Copyright Contest -K2
Table of contents:
1. Techniques for analyzing a literary text
2. Criteria for the artistry of a work (general and particular)
3. Evaluation of the plot of the work
4. Evaluation of the composition of the work
5. Extra-plot elements
6. Narrative, description, reasoning as ways of presentation
7. Evaluation of language and style. Speech errors.
8. Character evaluation
9. Evaluation of artistic details
10. Features of the analysis of the story as a form of fiction
A literary text is a way of perceiving and recreating the reality surrounding it by the author.
The author reflects the world in a special artistic and figurative system. Through images, literature reproduces life in time and space, gives new impressions to the reader, allows us to understand the development of human characters, connections and relationships.
A literary work should be considered as a systematic formation, regardless of whether there is an established system or not, whether this formation is perfect or imperfect.
When evaluating, the main thing is to catch the originality of the structure of a particular work and show where the solution of images, situations does not correspond to the intention, creative manner of the writer, the general structure of the work.
TECHNIQUES FOR ANALYSIS OF ARTISTIC TEXT
Analyzing the text, it is always necessary to correlate the whole with the particular - that is, how the general idea of the work, its theme, structure, genre are realized through the plot, composition, language, style, images of characters.
The task is not easy.
To solve it, you need to know some tricks.
Let's talk about them.
The first technique is the PLANNING of the work, at least mentally.
I refer you to the reviews of Alex Petrovsky, who always uses this technique. Alex retells the text. If you describe his actions in clever words, then Alex highlights the supporting semantic points in the text and reveals their subordination. This helps to see and correct factual and logical errors, contradictions, unsubstantiated judgments, etc.
The “translation” of the text into “their” language works very well. This is the criterion for understanding the text.
There is also an ANTICIPATION technique - anticipation, anticipation of the subsequent presentation.
When the reader understands the text, he kind of assumes. Foresees the direction of development, anticipates the thoughts of the author.
We understand that everything is good in moderation. If the plot and actions of the characters are easily viewed, reading such a work is not interesting. However, if the reader cannot follow the author's thought at all and guess at least the general direction of its movement, then this is also a signal of trouble. The process of anticipation is violated when the logic of presentation is violated.
There is one more technique - this is the STATEMENT OF PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS, which our dear Boa constrictor loves so much.
What happened to this minor character? Why did the other character do this? What is hidden behind the mysterious phrase of the heroine?
It is essential that the necessary majority of such questions be answered in the text. All storylines must be completed, mutually linked or logically cut off.
Curious is the fact that the reader and the author seem to be moving in opposite directions. The author goes from idea to structure, and the reader, on the contrary, assessing the structure, must get to the bottom of the idea.
A successful work is one in which the efforts of the author and the reader are approximately equal, and they meet halfway. Remember the cartoon "Kitten named Woof"? When did a kitten and a puppy eat a sausage and meet exactly in the middle? You will laugh, but in literature everything is exactly the same.
What dangers lie in wait for the authors = the most vulnerable link in the process. Reader what? He snorted, closed the book and went on, and the author suffers.
Oddly enough, there are two dangers. First, the reader did not understand the author's intention at all. The second is that the reader put in his own idea (instead of the author's, which turned out to be on the side). In any case, there was no communication, no emotional transmission either.
What to do? Analyze text! (we return to the beginning of the article). Look where the miscoordination took place, and the idea (theme \ structure \ genre) diverged from the embodiment (plot \ composition \ style \ character images).
CRITERIA FOR ARTISTICITY OF A WORK
They are divided into public and private.
GENERAL CRITERIA
1. The unity of the content and form of the work.
The artistic image does not exist outside of a certain form. An unsuccessful form discredits the idea, may raise doubts about the validity of what has been said.
2. The criterion of artistic truth = undistorted recreation of reality.
The truth of art is not just the truth of fact. Often we see how the author, defending his work (usually unsuccessful), puts forward an iron (in his opinion) argument - I described everything as it really happened.
But a work of art is not just a description of events. This is a certain aesthetics, a certain degree of artistic generalization and understanding of reality in images that convince with their aesthetic power. The critic does not assess the authenticity of the realities - he assesses whether the author has managed to achieve the necessary emotional impact with the facts and images presented.
The author's handwriting is a synthesis of the objective and the subjective.
Objective reality is refracted in the individual perception of the author and is reflected in the content, which the author reveals in an original form that is inherent in him. This is the attitude of the author, his special vision, which is expressed in special stylistic techniques of writing.
4. Emotional capacity, associative richness of the text.
The reader wants to empathize with the events along with the hero - to worry, rejoice, be indignant, etc. Empathy and co-creation is the main purpose of the artistic image in literature.
The reader's emotions should be evoked by the image itself, and not imposed by the author's statements and exclamations.
5. The integrity of the perception of the narrative.
The image appears in the mind not as a sum of individual elements, but as an integral, unified poetic picture. M. Gorky believed that the reader should perceive the images of the author immediately, as a blow, and did not think about them. A.P. Chekhov added that fiction should fit into a second.
The criterion of integrity applies not only to elements designed for simultaneous perception - comparisons, metaphors - but also to those components that can be located in the text at a considerable distance from each other (for example, portrait strokes).
This is important when analyzing the characters of the characters. It is not uncommon for novice authors when descriptions of the actions and thoughts of a character do not create in the reader's imagination a picture of his spiritual world. The facts are full of eyes and imagination, but the whole picture is not obtained.
SPECIAL CRITERIA
They relate to individual components of the work - themes, plot, characters' speech, etc.
EVALUATION OF THE PLOT OF THE WORK
The plot is the main means of recreating the movement of events. The optimal option can be considered when the intensity of the action is determined not only by unexpected events and other external methods, but also by internal complexity, a deep disclosure of human relationships, and the significance of the problems posed.
It is necessary to understand the relationship between the plot and the images of the characters, to determine the significance of the situations created by the author in order to reveal the characters.
One of the important requirements of artistry is the persuasiveness of the motivations for actions. Without this, the plot becomes sketchy and far-fetched. The author builds the narrative freely, but he must achieve persuasiveness so that the reader believes him, based on the logic of character development. As V. G. Korolenko wrote, the reader should recognize the former hero in the new adult.
The plot is the concept of reality (E.S. Dobin)
Plots arise, exist, are borrowed, translated from the language of one type of art to another (staging, film adaptation) - and thus reflect the norms of human behavior inherent in a particular type of culture. But this is only the first side of the relationship between life and art: plots not only reflect the cultural state of society, they form it: “By creating plot texts, a person has learned to distinguish plots in life and, thus, interpret this life for himself” (c)
The plot is an essential quality of a work of art; it is a chain of events that are inevitably present in this type of work. Events, in turn, are made up of the actions and deeds of the characters. The concept of an act includes externally tangible actions (came, sat down, met, went, etc.), and internal intentions, thoughts, experiences, sometimes resulting in internal monologues, and all kinds of meetings that take the form of a dialogue of one or more characters .
The assessment of the plot is very subjective, however, there are certain criteria for it:
- the integrity of the plot;
- complexity, tension of the plot (the ability to captivate the reader);
- the significance of the problems posed;
- originality and originality of the plot.
Plot types
There are two types of plots - dynamic and adynamic.
Signs of a dynamic plot:
- the development of the action is intense and fast,
- in the events of the plot lies the main meaning and interest for the reader,
- the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge content load.
Signs of an adynamic plot:
The development of the action is slow and does not tend to a denouement,
- the events of the plot do not contain any special interest (the reader does not have a specific tense expectation: “What will happen next?”),
- elements of the plot are not clearly expressed or are completely absent (the conflict is embodied and moves not with the help of plot, but with the help of other compositional means),
- the denouement is either completely absent, or is purely formal,
- in the overall composition of the work there are many extra-plot elements that shift the center of gravity of the reader's attention to themselves.
Examples of adynamic plots are Gogol's "Dead Souls", Hasek's "Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik", etc.
There is a fairly simple way to check what kind of plot you are dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be reread from any place, works with a dynamic plot - only from beginning to end.
Naturally, with an adynamic plot, the analysis of plot elements is not required, and sometimes it is completely impossible.
COMPOSITION EVALUATION
Composition is the construction of a work that unites all its elements into a single whole, it is a way of disclosing content, a way of systematic organization of content elements.
The composition must correspond to the specifics of the work and publication, the volume of the work, the laws of logic, a certain type of text.
Rules for constructing the composition of a work:
- the sequence of parts must be motivated;
- parts must be proportionate;
- Composition techniques should be determined by the content and nature of the work.
Depending on the ratio of the plot and plot in a particular work, one speaks of different types and methods of plot composition.
The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. Such a composition is also called DIRECT or FABUL SEQUENCE.
More complicated is the technique in which we learn about an event that happened before the rest at the very end of the work - this technique is called DEFAULT.
This technique is very effective, because it allows you to keep the reader in ignorance and tension until the very end, and at the end to amaze him with the unexpectedness of the plot twist. Due to these properties, the technique of default is almost always used in the works of the detective genre.
Another method of violating the chronology or plot sequence is the so-called RETROSPECTIVE, when, in the course of the development of the plot, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, at the time preceding the plot and the beginning of this work.
For example, in "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev, in the course of the plot, we encounter two significant flashbacks - the prehistory of the life of Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. It was not Turgenev's intention to start the novel from their youth, because this would clutter up the composition of the novel, and it seemed necessary to the author to give an idea of the past of these heroes - therefore, the technique of retrospection was used.
The plot sequence can be broken in such a way that events of different times are given mixed up; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the ongoing action to different previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past. This composition of the plot is often motivated by the memories of the characters. It's called FREE COMPOSITION.
When analyzing a literary text, one should consider the motivation for using each technique in terms of composition, which must be supported by the content and figurative structure of the text.
Many of the shortcomings of the composition are explained by the violation of the requirements of the basic laws of logic.
The most common disadvantages of the composition include:
- incorrect division of the work into the largest structural parts;
- go beyond the topic;
- incomplete disclosure of the topic;
- disproportion of parts;
- crossing and mutual absorption of material;
- repetitions;
- unsystematic presentation;
- incorrect logical connections between parts;
- incorrect or inappropriate sequence of parts;
- Unsuccessful breakdown of the text into paragraphs.
It must be remembered that in fiction, following a step-by-step logical plan is not at all necessary, sometimes in violation of the logic of plot development one should see not a compositional flaw, but a special method of compositional construction of a work, designed to increase its emotional impact. Therefore, when evaluating the composition of a work of art, great care and caution is required. We must try to understand the author's intention and not violate it.
OUTSIDE ELEMENTS
In addition to the plot, there are also so-called extra-plot elements in the composition of the work, which are often no less or even more important than the plot itself.
Extra-plot elements are those that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions.
If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then the extra-plot elements are the static side.
There are three main types of extra-plot elements:
- description,
- lyrical (or author's) digressions,
- insert episodes (otherwise they are called insert short stories or inserted plots).
DESCRIPTION is a literary depiction of the outside world (landscape, portrait, world of things, etc.) or a sustainable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, also have nothing to do with movement plot.
Descriptions are the most common type of non-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work.
LYRICAL (or AUTHOR'S) RETRACTS are more or less detailed author's statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; at the same time, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationship between them.
Authorial digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they nevertheless appear there (“Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Dead Souls” by Gogol, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, etc.), they play, as a rule, the most important role and are subject to mandatory analysis.
INSERT SCENES are relatively completed fragments of the action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to a different time and place, etc.
Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol's "Dead Souls" or Hasek's "Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik".
ASSESSMENT OF SPEECH STRUCTURES
Fragments are distinguished in the work by belonging to any type of text - narrative, descriptive or explanatory (reasoning texts).
Each type of text is characterized by its own type of presentation of the material, its internal logic, the sequence of arrangement of elements and the composition as a whole.
When complex speech structures are encountered in a work, including narratives, descriptions, and reasoning in the interweaving of their elements, it is necessary to identify the predominant type.
It is necessary to analyze the fragments in terms of their correspondence to the characteristics of the type, that is, to check whether the narrative, description or reasoning is correctly constructed.
NARRATORY - a story about events in chronological (temporal) sequence.
Narrative is about action. Comprises:
- key moments, that is, the main events in their duration;
- ideas about how these events changed (how the transition from one state to another took place).
In addition, almost every story has its own rhythm and intonation.
When evaluating, it is necessary to check how correctly the author chose the key moments so that they correctly display events; how consistent the author is in presenting them; whether the connection between these main points is thought out.
