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What is the plot of a work of art. The plot of a work of art

What is the plot of a work of art. The plot of a work of art

04.03.2019

The problem of content and form is one of the key problems in literary theory. Her decision is not easy. Moreover, this problem in the scientific literature appears to be either real or supposed, imaginary. There are three most common points of view on it. One comes from the idea of the primacy of content and the secondary nature of form. Another interprets the ratio of these categories in the opposite way. The third approach eliminates the need to use these categories. A prerequisite for such a theoretical view is the idea of the unity of content and form. Since such a unity is stated, the possibility of differentiation of concepts and, consequently, a separate consideration of content and form is, as it were, excluded. Let's try to express our attitude to all these views. The theory of literature is an autonomous field of knowledge, not directly subordinate to other aspects of the science of art, and even more so to artistic practice. However, there is always a natural need to "test" the concepts and terms of science. real picture this practice artistic material. And the very primary idea of a work of art, as well as the process of its creation, makes us discover some different moments, which prompt us to give them the appropriate terminological designation: content and form. Even at the level of ordinary consciousness, it is very often easy to notice the differences between essential and less essential moments in a work of art. And at the same level, questions often arise: what and how? And most often, in this unsystematized view of art, an idea of more significant and less significant is obtained. Thus, any reader or spectator who recreates his reaction to what he has seen or read characterizes the action in the work and only then the form in which this action is presented: the color of the painting paint, the narrative style in the novel, the camera style in the film work, etc.

The creative process itself, about which the artist often willingly tells himself, prompts the perceiver to the existence of these various aspects in art. We often notice how an artist in his creative process, making some seemingly private adjustments, fundamentally changes the feeling of a work or its individual components. So. it is known that Gogol, starting his "Inspector General", put long phrases into the mouth of the mayor, giving the beginning of the comedy a certain stylistic lethargy. In the last version, which is familiar to everyone, this beginning has gained dynamism, enhanced by the widespread in verbal art repetition, one of the most revealing in poetic syntax.

Gorky's formula is well-known, which has long been considered almost classical: "the word is the primary element of literature." It is not difficult to agree with this, but the question arises, what element of literature is thought? It is unlikely that the latter can be attributed to the secondary elements of art, rather the opposite. Strictly speaking, the dispute about what is primary in art, thought or word, is metaphysical, just as the old dispute in European philosophy is metaphysical about what is higher: beautiful in life or beautiful in art. This dispute, as is well known, was carried on between German epigones like Fischer and Russian materialists headed by Chernyshevsky. In passing, we add that in general, raising the question of what is higher, art or life, is meaningless from the point of view of logic. For art is also life, perhaps the most essential part of it. But judgments about the word and thought contribute to the differentiation of the concepts of content and form. Simply put, in this case, it is more natural to attribute thought to the content sphere, the word - to the formal one. To support the thesis about the difference between these categories, the difference that many artistic and theoretical minds, such as Kant, Hegel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, have stated, can be illustrated with several examples. Thus, it is known that in the first part of Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" the creed of the central character is stated. Underground man opposes various utopian ideas, which, however, are of an altruistic nature, clinging to the inaccurate terminology of the utopian socialists, he accuses them of egocentrism, considering the consequences of any individualistic knowledge to be destructive. Here one can guess the dispute between Dostoevsky and his ideological antipode, a contemporary who went through the same stages of a dramatic life path as Fyodor Mikhailovich himself (at the end of the 40s, Dostoevsky was executed on one of the squares in St. Petersburg, after a decade and a half it was repeated with Chernyshevsky) . These judgments underground man seem compelling and psychologically motivated. Now let's look at the second part of Notes from the Underground. If we called the first part the "creed" of the underground man, then the second can be called the "history" of the underground man. What is this story? The little official was walking along the street and accidentally ran into a confidently walking officer on the sidewalk. The officer, wanting to get rid of the hindrance, took our hero and moved it to the side, rearranging it from place to place, as it is said in the story, like a chair.

The offended official decided to take revenge on the officer. He had been preparing for this revenge for a long time. Actively arouse this feeling in yourself. This long period of preparation absorbed various everyday episodes, in particular, a meeting with a girl who treated him with complete sympathy. How did it all end? Wanting to take revenge on the officer, he abused the girl, satisfying, as it seemed to him, his wounded sense of pride. Before us is the story of a man with a painful ambition, weak spiritually, in fact crippled morally. And if we had known in advance the inner appearance of this character, we would have reacted differently to his theses regarding utopian socialism. But Dostoevsky simply rearranged the parts, he violated the logical course of the narrative, according to which one should first recognize a person, and then listen to his philosophy. But a purely external factor, the composition itself, the rearrangement of parts of the narrative played a certain role in the perception of the content.

