money - and we give gold to a beggar rogue; we are going to transform the world - and we fall down the stairs ... This is exactly discrepancy, overflowing Chekhov's plays(in fact, the fundamental basis of the comic), and makes them comedies in the highest, ancient sense words: these are real "comedies of life".

The milestone era (the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th centuries) demanded from playwrights attention to new topics and, first of all, attention to the very phenomenon of "man". M. Gorky in the play "At the Bottom" he draws a terrible model of the "bottom" of human society, creating on the stage a kind of rooming house-cave, as if accommodating the whole world of contemporary human relations in it. But the "bottom" for Gorky is not only poverty and restlessness. The soul also has a “bottom”, and the revelation of the deaf dark secrets of this soul was embodied in the images of the Baron, Kleshch, Actor, Kostylev, Ash ... darkness, that negativity that has accumulated in their souls throughout their real, actual life. No one will make your life different, except for yourself - this is the result of the author's observations of the heroes of the drama. And therefore, Gorky's drama "At the Bottom" is defined by genre as socio-philosophical. The key problems for Gorky were:

  • What is the real truth of life?
  • To what extent is a person capable of taking control of his own destiny? What have you done to make your life different, the way you would like it to be?
  • Who is to blame that the attempt to "jump off the tram" and start a new life failed?
  • How should one see a person of today, contemporary to the author, of the moment?
  • Pity or condemn? What really helps a person?
  • How responsible is society and the environment for human life? And etc.

When analyzing a dramatic work, you will need the skills that you received when performing tasks on the analysis of an episode of a work.

Be careful, strictly adhere to the analysis plan.

Topics 15 and 16 are closely related to each other, so the successful completion of the work is possible only with a detailed study of theoretical materials on these topics.

  • A.S.Griboyedov. Comedy "Woe from Wit"
  • N. Gogol. Comedy "Inspector"
  • A.N. Ostrovsky. Comedy "Own people - let's settle!"; dramas "Thunderstorm", "Dowry"
  • A.P. Chekhov. The play "The Cherry Orchard"
  • M. Gorky. The play "At the Bottom"

Literary genre is a group literary works, which has common historical development trends and is united by a set of properties in terms of its content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of "view" "form". To date, there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are classified according to a certain amount characteristic features.

The history of the formation of genres

The first systematization of literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, the impression began to emerge that the literary genre is a natural stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics, strictly prescribing to the authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. For many years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only to late XVIII century.

At the same time, literary works aimed at artistic search, in their attempts to move as far as possible from genre divisions, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena unique to literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, you need to familiarize yourself with existing classifications and characteristics of each of them.

Below is a sample table to determine the type of existing literary genres

by birth epic fable, epic, ballad, myth, short story, story, story, novel, fairy tale, fantasy, epic
lyrical ode, message, stanzas, elegy, epigram
lyrical-epic ballad, poem
dramatic drama, comedy, tragedy
content comedy farce, vaudeville, sideshow, sketch, parody, sitcom, mystery comedy
tragedy
drama
in form vision short story story epic story anecdote novel ode epic play essay sketch

Separation of genres by content

Classification literary trends based on content includes comedy, tragedy and drama.

Comedy is a kind of literature which provides for a humorous approach. Varieties of the comic direction are:

There is also a comedy of characters and a comedy of situations. In the first case, the source of humorous content is the internal features of the characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, comedy is manifested in the circumstances and situations.

Tragedy - drama genre with the obligatory catastrophic denouement, the opposite of the comedy genre. Tragedy usually reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is extremely intense. In some cases, tragedies are written in verse form.

Drama is a special kind of fiction, where the events that take place are transmitted not through their direct description, but through the monologues or dialogues of the characters. Drama as a literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of folklore. Originally in Greek, this term meant a sad event that affects one particular person. Subsequently, the drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various sizes, made in prose.

Novel

The novel is a prose literary genre that implies a detailed narrative about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre originates in the XII century, when chivalric stories were born "in the folk Romance language" as opposed to Latin historiography. A short story was considered a plot version of the novel. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, such concepts as a detective novel, female romance, fantasy novel.

Novella

Novella is a kind of prose genre. Her birth was served by the famous collection "Decameron" Giovanni Boccaccio . Subsequently, several collections based on the Decameron model were released.

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the genre of the short story - examples are the works of Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Mérimée bore the features of realistic stories.

novella like short story with a sharp plot became characteristic genre for American Literature.

The salient features of the novel are:

  1. Maximum brevity.
  2. Sharpness and even paradoxicality of the plot.
  3. Neutrality of style.
  4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
  5. An unexpected denouement, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

Tale

The story is called prose about small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, is in the nature of reproducing the natural events of life. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of ongoing events. A classic example is “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A story is a small form of prose work, which originates from folklore genres - parables and fairy tales. Some Literary Specialists as a Kind of Genre consider essay, essay and short story. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one storyline and a small number of characters. The stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

A play is a dramatic work that is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical production.