The syntactic structure of the narration is a chain of verbs, therefore the center of gravity in the narration is transferred from words related to quality to words that convey movements, actions, that is, to the verb.
There are two modes of narration: epic and stage.
The epic way is a complete story about events and actions that have already taken place, about the result of these actions. Most often found in a strict, scientific presentation of the material (for example, a story about the events of the Great Patriotic War in a history textbook).
The stage method, on the contrary, requires that the events be presented visually, the meaning of what is happening before the eyes of the reader is revealed through the gestures, movements, words of the characters. At the same time, the attention of readers is drawn to details, particulars (for example, A.S. Pushkin’s story about a winter blizzard: “Clouds are rushing, clouds are winding ... The invisible moon illuminates the flying snow ...”).
The most common shortcoming in the construction of the narrative: its overload with little significant facts and details. At the same time, it is important to remember that the significance of an event is determined not by its duration, but by its importance in terms of meaning or for the sequence of presentation of events.
When analyzing descriptions in a work of art, there is no rigid scheme. It is in the descriptions that the author's individuality is most clearly manifested.
REASONING is a series of judgments that relate to a certain subject and follow each other in such a way that others follow from the previous judgment and as a result an answer to the question posed is obtained.
The purpose of reasoning is to deepen our knowledge about the subject, about the world around us, since the judgment reveals the internal features of objects, the relationship of features among themselves, proves certain provisions, reveals the reasons.
A feature of reasoning is that it is the most complex type of text.
There are two types of reasoning: deductive and inductive. Deductive reasoning is from the general to the particular, while inductive reasoning is from the particular to the general. The inductive or synthetic type of reasoning is considered to be simpler and more accessible to the general reader. There are also mixed types of reasoning.
Analysis of reasoning involves checking the logical correctness of the construction of reasoning.
Describing the various ways of presentation, experts emphasize that the main part of the author's monologue speech is narration. “Narrative, storytelling is the essence, the soul of literature. A writer is, first of all, a storyteller, a person who knows how to tell in an interesting, exciting way”
The author's appeal to other speech structures that increase the tension of the storyline depends on the individual style, genre and subject of the image.
LANGUAGE AND STYLE ASSESSMENT
There are different styles of different types of literature: journalistic, scientific, artistic, official business, industrial, etc. At the same time, the boundaries between styles are quite unsteady, the styles of the language themselves are constantly evolving. Within the same type of literature, one can see some differences in the use of linguistic means, depending on the purpose of the text and its genre features.
Linguistic and stylistic errors have many varieties. We list only the most common and most common of them.
1. MORPHOLOGICAL ERRORS:
Incorrect use of pronouns
For example. “You have to be really lucky in order to win a large artistic canvas for a few rubles. It turned out to be a technician Alexei Stroev. In this case, the incorrect use of the pronoun "him" creates a second anecdotal meaning of the phrase, as it means that Alexei Stroev turned out to be an artistic canvas.
The use of the plural of nouns instead of the singular. For example. "They wear baskets on their heads."
Ending errors.
For example. “A school, a bathhouse, a kindergarten will be built here next year.
2. LEXICAL ERRORS:
Inaccurate word choice, use of words that cause unwanted associations. For example. "Classes are held without warning, in a family atmosphere" - Instead of "without invitation", "at ease".
Inept use of phraseological phrases.
For example. "Our troops have crossed the line" - Instead of: "Our troops have reached the line / Our troops have crossed the line."
The use of expressions in relation to animals that usually characterize the actions of people or human relationships.
For example. "At the same time, the rest of the bulls gave excellent daughters."
3. SYNTAX ERRORS:
Incorrect word order in a sentence.
For example. “For joy, Avdeev felt his heart beat faster.”
Incorrect control and connection.
For example. "More attention should be paid to the safety of young people."
The use of syntactically unformed sentences.
For example. "Her whole small FIGURE LIKE more like a student than a teacher."
Punctuation errors that distort the meaning of the text.
For example. “Sasha ran around the gardens with the kids, played money while sitting at his desk, listened to the stories of teachers.”
4. STYLISTIC ERRORS:
- stationery style
For example. “As a result of the work of the commission, it was found that there are significant reserves in the further use of materials and, in connection with this, a decrease in their consumption per unit of production” - Instead of “The commission found that materials can be used better and, therefore, their consumption can be reduced.”
Speech stamps are a rather complex phenomenon, which is widespread due to the stereotyped thought and content. Speech stamps can be represented by:
- words with a universal meaning (worldview, question, task, moment),
- in paired words or satellite words (initiative-response),
- stamps - style decorations (blue screen, black gold),
- stencil formations (to carry an honorary watch),
- stamps - compound words (oven-giant, miracle tree).
The main feature of the stamp is the lack of content in it. A stamp must be distinguished from a linguistic cliché, which is a special kind of linguistic means and is used in business, scientific and technical literature to more accurately convey the circumstances of an event or phenomenon.
ASSESSMENT OF ARTISTIC DETAILS
An artistic detail is a detail that the author endowed with a significant semantic and emotional load.
Artistic details include mainly subject details in a broad sense: details of everyday life, landscape, portrait, interior, as well as gesture, action and speech.
Through a well-found detail, one can convey the characteristic features of a person's appearance, his speech, behavior, etc.; convexly and visibly describe the situation, scene, any object, finally, the whole phenomenon.
Artistic detailing may be necessary or, conversely, redundant. Excessive attention to detail, which is characteristic of beginning writers, can lead to a heap of details that interfere with the perception of the main thing and therefore tire the reader.
There are two characteristic miscalculations in the use of artistic details:
It is necessary to distinguish an artistic detail from simple details, which are also necessary in a work.
The writer must be able to select exactly those details that will give a complete, lively, vivid picture. Creating a “visible” and “audible” text for the reader, the writer uses real details, which in the work can be considered as a detail.
Excessive passion for details makes the picture motley, deprives the narrative of integrity.
Black Wand
SOME THOUGHTS OF THE ORDINARY READER ON ARTISTIC DETAILS
FEATURES OF THE ANALYSIS OF A STORY AS A FORM OF A ARTWORK
The short story is the most concise form of fiction. The story is difficult precisely because of its small volume. “There is a lot in the small” - this is the main requirement for small forms.
The story requires especially serious, in-depth work on the content, plot, composition, language, because in small forms, flaws are more clearly visible than in large ones.
A story is not a simple description of a case from life, not a sketch from nature.
The story, like the novel, shows significant moral conflicts. The plot of a story is often as important as in other genres of fiction. The author's position, the importance of the topic is also significant.
The story is a one-dimensional work, it has one storyline. One incident from the life of heroes, one bright, significant scene can become the content of the story, or a comparison of several episodes covering a more or less long period of time.
Too slow development of the plot, prolonged exposition, unnecessary details harm the perception of the story.
Although the opposite happens as well. Sometimes, with excessive brevity of presentation, new shortcomings arise: the lack of psychological motivation for the actions of the characters, unjustified failures in the development of the action, the sketchiness of characters devoid of memorable features.
N. M. Sikorsky believes that there is a thoughtful and unjustified brevity, that is, omissions in the presentation of events that are easily restored by the reader’s imagination, and unfilled voids that violate the integrity of the narrative. It is important to notice when a figurative display is replaced by simply informational messages about events. That is, the story should not just be short, it should have a truly artistic conciseness. And here the artistic detail plays a special role in the story.
A story usually does not have a large number of characters and many storylines. Overloading with characters, scenes, dialogues are the most common shortcomings of the stories of novice authors.
Evaluation of the work is carried out in order to clarify the originality of a particular work.
The analysis is carried out in several aspects:
1. Correlation of execution and intention (image as an expression of thoughts and feelings of the author);
2. Figurative accuracy (image as a reflection of reality);
3. Emotional accuracy of the impact of the text on the imagination, emotions, associations of the reader (the image as a means of aesthetic empathy and co-creation).
The result of the assessment is the creation of some recommendations that will improve the unsuccessful components of the text that do not correspond to the intention, the general structure of the work and the creative manner of the author.
Skillfully carried out transformation should not violate the integrity of the text. On the contrary, the release of its structure from the elements introduced by secondary influences will clarify the idea of the work.
During stylistic editing, inaccuracies, speech errors in the manuscript, roughness in style are eliminated;
when shortening the text, everything superfluous that does not correspond to the genre, the functional affiliation of the work is removed;
during compositional editing, parts of the text are moved, sometimes missing links are inserted that are necessary for coherence, a logical sequence of presentation.
“You carefully remove the excess, as if you are removing a film from a decal, and gradually a bright drawing appears at your fingertips. The manuscript was not written by you. And yet you joyfully feel some involvement in its creation "(c)
Information for thought.
Before you are two editions of the text of the beginning of L. Tolstoy's story "Hadji Murad".
FIRST OPTION
I returned home through the fields. It was the middle of summer. The meadows were cleared and they were just about to mow the rye. There is a delightful selection of flowers for this season: fragrant porridges, red, white, pink, love-dislike, with their spicy rotten smell, yellow, honey and island-shaped, - purple, tulip-shaped peas, multi-colored scabioses, delicate with a slightly plantain with pink fluff and, most importantly, lovely cornflowers, bright blue in the sun, blue and purple in the evening. I love these wild flowers with their subtlety of finishing and slightly noticeable, not for everyone, with their gentle and healthy smell. I picked up a large bouquet and already on the way back I noticed in the ditch a wonderful crimson burdock in full bloom, of the variety that we call Tatar and which is diligently mowed or thrown out of the hay by mowers so as not to prick their hands on it. I took it into my head to pick this burdock, put it in the middle of the bouquet. I got down into the ditch and drove the bumblebee that had climbed into the flower and, since I did not have a knife, began to tear off the flower. Not only did it prick from all sides, even through the handkerchief with which I wrapped my hand, its stem was so terribly strong that I fought with it for about 5 minutes, tearing the fibers one at a time. When I tore it off, I crumpled the flower, then it was clumsy and did not go to the delicate delicate flowers of the bouquet. I regretted that I had ruined this beauty and threw the flower away. "What energy and strength of life," I thought, going up to him...
FINAL VERSION
I returned home through the fields. It was the middle of summer. The meadows were cleared and they were just about to mow the rye. There is a lovely selection of flowers for this season: red, white, pink, fragrant, fluffy porridge; cheeky daisies; milky white with a bright yellow center “love it or hate it” with its rotten spicy stench; yellow colza with its honey smell; high-standing purple and white tulip-shaped bells; creeping peas; yellow, red, pink, purple, neat scabioses; with slightly pink fluff and a slightly audible pleasant smell of plantain; cornflowers, bright blue in the sun and in youth, and blue, and blushing in the evening and in old age; and tender, with an almond smell, immediately withering, dodder flowers. I picked up a large bouquet of different flowers and was walking home when I noticed in a ditch wonderful crimson, in full bloom, burdock of the variety that we call "Tatar" and which is diligently mowed, and when it is accidentally mowed, mowers are thrown out of the hay so as not to prick hands on it. I took it into my head to pick this burdock and put it in I got down into the ditch and, having chased away the shaggy bumblebee that had dug into the middle of the flower and sweetly and languidly fell asleep there, I began to pluck the flower. But it was very difficult: not only did the stem prick from all sides, even through the hand, - he was so terribly strong; that I fought with him for about five minutes, tearing the fibers one at a time. When I finally tore off the flower, the stem was already all in tatters, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Except moreover, in its rudeness and coarseness, it did not fit the delicate flowers of the bouquet. I regretted that in vain I had ruined a flower that was good in its place, and I threw it away. “What, however, is the energy and strength of life,” I thought, Remembering the efforts with which I tore off the flower. “How he defended hard and sold his life dearly.”
© Copyright: Copyright Contest -K2, 2013
Publication Certificate No. 213052901211
reviews
Reviews
Analysis - Third criticism, positive
Quote - The evaluation of the plot is very subjective, however, there are certain criteria for it:
- the significance of the situation for revealing the characters of the characters;
...
Plot elements are the stages in the development of a literary conflict (exposition, plot, development of action, climax and denouement). The selection of these elements is possible only in connection with the conflict.
The daily audience of the Proza.ru portal is about 100 thousand visitors, who in total view more than half a million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.