In Anna Karenina, the artist Mikhailov, whom Vronsky and Anna met in Italy, could not remember what a person in anger looks like. What kind of pose to give to this character reproduced by the artist - the pose of one who is in anger. Going through the sketches of the portrait being created, he found one filled with a large stearin drop, and this random external detail clarified the pictorial concept for him, and he quickly sketched the portrait. Tolstoy was very fond of distinguishing between the concepts of content and form. He repeatedly said how important it is for an artist to master the form, if Gogol wrote his works badly, not artistically, no one would read them. The case with this stearin drop is a particular manifestation of the interaction of different sides in art. When a new school of literary criticism emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, which rejected all the previous ideas of philosophers and writers about the primacy of content and the secondary nature of form (hence, it did not accept Tolstoy's position just stated), a widespread belief arose that in art " the governing force" is the form. This formal school was represented by great minds such as Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and to some extent Zhirmunsky and Vinogradov. But even those who did not consider themselves formalists experienced the magic of their logic. Here is the famous outstanding psychologist Vygotsky. In his fundamental study "Psychology of Art" a short essay on Bunin's short story "Light Breath" is directly related to our topic. Vygotsky says that the content of Bunin's short story, or "material", is "worldly dregs". The plot of the novel is the story of the high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, who received angry remarks from the head of the gymnasium for her frivolous behavior, who made an early moral fall and was killed by a Cossack officer on the platform of the station. Ordinary, it would seem, the story of provincial Russian life, but why is its ending so poetic and joyful? At the cemetery, to the grave of Olya, over which a cross rises and with the image of a young beautiful face, one of the mentors - a teacher of the gymnasium - comes to this face with concentrated tenderness, sentimental and with almost some kind of joyful feeling of relief. And these final words of the short story "in this spring frosty air it was possible to pour a light breath, a certain liberation was felt in everything." Why does Bunin want to convey a feeling of some kind of liberation from any worldly turbidity. From everything bad, to convey the feeling even in the cemetery of something affirming and beautiful? Vygotsky answers as follows: here the whole point is in the novelistic form, which in its own way genre structure always presents the event and its consequences as unexpected. Vygotsky believes that Bunin chose a special "teleology" of style for his novelistic form. "It could be stated as follows: the hiding of the terrible in the fearless. The head of the gymnasium, in her comfortable office, carefully dressed, with her hair styled well, scolds young Olya for that she runs noisily along the corridors of the gymnasium, that she has ink spots on her face, a disheveled head, and her phrase sounds like the finale of these moralizing maxims: “Olya, you are a girl! How are you behaving?" And Olya quietly replies: "No, I'm not a girl; and your brother is to blame for this. " Subsequently, Olya's reminiscences of how this happened. But the reader does not seem to notice this, because this "information" is furnished with so many different details that this confession in the fall, in essence, did not take place (did not sound).

When she met her fiancé, a Cossack officer, on the station platform, she immediately handed him her diary so that he would immediately read the relevant pages. He read the lines where she wrote that she did not love him and, due to sad circumstances, was forced to marry a stranger to her. And then he killed her right there, on the platform, with a pistol. And here, according to Vygotsky, the teleology of style also worked: it was as if we did not hear this shot in this station hubbub, again the terrible was hidden in the fearless. From all this, Vygotsky concludes that the form dictated to the reader a sense of a certain freedom, a certain lightness of being, a lightness of breathing, i.e. the form drove the content. However, the outstanding theoretician made a fundamental theoretical mistake. We should have noticed it at the very beginning of his essay, when he called the content of the story her material. But this is a fundamental difference - material and content. Material is passive, content is active. The concept of content includes the attitude of the author to the subject of the image. And then it turns out that Bunin portrays a young natural being who does not recognize regulation, moral and aesthetic escort by adults, who, as we see, have no moral right to do so.

This is a Pushkin theme. Pushkin - this is the most important thing in his poetry and prose - saw the main watershed in being. Here is life artificial, regulated, false. The stingy knight counts money, goes over the coins he doesn’t need, living in this strange alienation from living life, in some kind of spiritual underground, and his nephew Albert jumps in tournaments, life plays in him, its triumph, this natural life, natural!

Salieri came up with a craft for himself - he wanted to become a musician and became one, he began to strain, carefully, but compose and perform his works. And Mozart, as if sent by God to earth, personifies the natural impulses and abilities to create great music. Pushkin considers this regulated, artificial form of existence to be a misfortune both for the person himself and for the other person. It may sound paradoxical and untrue, but Don Juan in Pushkin's "Stone Guest" dies because he violated the natural law, which is present in him, in his appearance as dominant. He loved many women, and then he fell in love with one Donna Anna and must die under the steps of the Commander.

Bunin - both in poetry and prose - Pushkin of the early 20th century. And all his work demonstrates the same dividing line - between the natural and the artificial. For him, there is no doubt that both the spots on the face and the disheveled hair of Olya Meshcherskaya are all the poetry of natural behavior. But for him it is also certain that in certain circumstances of being, one can even say that at a certain stage of human civilization, human impulses for the natural are interrupted by a boring or even cynical course of things, determined by bad adults. And all the same, this victory of the dark and nasty over the natural is a temporary phenomenon. Ultimately in human life light breath, pure, should triumph and triumph bright world liberation from everything invented by false norms and regulations.

So, in favor of the differentiated principle of considering content and form, a theoretical judgment and creative practice itself are in favor. Moreover, in the first case, thinkers of different philosophical and aesthetic orientations are united. Now it is fashionable to be ironic about the views of Marx, but it was he who said that if the form of manifestation and the essence of things directly coincided, then any science would be superfluous. But a similar thought, albeit not in such theoretical certainty, was expressed by Leo Tolstoy: “a terrible thing is concern for the perfection of form. It’s not without reason. But it’s not without reason when the content is good. millionth of those who read it now. Belinsky called Baratynsky's poems "On the death of Goethe" "wonderful", but denied the poem the value of the content: "Uncertainty of ideas, infidelity in content."

Chernyshevsky called Goethe's poem "Hermann and Dorothea" "excellent in artistic terms", but in content "harmful and pathetic, sugary-sentimental." The point here is not the actual accuracy of the estimates, but their theoretical orientation.

