The term "motive" (from Latin "mobile") passed into the science of literature from musicology. It was first recorded in the "Music Dictionary" by S. De Brossard (1703). Analogies with music, where this term is a key one in the analysis of the composition of a work, help to understand the typical properties of a motif in a literary text: its isolation from the whole and its repetition in a variety of variations.
The term “motive” was introduced into literary use by I.V. Goethe and I.F. Schiller, using it to characterize the constituent parts of the plot. In the article "On Epic and Dramatic Poetry" (1797), five types of motifs are singled out: "rushing forward, which accelerate the action"; "retreating, those that move the action away from its goal"; "delaying, which delay the course of action"; "turned to the past"; "facing the future, anticipating what will happen in subsequent epochs" .
In domestic literary criticism, the motive is studied at the beginning of the 20th century. For the first time this term was used by A.N. Veselovsky, applying it in the course of a comparative analysis of folklore texts. According to the scientist, motives are distinguished by historical stability and repetition in fiction. The philologist, considering the motif as the basis of a folklore plot, defined it as an indecomposable unit of narration.
A.N. Veselovsky also noted the ability of writers to use plots and motifs that were already in poetic processing with the help of a “brilliant poetic instinct”. Speaking about the semantic significance of the motive, the literary critic raises the question of the deep mental connection of the creative act with a stable set of its (motive) meanings: “They are somewhere in a deaf dark area of our consciousness<...>as an incomprehensible revelation, as a novelty and at the same time an antiquity, in which we are not aware of, because we are often unable to determine the essence of that mental act that unexpectedly renewed old memories in us.
A significant contribution to the development of the semantic theory of motive was made by O.M. Freudenberg. In her opinion, the concept of a motive is not abstract, but is inextricably linked with the concept of a character: “In essence, speaking about a character, we had to talk about the motives that were stabilized in it; all character morphology is morphology plot motifs(...) The significance expressed in the name of the character and, consequently, in his metaphorical essence, unfolds into an action that constitutes a motive: the hero does only what he himself semantically means.
Ancient medieval literature also reveals stable ties the hero and his motive repertoire, and these connections are already carried out within the framework of a certain genre-thematic tradition. D.S. Likhachev, describing the motive complex of the hero of medieval literature in the light of the concept of literary etiquette, speaks of the regularity of the predetermined, given by tradition, composition of literary themes.
Lines of conceptual searches by A.N. Veselovsky and O.M. Freidenberg converge together in the development of the idea of aesthetic motif. This idea takes the concept of motive beyond the limits of its narrow interpretation and connects the problem of motive with the general questions of the genesis of the aesthetic principle in literature, including explaining the very phenomenon of motive stability in the narrative tradition. Both researchers interpret the idea of motif aesthetics through the conjugated concept of figurativeness. So, in the definitions of the motive A.N. Veselovsky, you can see that the very word "figurative" is key, terminological meaning: a motive is “a formula that figuratively answered at the beginning of the public the questions that nature posed to man everywhere”; “a sign of a motive is its figurative one-term schematism,” etc.
We observe the same with O.M. Freidenberg: “The spread and concretization of the plot scheme is reflected in the highlighting by the motif of imagery, which conveys this scheme in a number of isolated similarities identified with the phenomena of life”; "Motive is a figurative interpretation of a plot scheme".
Thus, the motive as a figurative narrative formula fixed in tradition has the property of aesthetic significance, which ultimately determines its stability in the literary tradition.
The works of A.N. Veselovsky are fundamental in the study of the functioning of the motive in Russian literary criticism, but many of them were later criticized. So, the position of the literary critic about the motive as a one-member unit of the plot was revised by V. Ya. Propp. The scientist, arguing that the motives identified by A.N. Veselovsky can be split, demonstrates this decomposition on some of them. According to V.Ya. Propp, the primary elements of the plot are the “functions” (deeds) of the characters, “historically repeated in fiction” . Based on the analysis of one hundred fairy tales from the collection of A.N. Afanasyev, V.Ya. Propp created a classification of these functions. Having provided a detailed analysis of fairy tales with different plots, the scientist comes to the conclusion that "the sequence of functions is always the same" and that "all fairy tales are of the same type in their structure."
The change of the semantic criterion to the logical one in the criticism of V.Ya. Proppa led to the destruction of the motive as a whole. Taken only as a logical construction, the motif disintegrated into trivial components of the logical-grammatical structure of the utterance - into a set of subjects, objects and predicates expressed in various plot variations. The opposite A.N. Veselovsky, we observe the point of view on the essence of the motive in B.I. Yarkho. First, the researcher denies the motif the status of a narrative unit. “Motive,” writes B.I. Yarkho, - ... there is a certain division of the plot, the boundaries of which are determined by the researcher arbitrarily. . Secondly, the scientist denies the motive a semantic status: "It is impossible to establish the real volume of the motive" . As a result, the existence of a real literary motive was rejected by the author, and the motive itself was interpreted by him as a conceptual construct that helps the literary critic to establish the degree of similarity of various plots: “It is clear that the motive is not a real part of the plot, but a working term that serves to compare plots with each other” .
A.I. Beletsky in his monograph "In the Studio of the Artist of the Word" (1964) also comes to the problem of the relationship between the invariant meaning of the motive and the multiplicity of its specific plot variants. At the same time, the scientist does not deny the motive its own literary status and does not reject the very concept of motive, but makes an attempt to solve the problem of variability of the motive in a constructive way.
He distinguishes two levels of realization of the motive in the plot narrative - "schematic motive" and "real motive". "Real motive" is an element of the plot-event composition of the plot of a particular work. The "schematic motif" no longer refers to the plot itself in its concrete plot form, but to the invariant "plot scheme". This scheme is made up, according to A.I. Beletsky, "relationships-actions". It is important to emphasize that the scientist, starting from the observations of A.L. Bem, connected two polar principles in the structure of the motive into a single system, that is, he put the semantic invariant of the motive in line with its plot variants. Thus, a fundamental step forward was made, which served as the basis for the development of the dichotomous theory of motive.
It should be noted that the dichotomous concept of motive received its final form in the second half of the 20th century. At the same time, it was the idea of the generalized meaning of a motive, and, first of all, the concept of a function interpreted as an invariant form of a motive, in combination with the dichotomous ideas of structural linguistics, that allowed literary scholars to come to a strict distinction between the invariant of a motive and its plot variants.
Simultaneously with dichotomous ideas, the thematic concept of motive developed in Russian science in the 1920s. In the works of B.V. Tomashevsky and V.B. Shklovsky, thematic ideas about the motive were developed to the level of strict definitions.
B.V. Tomashevsky in the monographic textbook of poetics develops two interpretations of the motive - the original interpretation and the interpretation of the motive according to A.N. Veselovsky. At the same time, the author does not enter into a contradiction, since he correlates these interpretations with various methodological foundations of theoretical and historical poetics.
The researcher defines the motive exclusively through the category of the topic: “The concept of the topic is a summing concept that unites the verbal material of the work. The whole work can have a theme, and at the same time, each part of the work has its own theme. (...) By decomposing the work in this way into thematic parts, we finally reach the non-decomposable parts, the smallest fragmentation of the thematic material. “Evening has come”, “Raskolnikov killed the old woman”, “The hero has died”, “A letter has been received”, etc. The theme of the indecomposable part of the work is called the motive. In essence, each sentence has its own motive.
Thus, the concept of motive is derivative for B.V. Tomashevsky from the concept of a narrative theme and has a predominantly working function. The scientist points to the "auxiliary" nature of this concept. It is necessary for the researcher to correctly determine the relationship between the plot and the plot, because it connects these concepts: “the plot is the totality of motives in their logical causal relationship, the plot is the totality of the same motives in the sequence and connection in which they are given in the work” .
Further, it should be noted significant differences in the understanding of the motive as a theme by V.B. Shklovsky and B.V. Tomashevsky. United by the general idea of the theme of the motif, the concepts of these authors are at the same time directly opposite in terms of the relationship between the motif and the beginnings of the plot and plot. For V.B. Shklovsky's motif is the thematic outcome of the plot or its integral part, and in this regard, the motif becomes already above the plot - as a semantic "atom" of the plot of the work. That is, for V.B. Shklovsky, the motif is not important in itself, not as an initial “brick” for building plots, but is important as a unit of typological analysis of the plot literary era generally.
So, the considered ideas about the motive can be combined into four conceptual series: semantic, morphological, dichotomous (at the stage of its inception) and thematic. in the very status of a motive.
For A.N. Veselovsky and O.M. Freudenberg - the main representatives of the semantic approach - the constitutive beginning of the motive is the semantic integrity, which puts the limit of the elementary nature of the motive. At the same time, the semantics of the motive is figurative in nature. The very image underlying the motif is essentially aesthetic, which explains the phenomenon of spontaneous generation of motifs from "life itself" - but seen and experienced in an aesthetic perspective.