SCHEMES OF ANALYSIS OF LITERARY WORKS
1. Analysis of a work of art
1. Determine the theme and idea / main idea / of this work; the issues raised in it; the pathos with which the work is written;
2. Show the relationship between plot and composition;
3. Consider the subjective organization of the work /artistic image of a person, methods of creating a character, types of images-characters, a system of images-characters/;
5. Determine the features of the functioning of the visual and expressive means of the language in this work of literature;
6. Determine the features of the genre of the work and the style of the writer.
Note : according to this scheme, you can write an essay-review about the book you read, while also presenting in the work:
1. Emotional and evaluative attitude to what is read.
2. A detailed justification for an independent assessment of the characters of the heroes of the work, their actions and experiences.
3. Detailed substantiation of the conclusions.
2. Analysis of a prose literary work
When starting to analyze a work of art, first of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the specific historical context of the work during the period of creation of this work of art. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of historical and historical-literary situation, in the latter case it means
literary trends of the era;
the place of this work among the works of other authors written during this period;
creative history of the work;
assessment of the work in criticism;
originality of perception of this work by contemporaries of the writer;
evaluation of the work in the context of modern reading;
Next, we should turn to the question of the ideological and artistic unity of the work, its content and form (in this case, the content plan is considered - what the author wanted to say and the expression plan - how he managed to do it).
Conceptual level of a work of art
(themes, problems, conflict and pathos)
Subject - this is what the work is about, the main problem posed and considered by the author in the work, which unites the content into a single whole; these are those typical phenomena and events of real life that are reflected in the work. Does the theme resonate with the main issues of its time? Is the title related to the topic? Each phenomenon of life is a separate topic; a set of topics - the theme of the work.
Problem - this is the side of life that is of particular interest to the writer. One and the same problem can serve as the basis for posing different problems (the theme of serfdom is the problem of the internal lack of freedom of the serf, the problem of mutual corruption, mutilation of both serfs and serfs, the problem of social injustice ...). Issues - a list of issues raised in the work. (They may be complementary and subject to the main problem.)
Idea - what the author wanted to say; the writer's solution to the main problem or an indication of the way in which it can be solved. (The ideological meaning is the solution of all problems - the main and additional ones - or an indication of a possible solution.)
Pathos - the emotional-evaluative attitude of the writer to the narrated, which is distinguished by a great strength of feelings (maybe affirming, denying, justifying, elevating ...).
The level of organization of the work as an artistic whole
Composition - construction of a literary work; unites the parts of the work into one whole.
The main means of composition:
Plot - what happens in the work; system of major events and conflicts.
Conflict - clash of characters and circumstances, views and principles of life, which is the basis of action. The conflict can occur between the individual and society, between characters. In the mind of the hero can be explicit and hidden. Plot elements reflect the stages of development of the conflict;
Prologue - a kind of introduction to the work, which tells about the events of the past, it emotionally sets the reader up for perception (rare);
exposition - introduction into action, depiction of the conditions and circumstances that preceded the immediate start of actions (it can be expanded and not, whole and “broken”; it can be located not only at the beginning, but also in the middle, end of the work); introduces the characters of the work, the situation, time and circumstances of the action;
tie - the beginning of the plot; the event from which the conflict begins, subsequent events develop.
Development of action - a system of events that follow from the plot; in the course of the development of the action, as a rule, the conflict escalates, and the contradictions appear more and more clearly;
climax - the moment of the highest tension of the action, the pinnacle of the conflict, the climax presents the main problem of the work and the characters of the characters very clearly, after which the action weakens.
denouement - the solution of the depicted conflict or an indication of possible ways to resolve it. The final moment in the development of the action of a work of art. As a rule, it either resolves the conflict or demonstrates its fundamental insolubility.
Epilogue - the final part of the work, which indicates the direction of further development of events and the fate of the characters (sometimes an assessment is given to the depicted); this is a short story about what happened to the characters of the work after the end of the main plot action.
The plot may be:
In direct chronological sequence of events;
With digressions into the past - retrospectives - and "excursions" into
future;
In a deliberately changed sequence (see artistic time in the work).
Non-plot elements are:
Insert episodes;
Their main function is to expand the scope of what is depicted, to enable the author to express his thoughts and feelings about various phenomena of life that are not directly related to the plot.
Some elements of the plot may be missing in the work; sometimes it is difficult to separate these elements; sometimes there are several plots in one work - in other words, storylines. There are various interpretations of the concepts of "plot" and "plot":
1) plot - the main conflict of the work; plot - a series of events in which it is expressed;
2) plot - the artistic order of events; plot - the natural order of events
Compositional principles and elements:
Leading compositional principle (the composition is multifaceted, linear, circular, "string with beads"; in the chronology of events or not...).
Additional composition tools:
Lyrical digressions - forms of disclosure and transmission of the writer's feelings and thoughts about the depicted (they express the author's attitude to the characters, to the life depicted, may represent reflections on any occasion or an explanation of his goal, position);
Introductory (insert) episodes (not directly related to the plot of the work);
Artistic previews - the image of scenes that, as it were, predict, anticipate the further development of events;
Artistic framing - scenes that begin and end an event or work, complementing it, giving additional meaning;
Compositional techniques - internal monologues, diary, etc.
The level of the internal form of the work
The subjective organization of the narration (its consideration includes the following): The narration can be personal: on behalf of the lyrical hero (confession), on behalf of the hero-narrator, and impersonal (on behalf of the narrator).
1) Artistic image of a man - typical phenomena of life reflected in this image are considered; individual traits inherent in the character; reveals the originality of the created image of a person:
External features - face, figure, costume;
The character of the character - it is revealed in actions, in relation to other people, manifested in a portrait, in descriptions of the feelings of the hero, in his speech. Depiction of the conditions in which the character lives and acts;
An image of nature that helps to better understand the thoughts and feelings of the character;
Image of the social environment, the society in which the character lives and acts;
The presence or absence of a prototype.
2) 0 basic techniques for creating an image-character:
Characterization of the hero through his actions and deeds (in the plot system);
Portrait, portrait characteristic of the hero (often expresses the author's attitude to the character);
Psychological analysis - a detailed, in detail recreation of feelings, thoughts, motives - the inner world of the character; here the depiction of the “dialectics of the soul” is of particular importance, i.e. movements of the hero's inner life;
Characterization of the hero by other characters;
Artistic detail - a description of objects and phenomena of the reality surrounding the character (details that reflect a broad generalization can act as symbolic details);
3) Types of images-characters:
lyrical - in the event that the writer depicts only the feelings and thoughts of the hero, without mentioning the events of his life, the actions of the hero (found mainly in poetry);
dramatic - in the event that the impression arises that the characters act "on their own", "without the help of the author", i.e. the author uses the technique of self-disclosure, self-characteristics (found mainly in dramatic works) to characterize the characters;
epic - the author-narrator or narrator consistently describes the characters, their actions, characters, appearance, the environment in which they live, relationships with others (found in epic novels, short stories, short stories, short stories, essays).
4) The system of images-characters;
Separate images can be combined into groups (grouping of images) - their interaction helps to more fully present and reveal each character, and through them - the theme and ideological meaning of the work.
All these groups are united in the society depicted in the work (multidimensional or one-dimensional from a social, ethnic, etc. point of view).
Artistic space and artistic time (chronotope): space and time depicted by the author.
Artistic space can be conditional and concrete; compressed and voluminous;
Artistic time can be correlated with historical or not, intermittent and continuous, in the chronology of events (epic time) or the chronology of the characters’ internal mental processes (lyrical time), long or instantaneous, finite or endless, closed (i.e. only within the plot , out of historical time) and open (against the background of a certain historical epoch).
The way of creating artistic images: narration (image of the events taking place in the work), description (consistent enumeration of individual features, traits, properties and phenomena), forms of oral speech (dialogue, monologue).
The place and significance of the artistic detail (artistic detail that enhances the idea of the whole).
External form level. Speech and rhythm-melodic organization of a literary text
Character speech - expressive or not, acting as a means of typing; individual features of speech; reveals the character and helps to understand the attitude of the author.
Narrator's speech - evaluation of events and their participants
The peculiarity of the word use of the national language (active inclusion of synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, archaisms, neologisms, dialectisms, barbarisms, professionalisms).
Figurative techniques (tropes - the use of words in a figurative sense) - the simplest (epithet and comparison) and complex (metaphor, personification, allegory, litote, paraphrase).
Analysis of a poetic work
Poem analysis plan
1. Elements of a commentary on a poem:
Time (place) of writing, history of creation;
Genre originality;
The place of this poem in the poet's work or in a series of poems on a similar topic (with a similar motive, plot, structure, etc.);
Explanation of obscure places, complex metaphors and other transcripts.
2. Feelings expressed by the lyrical hero of the poem; the feelings that the poem evokes in the reader.
4. Interdependence of the content of the poem and its artistic form:
compositional solutions;
Features of self-expression of the lyrical hero and the nature of the narrative;
The sound range of the poem, the use of sound recording, assonance, alliteration;
Rhythm, stanza, graphics, their semantic role;
Motivation and accuracy of the use of expressive means.
4. Associations caused by this poem (literary, life, musical, pictorial - any).
5. The typicality and originality of this poem in the poet's work, the deep moral or philosophical meaning of the work, which was revealed as a result of the analysis; the degree of "eternity" of the issues raised or their interpretation. Riddles and secrets of the poem.
6. Additional (free) reflections.
Analysis of a poetic work
(scheme)
Starting the analysis of a poetic work, it is necessary to determine the direct content of the lyrical work - experience, feeling;
Determine the "belonging" of feelings and thoughts expressed in a lyrical work: a lyrical hero (the image in which these feelings are expressed);
Determine the subject of the description and its connection with the poetic idea (direct - indirect);
Determine the organization (composition) of the lyrical work;
Determine the originality of the use of visual means by the author (active - mean); determine the lexical pattern (vernacular - book and literary vocabulary ...);
Determine the rhythm (homogeneous - heterogeneous; rhythmic movement);
Determine the sound pattern;
Determine intonation (the attitude of the speaker to the subject of speech and the interlocutor.
Poetic vocabulary
It is necessary to find out the activity of using separate groups of words in common vocabulary - synonyms, antonyms, archaisms, neologisms;
Find out the degree of closeness of the poetic language with the colloquial;
Determine the originality and activity of the use of trails
EPITHET - artistic definition;
COMPARISON - comparison of two objects or phenomena in order to explain one of them with the help of the other;
ALLEGORY (allegory) - the image of an abstract concept or phenomenon through specific objects and images;
IRONY - hidden mockery;
HYPERBOLA - artistic exaggeration used to enhance the impression;
LITOTES - artistic understatement;
PERSONALIZATION - the image of inanimate objects, in which they are endowed with the properties of living beings - the gift of speech, the ability to think and feel;
METAPHOR - a hidden comparison, built on the similarity or contrast of phenomena, in which the word "as", "as if", "as if" are absent, but implied.
Poetic Syntax
(syntactic devices or figures of poetic speech)
- rhetorical questions, appeals, exclamations - they increase the reader's attention without requiring an answer from him;
- repetitions - repeated repetition of the same words or expressions;
- antitheses - opposition;
Poetic phonetics
The use of onomatopoeia, sound recording - sound repetitions that create a kind of sound "pattern" of speech.)
- Alliteration - repetition of consonant sounds;
- Assonance - repetition of vowel sounds;
- Anaphora- unity of command;
Composition of a lyrical work
Necessary:
Determine the leading experience, feeling, mood reflected in the poetic work;
Find out the harmony of the compositional construction, its subordination to the expression of a certain thought;
Determine the lyrical situation presented in the poem (the hero’s conflict with himself; the hero’s inner lack of freedom, etc.)
Determine the life situation that, presumably, could cause this experience;
Highlight the main parts of a poetic work: show their connection (identify the emotional "picture").
Analysis of a dramatic work
Scheme for analyzing a dramatic work
1. General characteristics: history of creation, vital basis, design, literary criticism.
2. Plot, composition:
The main conflict, stages of its development;
The nature of the denouement /comic, tragic, dramatic/
3. Analysis of individual actions, scenes, phenomena.
4. Collecting material about the characters:
character's appearance,
Behavior,
speech characteristic
Manner /how?/
Style, vocabulary
Self-characterization, mutual characteristics of the characters, author's remarks;
The role of scenery, interior in the development of the image.