The history of culture in the 20th century also showed countless variants of discrepancies between content and form. Sometimes they, especially in those cases when they tried to clothe the old content in new form, acquired a comic effect. For example: famous classical motif"here a young gentleman drove up to me" they tried to transform with the help of modern details - "here a collective farm truck drove up to us." This was especially common in folklore modifications, for example, "a hero sat down here, and in a speedy ZIS."

In a word, not artificial terminological enrichment of literary science, but real practice dictates the need for a separate consideration of these categories. And there is no need to talk about educational goals and benefits. But the final solution of the question, of course, is possible after the systematization of the elements of content and form.

A thorough, systematized view of the content in recent years has been stimulated by the fact that the traditional Hegelian concept of the formal specificity of art has been replaced by a meaningful one. Art appeared in the current scientific systems as a form of consciousness that has not only an external (imagery), but also an internal semantic feature. The dominance of the Hegelian point of view objectively at times reduced art to an illustrative function, or, in any case, was most often perceived as a secondary phenomenon. public consciousness: after all, such forms of consciousness as philosophy, and even more so journalism, turned out to be, as it were, more operational forms. Hence, by the way, there was a very arrogant attitude of politics towards art, disbelief in its ability to get ahead of political doctrines, or even more so specific social and public recommendations. A New Look on the specifics of artistic creativity equated art with all other forms of social consciousness. As a result of this new concept it became necessary to consider not only the content itself, but also its sources. Here exist different approaches. Not all of them, even those that follow from the recognition of the specific content of figurative reflection, can be agreed. The most preferable idea should be that which takes into account the specifics and content, and, at the same time, forms, and also evaluates art not only as a social phenomenon, but also as an aesthetic phenomenon. According to the German aesthetician Baumgarten, the beautiful is a concretely sensual, objective phenomenon; This provision also applies to art. Therefore, the idea of the source of artistic content, which considers the ideological views of the writer as such, is a kind of extreme that arose in a polemic with the concept of figurative specificity.

Another source of content should be named. Not ideology as a system of views, but social psychology, ordinary consciousness, unsystematic impression, emotional reaction to what is happening, etc. This was well understood by the young Dobrolyubov, who found two sides in the creative mind of the writer: theoretical views and worldview. The latter is the content source. And due to a number of features and its activity, it often comes into conflict with the author's theories.

But the same circumstance makes it difficult to analyze the specific features of the content and the "mechanism" of the impact of some of the objective ideas of the work, its theoretical premises.

So what is content? Undoubtedly, this is the subject of the image, what is often called material. Recognizing that Vygotsky narrows the artistic content, reducing it to the subject of reproduction, one cannot, of course, exclude the latter from the content. We should talk about the unity, so to speak, of the "passive" and "active" sides of the content of a literary text. Activity is the essence of the author's relationship to the object of narration. It is clear that these relationships are multifaceted. They consist in highlighting the special aspects of the subject under consideration, then in their specific emotional assessment.

How to start classifying the content aspects of a work? Most likely, from the answer to the question - is such a classification necessary? Strictly speaking, in such a question it is the methodological key to any theoretical knowledge. The answer in our case is obvious. We must try to consider the "morphology" of a work of art on an unsystematized, ordinary level. And that's what such a consideration leads to. With all the boundless variety of creative personalities, the plots, motifs, and the very objects of their depiction are very often similar or even almost identical. But the latter has a relative property, that is, artists can coincide or in a common drawing life situation, or in its particulars. But in any case, all these similarities and differences encourage typology, and, therefore, terminologically designate aspects of the content. In the very general sense and volume of the subject artistic knowledge one is life. But that's why artistic individuality exists, because it always has its own artistic life as a product of her observation and imagination. There are many easily accessible understandings and very convenient examples for teaching purposes that convince of the need for this terminological distinction. Here is one of the classic and, one might say, school examples that belong to the category of self-evident truths. Russian literature XIX centuries, according to a long-standing traditional definition, are various stories about the so-called superfluous people and the little man. A set of relevant artistic types allows us to talk about a certain broad topic of artistic literature of the last century. But it is equally obvious that the general object of artistic attention is greatly multiplied in the eyes of the writer. No matter how close the moral properties of Onegin, Pechorin and Rudin, their differences are striking at the most approximate examination. Generic signs extra person as if realized in its specific qualities. Of course, one should not ignore the fact that the generic and specific classifications are rather arbitrary. And for theoretical consciousness, in this case, a metonymic approach is unacceptable, when it is possible to reduce the general to the particular and vice versa. The picture of such a unification and separation of artistic types is especially visible when it comes to a small person. Here too school example allowed in the university course for the reason that the explanatory function of literary thought should operate here. Any attentive reader of Russian classics, talking about the little man in it, will name three stories: "The Stationmaster" by Pushkin, "The Overcoat" by Gogol and "Poor People" by Dostoevsky. Three giants of Russian prose, three founders of the great humanistic theme. Once upon a time, in the 30s of the 20th century, in the theory of the "single stream", in this dictatorial leveling of Russian culture, the analysis of the differences between the named stories was, as it were, not supposed. Culture had to be interpreted in terms of the unity of common motives and moral premises. Because in all these stories humanistic pathos their authors dominated, it was hardly necessary to bother yourself with the search for fundamental substantive differences. People interested in the history of science know that the one-stream concept, capable of ascertaining, for example, the coincidence of humanistic motives in the novels of Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky, was not able to explain the major ideological differences between the "sixties". Yes, Samson Vyrin, Akaki Bashmachkin and Makar Devushkin are siblings in the social and hierarchical sense, but it is easy to see that in Pushkin's character the "controlling force" of his actions is the protection of human and paternal honor, which, as it seems to him, is desecrated. A.A. Bashmachkin is a much different modification of the spiritual state of a poor official than Vyrin. It may even seem in general that here the spiritual principle itself is exhausted to the limit by material concerns. The almost selfless dream of an overcoat threatens to turn for Bashmachkin into a complete loss of his own human appearance. In its social invisibility and spiritual obliteration, there are signs of rejection from the life of a normal human society. If there were no motive in the story, expressed by the words "this is your brother", there would be every reason to talk about the transformation of a person into a thing. That "electricity order", which Gogol considered a factor determining the absurdity, grotesqueness of human relations in cold St. Petersburg, in fact makes the whole legal order and way of life unreal. In Gogol's story, a person appears in a rigid social determinism, which has certain consequences: he was a good person, but became a general. Makar Devushkin is a completely different type of official from the St. Petersburg slums. He has great internal dynamism in the perception of what is happening. The range of his judgments is so great and contrasting that sometimes it even seems artificial, but it is not. There is a logic in the transition from spontaneous consciousness of the social absurdity of life to a conciliatory consolation for its troubles. Yes, says Makar Devushkin, I am a rat, but I earn bread with my own hands. Yes. He soberly understands that some people travel in carriages, while others spank through the mud. But the phrases “morbid ambition” and “submissive self-consolation” are suitable for the emotional characterization of his reflection: the ancient philosophers went barefoot, and wealth often goes to fools alone. “We all came out of The Overcoat,” Dostoevsky seemed to say. This is true, but only in a general sense, because Gogol’s coloring is unacceptable for Makar Devushkin. He likes Pushkin’s character and the whole story about Vyrin much more. It's easy to explain. Makar Devushkin's love for Varenka and care for her is, in fact, the only thread that connects him with the spiritual forms of life. Soon they will break off, the landowner Bykov will appear, and Devushkin will lose Varenka. And, fearing this approaching future, Devushkin is indignant at its possible reproduction. Makar Devushkin stands, as it were, between Samson Vyrin and Akaky Akakievich. Consequently, it is clear that we have before us completely different forms of incarnation of a small person, i.e. different problems.