Morphological approach, most deeply developed by V.Ya. Propp, is directed in the opposite direction: not from semantic integrity to the elementary nature of the motive, but bypassing the integrity - to establishing a formal measure of the elementary nature of the motive.
As a result of such a "deconstruction of the whole" V.Ya. Propp reduces the motive to a set of elementary logical and grammatical components, but at the same time he faces the problem of the variability of the motive components in specific plots. The researcher solves the problem of variability of the motive by finding its semantic invariant, which is given the name of the function actor.
This fundamental step returns V.Ya. Propp in line with the semantic interpretation of the motive, but at a significantly different level - at the level of development of dichotomous ideas about the motive as a unit of dual status - linguistic and speech at the same time.
For representatives of the thematic approach, the criterion for the integrity of a motif is its ability to express an integral theme, understood as a semantic outcome, or a summary of the semantic development of the plot. In the interpretation of B.V. Tomashevsky, the motif acts as a spokesman for the micro-theme as the theme of the plot statement; in the interpretations of B.V. Shklovsky - as a spokesman for the macro-theme as the theme of the episode or the plot as a whole.
Due to well-known historical and cultural reasons, in the 1930s, domestic theoretical and historical traditions were interrupted for a long time. Motive theory was no exception in this series. Even in the 1960s, the category of motive in literary criticism was either not accepted in its essence, or was treated rather formally.
An example is the definition of motive in the Brief literary encyclopedia: this is "the simplest meaningful (semantic) unit of an artistic text in myth and fairy tale" . At the same time, the author encyclopedia article forced to refer only to the works of scientists of the beginning and the first quarter of the 20th century - A.N. Veselovsky, A.L. Bem and some others.
We will talk about a new period in the study of the motive and its modern interpretation in paragraph 1.2.
THE CONCEPT OF MOTIVE AND ITS INTERPRETATION IN THE THEORY OF LITERATURE AND MUSIC
S. G. SHALYGINA
The article is devoted to the consideration of the concept of motive and its interpretation in the theory of literature in comparison with the art of music. The main approaches to the study of this concept in the context of the studies of leading literary theorists are considered, the way of understanding this concept in the practice of scientific theoretical thought is traced.
Keywords Key words: motive, theory of motive, structure of motive, level of realization of motive.
Music and literature are areas of art, perhaps the most mutually enriching and complementary. Literature and music are song, opera, theater, cinema. A musical work can be conditionally compared with a literary work. Each work has a certain idea, idea and content, which become clear with a gradual presentation. In a piece of music, the content is presented in a continuous stream of sounds. Work musical art attributes such concepts as syntax, period, sentence, caesura, drama, lyrics, epic. Just as in fiction a thought is expressed by sentences consisting of individual words, so in melody sentences are divided into smaller structures - phrases and motifs.
A motive in music is the smallest part of a melody that has a certain expressive meaning and can be recognized when it appears. There is usually one accent in a motive (like one stress in a word), so the most typical length of a motive is one bar. Depending on the tempo, rhythm, indivisible two-bar motifs can form.
By analogy with the name of poetic stops, motifs have names - iambic and trochee. Iambic - a motif that begins with a weak beat of the bar. characteristic feature iambic - the desire for a subsequent strong share. Iambic motifs have a strong ending and sound active and energetic.
Chorey - a motive that begins with a strong beat of the measure. A characteristic feature of chorea is the transition from a strong beat to a weak one. Choreic motifs have a weak ending and sound softer, lyrical.
This notion, one of the key concepts in musicology, has a responsible place in the science of literature. It is present in almost all
new European languages, goes back to the Latin verb "moveo" (move) and in modern science has a very wide range of meanings.
The leading meaning of this literary term is difficult to define. In the works of V. E. Khalizev, one can find the following definition of the concept we are analyzing: “Motive is a component of works that has increased significance (semantic richness). He is actively involved in the theme and concept (idea) of the work, but he is not identical with them. According to the scientist, the motive is somehow localized in the work, but at the same time it is present in the most various forms. It can denote a single word or phrase, repeated and varied, or appear as something denoted by various lexical units; act as a title or epigraph, or remain only guessed, gone into subtext. Focusing on the foregoing, the researcher summarizes: “It is legitimate to assert that the sphere of motives is made up of the links of the work, marked with internal, invisible italics, which should be felt and recognized by a sensitive reader and literary analyst. The most important feature of the motif is its ability to be half-realized in the text, incompletely revealed in it, mysterious.
Since the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, the term "motive" has been widely used in the study of plots, especially historically early ones, folklore. So
A. N. Veselovsky, in his unfinished Poetics of Plots, wrote about the motive as the simplest, indivisible unit of narration: important or recurring impressions
reality”. Veselovsky presents the main feature of motives as "figurative one-term schematism". Such, the scientist cites as examples of motives, are the abduction of the sun or a beauty, water dried up in a source, the extermination of an evil old beauty, etc. Such motives, according to the scientist, could have arisen independently in diverse tribes; their homogeneity or their similarity cannot be explained by borrowing; it is explained by the homogeneity of living conditions and the mental processes deposited in them. The motive in the works of Veselovsky grows into a plot, thus being the fundamental principle of the story. Motives, according to Veselovsky, are historically stable and infinitely repeatable. In the form of an assumption, the scientist argued: “... is poetic creativity limited to certain certain formulas, stable motives, which one generation received from the previous one, and this from the third<...>? Doesn’t each new poetic epoch work on images long since bequeathed, necessarily revolving within their boundaries, allowing itself only new combinations of old ones and only filling them<.>new understanding of life<...>?» .
The concept of motive, developed by A. N. Veselovsky in The Poetics of Plots, was categorically criticized by V. Ya. Propp in Morphology of a Fairy Tale. However, at the same time, the researcher replaced the criterion of the indecomposability of the motive, so he criticized the concept of motive in such an interpretation, which never existed in the works of A. N. Veselovsky.
If for A. N. Veselovsky the criterion of the indecomposability of a motive is its “figurative one-term schematism” (the motive is indivisible from the point of view of its “imagery” as an integral and aesthetically significant semantics), then for V. Ya. Propp such a criterion is a logical relation.
The author himself reasoned: “Those motives that he (A. N. Veselovsky) cites as examples are laid out. If a motive is something logically whole, then every phrase of a fairy tale gives a motive. It wouldn't be so bad at all if motives didn't really decay. This would make it possible to compile an index of motives. But let's take the motive "the snake kidnaps the king's daughter" (an example not of Veselovsky). This motif is decomposed into 4 elements, of which each individually can vary.<... >Thus, contrary to Veselovsky, we must assert that the motive is not monomial, not indecomposable. The last decomposable unit, as such, is not a logical whole.
Thus, the change of the semantic criterion to the logical one in the criticism of V. Ya. Propp led to the destruction of the motive as a whole.
However, having subjected the concept of motive to criticism from the standpoint of the logical criterion of indecomposability,
V. Ya. Propp in his “Morphology of a Fairy Tale” completely abandoned this concept and introduced into circulation a fundamentally different, in his opinion, unit of narrative - “the function of the actor”: “The very method of implementing functions can change: it is a variable value.<...>But a function, as such, is a constant value.<...>The functions of the actors are those components that can replace Veselovsky's "motives".
The concept of the function of the actor introduced by the scientist not only did not replace, but significantly deepened the concept of motive, and precisely in the semantic interpretation of the latter. From the point of view of the semantics of the motive and the plot as a whole, the function is nothing more than one of the semantic components of the motive. In essence, the function of the actor is a generalized meaning of the motive, taken in abstraction from the multitude of its plot variants. In this regard, V. Ya. Propp theoretically consistently carried out the operation of generalizing motives.
I. V. Silantiev noted on this occasion that “a function is a general seme, or a set of general semes, occupying a central and invariant position in the structure of the variable meaning of a motive. Therefore, the function as a key component of the motive, as its semantic invariant, cannot replace the motive, just as a part cannot replace the whole.
That is why the opinions of modern scientists on the relationship between motive and function are not in favor of the categorical view of V. Ya. Propp.
B. I. Yarkho in the “Methodology of exact literary criticism”, written in the 1930s, defines the motive as “an image in action (or in a state)”, which, at first glance, gives some grounds to see in the scientist’s thought following the interpretation of the motive as a "figurative unit" according to A. N. Veselovsky. However, the remarks following this definition delimit the views of B. I. Yarkho and A. N. Veselovsky.
First, the researcher denies the motif the status of a narrative unit. “Motive,” writes B.I. Yarkho, - ... there is a certain division of the plot, the boundaries of which are determined by the researcher arbitrarily. Secondly, the scientist denies the motive a semantic status.
The result of the statements of B. I. Yarkho is the denial of the real literary existence of the motive. The researcher talks about the motive within the framework of the concept
tiy construct that helps the literary critic to establish the degree of similarity of various plots.