5. CONCLUSIONS : Theme, idea, meaning of the title, system of images. Genre of the work, artistic originality.
dramatic work
The generic specificity, the “borderline” position of the drama (Between literature and the theater) obliges it to be analyzed in the course of the development of dramatic action (this is the fundamental difference between the analysis of a dramatic work from an epic or lyrical one). Therefore, the proposed scheme is conditional, it only takes into account the conglomeration of the main generic categories of drama, the peculiarity of which can manifest itself in different ways in each individual case, namely in the development of the action (according to the principle of a untwisted spring).
1. General characteristics of dramatic action (character, plan and vector of movement, pace, rhythm, etc.). "Through" action and "underwater" currents.
2 . type of conflict. The essence of drama and the content of the conflict, the nature of the contradictions (two-dimensionality, external conflict, internal conflict, their interaction), the "vertical" and "horizontal" plan of the drama.
3. System of actors , their place and role in the development of dramatic action and conflict resolution. Main and secondary characters. Off-plot and off-stage characters.
4. System of motives and motivational development of the plot and microplots of the drama. Text and subtext.
5. Compositional-structural level. The main stages in the development of dramatic action (exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement). Assembly principle.
6. Features of poetics (the semantic key of the title, the role of the theater poster, stage chronotype, symbolism, stage psychologism, the problem of the finale). Signs of theatricality: costume, mask, game and post-situational analysis, role-playing situations, etc.
7. Genre originality (drama, tragedy or comedy?). The origins of the genre, its reminiscences and innovative solutions by the author.
9. Drama contexts (historical and cultural, creative, proper dramatic).
10. The problem of interpretations and stage history.
In most cases, starting from the 8th grade, in literature lessons, when studying a large and significant work, students are asked to write an analysis for a story, novel, play, or even a poem. In order to write an analysis correctly and get something useful out of it, you need to know how to draw up an analysis plan correctly. In this article we will talk about that, and analyze according to this plan the poem "The Sea", written by Zhukovsky.
The history of the creation of the work
The history of the creation of a work is an important part in the analysis, so we will start the analysis plan from this. In this paragraph, we will have to indicate when the work was written, that is, started and finished (year and, if known, then dates). Next, you need to find out exactly how the author worked on this work, in what place, at what period of his life. This is a very important part of the analysis.
The direction of the work, its type and genre
This point is already more like an analysis of the work. The plan for analyzing a work of art must necessarily consist of determining the direction, type and genre of the work.
In total, there are 3 directions in literature: classicism. It is necessary to read the work and determine which of them it relates to (there may even be two directions).
The plan of analysis also consists of determining the kind of work. In total, there are 3 types of works: epic, lyrics and drama. An epic is a story about a hero or a story about events that do not concern the author. Lyrics are a transmission through high feelings. Drama is all works built in a dialogic form.
It is not necessary to define, because it is indicated at the beginning of the work itself. There are a lot of them, but the most popular are the novel, the epic, etc.
Themes and problems of a literary work
The plan for compiling an analysis of a work is not complete without such important features in the work as its subject matter and problems. The theme of a piece is what the piece is about. Here you should describe the main themes of the work. The issue is based on the definition of the main problem.
Paphos and idea
The idea is the definition of the main idea of the work, that is, for which it was, in fact, written. In addition to what the author wanted to say with his work, it should be noted how he treats his heroes. Paphos is the main emotional mood of the author himself, which should be traced throughout the entire work. It is necessary to write with what emotions the author describes certain events, heroes, their actions.
Main heroes
The plan for analyzing the work also provides for a description of its main characters. It is necessary to say at least a little about the secondary characters, but at the same time describe the main ones in detail. The character, behavior, author's attitude, the significance of each character - this is what must be said.
In the poem, you need to describe the lyrical hero.
The plot and composition of a work of art
With the plot, everything is very simple: you only need to briefly, in just a few sentences, describe the main main and key events that occurred in the work.
Composition is how the work itself is built. It includes the plot (the beginning of the action), the development of the action (when the main events begin to grow), the climax (the most interesting part in any story or novel, the highest tension of the action occurs), the denouement (the end of the action).
Artistic originality
It is necessary to describe the properties of the work, its unique features, features, that is, what distinguishes it from another. There may be some characteristics of the author himself when writing.
The meaning of the work
The analysis plan of any work should end with a description of its meaning, as well as the attitude of the reader himself to it. Here you need to say how it influenced society, what it conveyed to people, whether you liked it as a reader, what you yourself took out of it for yourself. The value of the product is like a small conclusion at the end of the plan.
Features of the analysis of the poem
For lyrical poems, in addition to all of the above, it is necessary to write their poetic size, determine the number of stanzas, as well as the features of the rhyme.
Analysis of the poem "The Sea" by Zhukovsky
In order to consolidate the material and remember how the analysis of the work is done, we will write an analysis of Zhukovsky's poem according to the plan given above.
- This poem was written by Zhukovsky in 1822. The poem "Sea" was first published in a collection called "Northern Flowers for 1829".
- The poem is written in the spirit of early romanticism. It is worth noting that many works were sustained in this spirit. The author himself believed that this direction is the most attractive and exciting. The work belongs to the lyrics. This poem belongs to the genre of elegy.
- In this poem by Vasily Zhukovsky, not only the sea is described, but a real landscape of the soul, bright and intriguing, has been created. But the importance of the poem lies not only in the fact that the writer created a real psychological landscape and expressed the feelings and sensations of a person when describing the sea. The real feature of the poem is that the sea becomes for a person, for the reader, a living soul and a real hero of the work.
- The work consists of 3 parts. The first part is introductory, the largest and most informative. It can be called "The Silent Sea", because Zhukovsky himself calls the sea that way in this part of the poem. Then follows the second part, which is characterized by violent emotions and is called "The Storm". The third part barely begins, as the poem ends - this is "Peace".
- The artistic originality of the poem is manifested in a large number of epithets (light sky, dark clouds, hostile haze, etc.)
- This poem did not go unnoticed in Russian poetry. Following this author, other poets began to paint a picture of the sea in their poems.
Analysis of the poem "Sea" according to the plan of this analysis will help to easily and quickly disassemble the work of art.
The belonging of a work to one or another genus leaves its mark on the very course of analysis, dictates certain methods, although it does not affect the general methodological principles. Differences between literary genres have almost no effect on the analysis of artistic content, but almost always affect the analysis of form to one degree or another.
Among the literary genres, the epic has the greatest pictorial possibilities and the richest and most developed form structure. Therefore, in the preceding chapters (especially in the section "The structure of a work of art and its analysis"), the exposition was carried out primarily in relation to the epic genre. Let us now see what changes will have to be made in the analysis, taking into account the specifics of drama, lyrics and lyrical epic.
DramaThe drama is in many ways similar to the epic, so the basic methods of analysis for it remain the same. But it should be borne in mind that in the drama, unlike the epic, there is no narrative speech, which deprives the drama of many of the artistic possibilities inherent in the epic. This is partly compensated by the fact that the drama is mainly intended for staging on stage, and, entering into a synthesis with the art of the actor and director, acquires additional pictorial and expressive possibilities. In the actual literary text of the drama, the emphasis shifts to the actions of the characters and their speech; accordingly, the drama tends to such stylistic dominants as plot and heteroglossia. Compared with the epic, the drama is also distinguished by an increased degree of artistic conventionality associated with theatrical action. The conventionality of the drama consists in such features as the illusion of the "fourth wall", replicas "to the side", the characters' monologues alone with themselves, as well as in the increased theatricality of speech and gesture-mimic behavior.
The construction of the depicted world is also specific in drama. We get all the information about him from the conversations of the characters and from the author's remarks. Accordingly, the drama requires from the reader more work of fantasy, the ability to imagine the appearance of the characters, the objective world, the landscape, etc., by mean hints. Over time, the playwrights make their remarks more and more detailed; there is also a tendency to introduce a subjective element into them (for example, in the remark to the third act of the play “At the Bottom”, Gorky introduces an emotionally evaluative word: “In the window near the ground - erysipelas. Bubnov”), there is an indication of the general emotional tone of the scene (the sad sound of a broken string in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard), sometimes the introductory remarks are expanded to a narrative monologue (plays by B. Shaw). The image of the character is drawn with more sparing than in the epic, but also with brighter, stronger means. Characterization of the hero comes to the fore through the plot, through actions, and the actions and words of the heroes are always psychologically saturated and thus characterological. Another leading technique for creating an image of a character is his speech characteristics, manner of speech. Auxiliary techniques are the portrait, self-characterization of the hero and his characterization in the speech of other characters. To express the author's assessment, the characteristic is mainly used through the plot and individual manner of speech.
Peculiar in drama and psychologism. It is devoid of such forms common in the epic as the author's psychological narration, internal monologue, the dialectic of the soul and the stream of consciousness. The internal monologue is brought outward, takes shape in external speech, and therefore the psychological world of the character itself turns out to be more simplified and rationalized in the drama than in the epic. In general, the drama gravitates mainly towards bright and catchy ways of expressing strong and vivid spiritual movements. The greatest difficulty in drama is the artistic development of complex emotional states, the transfer of the depth of the inner world, vague and fuzzy ideas and moods, the sphere of the subconscious, etc. Playwrights learned to cope with this difficulty only towards the end of the 19th century; The psychological plays by Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorky and others are indicative here.
The main thing in the drama is the action, the development of the starting position, and the action develops due to the conflict, so it is advisable to start the analysis of a dramatic work with the definition of the conflict, tracing its movement in the future. The dramatic composition is subject to the development of the conflict. The conflict is embodied either in the plot or in the system of compositional oppositions. Depending on the form of embodiment of the conflict, dramatic works can be divided into action plays(Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Ostrovsky), mood plays(Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Chekhov) and discussion plays(Ibsen, Gorky, Shaw). Depending on the type of play, the specific analysis also moves.
So, in Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm", the conflict is embodied in the system of action and events, that is, in the plot. The conflict of the two-plane play: on the one hand, these are the contradictions between the rulers (Wild, Kabanikha) and the subordinates (Katerina, Varvara, Boris, Kuligin, etc.) - this is an external conflict. On the other hand, the action moves thanks to Katerina's internal, psychological conflict: she passionately wants to live, love, be free, clearly realizing at the same time that all this is a sin leading to the death of the soul. The dramatic action develops through a chain of actions, vicissitudes, one way or another changing the initial situation: Tikhon leaves, Katerina decides to get in touch with Boris, publicly repents and, finally, rushes into the Volga. The dramatic tension and attention of the viewer is supported by the interest in the development of the plot: what will happen next, how the heroine will act. The plot elements are clearly visible: the plot (in the dialogue of Katerina and Kabanikh in the first act, an external conflict is detected, in the dialogue of Katerina and Varvara - an internal one), a series of climaxes (at the end of the second, third and fourth acts and, finally, in the last monologue of Katerina in the fifth act ) and the denouement (Katerina's suicide).
In the plot, the content of the work is also mainly realized. Sociocultural issues are revealed through action, and actions are dictated by the prevailing morals, attitudes, and ethical principles in the environment. The plot also expresses the tragic pathos of the play, Katerina's suicide emphasizes the impossibility of a successful resolution of the conflict.
Mood plays are constructed somewhat differently. In them, as a rule, the basis of the dramatic action is the conflict of the hero with a way of life hostile to him, turning into a psychological conflict, which is expressed in the internal disorder of the characters, in a feeling of spiritual discomfort. As a rule, this feeling is typical not for one, but for many characters, each of which develops its own conflict with life, so it is difficult to single out the main characters in mood plays. The movement of the stage action is concentrated not in the plot twists and turns, but in the change of emotional tone, the chain of events only enhances this or that mood. Such plays usually have psychologism as one of the stylistic dominants. The conflict develops not in plot, but in compositional oppositions. The reference points of the composition are not elements of the plot, but the culmination of psychological states, which, as a rule, occur at the end of each action. Instead of a plot - the discovery of some initial mood, a conflicting psychological state. Instead of a denouement, there is an emotional chord in the finale, which, as a rule, does not resolve contradictions.
So, in Chekhov's play "Three Sisters" there is practically no through series of events, but all scenes and episodes are connected with each other by a common mood - rather heavy and hopeless. And if in the first act the mood of bright hope still glimmers (Irina's monologue “When I woke up today…”), then in the further development of the stage action it is drowned out by anxiety, longing, and suffering. The stage action is based on the deepening of the characters' experiences, on the fact that each of them gradually gives up the dream of happiness. The external destinies of the three sisters, their brother Andrey, Vershinin, Tuzenbakh, Chebutykin, do not add up, the regiment leaves the city, vulgarity in the person of the “rough animal” Natasha triumphs in the Prozorovs’ house, and the three sisters will not be in the longed-for Moscow ... All events that are not related to each other with a friend, have the goal of reinforcing the general impression of dysfunction, disorder of being.