And here is a visual effect and an example loved by art critics. There are three monuments to Gogol in Moscow: the front one - on the Arbat, as if a government gift to the admirers of the author of "Dead Souls"; ingenious Andreevsky in the courtyard of one of the houses on Gogol Boulevard and the caustic Gogol of Manizer in the foyer of the Maly Theatre. For all the mediocrity of the first one, it cannot be said that it contained an absolute lie: faith in the greatness of the future of Russia to a large extent determined the writer's ideological position. As for the outstanding monument created by Andreev, here it is all the more necessary to see the appearance of a stern and sad truth-lover. The satirical mockery of Gogol, placed in the center of attention by Manizer, is unconditional for the author of The Government Inspector. In a word, we have before us a self-evident case of "classifying" a single historical material according to the most characteristic psychological features - one more proof of the legitimacy of the terminological definition of an artistic object: theme and problem or theme and problematic. The substitution of concepts that occurs in the scientific literature confuses the issue.

As regards the actual literary material such a theoretical recommendation is confirmed by the greatest artistic synonyms. You can take confirmation in the case of the opposite in relation to the above interaction between the topic and the problem. In "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", of course, different topics: historical events the beginning of the 19th century and social and moral issues characteristic of the middle of the century, but the problems of the novels contain great similarities.

True, Tolstoy notes: in "War and Peace" - the thought of the people, in "Anna Karenina" - family. But these definitions cannot be unconditionally attributed only to problems, as, indeed, to topics. Here Tolstoy emphasizes a certain point of view, the question of human behavior is considered. If we specify the problems of the novels, it turns out that it can be reduced to the thesis - the inability to live according to the laws of collective consciousness and feelings is evil. The "swarm", uniting the beginning of life according to the laws of the "world" - like a peasant gathering - is the highest saving good. This ratio can be traced within the framework of one work - in different storylines. A classic example is the disintegrating and rebuilding families in Anna Karenina; here is the guarantee, so to speak, of moral success - in the altruistic feeling of the inner connection of one person with another. The discrepancy between the categories of themes and problems is almost a universal law of all kinds of arts. When there is a "translation" of the content of one type of art into the content of another, then there are cases when one type of art can give a variety of content in other types of art. For example, if the famous Pushkin's words "do not sing, beauty, in front of me" are announced as a theme literary work, then in the corresponding romances for these words, due to the aesthetic nuance, there will be various problems: the bright, elegant romance of Glinka and the passionate romance of Rachmaninov. If we have a general aesthetic point of view on the issue under study, we can recall the essential provisions of Chernyshevsky's well-known dissertation "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality", according to which artistic creativity reproduces, explains and sometimes "pronounces the verdict". Reproduces and explains - this, relatively speaking, is a topic and a problem. As for the verdict, it is the most "active" side of the content. This is an emotional assessment by the artist of what is depicted. It is easy to imagine how diverse such assessments are, they are the basis of a very specific classification. Of course, there is a temptation to abandon scientific systematization in this case: how many creative individuals, so many assessments and, therefore, scientific systematization is impossible, because it always presupposes the existence of a general law or several regularities. The first, long-spoken and habitual word in this usage is an idea, but the word needs to be used carefully. It is difficult to agree with the point of view that a direct statement of the writer in the text or outside it, for example, an epigraph, can be called the author's idea, and ideological meaning of the whole work, in all the main details, by the objective idea of this work. It is clear that the famous epigraph to "Anna Karenina" - "Vengeance is mine and I will repay" - is a kind of author's idea, and the entire main text of the novel is an objective idea.