It should be noted that A. L. Bem comes to a similar conclusion, although from the side of the semantic approach. Having discovered an invariant beginning in the structure of the motive, the scientist reduces the semantic whole of the motive to this invariant, and refers the variant semantics of the motive to the plan of the specific content of the work and, on this basis, denies the motive the reality of literary existence: “motives are fictions obtained as a result of abstraction from the specific content » .
Thus, B. I. Yarkho and A. L. Bem, each from their own position, do not accept the principle of the dual nature of the motive, which is becoming clear in other works, as a unit of artistic language, endowed with a generalized meaning, and as a unit of artistic speech, endowed with specific semantics.
A. I. Beletsky in the monograph “In the Studio of the Artist of the Word” (1923) also comes to the problem of the correlation between the invariant meaning of the motive and the multiplicity of its specific plot variants. At the same time, the scientist does not deny the motive its own literary status (as A. L. Bem and B. I. Yarkho do) and does not reject the very concept of motive (as V. Ya. Propp does), but makes an attempt to solve the problem of motive variability in a constructive way.
The scientist distinguishes two levels of realization of the motive in the plot narrative - "schematic motive" and "real motive". "Real motive" is an element of the plot-event composition of the plot of a particular work. The "schematic motif" no longer refers to the plot itself in its concrete plot form, but to the invariant "plot scheme". This scheme is, according to A. I. Beletsky, “action-relationships”.
Illustrating his thought, A. I. Beletsky obviously relies on the observations of A. L. Bem and cites the following pair of real and schematic motives: Russian prisoner"; in a schematic form: "a foreigner loves a prisoner".
The foregoing suggests that the ideas of A. L. Bem, despite his negative position regarding the literary status of the motive, objectively contributed to the development of precisely dichotomous ideas, because the scientist was the first to come to the identification of a motivic invariant - that very “schematic motive”, the concept of which was somewhat later formulated by A. I. Beletsky.
The need to distinguish between the concept of motive in the structural and plot-classification plans was emphasized in his works by A. Dundes. Acting as a direct successor of Propp in the study of fairy tales, A. Dundes addresses the problem of motive and proposes to solve it on the basis of two fundamentally different approaches - emic and ethical. He presents the first approach as unambiguously contextual, structural. "Emic units" - "points of the system" - do not exist in isolation, but as parts of a "functioning component system". They are not invented by the researcher, but exist in objective reality. Dundes offers two emic levels: motifema and allomotive. The concept of motifema corresponds to the function of J. Propp, but it is terminologically connected with the lower level. An allomotive is a concrete textual realization of a motive.
The concept of "motive", according to Dundes, has no emic meaning, it is a purely classificatory category that allows the researcher to operate with classes and units of material and is convenient for comparative analysis.
Dundes' ideas are partly developed by L. Parpulova, but with the difference that both emic and ethical approaches are equally important for her. Following Dundes, she leaves the terms “motifema” and “allomotive” with structural meanings, and at the ethical level offers the following gradation: 1) the theme of the motive corresponding to the motive; 2) the motive itself, expressed in a predicative form; 3) a variant of the motive corresponding to the allomotive, i.e., the presentation of the specific implementation of the motive in this text; 4) episode, i.e. the actual fragment of the text in its real form.
B. N. Putilov, continuing the theory of motive, in his work “Motive as a plot-forming element” defines motive as “one of the terms epic story, an element of an epic story system". “The motive,” the scientist writes, “functions as part of the system, here it finds its definite place, here its specific content is fully revealed. Together with other motives, this motive creates a system. Any motive in a certain way correlates with the whole (plot) and at the same time with other motives, that is, with parts of this whole.
However, B. N. Putilov puts his arguments in opposition to Dundes's statements about the role of motive as a purely classificatory category. According to the former, a motif as an invariant scheme that generalizes the essence of a number of allomotives can only partly be regarded as an “invention” of a researcher. The motive acts as an element that objectively existed and was “discovered” by the researcher, which
is proved both by the presence in the motives of their own stable semantics, and by the existence of undoubted connections between the motives and the facts of ethnographic reality. In this regard, Putilov writes about the possibility of asserting that it is the motives that are directly related to archaic ideas, institutions, while the allomotives act as their later transformations.
He, like A. N. Veselovsky, speaks about the motive primarily in the context of the plot, developing the idea of the driving, dynamic role of the motive. Of no small importance are Putilov’s statements regarding the way the motive is realized in the work (in some way consonant with Khalizev’s thoughts), which present the concept we are considering as an element of three levels: lexical, syntactic and the level associated with the forms of “the consciousness of the collective that creates and stores the epic” . In other words, the motive can be a single word or a combination of words, it can manifest itself in a sentence, or it can be realized in the spiritual and moral sphere, which performs the function of a kind of cultural code of the nation. However, semantic richness is revealed only when considering the motive at all the above-mentioned levels.
To clarify the concept of plot and plot, B. V. Tomashevsky introduces several auxiliary concepts, among which he singles out the theme and motive. Moreover, in the final definition, he somewhat synthesizes the last two concepts. He writes: “The theme of the indecomposable part of a work is called a motive. In essence, every sentence has its own motive. Making a reservation, the scientist draws attention to the fact that the term "motive", used in historical poetics - in the comparative study of wandering plots (for example, in the study of fairy tales), differs significantly from the one he himself introduces, although it is usually defined in the same way. These motifs are entirely transferred from one plot structure to another. In comparative poetics it does not matter whether they can be decomposed into smaller motifs. “The only important thing,” the researcher emphasizes, “is that within the genre under study, these “motives” are always found in a holistic form. Consequently, instead of the word "indecomposable" in a comparative study, one can speak of the historically indecomposable, of preserving its unity in wandering from work to work. However, many motifs of comparative poetics retain their significance precisely as motifs in theoretical poetics.
According to Tomashevsky, motifs, combined with each other, form a thematic connection
Denia. From this point of view, the plot is the totality of motives in their logical causal and temporal connection, the plot is the totality of the same motives in the same sequence and connection as they are given in the work. For the plot, it does not matter in which part of the work the reader learns about the event. In the plot, it is precisely the introduction of motives into the field of the reader's attention that plays a role. According to the statements of Tomashevsky, only related motives matter for the plot. In the plot, sometimes it is free motives that play the dominant role that determines the construction of the work. These "lateral" motifs are introduced for the purpose of artistic construction of the story and carry a wide variety of functions. The introduction of such motifs is largely determined by literary tradition, and each school has its own list of motifs, while related motifs occur in the same form in a wide variety of schools.
In the article by A.P. Skaftymov “The Thematic Composition of the Novel The Idiot” (first published in 1924; republished in 1972), a system of figurative and psychological analysis of the narrative work is deployed. This analysis is based on the author's model of the composition of the work, which is built in the direction of the character - episode - motive.
A. P. Skaftymov writes: “In the question of the analytical division of the whole [literary work] under study, we were guided by those natural knots around which its constituent thematic complexes united.<...>The protagonists of the novel seem to us to be such major major links of the whole. The internal division of integral images took place according to the categories of the most isolated and distinguished episodes in the novel, then ascending to smaller indivisible thematic units, which we denoted in the presentation by the term "thematic motif".
The model of A.P. Skaftymov implicitly includes, along with the system of heroes, another “upper” level that interacts with the level of “characters” - the plot of the work. The researcher reveals the hero as a whole not in this or that episode, but in the plot as a semantic generalization of the system of episodes. We consider it necessary to give several examples of motives that A.P. Skaftymov defines in the analysis of the novel. In relation to Nastasya Filippovna, the motive of consciousness of guilt and insufficiency, the motive of the thirst for the ideal and forgiveness, the motive of pride and the motive of self-justification are distinguished. In relation to Hippolytus - the motive of envious pride, the motive of enticing love. With regard to Rogozhin - the motive of selfishness in love. Applied
to Aglaya - "the motive of childishness informs Aglaya of freshness, immediacy and a kind of innocence even in malicious outbursts." In relation to Ganya Ivolgin: "the motive of" inability to surrender to the impulse ".
A. P. Skaftymov’s motive is thematic and at the same time integral and indivisible as a fundamental moment of the psychological whole in the subject matter of the work - the actual “actor” in the terminology of the scientist. So, the motives of pride and self-justification form in the image of Nastasya Filippovna "the theme of combining pride and a tendency to self-justification". Elsewhere, "the construction of the image of Nastasya Filipovna is entirely determined by the themes of pride and moral purity and sensitivity."
However, the interpretation of the concept of motive, which is positioned by Skaftymov, seems to us not completely understandable and logically blurred.
In our opinion, the synthesis of such basic concepts in literary criticism as the theme of a work and the motive of a work requires a fairly strong argumentation. The scientist, presenting various types of motifs that he discovered in the novel of one of the classics of world literature, nominates pride both as a theme of the work and as a motif, without outlining the circle of differences between these concepts. The rather frequent use of the word "motive" in the works of Skaftymov not only does not provide practical confirmation of its definition due to the loading of the word "semantic", but also produces the question of the relevance and persuasiveness of the concept introduced by the scientist.