The structure of the play usually includes the phrases of the characters and the author's remarks describing environment or the actions of the characters. There is always a list of characters at the beginning of a play. With brief description their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is divided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. Molière ("Tartuffe", "Imaginary Sick") B. Shaw ("Wait and see"), B. Brecht. ("The Good Man from Cesuan", "The Threepenny Opera").

Description and examples of individual genres

Consider the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large poetic work that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was "born" from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

  1. Didactic.
  2. Heroic.
  3. Burlesque,
  4. satirical.
  5. Ironic.
  6. Romantic.
  7. Lyric-dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for creating poems were world-historical or important religious events and themes. Virgil's Aeneid is an example of such a poem., "The Divine Comedy" by Dante, "The Liberated Jerusalem" by T. Tasso, "Paradise Lost" by J. Milton, "Henriad" by Voltaire, etc.

At the same time, it developed romantic poem- "The Knight in a Leopard's Skin" by Shota Rustaveli, "Furious Roland" by L. Ariosto. This kind of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval chivalric romances.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social topics began to come to the fore (“Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov).

IN XIX-XX centuries the poem begins more and more become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

epic

An epic is usually understood as a set of works that are united common epoch, nationality, theme.

The emergence of each epic is due to certain historical circumstances. As a rule, the epic claims to be objective and reliable presentation of events.

visions

This peculiar narrative genre, When the story is told from the perspective of, allegedly experiencing a dream, lethargy or hallucination.

  1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictional events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, Plato.
  2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its heights with Dante in his " Divine Comedy”, which in its form represents an unfolded vision.
  3. For some time, visions were an integral part of the church literature of most European countries. The editors of such visions have always been representatives of the clergy, thus obtaining the opportunity to express their personal views, allegedly on behalf of higher powers.
  4. Over time, a new sharply social satirical content was invested in the form of visions (“Visions of Peter the Ploughman” by Langland).

In more modern literature, the genre of visions has come to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

Over the millennia of cultural development, mankind has created countless literary works, among which there are some basic types that are similar in the way and form of reflection of human ideas about the world around. These are three types (or types) of literature: epic, drama, poetry.

How is each type of literature different?

Epos as a kind of literature

epic(epos - Greek, narration, story) is an image of events, phenomena, processes that are external to the author. Epic works reflect the objective course of life, human being generally. Using various artistic means, the authors of epic works express their understanding of the historical, socio-political, moral, psychological and many other problems that human society as a whole and each of its representatives in particular live with. Epic works have significant pictorial possibilities, thereby helping the reader to learn about the world around him, to comprehend the deep problems of human existence.

Drama as a kind of literature

Drama(drama - Greek, action, action) is a kind of literature, the main feature of which is the stage nature of works. Plays, i.e. dramatic works are created specifically for the theater, for staging on stage, which, of course, does not exclude their existence in the form of independent literary texts intended for reading. Like the epic, the drama reproduces the relationship between people, their actions, the conflicts that arise between them. But unlike the epic, which has a narrative nature, the drama has a dialogic form.

Related to this features of dramatic works :

2) the text of the play consists of the characters' conversations: their monologues (the speech of one character), dialogues (the conversation of two characters), polylogues (simultaneous exchange of remarks by several participants in the action). That is why speech characteristic turns out to be one of the most important means of creating a memorable character of the hero;

3) the action of the play, as a rule, develops quite dynamically, intensively, as a rule, it is given 2-3 hours of stage time.

Lyrics as a kind of literature

Lyrics(lyra - Greek, a musical instrument, to the accompaniment of which poetic works, songs were performed) is distinguished by a special type of construction artistic image- this is an image-experience in which the individual emotional and spiritual experience of the author is embodied. Lyrics can be called the most mysterious kind of literature, because it is addressed to the inner world of a person, his subjective feelings, ideas, ideas. In other words, a lyrical work primarily serves the individual self-expression of the author. The question arises: why are the readers, i.e. other people refer to such works? The thing is that the lyricist, speaking on his own behalf and about himself, surprisingly embodies universal human emotions, ideas, hopes, and the more significant the personality of the author, the more important his individual experience is for the reader.

Each type of literature also has its own system of genres.

Genre(genre - French genus, species) - a historically established type of literary work that has similar typological features. The names of the genres help the reader navigate the boundless sea of ​​literature: someone loves detective stories, another prefers fantasy, and the third is a fan of memoirs.