Subject detailing of artistic images as one of the main forms of narration

Usually, when they talk about art form, they first of all turn to speech, to language. There is a well-known classical formula, popular in the 20th century: language is the primary element of literature. However, taking into account the well-known position of the outstanding German aesthetician of the 18th century A. Baumgarten that the beautiful is a concrete-sensual feature of the world, and bearing in mind that art is the highest degree of beauty, it is more logical to start the study of form from the characteristics of objective details. In addition, the emphasis on the objective world, on the landscape, on the portrait, on the everyday environment is motivated by the fact that a person as the main subject of art very often in its content essentially boils down to this subject matter life. In other words, the essence of man, and it is precisely the psychological essence of man, can very often be reduced to this world of things.

This emphasis on detail provides a wide scope for the most diverse forms of conventionality: the grotesque, the anecdotal. G. Uspensky in his story "The Morals of Rasteryaeva Street" tells about the husband of a certain Balkanikh, whom he, having seen on the threshold of a closet, where he secretly entered from her to try the jam, "died his breath" from fear. In this episode, the character of Balkanikha is visible, maniacally striving for a thing, and the whole situation of their family life. This motif is repeated by Chekhov in the story "Carelessness", where the hero also secretly goes to the cupboard to drink something strong. But he drank kerosene. His sister-in-law Dashenka woke up to his cries, and when he, surprised that he had not died, began to explain this with his righteous life, the gloomy sister-in-law began to mutter: no, not because he was righteous, but because they gave the wrong kerosene, the wrong one, that for 5 kopecks, and that for three. Christ sellers! Here is another version of the manic nature of human passion.

Chekhov's example makes us pay attention to the fact that one subject detail can act as a characterological feature of the structure of a work. In Chekhov's story "On a Nail", the birthday boy Struchkov takes his official friends to dinner. They see a large nail on the wall in the hallway, and on it is a new cap with a shining visor and a cockade. The officials, turning pale, left to wait until their boss was with the birthday boy. When they return, they see: a marten's hat is already hanging on a nail. This is another boss who came to visit Struchkov's wife, and they again leave the house of their comrade.

The function of an objective detail has received a classical definition as an aesthetic phenomenon that is necessarily effective, both in terms of numbers and in terms of plot. More than a hundred years ago, it was said that if a gun is displayed in one of the acts of a play, then it must fire. And not just be cleaned up at intermission. By the way, these words are inaccurately attributed to Chekhov, in reality they belong to the director V. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Although this should not be taken too bluntly: a gun may not necessarily shoot, it may function differently, but it must function. There is some special, cosmic, secret in a person's attraction to the natural concrete world. Sometimes it seems paradoxical that art speaks of a person passing away in a situation of some real pantheism. That is, a person thinks most of all about nature, and not about the people he leaves, even the closest. But this is exactly what happens in art, and one of the most indicative examples in this respect are B. Pasternak's lines in the poem "English Lessons":

When you wanted to sing to Desdemona,

And there was so little left to live

Not for her love - a star ... she

According to the willow, burst into tears.

When I wanted to sing to Ophelia,

And the bitterness of dreams is fed up,

With what sunk trophies?

With a bunch of willows and celandine.

Very often, artists resort to the substantive details of the situation for semantic characteristics. Here Turgenev in "Fathers and Sons" characterizes everyday details in the atmosphere of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, whom he does not like. Abroad, he "adheres to Slavophile views, ... he does not read anything Russian, but on his desk there is a silver ashtray in the form of a peasant's bast shoes." Here is an almost satirical image of an ostentatious people-lover: a bast shoe is a symbol of peasant poverty, but Kirsanov has it silver, that is, it is only a secular item. Such an example of a direct critical method in the writer's artistic characterology is essentially universal in classical literature. Writers, as a rule, have a direct comparison of external and internal. Here popular example. At Gogol's Sobakevich in " Dead souls"Everything in the house" was of the most difficult and restless nature, in a word, every object, every chair seemed to say: I, too, Sobakevich. Everyone knows this, but they do not always notice the meaning of the word "restless", but Sobakevich is full of anxiety before new phenomena, in front of the adventure that Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov's traveling salesmanship is. Gogol in general, perhaps the first writer in Russia to boldly introduce these very substantive details into the characterology. In his "Marriage" Podkolesin, before the wedding, no longer thinks about the bride, but about wax and cloth.

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Offers several definitions of the concept of "plot". According to Ozhegov, the plot in literature is the order and connection of events. Ushakov's dictionary proposes to consider them a set of actions, the sequence and motivation for the deployment of what is happening in the work.

Relationship with the plot

In modern Russian criticism, the plot has a completely different definition. The plot in the literature is understood as the course of events, against which the confrontation is revealed. The plot is the main artistic conflict.

However, other points of view on this issue have existed and continue to exist in the past. Russian critics of the middle of the 19th century, supported by Veselovsky and Gorky, considered the compositional side of the plot, that is, how the author communicates the content of his work. And the plot in literature is, in their opinion, the actions and relationships of characters.