One of the most important characteristics of the motive L. E. Khvorova calls its properties of mobility (recall latin translation term). In her opinion, it is important as “a moving, passing (from plot to plot throughout a single artistic whole literary space) a formal-semantic core (a kind of macrostructure), which is a cluster of properties of a different order, including spiritual and value axiological properties. A motif can carry object-subjective information, and may have the meaning of a sign or action ".
For recent decades motives began to be actively correlated with individual creative experience, considered as the property of individual writers and works.
I would like to note that the term "motive" is used in a different sense. Thus, the themes and problems of the writer's work are often called motives (for example, the moral revival of man, the alogism of the existence of people).
In modern literary criticism, there is also the idea of a motive as an extrastructural
chale - as a property not of the text and its creator, but of the unrestricted thought of the perceiver of the work.
However, no matter what semantic tones are attached to the word “motive” in literary criticism, the unconditional significance and true relevance of this term, which captures the real (objectively) existing facet of literary works, remain self-evident.
Literature
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4. Popova I. M., Khvorova L. E. Problems modern literature. Tambov, 2004.
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7. Silantiev I. V. The theory of motive in domestic literary criticism and folklore: an essay on historiography. M., 1999.
8. Skaftymov A.P. Thematic composition of the novel "The Idiot" // Skaftymov A.P. Articles on Russian literature. Saratov., 1958.
9. Tomashevsky B. V. Theory of Literature. Poetics. M., 1927.
10. Khalizev V. E. Theory of Literature. M., 2002.
11. Yarkho B. I. Methodology of exact literary criticism (outline of the plan) // Context. M., 1983.
12. Dandes A. From etic to emic untis in the structural study of Folktales // Journal of American Folklore. 1962 Vol. 75.
THE CONCEPT "MOTIVE" AND ITS INTERPRETATION IN THE THEORY OF LITERATURE AND MUSIC
The article is dedicated to the concept of motive and its interpretation in the theory of the literature in relation to musical art. The basic approaches to the study of this concept in the context of the research of the leading theorists of literature, traced the path of understanding of the concepts in the practice of scientific theoretical thought are considered.
Key words: motive, theory of motive, structure of motive, level of implementation of the motive.
Topic 15. Plot and motive: between the “theme” and the text. “Complex of motives” and types of plot schemes
I. Dictionaries
Topic
1) Sierotwinski S.Topic. The subject of processing, the main idea developed in a literary work or scientific discussion. The main theme of the work. The main meaningful moment in the work, which forms the basis of the construction of the depicted world (for example, the interpretation of the most common ground ideological the meaning of the work, in a plot work - the fate of the hero, in a dramatic work - the essence of the conflict, in a lyrical work - dominant motives, etc.). Secondary theme of the work. Theme of the part of the work, subordinate main topic. The theme of the least meaningful integrity into which a work has been divided is called a motif” (S. 278). 2) Wilpert G. von. Topic(Greek - supposed), the main leading thought of the work; in a particular development of the subject under discussion. Common in spec. literature concept in German terminology material history(Stoffgeschichte), which distinguishes only the material (Stoff) and motive, in contrast to the English. and French, not included yet. It is proposed for motives of such a degree of abstraction that they do not conceal the grain of action: tolerance, humanity, honor, guilt, freedom, identity, mercy, etc.” (S. 942-943). 3) Dictionary of literary terms. a) Zundelovich Ya. Topic. Stlb. 927-929. “ Topic- the main idea, the main sound of the work. Representing that indecomposable emotional and intellectual core, which the poet, as it were, tries to decompose with each of his works, the concept of a theme is by no means covered by the so-called. content. The theme in the broadest sense of the word is that holistic image of the world that determines the artist's poetic worldview.<...>But depending on the material through which this image is refracted, we have this or that reflection of it, i.e. this or that idea (a specific theme) that determines this particular work. b) Eichengolts M. Subject. Stlb. 929-937. “ Subject- a set of literary phenomena that make up the subject-semantic moment poetic work. The following terms, related to the concept of subject matter, are subject to definition - theme, motive, plot, plot of a literary work. four) Abramovich G. Subject // Dictionary of literary terms. pp. 405-406. “ Topic<...>
what is the basis, the main idea of a literary work, the main problem posed in it by the writer. 5) Maslovsky V.I. Subject // LES. P. 437. Topic<...>, the circle of events that form the life basis of the epic. or dramatic. prod. and at the same time serving for the production of philosophy., social, ethical. and other ideological. problems." motive
1) Sierotwinski S. Slownik terminow literackich. S. 161. Motive. The theme of one of the smallest meaningful wholes that stands out in the analysis of the work. “ The motive is dynamic. The motive that accompanies a change in the situation (which is part of the action), the opposite of a static motive. “ The motive is free. A motive that is not included in the system of a causal plot, the opposite of a connected motive. 2) Wilpert G. von. Sachwörterbuch der Literatur. “ motive(lat .
motivus- encouraging),<...>3. content-structural unity as a typical, meaningful situation that covers general thematic representations (as opposed to a specific and formalized through specific features material
II. Textbooks, teaching aids
1) Tomashevsky B.V. Theory of Literature. Poetics. (Theme). “The theme (what is being said) is the unity of the meanings of the individual elements of the works. You can talk both about the theme of the whole work, and about the themes separate parts. Every work written in a language that has meaning has a theme.<...>In order for a verbal construction to represent a single work, it must have a unifying theme that unfolds throughout the work. “... the theme of a work of art is usually emotionally colored, that is, it evokes a feeling of indignation or sympathy, and is developed in terms of evaluation” (pp. 176-178). “The concept of a theme is the concept summarizing, which unites the verbal material of the work.<...>selection from works of parts, uniting each part with a particularly thematic unity, is called the expansion of the work.<...>By decomposing the work in this way into thematic parts, we finally reach the parts non-degradable, down to the smallest fragmentation of thematic material.<...>The theme of the indecomposable part of the work is called motive <...>From this point of view, the plot is the totality of motives in their logical causal relationship, the plot is the totality of the same motives in the same sequence and connection in which they are given in the work.<...>With a simple retelling of the plot of the work, we immediately discover that it is possible lower <...>Non-excludable motives are called related; motives that can be eliminated without violating the integrity of the causal-temporal course of events are free”. “Motives that change the situation are dynamic motives, motives that do not change the situation - static motives” (S. 182-184). 2) Introduction to literary criticism / Ed. G.N. Pospelov. Ch. IX. General properties of the form of epic and dramatic works.<Пункт>Chronicle and concentric plots (Author - V.E. Khalizev). “The events that make up the plot can be related to each other in different ways. In some cases, they are with each other only in a temporary connection (B happened after A). In other cases, there are causal relationships between events, in addition to temporal ones (B happened as a result of A). So, in the phrase The king is dead and the queen is dead connections of the first type are recreated. In the phrase The king died and the queen died of grief we have a connection of the second type. Accordingly, there are two types of plots. Plots with a predominance of purely temporal connections between events are chronicle. Plots with a predominance of causal relationships between events are called plots of a single action, or concentric” (pp. 171-172). 3) Grekhnev V.A. Verbal image and literary work. “Theme is usually called the circle of phenomena of reality, embodied by the writer. This simplest, but also commonplace definition, as it were, pushes us to the idea that the theme is entirely located beyond the line of artistic creation, being in reality itself. If this is true, it is only partly true. The most significant thing is precisely that this is a circle of phenomena that artistic thought has already touched. They became her choice. And this is the most important thing, even if this choice is still, perhaps, not associated with the thought of specific work” (pp. 103-104). “The focus of the choice of topic is determined not only by the artist’s individual preferences and his life experience, but also by the general atmosphere of the literary era, the aesthetic preferences of literary movements and schools.<...>Finally, the choice of theme is determined by the horizons of the genre, if not in all kinds of literature, then in any case in lyrics” (p. 107-109).