How to determine what genre does it belong to specific work? Most often, the authors themselves help us in this, calling their creation a novel, story, poem, etc. However, some author's definitions seem unexpected to us: remember that A.P. Chekhov emphasized that The Cherry Orchard is a comedy, and not a drama at all, but A.I. Solzhenitsyn considered "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" a story, not a story. Some literary scholars call Russian literature a collection of genre paradoxes: the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin", the poem in prose " Dead Souls”, a satirical chronicle “The history of one city”. There was a lot of controversy regarding "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy. The writer himself said only about what his book is not: “What is War and Peace? This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. "War and Peace" is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. And only in the 20th century did literary critics agree to call the brilliant creation of L.N. Tolstoy's epic novel.

Each literary genre has a number of stable features, the knowledge of which allows us to attribute a particular work to one or another group. Genres develop, change, die off and are born, for example, literally before our eyes arose new genre blog (web loq English online magazine) - a personal online diary.

However, for several centuries now, there have been stable (they are also called canonical) genres.

Literature of literary works - see table 1).

Table 1.

Genres of literary works

Epic genres of literature

Epic genres primarily differ in volume, on this basis they are divided into small ones ( essay, short story, short story, fairy tale, parable ), average ( story ), large ( novel, epic novel ).

Feature article- a small sketch from nature, the genre is both descriptive and narrative. Many essays are created on a documentary, life basis, they are often combined into cycles: the classic example is “Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy” (1768) by the English writer Laurence Sterne, in Russian literature it is “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790) A . Radishcheva, "Frigate Pallada" (1858) I. Goncharov "Italy" (1922) B. Zaitsev and others.

Story- a small narrative genre, which usually depicts one episode, an incident, a human character, or an important incident from the life of a hero that influenced his future fate (“After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy). The stories are created like a documentary, often autobiographical basis(“Matryonin Dvor” by A. Solzhenitsyn), and thanks to pure fiction (“The Gentleman from San Francisco” by I. Bunin).

The intonation and content of the stories are very different - from comic, funny (the early stories of A.P. Chekhov) to deeply tragic (Kolyma Tales by V. Shalamov). Stories, like essays, are often combined into cycles (“Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev).

Novella(novella ital. news) is in many ways akin to a story and is considered its variety, but it is distinguished by a special dynamism of the narrative, sharp and often unexpected turns in the development of events. Quite often the narration in the short story begins with the finale, is built according to the law of inversion, i.e. in the reverse order, when the denouement precedes the main events ("Terrible Revenge" by N. Gogol). This feature of the construction of the short story will later be borrowed by the detective genre.

The word "novella" has another meaning that future lawyers need to know. IN Ancient Rome the phrase "novellae leges" (new laws), called laws introduced after the official codification of law (after the release of the Code of Theodosius II in 438). The short stories of Justinian and his successors, published after the second edition of the Code of Justinian, later formed part of the code of Roman laws (Corpus iuris civillis). IN modern era a short story is a law submitted to the parliament (in other words, a draft law).

Fairy tale- the most ancient of the small epic genres, one of the main in the oral art of any people. This is a small work of a magical, adventurous or everyday nature, where fiction is clearly emphasized. Another important feature folk tale- its instructive character: "A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows." Folk tales are usually divided into magical ("The Tale of the Frog Princess"), household ("Porridge from an ax") and fairy tales about animals ("Zayushkina's hut").

With development written literature literary tales arise in which traditional motifs and the symbolic possibilities of a folk tale are used. The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), his wonderful "The Little Mermaid", "The Princess and the Pea", " The Snow Queen”,“ The Steadfast Tin Soldier ”,“ Shadow ”,“ Thumbelina ”are loved by many generations of readers, both very young and completely middle age. And this is far from accidental, because Andersen's fairy tales are not only extraordinary, but sometimes even strange adventures heroes, they contain a deep philosophical and moral sense, enclosed in beautiful symbolic images.

From European literary tales The Little Prince (1942) became a classic of the 20th century French writer An-toine de Saint-Exupery. And the famous "Chronicles of Narnia" (1950 - 1956) by the English writer Kl. Lewis and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), also by the Englishman J. R. Tolkien, are written in the fantasy genre, which can be called a modern transformation of an ancient folk tale.

In Russian literature, unsurpassed, of course, are the tales of A.S. Pushkin: "Oh dead princess and seven heroes”, “About the fisherman and the fish”, “About Tsar Saltan ...”, “About the golden cockerel”, “About the priest and his worker Balda”. A substitute storyteller was P. Ershov, the author of The Little Humpbacked Horse. E. Schwartz in the 20th century creates the form of a fairy tale play, one of them "The Bear" (another name is "Ordinary Miracle") is well known to many thanks to the wonderful film directed by M. Zakharov.