Naturally, in mood plays, psychologism plays an important role in style, but psychologism is peculiar, subtextual. Chekhov himself wrote about this: “I wrote to Meyerhold and urged in the letter not to be harsh in depicting a nervous person. After all, the vast majority of people are nervous, the majority suffer, a minority feel acute pain, but where - on the streets and in houses - do you see people rushing about, jumping, grabbing their heads? Suffering must be expressed as it is expressed in life, that is, not with feet or hands, but with a tone, a look; not gesture, but grace. The subtle spiritual movements inherent in intelligent people must be expressed subtly outwardly. You will say: scene conditions. No conditions allow lies ”(Letter to O.L. Knipper dated January 2, 1900). In his plays and, in particular, in The Three Sisters, stage psychologism relies precisely on this principle. The depressed mood, melancholy, suffering of the characters are only partly expressed in their remarks and monologues, where the character "brings out" his experiences. An equally important technique of psychologism is the discrepancy between the external and internal - spiritual discomfort is expressed in meaningless phrases ("At Lukomorye there is a green oak" by Masha, "Balzac got married in Berdichev" by Chebutykin, etc.), in causeless laughter and tears, in silence, etc. An important role is played by the author's remarks, emphasizing the emotional tone of the phrase: "left alone, yearns", "nervously", "tearfully", "through tears", etc.
The third type is a discussion play. The conflict here is deep, based on the difference in worldview attitudes, the problems, as a rule, are philosophical or ideological and moral. “In the new plays,” B. Shaw wrote, “the dramatic conflict is built not around the vulgar inclinations of a person, his greed or generosity, resentment and ambition, misunderstandings and accidents, and everything else, which in itself does not give rise to moral problems, but around the clash of various ideals." Dramatic action is expressed in the clash of points of view, in the compositional opposition of individual statements, therefore, the paramount attention in the analysis should be given to heteroglossia. A number of characters are often drawn into the conflict, each with their own position in life, therefore in this type of play it is difficult to single out the main and secondary characters, just as it is difficult to single out positive and negative characters. Let us refer again to Shaw: “The conflict “…” is not between the right and the guilty: the villain here can be just as conscientious as the hero, if not more. In fact, the problem that makes the play interesting "..." is to find out who is the hero here and who is the villain. Or, to put it another way, there are no villains or heroes here.” The chain of events serves mainly as a pretext for the characters' statements, provokes them.
On these principles, in particular, M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom" is built. The conflict here is in the clash of different points of view on the nature of man, on lies and truth; in general terms, this is a conflict of the sublime, but unreal, with the base real; philosophical problem. In the very first act, this conflict is tied up, although from the point of view of the plot it is nothing more than an exposition. Despite the fact that no important events take place in the first act, the dramatic development has already begun, the brute truth and the sublime lie have already come into conflict. On the very first page, this key word “truth” sounds (Kvashnya’s remark “Ah! You can’t stand the truth!”). Here, Satin contrasts the resounding "human words" with sonorous, but meaningless "organon", "sicambre", "macrobiotic", etc. Here Nastya reads "Fatal Love", the Actor recalls Shakespeare, the Baron - coffee in bed, and all this in in sharp contrast to the everyday life of a rooming house. In the first act, one of the positions in relation to life and to the truth has already sufficiently manifested itself - what can be called, following the author of the play, "the truth of the fact." This position, cynical and inhumane in essence, is presented in the play by Bubnov, calmly stating something absolutely indisputable and just as cold (“Noise is not a hindrance to death”), chuckling skeptically at Pepel’s romantic phrases (“And the threads are rotten!”), expressing his position in the discussion of his life. In the very first act, the antipode of Bubnov, Luka, also appears, opposing the soulless, wolf life of the rooming house with his philosophy of love and compassion for one’s neighbor, whatever it may be (“In my opinion, not a single flea is bad: everyone is black, everyone jumps …”), comforting and encouraging people of the bottom. In the future, this conflict develops, drawing into the dramatic action more and more new points of view, arguments, reasoning, parables, etc., sometimes - at the reference points of the composition - pouring out into a direct dispute. The conflict culminates in the fourth act, which is an already open discussion about Luke and his philosophy, practically unrelated to the plot, turning into a dispute about law, truth, understanding of man. Let us pay attention to the fact that the last action takes place after the completion of the plot and the denouement of the external conflict (the murder of Kostylev), which is of an auxiliary nature in the play. The finale of the play is also not a plot denouement. It is associated with a discussion about truth and man, and the Actor's suicide serves as one more cue in the dialogue of ideas. At the same time, the finale is open, it is not intended to resolve the philosophical dispute going on the stage, but, as it were, invites the reader and viewer to do it themselves, affirming only the idea of the unbearability of life without an ideal.
LyricsLyrics as a literary genre opposes epic and dramaturgy, therefore, when analyzing it, one should take into account the generic specificity to the highest degree. If the epic and drama reproduce human existence, the objective side of life, then the lyrics - the human consciousness and subconsciousness, the subjective moment. Epos and drama depict, lyric expresses. It can even be said that lyric poetry belongs to a completely different group of arts than epic and dramaturgy - not to the pictorial, but to the expressive. Therefore, many methods of analyzing epic and dramatic works are inapplicable to a lyric work, especially with regard to its form, and literary criticism has developed its own methods and approaches for the analysis of lyrics.
The foregoing concerns, first of all, the depicted world, which in the lyrics is built in a completely different way than in the epic and drama. The stylistic dominant, to which the lyrics gravitate, is psychologism, but psychologism is peculiar. In the epic and partly in the drama, we are dealing with the image of the inner world of the hero, as if from the outside, while in the lyrics, psychologism is expressive, the subject of the statement and the object of the psychological image coincide. As a result, lyrics explore the inner world of a person in a special perspective: it takes advantage of the sphere of experience, feelings, emotions and reveals it, as a rule, in static, but more deeply and vividly than is done in the epic. Subject to lyrics and the sphere of thinking; many lyrical works are built on the development of not an experience, but a reflection (though it is always colored by one or another feeling). Such lyrics (“Do I wander along the noisy streets ...” by Pushkin, “Duma” by Lermontov, “Wave and Thought” by Tyutchev, etc.) is called meditative. But in any case, the depicted world of a lyrical work is, first of all, a psychological world. This circumstance should be especially taken into account when analyzing individual pictorial (it would be more correct to call them “pseudo-pictorial”) details that can be found in lyrics. First of all, we note that a lyrical work can do without them at all - for example, in Pushkin's poem "I loved you ..." all psychological details without exception are completely absent. If object-pictorial details do appear, then they perform the same function of a psychological image: either indirectly creating the emotional mood of the work, or becoming the impression of the lyrical hero, the object of his reflection, etc. Such, in particular, are the details of the landscape. For example, in A. Fet's poem "Evening" there does not seem to be a single psychological detail, but only a description of the landscape. But the function of the landscape here is to create a mood of peace, tranquility, silence with the help of the selection of details. The landscape in Lermontov's poem "When the yellowing field is agitated ..." is an object of reflection, given in the perception of the lyrical hero, the changing pictures of nature constitute the content of the lyrical reflection, ending with an emotional-figurative conclusion-generalization: "Then the anxiety of my soul is humbled ...". We note by the way that in Lermontov's landscape there is no accuracy required from the landscape in the epic: lily of the valley, plum and yellowing cornfield cannot coexist in nature, as they belong to different seasons, which shows that the landscape in the lyrics, in fact, is not a landscape as such, but only the impression of a lyrical hero.
The same can be said about the details of the portrait and the world of things found in lyrical works - they perform an exclusively psychological function in lyrics. So, “a red tulip, a tulip is in your buttonhole” in A. Akhmatova's poem “Confusion” becomes a vivid impression of the lyrical heroine, indirectly denoting the intensity of the lyrical experience; in her poem “The Song of the Last Meeting”, the substantive detail (“I put on the Glove from my left hand on my right hand”) serves as a form of indirect expression of the emotional state.
The greatest difficulty for analysis are those lyrical works in which we meet with some semblance of a plot and a system of characters. Here there is a temptation to transfer to the lyrics the principles and methods of analyzing the corresponding phenomena in the epic and drama, which is fundamentally wrong, because both the “pseudo-plot” and the “pseudo-characters” in the lyrics have a completely different nature and a different function - first of all, again, psychological. So, in Lermontov’s poem “The Beggar”, it would seem that an image of a character appears who has a certain social status, appearance, age, that is, signs of existential certainty, which is typical for epic and drama. However, in reality, the existence of this “hero” is dependent, illusory: the image turns out to be only part of a detailed comparison and, therefore, serves to more convincingly and expressively convey the emotional intensity of the work. The beggar as a fact of being is not here, there is only a rejected feeling, conveyed with the help of allegory.
In Pushkin's poem "Arion" something like a plot appears, some kind of dynamics of actions and events is outlined. But it would be senseless and even absurd to look in this “plot” for plots, climaxes and denouements, to look for the conflict expressed in it, etc. The chain of events is Pushkin’s lyrical hero’s understanding of the events of the recent political past, given in allegorical form; in the foreground here are not actions and events, but the fact that this “plot” has a certain emotional coloring. Consequently, the plot in the lyrics does not exist as such, but acts only as a means of psychological expressiveness.
So, in a lyrical work, we do not analyze either the plot, or the characters, or the subject details outside of their psychological function, that is, we do not pay attention to what is fundamentally important in the epic. But in the lyrics, the analysis of the lyrical hero acquires fundamental significance. Lyric hero - this is the image of a person in lyrics, the bearer of experience in a lyrical work. Like any image, the lyrical hero carries not only unique and inimitable personality traits, but also a certain generalization, therefore his identification with the real author is unacceptable. Often the lyrical hero is very close to the author in terms of personality, the nature of experiences, but nevertheless, the difference between them is fundamental and remains in all cases, since in each specific work the author actualizes some part of his personality in the lyrical hero, typing and summarizing lyrical experiences. Thanks to this, the reader easily identifies himself with the lyrical hero. It can be said that the lyrical hero is not only the author, but also anyone who reads this work and experiences the same experiences and emotions as the lyrical hero. In a number of cases, the lyrical hero correlates only to a very weak extent with the real author, revealing a high degree of conventionality of this image. So, in Tvardovsky's poem "I was killed near Rzhev ..." the lyrical narration is conducted on behalf of a fallen soldier. In rare cases, the lyrical hero appears even as the antipode of the author ("The Moral Man" by Nekrasov). Unlike the character of an epic or dramatic work, the lyrical hero, as a rule, does not have an existential certainty: he does not have a name, age, portrait features, sometimes it is not even clear whether he belongs to the male or female sex. The lyrical hero almost always exists outside of ordinary time and space: his experiences flow "everywhere" and "always".
The lyrics gravitate towards a small volume and, as a result, to a tense and complex composition. In lyrics, more often than in epic and drama, compositional techniques of repetition, opposition, amplification, and montage are used. Of exceptional importance in the composition of a lyrical work is the interaction of images, often creating a two-dimensional and multi-layered artistic meaning. So, in Yesenin's poem "I am the last poet of the village ..." the tension of the composition is created, firstly, by the contrast of color images:
On the trail blue fields
Iron guest coming soon.
Oatmeal, spilled at dawn,
Will collect it black a handful of.
Secondly, the technique of amplification attracts attention: the images associated with death are constantly repeated. Thirdly, the opposition of the lyrical hero to the “iron guest” is compositionally significant. Finally, the cross-cutting principle of the personification of nature links together individual landscape images. All this together creates a rather complex figurative and semantic structure in the work.
The main reference point of the composition of a lyrical work is in its finale, which is especially felt in works of small volume. For example, in Tyutchev's miniature "Russia cannot be understood with the mind ..." the entire text serves as a preparation for the last word, which contains the idea of \u200b\u200bthe work. But even in more voluminous creations, this principle is often maintained - let's name as examples "Monument" by Pushkin, "When the yellowing field is agitated ..." by Lermontov, "On the railway" by Blok - poems where the composition is a direct ascending development from the beginning to the last, percussion stanza.