III. Special studies
motive , topic and plot 1) Veselovsky A.N. Poetics of plots // Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. “The word “plot” requires the nearest definition<...>it is necessary to agree in advance what is meant by plot, to distinguish a motive from a plot as a complex of motives. "Under motive I mean a formula that, at the beginning of the public, answered the questions that nature posed to man everywhere, or fixed especially vivid, seemed especially important or repeated impressions of reality. A sign of a motive is its figurative one-term schematism; such are the elements of lower mythology and fairy tales that cannot be further decomposed: someone steals the sun<...>marriages with animals, transformations, an evil old woman is harassing a beautiful woman, or someone kidnaps her and she has to be mined by force and dexterity, etc. ”(p. 301). 2) Propp V.Ya. Morphology of a fairy tale. “Morozko acts differently than Baba Yaga. But a function, as such, is a constant value. An important question for the study of a fairy tale what fairy-tale characters do, and the question who does and how does - these are questions of only adventitious study. The functions of the actors are those components that can replace Veselovsky's "motives"...” (p. 29). 3) Freidenberg O.M. The Poetics of Plot and Genre. M., 1997. “The plot is a system of metaphors developed into a verbal action; the whole point is that these metaphors are a system of allegories of the main image” (p. 223). “After all, the point of view put forward by me no longer requires any consideration or comparison of motives; it says in advance, proceeding from the nature of the plot, that under all the motives of a given plot there always lies a single image - hence they are all tautological in the potential form of their existence; and that in decoration one motif will always be different from another, no matter how much they are brought together...” (224-225). four) Cavelty J.G. The study of literary formulas. pp. 34-64. “A literary formula is a structure of narrative or dramatic conventions used in a very large number of works. This term is used in two senses, combining which we get an adequate definition of the literary formula. First, it is a traditional way of describing certain specific objects or people. In this sense, some Homeric epithets can be considered as formulas: “Achilles the swift-footed”, “Zeus the Thunderer”, as well as a number of comparisons and metaphors characteristic of him (for example, “the talking head falls to the ground”), which are perceived as traditional formulas of wandering singers, easily fit into dactylic hexameter. In an expansive approach, any culturally determined stereotype often found in literature is red-haired, short-tempered Irishmen, eccentric detectives with remarkable analytical skills, chaste blondes, passionate brunettes - can be considered a formula. It is only important to note that in this case we are talking about traditional constructs conditioned by a specific culture of a certain time, which, outside this specific context, may have a different meaning.<...>. Secondly, the term “formula” is often referred to as plot types. It is this interpretation of it that we will find in manuals for beginner writers. where you can find clear instructions on how to play twenty-one win-win scenarios: a boy meets a girl, they do not understand each other, a boy gets a girl. Such general schemes are not necessarily tied to a particular culture and a particular time period.<...>In fact, they can be seen as an example of what some researchers call archetypes, or patterns (patterns), common in different cultures.<...>Making a western requires more than just some idea of how to build a compelling adventure story. but also the ability to use certain images and symbols characteristic of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as cowboys, pioneers, robbers, frontier forts and saloons, along with relevant cultural themes and mythology: the opposition of nature and civilization, the moral code of the American West or law - lawlessness and arbitrariness, etc. All this allows you to justify or comprehend the action. So formulas are ways. through which specific cultural themes and stereotypes are embodied in more universal narrative archetypes” (pp. 34-35). 5) Zholkovsky A.K., Shcheglov Yu.K. Works on the poetics of expressiveness. (Appendix. Basic concepts of the “Theme - PV - Text” model). “1.2. Topic. Formally speaking, the topic is the source element of the output. Substantially, this is some value setting, with the help of PV (“techniques of expressiveness” - N. T.) "dissolved" in the text - a semantic invariant of the totality of its levels, fragments and other components. Examples of topics are: the theme of the ancient Babylonian "Dialogue between master and slave about the meaning of life": (1) the vanity of all earthly desires; theme of "War and Peace": (2) undoubted in human life, simple, real, not artificial, far-fetched values, the meaning of which becomes clear in crisis situations...<...>All these themes are statements of one kind or another about (= situations from) life. Let's call them themes of the first kind. But the themes can also be value orientations not about "life", but about the very tools of artistic creativity - a kind of statement about language of literature, about genres, plot constructions, styles, etc. Let's call them themes of the second kind.<...>Usually the theme of a literary text consists of one or another combination of themes of the I and II kind. In particular, this is true with regard to works that not only reflect "life", but also echo other ways of reflecting it. "Eugene Onegin" is an encyclopedia of Russian life, styles of Russian speech and styles of artistic thinking at the same time. So, a theme is a thought about life and/or the language of art that permeates the entire text, the formulation of which serves the starting point of the description-inference. In this formulation, all the semantic invariants of the text should be explicitly fixed, i.e., everything that the researcher considers to be meaningful values that are present in the text and, moreover, not deduced with the help of SP from other values that are already included in the topic” (p. 292) . 6) Tamarchenko N.D. Motives of crime and punishment in Russian literature (Introduction to the problem). The term "motive" in research literature correlate with two different aspects of a literary work. On the one hand, with such plot element(event or situation) repeats in its composition and/or known from tradition. On the other hand, with the chosen one in this case verbal designation this kind of events and provisions, which is included as element no longer in the plot, but in composition of the text. The need to distinguish between these aspects in the study of the plot was first shown, as far as is known, by V.Ya. Propp. It was their discrepancy that forced the scientist to introduce the concept of "function". In his opinion, the actions of the characters of a fairy tale, which are the same in terms of their role for the course of action, can have a variety of verbal designations.<...>Thus, under the outer layer of a particular plot, an inner layer is found. Functions in their necessary and always the same, according to V.Ya. Propp, sequences form nothing more than a single plot scheme. The verbal designations of its constituent “nodes” (such as sending, crossing, difficult tasks etc.); The narrator (narrator) chooses one or another variant from the general arsenal of traditional formulas. “Basic situation directly expressed in the type of plot scheme. How do the complexes of the most important motifs that vary in this scheme, characteristic of various genres, correlate with it: for example, for a fairy tale (shortage and dispatch - crossing and the main test - return and liquidation of shortage) or for an epic (disappearance - search - finding)? This problem in our science was posed and solved in a very clear form by O.M. Freudenberg. In her opinion, “the plot is a system of metaphors deployed into action.<...>When an image is developed or expressed in words, it is thereby already subject to a certain interpretation; Expression is an investment in a form, a transmission, a transcription, therefore, a well-known allegory. What is the interpretation of what "basic image" is the plot recognized here? A little lower it is said that this is an “image cycle of life-death-life": it's clear that we are talking about the content of the cyclic plot scheme. But this scheme can have various variations, and the differences in the motives that implement it do not negate the fact that "all these motives are tautological in the potential form of their existence." The difference is “the result of a difference in metaphorical terminology”, so that “the composition of the plot depends entirely on the language of metaphors”. Comparing the stated, apparently complementary ideas of V.Ya. Propp and O.M. Freudenberg, one can see a "three-layer" or "three-level" structure: (1) the "main image" (i.e., the situation that generates the plot in its content); (2) interpretation of this image in one or another variant of the complex of scheme-forming motifs and, finally, (3) interpretation of this variant of the plot scheme in multiple verbal designations characteristic of one or another “system of metaphors”. Such an approach to the problem of motive, plot and its basis (situation) can be compared with the characteristic of the German tradition, the distinction between the concepts of “Motiv”, “Stoff” (plot) and “Thema” according to an increasing degree of abstraction” (p. 41-44). Complex of motives and plot scheme 1) Veselovsky A.N. Poetics of plots // Historical poetics. “The simplest kind of motive can be expressed by the formula a + b: the evil old woman does not love the beauty - and sets her a life-threatening task. Each part of the formula is capable of changing, especially subject to increment b; there can be two, three (favorite folk number) or more tasks; there will be a meeting along the way of the hero, but there may be several of them. So the motive grew in plot. <..>” (p. 301). “But the schematism of the plot is already half conscious, for example, the choice and order of tasks and meetings is not necessarily determined by the theme given by the content of the motive, and presupposes already known freedom; the plot of a fairy tale, in a certain sense, is already an act of creativity.<...>the less one or another of the alternating tasks and meetings was prepared by the previous one, the weaker their internal connection, so that, for example, each of them could stand in any queue, with the more confidence we can assert that if in various national environments we meet the formula with the same random sequence<...>we have the right to speak of borrowing...” (p. 301-302). “ Plots are complex schemes, in the figurativeness of which generalized well-known acts of human life and the psyche in alternating forms of everyday reality. The evaluation of the action, positive or negative, is already connected with the generalization.<...>” (p. 302). “The similarity of outlines between a fairy tale and a myth is explained not by their genetic connection, and the fairy tale would be a drained myth, but by the unity of materials and techniques and schemes, only timed differently” (p. 302). “The same points of view can be applied to the consideration of poetic stories and motives; they present the same features commonality and repeatability from myth to epic, fairy tale, local saga and novel; and here it is allowed to speak of a dictionary of typical schemes and provisions...” “Under plot I mean a theme in which various positions-motives scurry about...” (p. 305) / “I do not mean by this that the poetic act is expressed only in repetition or a new combination of typical plots. There are anecdotal plots, prompted by some accidental incident...” (pp. 305-306). 