Parable- also a very ancient folklore genre, but, unlike a fairy tale, parables contained written monuments: the Talmud, the Bible, the Koran, a monument of Syrian literature "Teaching Akahara". A parable is a work of an instructive, symbolic nature, distinguished by sublimity and seriousness of content. Ancient parables, as a rule, are small in volume, they do not contain a detailed account of events or psychological characteristics the character of the hero.

The purpose of the parable is edification or, as they once said, the teaching of wisdom. IN European culture the most famous are the parables from the Gospels: about the prodigal son, about the rich man and Lazarus, about the unrighteous judge, about the crazy rich man, and others. Christ often spoke with the disciples allegorically, and if they did not understand the meaning of the parable, he explained it.

Many writers turned to the parable genre, not always, of course, putting a high religious meaning into it, rather trying to express some kind of moralistic edification in an allegorical form, as, for example, L. Tolstoy in his later work. Carry it. V. Rasputin - Farewell to Matera "can also be called a detailed parable in which the writer speaks with anxiety and sorrow about the destruction of the "ecology of conscience" of a person. The story "The Old Man and the Sea" by E. Hemingway is also considered by many critics to be in the tradition of a literary parable. The well-known modern Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho also uses the parable form in his novels and short stories (the novel The Alchemist).

Tale- an average literary genre, widely represented in world literature. The story shows several important episodes from the life of the hero, as a rule, one storyline and a small number of characters. The stories are characterized by great psychological saturation, the author focuses on the experiences and mood changes of the characters. Often main theme the love of the protagonist becomes the story, for example, "White Nights" by F. Dostoevsky, "Asya" by I. Turgenev, "Mitina's Love" by I. Bunin. The stories can also be combined into cycles, especially those written on autobiographical material: “Childhood”, “Boyhood”, “Youth” by L. Tolstoy, “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” by A. Gorky. The intonations and themes of the stories are very diverse: tragic, addressed to acute social and moral issues(“Everything flows” by V. Grossman, “The House on the Embankment” by Y. Trifonov), romantic, heroic (“Taras Bulba” by N. Gogol), philosophical, parable (“Pit” by A. Platonov), mischievous, comic (“Three in the boat, not counting the dog "by the English writer Jerome K. Jerome).

Novel(Gotap French originally, in late Middle Ages, any work written in the Romance language, as opposed to those written in Latin) is a major epic work in which the narrative is focused on fate individual person. The novel is the most complex epic genre, which is distinguished by an incredible number of themes and plots: love, historical, detective, psychological, fantastic, historical, autobiographical, social, philosophical, satirical, etc. All these forms and types of the novel are united by its central idea - the idea of ​​personality, the individuality of a person.

The novel is called an epic privacy, because it depicts the diverse connections of the world and man, society and personality. The reality surrounding a person is presented in the novel in different contexts: historical, political, social, cultural, national, etc. The author of the novel is interested in how the environment affects the character of a person, how he is formed, how his life develops, whether he managed to find his destiny and realize himself.

Many attribute the emergence of the genre to antiquity, these are Long's Daphnis and Chloe, Apuleius' Golden Ass, the chivalrous novel Tristan and Isolde.

In the work of the classics of world literature, the novel is represented by numerous masterpieces:

Table 2. Examples of the classic novel by foreign and Russian writers (XIX, XX centuries)

famous novels Russians writers of the 19th V .:

In the 20th century, Russian writers develop and multiply the traditions of their great predecessors and create no less remarkable novels:


Of course, none of these enumerations can claim to be complete and exhaustive objectivity, this is especially true for modern prose. In this case, the most famous works that glorified both the literature of the country and the name of the writer are named.

epic novel. In ancient times, there were forms of the heroic epic: folklore sagas, runes, epics, songs. These are the Indian "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata", the Anglo-Saxon "Beowulf", the French "Song of Roland", the German "Song of the Nibelungs", etc. In these works, the exploits of the hero were exalted in an idealized, often exaggerated form. The later epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer, "Shah-name" by Ferdowsi, while retaining the mythological nature of the early epic, nevertheless, had a pronounced connection with real history, and the theme of the interweaving of human fate and the life of the people becomes one of them. main. The experience of the ancients will be in demand in the 19th-20th centuries, when writers will try to comprehend the dramatic relationship between the era and the individual personality, tell about the tests that morality, and sometimes the human psyche, are subjected to at the time of the greatest historical upheavals. Let us recall the lines of F. Tyutchev: "Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments." The romantic formula of the poet in reality meant the destruction of all habitual forms of life, tragic losses and unfulfilled dreams.

The complex form of the epic novel allows writers to artistically explore these problems in all their completeness and inconsistency.