This interpretation is directly opposite to that in Ushakov's dictionary, in which the plot is the content of events in their sequential connection.

Finally, there is a third point of view. Those who adhere to it believe that the concept of "plot" has no independent meaning, and in the analysis it is quite enough to use the terms "plot", "composition" and "plot scheme".

Types and variants of product schemes

Modern analysts distinguish two main types of plot: chronicle and concentric. They differ from each other in the nature of the connections between events. The main factor, so to speak, is time. The chronic type reproduces its natural course. Concentric - focuses no longer on the physical, but on the mental.

The concentric plot in literature is detectives, thrillers, social and psychological novels, drama. Chronicle is more common in memoirs, sagas, adventure works.

Concentric plot and its features

In the case of this type of course of events, a clear causal relationship of episodes can be traced. The development of the plot in the literature of this type is consistent and logical. Here it is easy to distinguish the tie and the denouement. Previous actions are the causes of subsequent ones, all events seem to be pulled together into one node. The writer explores one conflict.

Moreover, the work can be both linear and multilinear - the causal relationship is preserved just as clearly, moreover, any new storylines appear as a result of past events. All parts of a detective, thriller or story are built on a clearly expressed conflict.

chronicle plot

It can be contrasted with concentric, although in fact there is not an opposite, but a completely different principle of construction. These types of plots in literature can interpenetrate each other, but most often either one or the other is decisive.

The change of events in a work built according to the chronicle principle is tied to time. There may be no pronounced plot, no strict logical causal relationship (or at least this relationship is not obvious).

In such a work, we can talk about many episodes, which have in common only that they happen in chronological order. The chronicle plot in literature is a multi-conflict and multi-component canvas, where contradictions arise and go out, one is replaced by another.

Ending, climax, denouement

In works whose plot is based on conflict, it is essentially a scheme, a formula. It can be divided into constituent parts. Plot elements in literature include exposition, opening, conflict, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, and denouement.

Of course, not all of these elements are present in every work. More often you can meet several of them, for example, the plot, the conflict, the development of the action, the crisis, the climax and the denouement. On the other hand, it matters how exactly the work is analyzed.

The exposition in this regard is the most static part. Her task is to introduce some of the characters and the setting of the action.

The opening describes one or more events that trigger the main action. Story development in literature goes through conflict, escalation, crisis to climax. She is also the peak of the work, playing a significant role in revealing the characters of the characters and in the development of the conflict. The denouement adds the final touches to the story told and to the characters of the characters.

In the literature, a certain plot construction scheme has developed, psychologically justified from the point of view of influencing the reader. Each described element has its place and meaning.

If the story does not fit into the scheme, it seems sluggish, incomprehensible, illogical. In order for a work to be interesting, for readers to empathize with the characters and delve into what is happening to them, everything in it must have its place and develop according to these psychological laws.

Plots of Old Russian Literature

Ancient Russian literature, according to D.S. Likhachev, is “the literature of one theme and one plot.” World history and the meaning of human life - these are the main, deep motives and themes of the writers of those times.

Plots ancient Russian literature are revealed to us in lives, epistles, walks (descriptions of travel), chronicles. The names of the authors of most of them are unknown. According to the time interval, the Old Russian group includes works written in the 11th-17th centuries.

The diversity of modern literature

Attempts to classify and describe the plots used have been made more than once. In his book The Four Cycles, Jorge Luis Borges suggested that there are only four types of cycles in world literature:

about the search;
about the suicide of a god;
about a long return;
about the assault and defense of the fortified city.

Christopher Booker singled out seven: "rags to riches" (or vice versa), adventure, "there and back" (Tolkien's "The Hobbit" comes to mind here), comedy, tragedy, resurrection, and victory over the monster. Georges Polti reduced the entire experience of world literature to 36 plot collisions, and Kipling singled out 69 of their variants.

Even experts of a different profile did not remain indifferent to this issue. According to Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, the main plots of literature are archetypal, and there are only six of them - this is the shadow, anima, animus, mother, old man and child.

Folk tale index

Most of all, perhaps, the Aarne-Thompson-Uther system “allocated” opportunities to writers - it recognizes the existence of approximately 2500 options.

However, this is about folklore. This system is a catalog, an index of fairy-tale plots known to science at the time of the compilation of this monumental work.

There is only one definition for the course of events. The plot in the literature of such a plan is as follows: “The persecuted stepdaughter is taken to the forest and thrown there. Baba Yaga, or Morozko, or Goblin, or 12 months, or Winter, test her and reward her. The stepmother's own daughter also wants to receive a gift, but she does not pass the test and dies.

In fact, Aarne himself established no more than a thousand options for the development of events in a fairy tale, however, he allowed the possibility of the emergence of new ones and left a place for them in his original classification. It was the first pointer that came into scientific use and was recognized by the majority. Subsequently, scientists from many countries made their additions to it.

In 2004, an edition of the handbook appeared, in which the descriptions of fabulous types were updated and made more accurate. This version of the pointer contained 250 new types.

Plot (from French sujet - subject)

1) in literature - the development of action, the course of events in narrative and dramatic works, and sometimes in lyrical ones. To literature, the word "S." first used in the 17th century. classicists P. Corneille and N. Boileau, meaning, following Aristotle, incidents in life legendary heroes antiquity (for example, Antigone and Creon or Medea and Jason), borrowed by playwrights of later times. But Aristotle in "Poetics" used the ancient Greek word "myth" (mýthos) in the sense of "tradition", which in Russian literary criticism is usually translated incorrectly by the Latin word "fabula" to refer to such incidents. latin word"Fabula" (from the same root with the verb fabulari - to tell, narrate) was used by Roman writers as a designation for all kinds of stories, including myths and fables, and became widespread much earlier than the French term "S.". In German classical aesthetics (Schelling, Hegel), the events depicted in the works were called "action" (Handlung). The difference in terms denoting one phenomenon made them unstable and ambiguous.