2) Zelinsky F.F. Origins of comedy // Zelinsky F. From the life of ideas. “As you can see, there is no common, central dramatic motif that would dominate the entire play (meaning the comedy of Aristophanes “Acharnians” - N. T.), as is customary in our comedy; in short, we can say that in Aristophanes we have stringing drama, as opposed to centralizing drama of contemporary comedy. I must make the reservation that while attributing the centralizing dramatism to modern comedy, I do not think of denying it to the ancients: we find it in a developed form in Plautus and Terentius...” (pp. 365-366). 3) Shklovsky V. Relationship of plot composition techniques with general style techniques // Shklovsky V. On the theory of prose. pp. 26-62. “... it is completely incomprehensible why a random sequence of motives should be preserved when borrowing.” “Coincidences are explained only by the existence of special laws of plot formation. Even the assumption of borrowing does not explain the existence of identical fairy tales at a distance of thousands of years and tens of thousands of miles” (p. 29). “Constructions of the type a+ (a=a) + (a (a + a)) + ... etc., that is, according to the formula of an arithmetic progression without reduction of similar terms. There are fairy tales built on a kind of plot tautology like a+ (a+a) (a+ (a+a) + a2), etc.” (Further example: "chain" fairy tale "Kurka-Ryabushka" - N. T.) (p. 44). “The action of a literary work takes place in a certain field; chess pieces will correspond to types-masks, the role of the modern theater. The plots correspond to gambits, that is, the classic draws of this game, which players use in variants. The tasks and vicissitudes correspond to the role of the opponent's moves” (p. 62). four) Propp V.Ya. Morphology of a fairy tale. “A function is understood as an act of an actor, defined in terms of its significance for the course of action.” “... in what grouping and in what sequence do these functions occur?<...>Veselovsky says: “Choice and routine tasks and meetings (examples of motives) presupposes the already known freedom» <...>“. “The sequence of functions is always the same”(p. 30-31) . “ Morphologically, any development from sabotage (A) or lack (a) through intermediate functions to marriage (C*) or other functions used as a denouement can be called a fairy tale” (p. 101). “... one can easily imagine a magical, enchanting, fantastic fairy tale constructed in a completely different way (cf. some fairy tales by Andersen, Brentano, Goethe's fairy tale about the snake and the lily, etc.). On the other hand, fairy tales that are not fairy tales can be constructed according to the above scheme” (p. 108). “...the same composition can underlie different plots. Whether the serpent abducts the princess or the devil the peasant's or the priest's daughter is irrelevant from the point of view of the composition. But these cases can be considered as different plots” (p. 125). 5) Freidenberg O.M. The Poetics of Plot and Genre. “The composition of the plot depends entirely on the language of metaphors...” (p. 224-225). “What in solar compositions is removal and return, then in vegetative compositions it is death and Sunday; there are feats, here are passions, there is a struggle, here is death. “Thus, in any archaic plot, we will certainly find a figure of bifurcation-antithesis, or, as it might be called, a figure of symmetrically-reverse repetition” (pp. 228-229). 6) Bakhtin M.M. Forms of time and chronotope in the novel // Bakhtin M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. “The plots of all these novels<...>reveal an enormous similarity and, in essence, are composed of the same elements (motives); in individual novels, the number of these elements, their proportion in the whole plot, and their combinations change. It is easy to draw up a summary typical scheme of the plot...” (p. 237). “Such motives as meeting-parting (separation), loss-acquisition, search-finding, recognition-non-recognition, etc., are included as constituent elements, in the plots of not only novels of different eras and different types, but also literary works of other genres (epic, dramatic, even lyrical). These motifs are chronotopic in nature (however, in different genres in different ways)” (p. 247). “But the main complex of motives - meeting - separation - search - finding- is only another, so to speak, reflected plot expression of the same human identity” (p. 256). “ fairy tale man- with all the huge variety of fairy-tale folklore - it is always based on motives transformation and identities(however, in turn, the specific content of these motifs is varied)” (pp. 262-263).<О романе “Золотой осел”>“Thus, the adventurous series with its randomness here is completely subordinate to the series that encompasses and comprehends it: guilt - punishment - redemption - bliss. This series is controlled by a completely different, non-adventurous logic” (p. 269). 7) Todorov Tsv. Poetics / Per. A.K. Zholkovsky // Structuralism: “for” and “against”. “Causality is closely related to the temporal sequence of events; they are even very easy to confuse with each other. This is how Forster illustrates the difference between them, believing that in every novel both are present, and causality form its plot, and temporary - the actual narrative: "The king died and the queen died after him" - this is the narrative; “The king died and after him the queen died of grief” - this is the plot. “Temporal, chronological organization, devoid of any causality, prevails in historical chronicle, annals, a private diary and a ship's journal<...>In the literature, an example of causality in pure form the portrait genre and other descriptive genres, where a time delay is obligatory (a typical example is Kafka's short story "The Little Woman"), can serve. Sometimes. on the contrary, literature based on temporal organization is not subject - at least at first glance - to causal dependencies. Such works may take the direct form of a chronicle or saga, such as the Budenbrooks” (pp. 79-80). eight) Lotman Yu.M. The origin of the plot in typological coverage // Lotman Yu.M. Fav. Articles: B 3 vols. T. I. S. 224-242. “For a typologically initial situation, two fundamentally opposite types of texts can be assumed. In the center of the cultural array is a myth-generating text device. The main feature of the texts it generates is their subordination to cyclic temporal movement” (p. 224). “This central text-generating device performs the most important function - it builds a picture of the world<...> <Порождаемые тексты>“reduced the world of excesses and anomalies that surrounded a person to a norm and order.” “They interpreted not about single and regular phenomena, but about events that are timeless, infinitely reproducible and, in this sense, motionless.” “As a counterparty mechanism, it (this device is N. T.) needed a text-generating device, organized in accordance with linear temporal movement and fixing not regularities, but anomalies. Such were the oral stories about "incidents", "news", various happy and unfortunate excesses. If the principle was fixed there, then here the case” (p. 225).
QUESTIONS
1. Which of the above definitions of the concept of “theme” emphasizes in it a) objectivity, which is aimed at the author’s creative intent and assessments; b) subjectivity, i.e., it is the assessments themselves and the intention; c) a combination of both? Note that in the latter case, it is necessary to distinguish between an eclectic, ill-conceived mixture of different approaches and a thoughtful solution to the problem, a conscious departure from one-sidedness. In what judgments have you considered, the “objectivity” of the theme is emphasized (its presence in the tradition, and even outside of art) and where, on the contrary, does the term characterize the work itself or the specifics of creative consciousness? 2. Try to correlate the above definitions of “motive” with three theoretically possible solutions to the problem: motive - an element of the theme (understood as a characteristic of the subject of the image or statement by the reader); motive - an element of the text, i.e. the author's verbal designation of an individual event or situation; finally, the motive is an element of an event series or a series of situations, that is, it is part of the plot (or plot). 3. Are there any judgments in the selected materials that delimit the verbal designation of the motive (verbal formula) from the role of the act or event itself designated in this way in the plot; do they separate the motive as an act or position from that image of a person or the world, the reflection or even interpretation of which is a series of motives? 4. Find and compare the judgments of different authors that the plot is, in essence, a complex of motives. Select among them those who consider the sequence of motives a) their random combination; b) the result of individual-author's, conscious combination; c) a manifestation of the necessity inherent in tradition, the expression of a traditionally established meaning and, thereby, a certain plot “language”. 5. Which of the above statements single out and distinguish between types of plot schemes? What exactly are their types and on what grounds are they distinguished? Compare solutions to the problem by different authors.
Motive is a term that has entered the literature from musicology. It was first recorded in the "musical dictionary" by S. de Brossard in 1703. Analogies with music, where this term key in the analysis of the composition of a work, they help to understand the properties of a motive in a literary work: its isolation from the whole and its repetition in a variety of situations.
In literary criticism, the concept of motive was used to characterize the constituent parts of the plot by Goethe and Schiller. They singled out motives of five types: accelerating action, slowing down action, moving action away from the goal, facing the past, anticipating the future.
The concept of motive as the simplest narrative unit was first theoretically substantiated in the Poetics of Plots. Veselovsky. He was interested in the repetition of motifs in different genres among different peoples. Veselovsky considered motives to be the simplest formulas that could originate among different tribes independently of each other. plot (in a fairy tale there is not one task, but five, etc.)
Subsequently, combinations of motifs were transformed into various compositions and became the basis of such genres as the novel, story, and poem. The motive itself, according to Veselovsky, remained stable and indecomposable; combinations of motives make up the plot. The plot could be borrowed, passed from people to people, become vagrant. In the plot, each motive can be the main, secondary, episodic .. many motives can be developed into whole plots, and vice versa.
Veselovsky's position on the motive as an indecomposable unit of narration was revised in the 1920s. Propp : motifs are decomposed, the last decomposable unit is not a logical whole. Propp calls primary elements functions of actors - the actions of the characters, determined in terms of their significance for the course of action.. seven types of characters, 31 functions (based on Afanasiev's collection)
Of particular difficulty is the selection of motives in the literature recent centuries: their diversity and complex functional load.
In the literature of different eras, there are many mythological motives. Constantly updated within the historical and literary context, they retain their essence (the motive of the hero’s conscious death because of a woman, apparently, can be considered as a transformation of the fight for the bride identified by Veselovsky (Lensky in Pushkin, Romashov in Kuprin).
A generally accepted measure of motive is its repeatability .