When we talk about the genre of the epic novel, of course, we immediately recall Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Other examples can be mentioned: Quiet Flows the Don by M. Sholokhov, Life and Fate by V. Grossman, The Saga of the Forsytes by the English writer Galsworthy; the book of the American writer Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" can also be reckoned with good reason in this genre.

The very name of the genre indicates a synthesis, a combination of two main principles in it: the novel and the epic, i.e. related to the theme of the life of an individual and the theme of the history of the people. In other words, the epic novel tells about the fates of the heroes (as a rule, the heroes themselves and their fates are fictitious, invented by the author) against the background and in close connection with epoch-making historical events. So, in "War and Peace" - these are the fates of individual families (Rostovs, Bolkonskys), favorite heroes (Prince Andrei, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha and Princess Marya) in a crucial historical period for Russia and all of Europe early XIX century, the Patriotic War of 1812. In Sholokhov's book, the events of the First World War, two revolutions and a bloody civil war tragically intrude into the life of the Cossack farm, the Melekhov family, the fate of the main characters: Grigory, Aksinya, Natalya. V. Grossman talks about the Great Patriotic war and its main event - the Battle of Stalingrad, about the tragedy of the Holocaust. In "Life and Fate" the historical and family theme is also intertwined: the author traces the history of the Shaposhnikovs, trying to understand why the fate of the members of this family developed so differently. Galsworthy describes the life of the Forsyte family during the legendary Victorian era in England. Margaret Mitchell is a central event in US history, the Civil War between North and South, which dramatically changed the lives of many families and the fate of the most famous heroine of American literature - Scarlett O'Hara.

Dramatic genres of literature

Tragedy(tragodia Greek goat song) is a dramatic genre that originated in ancient Greece. The emergence of the ancient theater and tragedy is associated with the worship of the god of fertility and wine, Dionysus. A number of holidays were dedicated to him, during which ritual magical games were played with mummers, satyrs, whom the ancient Greeks represented as bipedal goat-like creatures. It is assumed that it was this appearance of the satyrs, who sang hymns to the glory of Dionysus, that gave such a strange name in translation to this serious genre. Theatrical action in Ancient Greece was given a magical religious significance, and theaters, built in the form of large open-air arenas, were always located in the very center of cities and were one of the main public places. Spectators sometimes spent the whole day here: they ate, drank, loudly expressed their approval or condemnation of the spectacle presented. The heyday of ancient Greek tragedy is associated with the names of three great tragedians: Aeschylus (525-456 BC) - the author of the tragedies Chained Prometheus, Oresteia, etc.; Sophocles (496-406 BC) - author of "Oedipus Rex", "Antigone" and others; and Euripides (480-406 BC) - the creator of Medea, Troy Nok, etc. Their creations will remain examples of the genre for centuries, they will be tried to imitate, but they will remain unsurpassed. Some of them ("Antigone", "Medea") are staged even today.

What are the main features of the tragedy? The main one is the presence of an insoluble global conflict: in ancient tragedy, this is the opposition of fate, fate, on the one hand, and man, his will, free choice- with another. In the tragedies of later eras, this conflict took on a moral and philosophical character, as a confrontation between good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred. It has an absolute character, the heroes, embodying the opposing forces, are not ready for reconciliation, compromise, and therefore there are often many deaths at the end of the tragedy. This is how the tragedies of the great English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) were built, let us recall the most famous of them: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, etc.

In the tragedies of the French playwrights of the 17th century Corneille ("Horace", "Polyeuctus") and Racine ("Andromache", "Britanic") this conflict received a different interpretation - as a conflict of duty and feeling, rational and emotional in the souls of the main characters, i.e. . received a psychological interpretation.

The most famous in Russian literature is the romantic tragedy "Boris Godunov" by A.S. Pushkin, created on historical material. In one of his best works, the poet sharply posed the problem of the “real misfortune” of the Moscow state - a chain reaction of impostures and “terrible atrocities” that people are ready for for the sake of power. Another problem is the attitude of the people to everything that happens in the country. The image of the “silent” people in the finale of “Boris Godunov” is symbolic; to this day, discussions continue about what Pushkin wanted to say by this. Based on the tragedy, an opera of the same name by M. P. Mussorgsky was written, which became a masterpiece of Russian opera classics.

Comedy(Greek komos - a cheerful crowd, oda - a song) - a genre that originated in ancient Greece a little later than tragedy (5th century BC). The most famous comedian of that time is Aristophanes ("Clouds", "Frogs", etc.).