In modern Soviet literary-critical and school practice, the terms "S." and “plot” are perceived either as synonyms, or S. is called the whole course of events, and the plot is the main artistic conflict that develops in them (in both cases, the terms are doubled). In literary criticism, two other interpretations collide. In the 1920s representatives of OPOYAZ a proposed an important distinction between the two sides of the narrative: the development of the events themselves in the life of the characters, the order and method of reporting them by the author-narrator; giving great importance the way the work is “made”, they began to call S. the second side, and the first - the plot. This tradition continues to be preserved (see "Theory of Literature ..." in three volumes, vol. 2, M., 1964). Another tradition comes from the Russian democratic critics of the mid-19th century, and also from A. N. Veselovsky and M. Gorky; all of them S. called the development of the action (Belinsky V.G.: “Only those to whom ... the content is important, and not the “plot” - complete collection soch., vol. 6, 1955, p. 219; Gorky M.: "... The plot ... connections, contradictions, sympathies and antipathies, and in general the relationship of people ..." - Collected works, vol. 27, 1953, p. 215). Such terminology is not only more traditional and familiar, but also more etymologically accurate (S., in the sense of the word, is an “object”, that is, what is being narrated, the plot, from the same point of view, the story about S. itself). However, it is important for supporters of this theory to assimilate the theoretical innovation of the “formal school” and, naming S. the main, subject side of the narrative or stage action, use the term "plot" to refer to the second, actually compositional side (see Composition).

S. works - one of the most important means of embodying the content - the generalizing "thought" of the writer, his ideological and emotional understanding of the real characteristics of life, expressed through a verbal image fictional characters in their individual actions and relationships. S. in all its unique originality is the main side of the form (and thus the style (See Style)) of the work in its accordance with the content, and not the content itself, as is often understood in school practice. The entire structure of secularism, its conflicts, and the correlation of narrative and dialogic episodes that develops them must be studied functionally, in its connections with content, in its ideological and aesthetic significance. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish S. in its uniqueness from abstract plot, more precisely, conflict “schemes” (A loves B, but B loves C, etc.), which can be historically repeated, borrowed and each time find a new concrete artistic embodiment. .

On early stages of the historical development of the epic of his S. were built according to the temporary, chronicle principle of combining episodes ( fairy tales, chivalrous and picaresque novels). Later in European epic there are concentric S., based on a single conflict. In the concentric secularity of epic and dramaturgy, the conflict runs through the entire work and is distinguished by the definiteness of its plot (See the plot), the climax (See the Climax) and interchanges (See Interchange).

Only on the basis of S.'s analysis is it possible to functionally analyze the plot of a work in all the complex relationship of its own aspects (see plot).

2) B fine arts- a certain event, situation depicted in the work and often indicated in its title. Unlike the topic (See topic) , S. is a concrete, detailed, figurative-narrative disclosure of the idea of the work. S.'s particular complexity is characteristic of works of domestic and historical genres.

Lit.: Aristotle. On the art of poetry, M., 1937; Lessing G. E., Laocoön, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry, M., 1957; Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, M., 1968: Belinsky V. G., Poln. coll. soch., vol. 5, M., 1954, p. 219; Veselovsky A.N., Poetics of plots, in his book: Historical poetics, L., 1940; Shklovsky V. B., On the theory of prose, M.-L., 1925; Medvedev P. N., Formal method in literary criticism, L., 1928: Freidenberg O. M., Poetics of plot and genre, L., 1936; Kozhinov V.V., Plot, plot, composition, in the book: Theory of Literature ..., vol. 2, M., 1964; Questions of cinematography, c. 5 - Plot in the cinema, M., 1965; Pospelov G. N., Problems literary style, M., 1970; Lotman Yu. M., Structure of an artistic text, M., 1970; Timofeev L. I., Fundamentals of the theory of literature, M., 1971; Wellek R., Warren A., Theory of literature, 3 ed., N. Y., 1963.

G. N. Pospelov(S. in literature).

Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .

Synonyms:

See what "Plot" is in other dictionaries:

- (from French sujet subject) in literature, dramaturgy, theater, cinema and games, a series of events (sequence of scenes, acts) occurring in a work of art (on the theater stage) and lined up for the reader (spectator, player) ... Wikipedia

1. S. in literature, a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of an action unfolding in a work, in the form of internally connected (causally temporary) actions of characters, events that form a certain unity, constituting some ... Literary Encyclopedia

plot- a, m. sujet m. 1. An event or a series of interconnected and sequentially developing events that make up the content of a literary work. BAS 1. || trans. Relationships. He is a beginner immediately understands the plot of the camera: hidden power P … Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Plot- PLOT - the narrative core of a work of art, a system of effective (actual) mutual orientation and location of the persons (objects) acting in this work, the provisions put forward in it, the events developing in it. ... ... Dictionary literary terms

- (fr., from lat. subjectum subject). The content, interweaving of external circumstances that form the basis of known. literary or arts. works; in music: the theme of the fugue. In theatrical language, an actor or actress. Dictionary foreign words included in ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Cm … Synonym dictionary