The leading motive in one or many works of the writer can be defined as keynote . It can be considered at the level of the theme and figurative structure of the work. In Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, the motif of the garden as a symbol of the Home, the beauty and stability of life .. we can talk about the role of both the leitmotif and the organization of the second, secret meaning of the work - subtext, undercurrent (phrase: “life is gone” - the leitmotif of Uncle Vanya. Chekhov)
Tomashevsky: episodes break up into even smaller parts that describe individual actions, events and things. Topics such small parts of a work that can no longer be divided are called motives .
AT lyrical work motif - a recurring set of feelings and ideas expressed in artistic speech. The motives in the lyrics are more independent, because they are not subject to the development of the action, as in the epic and drama. Sometimes the poet's work as a whole can be viewed as an interaction, a correlation of motives. (At Lermontov: the motives of freedom, will, memory, exile, etc.) The same motive can receive different symbolic meanings in lyrical works of different eras, emphasizing the closeness and the originality of poets (the road of Pushkin to Besy and Gogol to M.D., the birthplace of Lermontov and Nekrasov, Rus' of Yesenin and Blok, etc.)
At lectures, Stepanov said only the following:
According to Tomashevsky, motives are divided
Free and related motifs:
The ones to miss (details, details they play important role in the plot: do not make the work schematic.)
Those that cannot be omitted when retelling, because the causal relationship is violated .. form the basis of the plot.
Dynamic and static motives:
1. Change the situation. The transition from happiness to unhappiness and vice versa.
Peripetia (Aristotle: “the transformation of an action into its opposite) is one of the essential elements of the complication of the plot, denoting any unexpected turn in the development of the plot.
2. Not changing the situation (descriptions of the interior, nature, portrait, actions and deeds that do not lead to important changes)
Free motives are static, but not every static motive is free.
I don’t know what book Tomashevsky is from, because in Theory of Literature. Poetics." He's writing:
Motivation. The system of motifs that make up the theme of this work should represent some artistic unity. If all the parts of a work fit poorly to each other, the work "falls apart". Therefore, the introduction of each individual motive or each complex of motives must be justified(motivated). The appearance of this or that motive must seem necessary to the reader in this place. The system of techniques that justify the introduction of individual motives and their complexes is called motivation. Methods of motivation are diverse, and their nature is not the same. Therefore, it is necessary to classify motivations.
To oppositional motivation.
Its principle lies in the economy and expediency of motives. Separate motifs can characterize objects introduced into the reader's field of vision (accessories), or the actions of characters ("episodes"). Not a single accessory should remain unused in the plot, not a single episode should remain without influence on the plot situation. It was precisely about compositional motivation that Chekhov spoke when he argued that if at the beginning of the story it is said that a nail is driven into the wall, then at the end of the story the hero must hang himself on this nail. ("Dowry" by Ostrovsky on the example of a weapon. "There is a carpet over the sofa on which weapons are hung."
This is first introduced as a detail of the setting. In the sixth phenomenon, attention is drawn to this detail in the replicas. At the end of the action, Karandyshev, running away, grabs a pistol from the table. From this pistol in the 4th act, he shoots Larisa. The introduction of the weapon motif here is compositionally motivated. This weapon is necessary for decoupling. It serves as a preparation last moment drama.) The second case of compositional motivation is the introduction of motives as methods of characterization . The motives must be in harmony with the dynamics of the plot. (Thus, in the same "Dowry" the motive of "Burgundy", made by a counterfeit wine merchant at a cheap price, characterizes the wretchedness of Karandyshev's everyday environment and prepares for Larisa's departure).
These characteristic details can harmonize with the action:
1) by psychological analogy ( romantic landscape: Moonlight night for love scene, storm and thunderstorm for a scene of death or villainy),
2) by contrast (the motive of "indifferent" nature, etc.).
In the same "Dowry", when Larisa dies, the singing of a gypsy choir is heard from the doors of the restaurant. Consideration should also be given to the possibility false motivation . Accessories and episodes may be introduced to divert the reader's attention from the true situation. This very often appears in detective (detective) short stories, where a number of details are given that lead the reader down the wrong path. The author makes us assume the denouement is not in what it really is. The deception is unraveled at the end, and the reader is convinced that all these details were introduced only for preparation. surprises in the denouement.
Realistic motivation
From each work we demand an elementary "illusion", i.e. no matter how arbitrary and artificial the work, its perception must be accompanied by a sense of the reality of what is happening. For a naive reader, this feeling is extremely strong, and such a reader can believe in the authenticity of what is being stated, can be convinced of the real existence of the characters. So, Pushkin, having just printed "The History of the Pugachev Rebellion", publishes " captain's daughter" in the form of Grinev's memoirs with the following afterword: "The manuscript of Pyotr Andreevich Grinev was delivered to us from one of his grandsons, who learned that we were busy with work dating back to the time described by his grandfather.
We decided, with the permission of the relatives, to publish it separately. "An illusion of the reality of Grinev and his memoirs is created, especially supported by moments of Pushkin's personal biography known to the public (his historical studies on the history of Pugachev), and the illusion is also supported by the fact that the views and beliefs expressed by Grinev , in many respects diverge from the views expressed by Pushkin himself.Realistic illusion in a more experienced reader is expressed as a demand for "vitality".
While firmly knowing the fictitiousness of the work, the reader still demands some correspondence to reality and sees the value of the work in this correspondence. Even readers who are well versed in the laws of artistic construction cannot psychologically free themselves from this illusion. In this regard, each motive should be entered as a motive likely in this situation.
We do not notice, getting used to the technique of an adventure novel, the absurdity of the fact that the hero's salvation always keeps up five minutes before his inevitable death, the audience of ancient comedy did not notice the absurdity of the fact that in the last act all the characters suddenly turned out to be close relatives. However, how tenacious this motive is in the drama is shown by Ostrovsky's play Guilty Without Guilt, where at the end of the play the heroine recognizes her lost son in the hero). This motive of recognizing kinship was extremely convenient for denouement (kinship reconciled interests, radically changing the situation) and therefore became firmly established in the tradition.
Thus, realistic motivation has its source either in naive trust or in the demand for illusion. It does not interfere with the development fantasy literature. If folk tales usually arise in a folk environment that allows the real existence of witches and brownies, then they continue to exist as some kind of conscious illusion, where the mythological system or a fantastic worldview (the assumption of really unjustified "possibilities") is present as some kind of illusory hypothesis.
It is curious that fantastic narratives in a developed literary environment, under the influence of the requirements of realistic motivation, usually give double interpretation plot: it can be understood both as a real event and as a fantastic one. From the point of view of the realistic motivation for the construction of a work, it is easy to understand and an introduction to a work of art non-literary material, i.e. topics of real importance outside the scope fiction.
Yes, in historical novels are brought to the stage historical figures, some interpretation is introduced historical events. See L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" for a whole military-strategic report on the Battle of Borodino and the fire in Moscow, which caused controversy in specialized literature. AT contemporary works the life familiar to the reader is displayed, questions of moral, social, political, etc. are raised. order, in a word, themes are introduced that live their lives outside of fiction.
Artistic motivation
The input of motifs is the result of a compromise between realistic illusion and the demands of artistic construction. Not everything borrowed from reality is suitable for a work of art.
On the basis of artistic motivation, disputes usually arise between the old and the new. literary schools. old, traditional direction usually denies the presence of artistry in new literary forms. This, for example, is reflected in poetic vocabulary, where the very use of individual words must be in harmony with solid literary traditions (the source of "prosaisms" - words forbidden in poetry). As a special case of artistic motivation, there is a technique elimination. The introduction of non-literary material into the work, so that it does not fall out of the work of art, must be justified by the novelty and individuality in the coverage of the material.
It is necessary to speak of the old and familiar as of the new and unusual. The ordinary is spoken of as strange. These methods of removing ordinary things are usually themselves motivated by the refraction of these themes in the psychology of the hero, who is unfamiliar with them. There is a well-known method of estrangement by L. Tolstoy, when, describing the military council in Fili in War and Peace, he introduces as a character a peasant girl who observes this council and in her own way, childishly, without understanding the essence of what is happening, interpreting all actions and speeches of council members.
Motive is a term that has entered the literature from musicology. It was first recorded in the "musical dictionary" by S. de Brossard in 1703. Analogies with music, where this term is key in the analysis of the composition of a work, help to understand the properties of a motive in a literary work: its isolation from the whole and its repetition in a variety of situations.
In literary criticism, the concept of motive was used to characterize the components of the plot by Goethe and Schiller. They singled out motives of five types: accelerating action, slowing down action, moving action away from the goal, facing the past, anticipating the future.
The concept of motive as the simplest narrative unit was first theoretically substantiated in the Poetics of Plots. Veselovsky. He was interested in the repetition of motifs in different genres among different peoples. Veselovsky considered motives to be the simplest formulas that could originate among different tribes independently of each other. a different plot (in a fairy tale there is not one task, but five, etc.)
Subsequently, combinations of motifs were transformed into various compositions and became the basis of such genres as the novel, story, and poem. The motive itself, according to Veselovsky, remained stable and indecomposable; combinations of motives make up the plot. The plot could be borrowed, passed from people to people, become vagrant. In the plot, each motif can be primary, secondary, episodic. Many motifs can be developed into whole plots, and vice versa.