In comedy, with the help of satire and humor, i.e. comic, moral vices are ridiculed: hypocrisy, stupidity, greed, envy, cowardice, complacency. Comedies tend to be topical; addressed to social issues, exposing the shortcomings of power. Distinguish between sitcoms and character comedies. In the first, a cunning intrigue, a chain of events are important (Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors"), in the second - the characters of the characters, their absurdity, one-sidedness, as in the comedies "The Undergrowth" by D. Fonvizin, "The Tradesman in the Nobility", "Tartuffe", pen-owned the classic of the genre, the 17th-century French comedian Jean-Baptiste Molière. In Russian dramaturgy, satirical comedy with its sharp social criticism, as, for example, N. Gogol's "Inspector General", M. Bulgakov's "Crimson Island". Many wonderful comedies were created by A. Ostrovsky (“Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”, “Mad Money”, etc.).

The comedy genre invariably enjoys success with the public, perhaps because it affirms the triumph of justice: in the finale, vice must certainly be punished, and virtue must triumph.

Drama- a relatively "young" genre that appeared in Germany in the 18th century as a lesedrama (in German) - a play for reading. Drama addressed to Everyday life of a person and society, everyday life, relationships in the family. Drama is primarily interested in the inner world of a person, it is the most psychological of all dramatic genres. At the same time, it is also the most literary of the stage genres, for example, the plays of A. Chekhov are largely perceived more as texts for reading, and not as theatrical performances.

Lyrical genres of literature

The division into genres in the lyrics is not absolute, because. the differences between genres in this case are conditional and not as obvious as in epic and drama. More often we distinguish lyric works by their thematic features: landscape, love, philosophical, friendly, intimate lyrics, etc. However, we can name some genres that have pronounced individual characteristics: elegy, sonnet, epigram, message, epitaph.

Elegy(elegos Greek mournful song) - a poem of medium length, as a rule, moral-philosophical, love, confessional content.

The genre arose in antiquity, and elegiac distich was considered its main feature, i.e. dividing the poem into couplets, for example:

The longed-for moment has come: my long-term work is over, Why is an incomprehensible sadness secretly disturbing me?

A. Pushkin

In the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries, the division into couplets is no longer such a strict requirement, now the semantic features that are associated with the origin of the genre are more significant. In terms of content, the elegy goes back to the form of ancient funeral “weeps”, in which, while mourning the deceased, they simultaneously recalled his extraordinary virtues. This origin predetermined the main feature of the elegy - the combination of sorrow with faith, regret with hope, the acceptance of being through sadness. Lyrical hero elegy is aware of the imperfection of the world and people, his own sinfulness and weakness, but does not reject life, but accepts it in all its tragic beauty. A striking example is "Elegy" by A.S. Pushkin:

Crazy years faded fun

It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.

But like wine - sadness past days

In my soul, the older, the stronger.

My path is sad. Promises me labor and sorrow

The coming turbulent sea.

But I do not want, oh friends, to die;

I want to live in order to think and suffer;

And I know I will enjoy

Between sorrows, worries and anxiety:

Sometimes I'll get drunk again with harmony,

I will shed tears over fiction,

And maybe - at my sad sunset

Love will shine with a farewell smile.

Sonnet(sonetto, ital. song) - the so-called "solid" poetic form, which has strict construction rules. There are 14 lines in the sonnet, divided into two quatrains (quatrains) and two three-line verses (tercet). In quatrains only two rhymes are repeated, in terzets two or three. The methods of rhyming also had their own requirements, which, however, varied.

The birthplace of the sonnet is Italy, this genre is also represented in English and French poetry. Petrarch, the 14th-century Italian poet, is considered the luminary of the genre. He dedicated all his sonnets to his beloved Donna Laura.

In Russian literature, the sonnets of A.S. Pushkin remain unsurpassed, beautiful sonnets were also created by the poets of the Silver Age.

Epigram(Greek epigramma, inscription) is a short, mocking poem, usually addressed to a specific person. Many poets write epigrams, sometimes increasing the number of their ill-wishers and even enemies. The epigram on Count Vorontsov turned around for A.S. Pushkin by the hatred of this nobleman and, ultimately, expulsion from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye:

Popu-my lord, half-merchant,

Half wise, half ignorant,

Semi-scoundrel, but there is hope

What will be complete at last.

Mocking verses can be dedicated not only to a specific person, but also to a generalized addressee, as, for example, in the epigram of A. Akhmatova:

Could Bice create like Dante,

Were Laura to glorify the heat of love?

I taught women to speak...

But, God, how to silence them!

There are even cases of a kind of duel of epigrams. When the famous Russian lawyer A.F. Horses were appointed to the Senate, ill-wishers extended an evil epigram to him:

Caligula brought the horse to the Senate,

He stands dressed in both velvet and gold.

But I will say, we have the same arbitrariness:

I read in the papers that Kony is in the Senate.