The stylistic dominants of lyrics in the field of artistic speech are monologism, rhetoric and poetic form. In the vast majority of cases, a lyrical work is built as a monologue of a lyrical hero, so we do not need to single out the narrator's speech in it (it is absent) or to give a speech characterization of the characters (they are also absent). However, some lyrical works are constructed in the form of a dialogue of "characters" ("A conversation between a bookseller and a poet", "A scene from Pushkin's Faust", "Journalist, reader and writer" Lermontov). In this case, the “characters” entering into dialogue embody different facets of lyrical consciousness, therefore they do not have their own speech manner; the principle of monologism is maintained here as well. As a rule, the speech of a lyrical hero is characterized by literary correctness, so there is no need to analyze it from the point of view of a special speech manner.
Lyrical speech, as a rule, is speech with increased expressiveness of individual words and speech structures. In lyrics, there is a greater proportion of tropes and syntactic figures compared to epic and dramaturgy, but this pattern is visible only in the general array of all lyrical works. Separate lyrical poems, especially the XIX-XX centuries. may also differ in the absence of rhetoric, nominativity. There are poets whose style consistently eschews rhetoric and tends to be nominative - Pushkin, Bunin, Tvardovsky - but this is rather an exception to the rule. Such exceptions as the expression of the individual originality of the lyrical style are subject to mandatory analysis. In most cases, however, an analysis of both individual methods of speech expressivity and the general principle of organizing a speech system is required. So, for Blok, the general principle will be symbolization, for Yesenin - personifying metaphorism, for Mayakovsky - reification, etc. In any case, the lyrical word is very capacious, contains a "condensed" emotional meaning. For example, in Annensky's poem "Among the Worlds" the word "Star" has a meaning that is clearly superior to the dictionary one: it is not in vain that it is written with a capital letter. The star has a name and creates a multi-valued poetic image, behind which one can see the fate of the poet, and the woman, and the mystical secret, and the emotional ideal, and, perhaps, a number of other meanings acquired by the word in the process of free, albeit guided by the text, associations.
Due to the "condensedness" of poetic semantics, lyrics gravitate toward rhythmic organization, poetic embodiment, since the word in verse is more loaded with emotional meaning than in prose. “Poetry, in comparison with prose, has an increased capacity of all its constituent elements“...” The very movement of words in verse, their interaction and comparison in terms of rhythm and rhyme, a clear identification of the sound side of speech given by the poetic form, the relationship of rhythmic and syntactic structure and etc. - all this is fraught with inexhaustible semantic possibilities, which prose, in essence, is deprived of “...” words."
The case when the lyrics use not a poetic, but a prose form (the genre of the so-called poems in prose in the works of A. Bertrand, Turgenev, O. Wilde) is subject to mandatory study and analysis, since it indicates individual artistic originality. "A poem in prose", not being rhythmically organized, retains such common features of the lyrics as "small volume, increased emotionality, usually plotless composition, a general attitude towards the expression of a subjective impression or experience."
An analysis of the poetic features of lyrical speech is largely an analysis of its tempo and rhythmic organization, which is extremely important for a lyrical work, since tempo-rhythm has the ability to objectify certain moods and emotional states in itself and, with the need to evoke them in the reader. So, in the poem by A.K. Tolstoy “If you love, so without reason ...” the four-foot trochaic creates a cheerful and cheerful rhythm, which is also facilitated by adjacent rhyme, syntactic parallelism and through anaphora; the rhythm corresponds to the cheerful, cheerful, mischievous mood of the poem. In Nekrasov's poem "Reflections at the Front Door", the combination of three- and four-foot anapaest creates a slow, heavy, dull rhythm, in which the corresponding pathos of the work is embodied.
In Russian versification, only iambic tetrameter does not require special analysis - this is the most natural and frequently encountered size. Its specific content consists only in the fact that verse, in its tempo-rhythm, approaches prose, without, however, turning into it. All other poetic meters, not to mention the dolnik, declamatory-tonic and free verse, have their own specific emotional content. In general terms, the content of poetic meters and versification systems can be described as follows: short lines (2-4 feet) in two-syllable meters (especially in chorea) give energy to the verse, a vigorous, clearly defined rhythm, express, as a rule, a bright feeling, a joyful mood (“Svetlana” by Zhukovsky, “Winter is angry for a reason…” by Tyutchev, “Green Noise” by Nekrasov). The iambic lines, elongated to five or six feet or more, convey, as a rule, the process of reflection, the intonation is epic, calm and measured (“Monument” by Pushkin, “I do not like your irony ...” Nekrasov, “Oh friend, do not torment me with a cruel sentence ... » Feta). The presence of spondees and the absence of pyrrhias make the verse heavier and vice versa - a large number of pyrrhias contributes to the emergence of free intonation, close to colloquial, gives the verse lightness and euphony. The use of three-syllable sizes is associated with a clear, usually heavy rhythm (especially with an increase in the number of feet to 4–5), often expressing despondency, deep and difficult feelings, often pessimism, etc. mood (“Both boring and sad” Lermontov, “ Wave and thought "Tyutcheva," Whatever the year - the forces are decreasing ... "Nekrasova). Dolnik, as a rule, gives a nervous, ragged, whimsically capricious rhythm, expressing an uneven and anxious mood (“The girl sang in the church choir ...” by Blok, “Confusion” by Akhmatova, “No one took away anything ...” by Tsvetaeva). The use of the declamatory-tonic system creates a rhythm that is clear and at the same time free, the intonation is energetic, “offensive”, the mood is sharply defined and, as a rule, elevated (Mayakovsky, Aseev, Kirsanov). However, it should be remembered that the indicated correspondences of rhythm to poetic meaning exist only as tendencies and may not manifest themselves in individual works, here much depends on the individual-specific rhythmic originality of the poem.
The specificity of the lyrical gender also influences the meaningful analysis. When dealing with a lyrical poem, it is important first of all to comprehend its pathos, to catch and determine the leading emotional mood. In many cases, the correct definition of pathos makes it unnecessary to analyze the rest of the elements of artistic content, especially the idea, which often dissolves in pathos and does not have an independent existence: shone ... "- the pathos of romance, in Blok's poem "I am Hamlet; the blood grows cold ... ”- the pathos of tragedy. The formulation of the idea in these cases becomes unnecessary, and practically impossible (the emotional side noticeably prevails over the rational), and the definition of other aspects of the content (themes and problems in the first place) is optional and auxiliary.
LyroepicLyro-epic works are, as the name implies, a synthesis of epic and lyrical principles. From the epic, the lyro-epic takes the presence of a narrative, a plot (albeit a weakened one), a system of characters (less developed than in the epic), and a reproduction of the objective world. From lyrics - an expression of subjective experience, the presence of a lyrical hero (united with the narrator in one person), an attraction to a relatively small volume and poetic speech, often psychologism. In the analysis of lyrical-epic works, special attention should be paid not to the distinction between epic and lyrical principles (this is the first, preliminary stage of the analysis), but to their synthesis within the framework of one artistic world. For this, the analysis of the image of the lyrical hero-narrator is of fundamental importance. So, in Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina", lyrical and epic fragments are separated quite clearly: when reading, we easily distinguish plot and descriptive parts, on the one hand, and lyrical monologues saturated with psychologism ("The war has eaten my whole soul ...", "The moon laughed, like a clown…”, “Our meek homeland is poor…”, etc.). Narrative speech easily and inconspicuously turns into expressive-lyrical speech, the narrator and the lyrical hero are inseparable facets of the same image. Therefore - and this is very important - the narration of things, people, events is also imbued with lyricism, we feel the intonation of the lyrical hero in any text fragment of the poem. So, the epic transmission of the dialogue between the hero and the heroine ends with the lines: “The distance thickened, became foggy ... I don’t know why I touched her gloves and shawl”, here the epic beginning instantly and imperceptibly turns into a lyrical one. When describing what seems to be purely external, a lyrical intonation and a subjective-expressive epithet suddenly appear: “We have arrived. House with a mezzanine Slightly squatted on the facade. Excitingly smells of jasmine Its wicker palisade. And the intonation of subjective feeling slips in the epic narrative: “Toward evening they left. Where? I don’t know where,” or: “Severe, formidable years! But is it possible to describe everything?
Such penetration of lyrical subjectivity into the epic narrative is the most difficult to analyze, but at the same time the most interesting case of the synthesis of epic and lyrical beginnings. It is necessary to learn to see the lyrical intonation and the hidden lyrical hero in a text that is objectively epic at first glance. For example, in D. Kedrin's poem "Architects" there are no lyrical monologues as such, but the image of a lyrical hero can nevertheless be "reconstructed" - it manifests itself primarily in the lyrical excitement and solemnity of artistic speech, in a loving and sincere description of the church and its builders, in an emotionally rich final chord, redundant from the point of view of the plot, but necessary to create a lyrical experience. It can be said that the lyricism of the poem is manifested in the way a well-known historical story is told. There are also places in the text with special poetic tension, in these fragments the emotional intensity and the presence of the lyrical hero - the subject of the story - are especially clearly felt. For example:
And above all this shame
That church was
Like a bride!
And with his matting,
With a turquoise ring in my mouth
indecent girl
Stood at the Execution Ground
And wondering
Like a fairy tale
Looking at that beauty...
And then the sovereign
He ordered these architects to be blinded,
So that in his land
Church
There was one like this
So that in the Suzdal lands
And in the lands of Ryazan
And others
They didn't put up a better temple,
Than the Church of the Intercession!
Let us pay attention to the external ways of expressing lyrical intonation and subjective excitement - breaking the line into rhythmic segments, punctuation marks, etc. We also note that the poem is written in a rather rare size - a five-foot anapaest - giving solemnity and depth to intonation. As a result, we have a lyrical story about an epic event.
Literary genresThe category of genre in the analysis of a work of art is somewhat less important than the category of gender, but in some cases, knowledge of the genre nature of a work can help in the analysis, indicate which aspects should be paid attention to. In literary criticism, genres are groups of works within literary genres, united by common formal, meaningful or functional features. It should be said right away that not all works have a clear genre nature. So, Pushkin's poem "On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night ...", Lermontov's "The Prophet", plays by Chekhov and Gorky, "Vasily Terkin" by Tvardovsky and many other works are indefinable in the genre sense. But even in those cases where the genre can be defined quite unambiguously, such a definition does not always help the analysis, since genre structures are often identified by a secondary feature that does not create a special originality of content and form. This applies mainly to lyrical genres, such as elegy, ode, message, epigram, sonnet, etc. But still, sometimes the genre category matters, pointing to the content or formal dominant, some features of the problem, pathos, poetics.
In epic genres, it is primarily the opposition of genres in terms of their volume that matters. The established literary tradition here distinguishes the genres of a large (novel, epic) middle (story) and small (story) volume, however, in typology, the distinction between only two positions is real, since the story is not an independent genre, gravitating in practice either to the story (“Belkin’s Tale” by Pushkin) or to the novel (his “The Captain’s Daughter”). But here the distinction between large and small volume seems essential, and above all for the analysis of a small genre - a story. Yu.N. Tynyanov rightly wrote: "The calculation for a large form is not the same as for a small one." The small volume of the story dictates the peculiar principles of poetics, specific artistic techniques. First of all, this is reflected in the properties of literary representation. The story is highly characteristic of the “economy mode”, it cannot have long descriptions, therefore it is characterized not by details-details, but by details-symbols, especially in the description of a landscape, portrait, interior. Such a detail acquires heightened expressiveness and, as a rule, refers to the creative imagination of the reader, suggests co-creation, conjecture. According to this principle, Chekhov built his descriptions, in particular, the master of artistic detail; let us recall, for example, his textbook depiction of a moonlit night: “In the descriptions of nature, one must grasp at small details, grouping them in such a way that after reading, when you close your eyes, a picture is given. For example, you will get a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a glass from a broken bottle flashed like a bright star and the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled in a ball ”(Letter to Al. P. Chekhov dated May 10, 1886). Here the details of the landscape are guessed by the reader based on the impression of one or two dominant symbolic details. The same thing happens in the field of psychologism: for the writer, it is important not so much to reflect the mental process in its entirety, but to recreate the leading emotional tone, the atmosphere of the hero’s inner life at the moment. The masters of such a psychological story were Maupassant, Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Hemingway and others.
In the composition of the story, as in any short form, the ending is very important, which is either in the nature of a plot denouement or an emotional ending. Noteworthy are those endings that do not resolve the conflict, but only demonstrate its insolubility; so-called "open" finals, as in Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog".