Veselovsky's position on the motive as an indecomposable unit of narration was revised in the 1920s. Propp: motifs are decomposed, the last decomposable unit is not a logical whole. Propp calls primary elements functions of actors- the actions of the characters, determined in terms of their significance for the course of action.. seven types of characters, 31 functions (based on Afanasiev's collection)
Of particular difficulty is the selection of motifs in the literature of recent centuries: their diversity and complex functional load.
In the literature of different eras, there are many mythological motives. Constantly updated within the historical and literary context, they retain their essence (the motive of the hero’s conscious death because of a woman, apparently, it can be considered as a transformation of the battle for the bride identified by Veselovsky (Lensky in Pushkin, Romashov in Kuprin)
A generally accepted measure of motive is its repeatability.
The leading motive in one or many works of the writer can be defined as keynote. It can be considered at the level of the theme and figurative structure of the work. In Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, the motif of the garden as a symbol of the Home, the beauty and sustainability of life .. we can talk about the role of both the leitmotif and the organization of the second, secret meaning of the work - subtext, undercurrent.. (phrase: "life is gone" - the leitmotif of Uncle Vanya. Chekhov)
Tomashevsky: episodes break up into even smaller parts that describe individual actions, events and things. Topics such small parts of a work that can no longer be divided are called motives.
AT lyrical work motif - a recurring set of feelings and ideas expressed in artistic speech. The motives in the lyrics are more independent, because they are not subject to the development of the action, as in the epic and drama. Sometimes the poet's work as a whole can be viewed as an interaction, a correlation of motives. (At Lermontov: the motives of freedom, will, memory, exile, etc.) The same motive can receive different symbolic meanings in lyrical works of different eras, emphasizing the closeness and the originality of poets (the road of Pushkin to Besy and Gogol to M.D., the birthplace of Lermontov and Nekrasov, Rus' of Yesenin and Blok, etc.)
According to Tomashevsky, motives are divided
Free and related motifs:
- - those that can be skipped (details, details, they play an important role in the plot: they do not make the work schematic.)
- - those that cannot be omitted when retelling, because the causal relationship is violated .. form the basis of the plot.
Dynamic and static motives:
1. change the situation. The transition from happiness to unhappiness and vice versa.
Peripetia (Aristotle: “the transformation of an action into its opposite) is one of the essential elements of the complication of the plot, denoting any unexpected turn in the development of the plot.
2. not changing the situation (descriptions of the interior, nature, portrait, actions and deeds that do not lead to important changes)
Free motives are static, but not every static motive is free.
I don’t know what book Tomashevsky is from, because in Theory of Literature. Poetics." He's writing:
Motivation. The system of motifs that make up the theme of this work should represent some artistic unity. If all the parts of a work fit poorly to each other, the work "falls apart". Therefore, the introduction of each individual motive or each complex of motives must be justified (motivated). The appearance of this or that motive must seem necessary to the reader in this place. The system of techniques that justify the introduction of individual motives and their complexes is called motivation. Methods of motivation are diverse, and their nature is not the same. Therefore, it is necessary to classify motivations.
1. compositional motivation.
Its principle lies in the economy and expediency of motives. Separate motifs can characterize objects introduced into the reader's field of vision (accessories), or the actions of characters ("episodes"). Not a single accessory should remain unused in the plot, not a single episode should remain without influence on the plot situation. It was precisely about compositional motivation that Chekhov spoke when he argued that if at the beginning of the story it is said that a nail is driven into the wall, then at the end of the story the hero must hang himself on this nail. (“Dowry” by Ostrovsky on the example of a weapon. “There is a carpet over the sofa on which weapons are hung.” First, this is introduced as a detail of the situation. In the sixth appearance, attention is drawn to this detail in replicas. At the end of the action, Karandyshev, running away, grabs a pistol from the table He shoots Larisa with this pistol in act 4. The introduction of the motif of the weapon here is compositionally motivated. This weapon is necessary for the denouement. It serves as a preparation for the last moment of the drama.) methods of characterization. The motives must be in harmony with the dynamics of the plot. (Thus, in the same "Dowry" the motive of "Burgundy", made by a counterfeit wine merchant at a cheap price, characterizes the wretchedness of Karandyshev's everyday environment and prepares for Larisa's departure). These characteristic details can be in harmony with the action: 1) by psychological analogy (romantic landscape: a moonlit night for a love scene, a storm and a thunderstorm for a scene of death or villainy), 2) by contrast (the motive of "indifferent" nature, etc.). In the same "Dowry", when Larisa dies, the singing of a gypsy choir is heard from the doors of the restaurant. Consideration should also be given to the possibility false motivation. Accessories and episodes may be introduced to divert the reader's attention from the true situation. This very often appears in detective (detective) short stories, where a number of details are given that lead the reader down the wrong path. The author makes us assume the denouement is not in what it really is. The deception is unraveled at the end, and the reader is convinced that all these details were introduced only for preparation. surprises in the denouement.
2. realistic motivation
From each work we demand an elementary "illusion", i.e. no matter how arbitrary and artificial the work, its perception must be accompanied by a sense of the reality of what is happening. For a naive reader, this feeling is extremely strong, and such a reader can believe in the authenticity of what is being stated, can be convinced of the real existence of the characters. Thus, Pushkin, having just published The History of the Pugachev Rebellion, publishes The Captain's Daughter in the form of Grinev's memoirs with the following afterword: "Pyotr Andreevich Grinev's manuscript was delivered to us from one of his grandsons, who learned that we were engaged in labor related to by the time described by his grandfather. We decided, with the permission of relatives, to publish it separately. " An illusion of the reality of Grinev and his memoirs is created, especially supported by moments of Pushkin’s personal biography known to the public (his historical studies on the history of Pugachev), and the illusion is also supported by the fact that the views and beliefs expressed by Grinev largely diverge from the views expressed by Pushkin himself. The realistic illusion in the more experienced reader is expressed as the demand for "vitality". While firmly knowing the fictitiousness of the work, the reader still demands some correspondence to reality and sees the value of the work in this correspondence. Even readers who are well versed in the laws of artistic construction cannot psychologically free themselves from this illusion. In this regard, each motive should be entered as a motive likely in this situation. We do not notice, getting used to the technique of an adventure novel, the absurdity of the fact that the hero's salvation always keeps up five minutes before his inevitable death, the audience of ancient comedy did not notice the absurdity of the fact that in the last act all the characters suddenly turned out to be close relatives. However, how tenacious this motive is in the drama is shown by Ostrovsky's play Guilty Without Guilt, where at the end of the play the heroine recognizes her lost son in the hero). This motive of recognizing kinship was extremely convenient for denouement (kinship reconciled interests, radically changing the situation) and therefore became firmly established in the tradition.
Thus, realistic motivation has its source either in naive trust or in the demand for illusion. This does not prevent the development of fantastic literature. If folk tales usually arise in a folk environment that allows the real existence of witches and brownies, then they continue to exist as some kind of conscious illusion, where the mythological system or a fantastic worldview (the assumption of really unjustified "possibilities") is present as some kind of illusory hypothesis.
It is curious that fantastic narratives in a developed literary environment, under the influence of the requirements of realistic motivation, usually give double interpretation plot: it can be understood both as a real event and as a fantastic one. From the point of view of the realistic motivation for the construction of a work, it is easy to understand and an introduction to a work of art non-literary material, i.e. topics that have real meaning outside the framework of fiction. So, in historical novels, historical figures are brought to the stage, this or that interpretation of historical events is introduced. See L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" for a whole military-strategic report on the Battle of Borodino and the fire in Moscow, which caused controversy in specialized literature. In modern works, the life familiar to the reader is displayed, questions of moral, social, political, etc. are raised. order, in a word, themes are introduced that live their lives outside of fiction.
3. artistic motivation
The input of motifs is the result of a compromise between realistic illusion and the demands of artistic construction. Not everything borrowed from reality is suitable for a work of art.
On the basis of artistic motivation, disputes usually arise between the old and new literary schools. The old, traditional trend usually denies the presence of artistry in new literary forms. This, for example, is reflected in poetic vocabulary, where the very use of individual words must be in harmony with solid literary traditions (the source of "prosaisms" - words forbidden in poetry). As a special case of artistic motivation, there is a technique removal. The introduction of non-literary material into the work, so that it does not fall out of the work of art, must be justified by the novelty and individuality in the coverage of the material. It is necessary to speak of the old and familiar as of the new and unusual. The ordinary is spoken of as strange. These methods of removing ordinary things are usually themselves motivated by the refraction of these themes in the psychology of the hero, who is unfamiliar with them. There is a well-known method of estrangement by L. Tolstoy, when, describing the military council in Fili in War and Peace, he introduces as a character a peasant girl who observes this council and in her own way, childishly, without understanding the essence of what is happening, interpreting all actions and speeches of council members.