What A.F. Horses, distinguished by outstanding literary talent, answered:

(Greek epitafia, tombstone) - a farewell poem to a dead person, intended for tombstone. Initially, this word was used in a literal sense, but later it received more figurative meaning. For example, I. Bunin has a lyrical miniature in prose "Epitaph", dedicated to farewell to the writer's dear, but forever receding Russian estate. Gradually, the epitaph is transformed into a dedication poem, a farewell poem (A. Akhmatova's Wreath to the Dead). Perhaps the most famous poem of this kind in Russian poetry is “The Death of a Poet” by M. Lermontov. Another example is the "Epitaph" by M. Lermontov, dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Venevitinov, a poet and philosopher who died at the age of twenty-two.

Lyric-epic genres of literature

There are works that combine some features of lyrics and epic, as evidenced by the very name of this group of genres. Their main feature is the combination of narration, i.e. a story about events, with the transfer of feelings and experiences of the author. TO lyrical-epic genres it is customary to attribute poem, ode, ballad, fable .

Poem(poeo Greek I create I create) is a very famous literary genre. The word "poem" has many meanings, both direct and figurative. In ancient times, poems were called large epic works, which today are considered epics (the poems of Homer already mentioned above).

IN literature XIX-XX centuries, a poem is a large poetic work with a detailed plot, for which it is sometimes called a poetic story. The poem has characters, a plot, but their purpose is somewhat different than in a prose story: in the poem they help the author's lyrical self-expression. Perhaps that is why romantic poets loved this genre so much (“Ruslan and Lyudmila” by early Pushkin, “Mtsyri” and “Demon” by M. Lermontov, “Cloud in Pants” by V. Mayakovsky).

Oh yeah(oda Greek song) - a genre represented mainly in the literature of the 18th century, although it also has an ancient origin. The ode goes back to the ancient genre of dithyramb - a hymn glorifying folk hero or the winner Olympic Games, i.e. an outstanding person.

Poets of the 18th-19th centuries created odes on various occasions. It could be an appeal to the monarch: M. Lomonosov dedicated his odes to Empress Elizabeth, G. Derzhavin to Catherine P. While glorifying their deeds, the poets at the same time taught the empresses, inspired them with important political and civil ideas.

Significant historical events could also become the subject of glorification and admiration in the ode. G. Derzhavin after the capture by the Russian army under the command of A.V. Suvorov of the Turkish fortress, Ishmael wrote the ode “Thunder of victory, resound!”, Which for some time was unofficial anthem Russian Empire. There was a kind of spiritual ode: "Morning reflection on God's greatness" by M. Lomonosov, "God" by G. Derzhavin. civil, political ideas could also become the basis of an ode (“Liberty” by A. Pushkin).

This genre has a pronounced didactic nature, it can be called a poetic sermon. Therefore, it is distinguished by the solemnity of style and speech, the leisurely narration. An example is the famous excerpt from M. Lomonosov’s “Ode on the Day of Accession to the All-Russian Throne of Her Majesty Empress Elisaveta Petrovna in 1747”, written in the year when Elizabeth approved the new charter of the Academy of Sciences, significantly increasing funds for its maintenance. The main thing for the great Russian encyclopedist is the enlightenment of the younger generation, the development of science and education, which, according to the poet, will become the key to the prosperity of Russia.

Ballad(balare Provence - to dance) was especially popular at the beginning of the 19th century, in sentimental and romantic poetry. This genre originated in the French Provence as a folk dance of love content with obligatory refrains-repetitions. Then the ballad migrated to England and Scotland, where it acquired new features: now it is a heroic song with a legendary plot and heroes, for example, the famous ballads about Robin Hood. The only constant feature is the presence of refrains (repetitions), which will be important for ballads written later.

Poets of the 18th and early 19th centuries fell in love with the ballad for its special expressiveness. If we use an analogy with epic genres, a ballad can be called a poetic novel: it must have an unusual love, legendary, heroic plot that captures the imagination. Quite often, fantastic, even mystical images and motifs are used in ballads: let us recall the famous "Lyudmila" and "Svetlana" by V. Zhukovsky. No less famous are "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg" by A. Pushkin, "Borodino" by M. Lermontov.

In Russian lyrics of the 20th century, a ballad is a love romantic poem, often accompanied by musical accompaniment. Ballads are especially popular in "bardic" poetry, the anthem of which can be called the ballad of Yuri Vizbor, beloved by many.