One of the genre varieties of the story is short story The short story is an action-packed narrative, the action in it develops quickly, dynamically, strives for a denouement, which contains the whole meaning of what is told: first of all, with its help, the author gives an understanding of the life situation, makes a “sentence” on the depicted characters. In short stories, the plot is compressed, the action is concentrated. A fast-paced plot is characterized by a very economical system of characters: there are usually just enough of them so that the action can continuously develop. Cameo characters are introduced (if they are introduced at all) only to kick-start the action of the story and disappear immediately afterwards. In the short story, as a rule, there are no side storylines, author's digressions; only what is absolutely necessary for understanding the conflict and the plot is reported from the past of the characters. Descriptive elements that do not move the action forward are kept to a minimum and appear almost exclusively at the beginning: then, towards the end, they will interfere, slowing down the development of the action and distracting attention.
When all these tendencies are brought to their logical end, the short story acquires a pronounced anecdote structure with all its main features: a very small volume, an unexpected, paradoxical "shock" ending, minimal psychological motivations for actions, the absence of descriptive moments, etc. used by Leskov, early Chekhov, Maupassant, O'Henry, D. London, Zoshchenko and many other novelists.
The novella, as a rule, is based on external conflicts, in which contradictions collide (setting), develop and, having reached the highest point (culmination) in development and struggle, are more or less rapidly resolved. Moreover, the most important thing is that the contradictions encountered must and can be resolved in the course of the development of the action. For this, the contradictions must be sufficiently definite and manifest, the characters must have some psychological activity in order to strive at all costs to resolve the conflict, and the conflict itself must, at least in principle, be amenable to immediate resolution.
Consider from this angle the story of V. Shukshin "The Hunt to Live". A young city guy comes into the hut to the forester Nikitich. It turns out that the guy escaped from prison. Suddenly, the district authorities come to Nikitich to hunt, Nikitich tells the guy to pretend to be asleep, puts the guests down and falls asleep himself, and waking up, he finds that "Kolya the Professor" has left, taking Nikitich's gun and his tobacco pouch with him. Nikitich rushes after him, overtakes the guy and takes his gun from him. But in general Nikitich likes the guy, he is sorry to let go of that one, in winter, unaccustomed to the taiga and without a gun. The old man leaves the guy a gun, so that when he reaches the village, he will hand it over to Nikitich's godfather. But when they have already gone each in their own direction, the guy shoots Nikitich in the back of the head, because “it will be better, father. More reliable."
The clash of characters in the conflict of this novel is very sharp and clear. The incompatibility, the opposite of Nikitich's moral principles - principles based on kindness and trust in people - and the moral standards of the "Koli-professor", who "wants to live" for himself, "better and more reliable" - also for himself - the incompatibility of these moral principles intensifies in the course of action and is embodied in a tragic, but inevitable denouement according to the logic of the characters. We note the special significance of the denouement: it not only formally completes the plot action, but exhausts the conflict. The author's assessment of the depicted characters, the author's understanding of the conflict are concentrated precisely in the denouement.
Major genres of epic - novel And epic - differ in their content, primarily in terms of problems. The content dominant in the epic is national, and in the novel - novelistic (adventurous or ideological and moral) problems. For the novel, accordingly, it is extremely important to determine which of the two types it belongs to. Depending on the genre content dominant, the poetics of the novel and the epic is also constructed. The epic tends to plot, the image of the hero in it is built as the quintessence of typical qualities inherent in the people, ethnic group, class, etc. In the adventure novel, the plot also clearly prevails, but the image of the hero is built in a different way: he is emphatically free from class, corporate and other connections with the environment that gave rise to it. In an ideological and moral novel, the stylistic dominants will almost always be psychologism and heteroglossia.
Over the past century and a half, a new genre of large volume has developed in the epic - the epic novel, which combines the properties of these two genres. This genre tradition includes such works as Tolstoy's "War and Peace", Sholokhov's "Quiet Flows the Don", A. Tolstoy's "Walking Through the Torments", Simonov's "The Living and the Dead", Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" and some others. The epic novel is characterized by a combination of national and ideological and moral issues, but not a simple summation of them, but such an integration in which the ideological and moral search for a person is correlated primarily with the people's truth. The problem of the epic novel becomes, in the words of Pushkin, "the fate of man and the fate of the people" in their unity and interdependence; Critical events for the entire ethnos give the philosophical search for the hero a special urgency and relevance, the hero is faced with the need to determine his position not just in the world, but in national history. In the field of poetics, the epic novel is characterized by a combination of psychologism with plot, a compositional combination of general, medium and close-up plans, the presence of many storylines and their interweaving, and author's digressions.
The fable genre is one of the few canonized genres that have retained their real historical existence in the 19th–20th centuries. Some features of the fable genre may suggest promising directions for analysis. This is, firstly, a large degree of conventionality and even the direct fantasticness of the figurative system. The plot is conditional in the fable, therefore, although it can be analyzed by elements, such an analysis does not give anything interesting. The figurative system of the fable is based on the principle of allegory, its characters denote some abstract idea - power, justice, ignorance, etc. Therefore, the conflict in the fable should be sought not so much in the clash of real characters, but in the opposition of ideas: for example, in " Wolf and Lamb ”Krylov, the conflict is not between the Wolf and the Lamb, but between the ideas of strength and justice; the plot is driven not so much by the Wolf's desire to dine, but by his desire to give this case a "legitimate look and sense."
In the composition of a fable, two parts are usually clearly distinguished - the plot (often unfolding in the form of a dialogue of characters) and the so-called morality - the author's assessment and understanding of the depicted, which can be placed both at the beginning and at the end of the work, but never in the middle. There are fables without morals. The Russian poetic fable is written in multi-footed (free) iambic, which makes it possible to bring the intonational pattern of the fable closer to colloquial speech. According to the norms of the poetics of classicism, the fable belongs to the “low” genres (we note that among the classicists the word “low” in relation to the genre did not mean blasphemy, but only established the place of the genre in the aesthetic hierarchy and set the most important features of the classic canon), therefore, it is widely found heteroglossia and, in particular, vernacular, which brings the speech form of the fable even closer to the spoken language. In fables, we usually meet with sociocultural issues, sometimes with philosophical ones (“The Philosopher”, “Two Doves” by Krylov) and very rarely with national ones (“The Wolf in the Kennel” by Krylov). The specificity of the idea world in a fable is such that its elements are expressed, as a rule, directly and do not cause difficulties in interpretation. However, it would be wrong to always look for an open expression of an idea in the morality of a fable - if this is true, for example, in relation to the fable "The Monkey and Glasses", then in "The Wolf and the Lamb" the morality does not formulate an idea, but a theme ("The strong always blame the weak ").
The lyrical-epic genre of the ballad is also a canonized genre, but already from the aesthetic system of not classicism, but romanticism. It assumes the presence of a plot (usually simple, one-line) and, as a rule, its emotional comprehension by a lyrical hero. The form of organization of speech is poetic, the size is arbitrary. An essential formal feature of a ballad is the presence of a dialogue. In the ballad there is often a mystery, a mystery, which is associated with the emergence of conventionally fantastic imagery (Zhukovsky); often the motive of fate, fate (“The Song of the Prophetic Oleg” by Pushkin, “The Ballad of a Smoky Carriage” by A. Kochetkov). The pathos in the ballad is sublime (tragic, romantic, less often heroic).
In dramaturgy over the past hundred - one hundred and fifty years, genre boundaries have been blurred, and many plays have become indefinable in terms of genre (Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorky, Shaw, etc.). However, along with genre-amorphous constructions, there are also more or less pure genres. tragedy And comedy. Both genres are defined by their leading pathos. For tragedy, therefore, the nature of the conflict is of paramount importance; in the analysis it is required to show its insolubility, despite the active attempts of the characters to do this. It should be taken into account that the conflict in tragedy is usually multifaceted, and if on the surface a tragic collision appears as a confrontation between characters, then at a deeper level it is almost always a psychological conflict, a tragic duality of the hero. So, in Pushkin's tragedy "Boris Godunov" the main stage action is based on external conflicts: Boris - the Pretender, Boris - Shuisky, etc. Deeper aspects of the conflict are manifested in folk scenes, and especially in the scene of Boris with the holy fool - this is a conflict between the king and the people. And finally, the deepest conflict is the contradictions in Boris's soul, his struggle with his own conscience. It is this last collision that makes the position and fate of Boris truly tragic. The means of revealing this deep conflict in tragedy is a kind of psychologism, which must be paid attention to; in selective analysis, it is necessary to focus on scenes with high psychological content and emotional intensity - for example, in Boris Godunov, such reference points of the composition will be Shuisky's story about the death of Dimitri , the scene with the holy fool, Boris' internal monologues.
In comedy, the pathos of satire or humor, less often irony, becomes the dominant content; problems can be very diverse, but most often socio-cultural. In the field of style, such properties as heteroglossia, plot, increased conventionality become important and subject to analysis. Basically, the analysis of the form should be aimed at clarifying why this or that character, episode, scene, replica is comical, funny; on the forms and techniques of achieving a comic effect. So, in Gogol's comedy The Inspector General, one should dwell in detail on those scenes where an inner, deep comedy is manifested, consisting in a contradiction between what should be and what is. Already the first act, which is essentially a detailed exposition, provides a huge amount of material for analysis, since in a frank conversation of officials it turns out the actual state of affairs in the city, which does not coincide with what should be: the judge takes bribes with greyhound puppies in the naive conviction that this is not a sin , government funds allocated for the church were stolen, and a report was presented to the authorities that the church “began to be built, but burned down”, “a tavern in the city, uncleanness”, etc. The comedy further intensifies as the action develops, moreover special attention should be paid to those scenes and episodes where all sorts of absurdities, inconsistencies, and alogism are manifested. Aesthetic analysis in the consideration of comedy should prevail over the problematic and semantic, in complete contrast to the traditional practice of teaching.
In some cases, it is difficult to analyze the author's genre subtitles, which do not quite coincide with modern ideas about a particular genre. In this case, for a correct understanding of the author's intention, it is necessary to find out how the given genre was perceived by the author and his contemporaries. For example, in the practice of teaching, the genre of Griboedov's play "Woe from Wit" is often puzzling. What kind of comedy is this, if the main conflict is dramatic, there is no special setting for laughter, when reading or watching, the impression is not comic at all, but the pathos of the protagonist and is generally close to tragedy? To understand the genre, one must turn to the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, in line with which Griboyedov worked and which did not know the genre of drama, but only tragedy or comedy. Comedy (or, in other words, "high comedy", as opposed to farce) did not imply a mandatory setting for laughter. In general, dramatic works belonged to this genre, giving a picture of the mores of society and revealing its vices, an accusatory and instructive emotional orientation was obligatory, but not necessarily comic; at the comedy it was not at all supposed to laugh at the top of its lungs, but it was supposed to reflect. Therefore, in Griboedov's comedy, one should not place a special emphasis on the pathos of satire, the corresponding methods of poetics, rather, one should look for invective as a leading emotional tone in it. This - serious - pathos does not contradict either the drama of the conflict or the character of the protagonist.
Another example is the author's genre designation of "Dead Souls" - a poem. Under the poem, we are accustomed to understand a poetic lyrical-epic work, therefore, the solution to the Gogol genre is often sought in the author's digressions, which give the work subjectivity, lyricism. But this is not the point at all, Gogol simply perceived the very genre of the poem differently than we do. The poem for him was “a small kind of epic”, that is, not the features of the form, but the nature of the problematic were taken as a genre sign here. A poem, unlike a novel, is a work with national problems, in which it is not about the particular, but about the general, about the fate of not individuals, but the people, the motherland, the state. With such an understanding of the genre, the features of the poetics of Gogol's work also correlate: an abundance of extra-plot elements, the inability to single out the protagonist, the epic slowness of the narration, etc.
Another example is Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm", which, by the nature of the conflict, its resolution and leading emotional pathos, is, of course, a tragedy. But the fact is that in the era of Ostrovsky, the dramaturgical genre of tragedy was determined not by the nature of the conflict and pathos, but by the problem-thematic feature. Only a work depicting outstanding historical figures, often dedicated to the historical past, national-historical in its problems and sublime in its object of image could be called a tragedy. Works from the life of merchants, philistines, and townsfolk could only be called a drama given the tragic nature of the conflict.
These are the main features of the analysis of a work in connection with its genre and genre.
? CONTROL QUESTIONS:1. What are the characteristic features of drama as a literary genre? What is the difference between action plays, mood plays and discussion plays?