- (from French sujet subject, subject) a sequence of events in artistic text. The paradox associated with the fate of the concept of secularism in the 20th century lies in the fact that as soon as philology learned to study it, literature began to destroy it. In studying S... Encyclopedia of cultural studies

PLOT, plot, husband. (French sujet). 1. A set of actions, events in which the main content of a work of art is revealed (lit.). Plot Queen of Spades Pushkin. Choose something as the plot of the novel. 2. trans. Content, topic of what ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

From life. Razg. Shuttle. iron. About what l. everyday life episode, ordinary everyday history. Mokienko 2003, 116. Plot for short story. Razg. Shuttle. iron. 1. Something worth talking about. 2. What l. strange, interesting story. /i> From… … Big dictionary of Russian sayings

Event in a literary text. Storytelling and non-storytelling. Features of plot construction: plot components (plot, course of action, climax, denouement - if any), sequence of main components. Relationship between plot and plot. Plot motives. Motive system. Plot types.

Difference between " plot" And " plot”is defined in different ways, some literary critics do not see a fundamental difference between these concepts, while for others, “plot” is the sequence of events as they happen, and “plot” is the sequence in which the author arranges them.

plot- the actual side of the narrative, those events, cases, actions, states in their causal-chronological sequence. The term "plot" refers to what is preserved as the "basis", "core" of the narrative.

Plot- this is a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of an action unfolding in a work, in the form of interrelated (by causal relationship) actions of characters, events that form a unity, that make up some complete whole. The plot is a form of development of the theme - an artistically constructed distribution of events.

The driving force behind the development of the plot, as a rule, is conflict(literally "collision"), a conflicting life situation, put by the writer at the center of the work. In a broad sense conflict we should call that system of contradictions that organizes a work of art into a certain unity, that struggle of images, characters, ideas, which is especially widely and fully developed in epic and dramatic works

Conflict- a more or less acute contradiction or clash between characters with their characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within the character and consciousness of a character or a lyrical subject; this is the central moment not only of epic and dramatic action, but also of lyrical experience.

There are various types of conflicts: between individual characters; between character and environment; psychological. The conflict can be external (the struggle of the hero with the forces opposing him) and internal (the struggle in the mind of the hero with himself). There are plots based only on internal conflicts (“psychological”, “intellectual”), the action in them is based not on events, but on the ups and downs of feelings, thoughts, experiences. In one work there can be a combination of different types of conflicts. Sharply pronounced contradictions, the opposite of the forces acting in the work, is called a collision.

Composition (architectonics) is the construction of a literary work, the composition and sequence of the arrangement of its individual parts and elements (prologue, exposition, plot, development of the action, climax, denouement, epilogue).

Prologue – introductory part literary work. The prologue tells about the events that precede and motivate the main action, or explains the author's artistic intention.

Exposure- a part of the work that precedes the beginning of the plot and is directly related to it. The exposition follows the arrangement of the characters and the circumstances, the reasons that “trigger” the plot conflict are shown.

tie in the plot - the event that served as the beginning of the conflict in a work of art; an episode that determines the entire subsequent deployment of the action (in N.V. Gogol's "Inspector General", for example, the plot is the message of the mayor about the arrival of the auditor). The plot is present at the beginning of the work, indicates the beginning of the development of artistic action. As a rule, it immediately introduces the work into the main conflict, determining the entire narrative and plot in the future. Sometimes the plot comes before the exposition (for example, the plot of the novel "Anna Karenina" by L. Tolstoy: "Everything is mixed up in the Oblonsky's house"). The writer's choice of one or another type of plot is determined by the stylistic and genre system in terms of which he draws up his work.

climax- the point of the highest rise, tension in the development of the plot (conflict).

denouement- conflict resolution; it completes the struggle of contradictions that make up the content of the work. The denouement marks the victory of one side over the other. The effectiveness of the denouement is determined by the significance of the entire preceding struggle and the climactic sharpness of the episode preceding the denouement.

Epilogue- the final part of the work, which briefly reports on the fate of the characters after the events depicted in it, and sometimes discusses the moral, philosophical aspects of the depicted (“Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).

The composition of a literary work includes off-plot elements– author's digressions, inserted episodes, various descriptions(portrait, landscape, world of things), etc., serving to create artistic images, the disclosure of which, in fact, the whole work serves.

So, for example, episode as a relatively complete and independent part of the work, which depicts a completed event or an important moment in the fate of the character, can become an integral link in the problematics of the work or an important part of its general idea.

Scenery in a work of art, it is not just a picture of nature, a description of a part of the real environment in which the action unfolds. The role of the landscape in the work is not limited to depicting the scene. It serves to create a certain mood; is a way of expressing the author's position (for example, in the story of I.S. Turgenev "Date"). The landscape can emphasize or convey the state of mind of the characters, while the internal state of a person is likened or contrasted with the life of nature. The landscape can be rural, urban, industrial, marine, historical (pictures of the past), fantastic (the image of the future), etc. The landscape can also perform a social function (for example, the landscape in the 3rd chapter of the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", the urban landscape in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"). In lyrics, the landscape usually has an independent meaning and reflects the perception of nature by a lyrical hero or a lyrical subject.

Even small artistic detail in a literary work it often plays an important role and performs a variety of functions: it can serve as an important addition to characterize the characters, their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create overall picture morals, have the meaning of a symbol, etc. Artistic details in the work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, psychological details.

Main literature: 20, 22, 50, 54.68, 69, 80, 86, 90