Fable(basnia lat. story) - a short story in verse or prose of a didactic, satirical nature. Elements of this genre from ancient times were present in the folklore of all peoples as fairy tales about animals, and then transformed into anecdotes. The literary fable took shape in ancient Greece, its founder is Aesop (V century BC), after his name allegorical speech began to be called "Aesopian language". In a fable, as a rule, there are two parts: plot and moralizing. The first contains a story about some funny or absurd incident, the second - morality, teaching. The heroes of fables are often animals, under the masks of which quite recognizable moral and social vices are hidden, which are ridiculed. The great fabulists were Lafontaine (France, 17th century), Lessing (Germany, 18th century). In Russia, I.A. Krylov (1769-1844). The main advantage of his fables is a lively, folk language, a combination of cunning and wisdom in the author's intonation. The plots and images of many of I. Krylov's fables look quite recognizable even today.

Greek drama - action) - a kind of literature in which an image of life is given through events, actions, clashes of heroes, i.e. through the phenomena that make up the external world.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

DRAMA

Greek drama - action).- 1. One of the main. birth of the artist literature (along with lyrics and epic), covering works usually intended to be performed on stage; subdivided into genre varieties: tragedy, comedy, drama in the narrow sense, melodrama, farce. Dramatic text. consists of dialogues and monologues of characters embodying certain human characters, manifested in actions and speeches. The essence of drama is the disclosure of the contradictions of reality, which are embodied in the conflicts that determine the development of the action of the work, and in the internal contradictions inherent in the personality of the characters. Plots, forms, and styles of drama have changed over the course of cultural history. Initially, myths served as the subject of the image, in which the spiritual experience of mankind was generalized (D. East, Ancient Greece, religious D. European Middle Ages). A turning point in dramatization came with an appeal to real history and state and everyday conflicts (D. Vozrozhdeniye, the dramaturgy of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Corneille, Racine, and others); plots D. began to reflect the events and characters of the majestic and heroic. In the XVIII century. under the influence of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, D.

the promoters of the rising bourgeois class (Didero, Lessing). The realism of the Enlightenment D. romance of the first half of XIX V. contrast legendary and historical plots, extraordinary heroes, intensity of passions. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. symbolism revives mythological subjects in D., while naturalism addresses the darkest aspects of everyday life. D. in socialist art, striving for a comprehensive coverage of reality, follows the traditions of realism of the previous period, often supplementing realism with revolutionary romance. 2. A variety of plays in which the conflict does not receive a tragic, deadly denouement, but the action does not acquire a purely comic character either. This genre of drama, which is intermediate between tragedy and comedy, was particularly widespread in the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries. A prime example such a variety of plays is the dramaturgy of A.P. Chekhov.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

- ▲ kind of fiction genres of literature. epic genre. epic. prose is an artistic story about what l. events. prosaic (# works). fiction. lyrics. drama... Ideographic Dictionary of the Russian Language

This term has other meanings, see Drama. Not to be confused with Drama (a type of literature). Drama is a literary (dramatic), stage and cinematic genre. Received special distribution in the literature of the XVIII XXI centuries, ... ... Wikipedia

In art: Drama is a kind of literature (along with epic and lyrics); Drama is a kind of stage cinematic action; a genre that includes various subgenres, modifications (such as petty-bourgeois drama, drama of the absurd, etc.); Toponym(s): ... ... Wikipedia

D. as a poetic genus Origin D. Eastern D. Antique D. Medieval D. D. Renaissance From Renaissance to Classicism Elizabethan D. Spanish D. Classical D. Bourgeois D. Ro ... Literary Encyclopedia

Epos, poetry, drama. It is determined according to various criteria: from the point of view of ways of imitating reality (Aristotle), types of content (F. Schiller, F. Schelling), categories of epistemology (objective subjective in G. W. F. Hegel), formal ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Drama (Greek dráma, literally - action), 1) one of the three types of literature (along with epic and lyrics; see Literary type). D. belongs simultaneously to the theater and literature: being the fundamental principle of the performance, it is also perceived in ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Modern Encyclopedia

Genus literary- GENUS LITERARY, one of the three groups of works of fiction epos, lyrics, drama. The tradition of generic division of literature was founded by Aristotle. Despite the fragility of the boundaries between genera and the abundance of intermediate forms (lyroepic ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Epos, poetry, drama. It is determined according to various criteria: from the point of view of ways of imitation of reality (Aristotle), types of content (F. Schiller, F. Schelling), categories of epistemology (objective subjective in G. Hegel), formal features ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

GENUS, a (y), prev. about (in) kind and in (on) kind, pl. s, ov, husband. 1. The main social organization of the primitive communal system, united by blood relationship. Elder of the family. 2. A number of generations descending from one ancestor, as well as a generation in general ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

Books

  • Pushkin, Tynyanov Yuri Nikolaevich. Yuri Nikolayevich Tynyanov (1894-1943) - an outstanding prose writer and literary critic - outwardly looked like Pushkin, as he was told about student years. Who knows, maybe it was this similarity that helped ...


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