2. What is the specificity of lyrics as a literary genre? What requirements does this specificity impose on the analysis of the work?
3. What should and should not be analyzed in the world of a lyrical work? What is a lyrical hero? What is the meaning of tempo in lyrics?
4. What is a lyric-epic work and what are the main principles of its analysis?
5. In what cases and in relation to what genres is it necessary to analyze the genre features of the work? What literary genres do you know that are essential for the content or form of a work?
Exercises1. Compare the given works with each other and determine the specific function of remarks in each of them:
N.V. Gogol. Marriage,
A.N. Ostrovsky. Snow Maiden,
A. P. Chekhov. Uncle Ivan,
M. Gorky. Old man.
2. Correct errors in the play type definition (not necessarily all definitions are wrong):
A.S. Pushkin. Boris Godunov - mood play,
N.V. Gogol. The players are a play of action
ON THE. Ostrovsky. Dowry - a play-discussion,
ON THE. Ostrovsky. Mad money is a mood play
L.N. Tolstoy. The power of darkness is a play-debate,
A. P. Chekhov. Ivanov - a play of mood,
A.P. Chekhov. The seagull is an action play,
M. Gorky. The old man is an action play
M.A. Bulgakov. Days of the Turbins - a play-discussion,
A.V. Vampilov. Duck hunting is a mood play.
3. Briefly describe the image of the lyrical hero in the following works:
M.Yu. Lermontov. Prophet,
ON THE. Nekrasov. I don't like your irony...
A.A. Block. Oh spring without end and without edge ...,
A.T. Tvardovsky. In the case of a major utopia...
4. Determine the poetic size and the tempo it creates in the following works;
A.S. Pushkin. It's time, my friend, it's time! Rest the heart asks ...,
I.S. Turgenev. Foggy morning, gray morning...
ON THE. Nekrasov. Reflections at the front door
A.A. Block. stranger,
I.A. Bunin. Loneliness,
S.A. Yesenin. I am the last poet of the village...,
V.V. Mayakovsky. A conversation with the financial inspector about poetry,
M.A. Svetlov. Grenada.
Final taskIn the works below, note the generic and genre features that are essential for analysis, and analyze them. At the same time, note those cases when the generic and genre affiliation of the work has practically no effect on the analysis.
Texts for analysis
A: A.S. Pushkin. Feast in Time of Plague,
M.Yu. Lermontov. Masquerade,
N.V. Gogol. auditor,
A.N. Ostrovsky. Wolves and sheep
L.N. Tolstoy. Living Dead,
A. P. Chekhov. Ivanov,
M. Gorky. Vassa Zheleznova,
L. Andreev. Human life.
B: K.N. Batyushkov. My genius
V.A. Zhukovsky. lark,
A.S. Pushkin. Elegy (Crazy years faded fun ...),
M.Yu. Lermontov. Sail,
F.I. Tyutchev. These poor villages...
I.F. Annensky. Wish,
A.A. Block. About valor, about exploits, about glory ...,
V. V. Mayakovsky. Sergei Yesenin,
N.S. Gumilev. Choice.
IN: V.A. Zhukovsky. willow cranes,
A.S. Pushkin. Groom,
ON THE. Nekrasov. Railway,
A.A. Block. Twelve,
S.A Yesenin. Black man.
Exploring the context
Context and its typesA literary work, on the one hand, is self-sufficient and closed in itself, and on the other hand, it comes into contact with extra-textual reality in different ways - context. The context in the broad sense of the word is understood as the whole set of phenomena associated with the text of a work of art, but at the same time outside it. There is a literary context - the inclusion of a work in the writer's work, in the system of literary trends and trends; historical - the socio-political situation in the era of the creation of the work; biographically-everyday - the facts of the writer's biography, the realities of the everyday way of life of the era, this also includes the circumstances of the writer's work on the work (history of the text) and his non-artistic statements.
The issue of involving contextual data in the analysis of a work of art is solved ambiguously. In a number of cases, out of context, it is generally impossible to understand a literary work (for example, Pushkin's epigram "To Two Alexander Pavlovichs" requires mandatory knowledge of the historical context - the activities of Alexander I, - and biographical - knowledge of the lyceum Alexander Pavlovich Zernov); in other cases, the involvement of contextual data is optional, and sometimes, as will be seen from the following, even undesirable. Usually the text itself contains direct or indirect indications of which context should be referred to for its correct understanding: for example, in Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, the realities of the “Moscow” chapters indicate the everyday context, the epigraph and the “evangelical” chapters determine literary context, etc.
Historical contextThe study of the historical context is a more familiar operation for us. It has even turned into some kind of obligatory template, so that the schoolboy and student tend to start any conversation about the work by the way and inopportunely from the era of its creation. Meanwhile, the study of the historical context is not always necessary.
It should be noted that when perceiving a work of art, some kind of, even the most approximate and general historical context is almost always present - so, it is difficult to imagine a reader who would not know what Pushkin did in Russia in the era of the Decembrists, under the autocratic serf system, after the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, etc., that is, he would not have even a vague idea of the Pushkin era. The perception of almost any work thus, willy-nilly, takes place against a certain contextual background. The question, therefore, is whether it is necessary to expand and deepen this background knowledge of the context for an adequate understanding of the work. The solution to this question is prompted by the text itself, and above all by its content. In the case when we have a work with a pronounced eternal, timeless theme, the involvement of the historical context turns out to be useless and unnecessary, and at times even harmful, since it distorts the real connections of artistic creativity with the historical era. So, in particular, it would be directly wrong to explain (and this is sometimes done) the optimism of Pushkin's intimate lyrics by the fact that the poet lived in an era of social upsurge, and the pessimism of Lermontov's intimate lyrics - an era of crisis and reaction. In this case, the involvement of contextual data does not give anything for the analysis and understanding of the work. On the contrary, when specific historical aspects are essential in the subject matter of a work, it may be necessary to refer to the historical context.
Such an appeal, as a rule, is also useful for a better understanding of the writer's worldview, and thereby the problems and axiomatics of his works. So, in order to understand the worldview of the mature Chekhov, it is necessary to take into account the intensified in the second half of the 19th century. materialistic tendencies in philosophy and natural sciences, the teachings of Tolstoy and the controversy around him, the widespread use of the subjective-idealistic philosophy of Schopenhauer in Russian society, the crisis of the ideology and practice of populism, and a number of other socio-historical factors. Their study will help in a number of cases to better understand Chekhov's positive program in the field of morality and the principles of his aesthetics. But, on the other hand, the involvement of this kind of data is not strictly necessary: after all, Chekhov's worldview is fully reflected in his artistic creations, and their thoughtful and careful reading provides almost everything necessary for understanding Chekhov's axiomatics and problems.
In any case, there are a number of dangers associated with using contextual historical data that you need to be aware of and be aware of.
First, the study of the literary work itself cannot be substituted for the study of its historical context. A work of art cannot be regarded as an illustration of historical processes, losing the idea of its aesthetic specificity. Therefore, in practice, the involvement of the historical context should be extremely moderate and limited to the framework of a work that is absolutely necessary for understanding. Ideally, an appeal to historical information should occur only when one or another fragment of the text cannot be understood without such an appeal. For example, when reading "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin, one should obviously imagine in general terms the system of serfdom, the difference between corvée and dues, the position of the peasantry, etc.; when analyzing Gogol's "Dead Souls" you need to know about the order of submission of revision tales, when reading Mayakovsky's "Mystery-buff" - be able to decipher political hints, etc. In any case, it should be remembered that the involvement of historical context data does not replace analytical work on the text , but is an auxiliary technique.
Secondly, the historical context must be drawn on in sufficient detail, taking into account the complex and sometimes variegated structure of the historical process in each given period. So, when studying the era of the 30s of the XIX century. it is absolutely insufficient to indicate that this was the era of the Nikolaev reaction, crisis and stagnation in public life. In particular, it is necessary to take into account the fact that this was also the era of the ascending development of Russian culture, represented by the names of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Belinsky, Stankevich, Chaadaev and many others. The era of the 60s, which we habitually consider the heyday of revolutionary democratic culture, also carried other principles, manifested in the activities and works of Katkov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, A. Grigoriev and others. Examples of this kind could be multiplied .
And of course, we must resolutely reject the stereotype according to which all the great writers who lived under the autocratic serf system fought against autocracy and serfdom for the ideals of a brighter future.
Thirdly, in the general historical situation, one must see mainly those aspects of it that have a direct impact on literature as a form of social consciousness. This is primarily not a socio-economic basis and not a political superstructure, which is often the idea of an era in the practice of teaching, but the state of culture and social thought. Thus, for understanding Dostoevsky’s work, it is important, first of all, not that his era fell on the second stage of the Russian liberation movement, not the crisis of the feudal system and the gradual transition to capitalist relations, not the form of monarchical government, but the controversy between Westerners and Slavophiles, aesthetic discussions, the struggle of Pushkin’s and Gogol trends, the position of religion in Russia and in the West, the state of philosophical and theological thought, etc.
Thus, the involvement of a historical context in the study of a work of art is an auxiliary and not always necessary methodological method of analysis, but by no means its methodological principle.
Biographical contextThe same can be said, and even more justifiably, about the biographical context. Only in the rarest cases is it needed to understand the work (in lyrical genres with a pronounced functional orientation - epigrams, less often in messages). In other cases, the involvement of a biographical context is not only useless, but often harmful, since it reduces the artistic image to a specific fact and deprives it of a generalizing meaning. So, to analyze Pushkin's poem "I loved you ...", we absolutely do not need to know which particular woman this message is addressed to and what kind of relationship the real author had with her, since Pushkin's work is a generalized image light and uplifting feeling. The biographical context may not enrich, but impoverish the idea of the writer's work: for example, the nationality of the same Pushkin cannot be explained by one biographical fact - the songs and fairy tales of Arina Rodionovna - she was also born through direct observation of folk life, the assimilation of her customs, traditions, moral and aesthetic norms, through the contemplation of Russian nature, through the experience of the Patriotic War of 1812, through familiarization with European culture, etc., and was thus a very complex and profound phenomenon.
It is therefore optional, and often undesirable, to establish real life prototypes of literary characters, and even more so to reduce literary characters to their prototypes - this impoverishes the artistic image, deprives it of a generalizing content, simplifies the idea of the creative process and does not at all testify to the realism of the writer, as long time was considered in our literary criticism. Although it should be noted that back in the 1920s, the outstanding Russian literary theorist A.P. Skaftymov warned of the danger of dissolving the aesthetic qualities of a work of art in a biographical context and clearly wrote: “It is even less necessary for the aesthetic understanding of a work to compare its internal images with the so-called “prototypes”, no matter how reliable the connection between one and the other. The properties of the prototype cannot in the least serve as a support in the internal interpretation of certain features projected by the author in the corresponding character.
The biographical context can also include what is called the "creative laboratory" of the artist, the study of work on the text: drafts, initial revisions, etc. The involvement of this kind of data is also not necessary for analysis (by the way, they may simply not be), but when methodologically inept use brings only harm. In most cases, the logic of teachers of literature turns everything upside down here: the fact of the final edition is replaced by the fact of a draft and, as such, is called upon to prove something. So, for many teachers, the original title of Griboedov's comedy "Woe to the Wit" seems more expressive. In the spirit of this title, the ideological meaning of the work is interpreted: smart Chatsky was hunted down by Famus Moscow. But after all, the logic when using the facts of the creative history of the work should be completely opposite: the original title was discarded, which means that it did not suit Griboedov, it seemed unsuccessful. Why? - yes, obviously, precisely because of its straightforwardness, sharpness, which does not reflect the real dialectic of the relationship between Chatsky and Famusovsky society. It is this dialectic that is well conveyed in the final title: woe not to the mind, but to the bearer of the mind, who himself puts himself in a false and ridiculous position, the sword, as Pushkin puts it, beads before the Repetilovs, and so on. In general, the same Skaftymov spoke well about the relationship between the final text and the creative biographical context: “As for the study of draft materials, plans, successive editorial changes, etc., even this area of study without theoretical analysis cannot lead to an aesthetic understanding of the final text. The facts of the draft are by no means equivalent to the facts of the final edition. The intentions of the author in one or another of his characters, for example, could change at different times of work, and the idea could not be presented in the same lines, and it would be incongruous to transfer the meaning of the draft fragments, even if they are full of clarity, to the final text "..." Only the very the work can speak for itself. The course of the analysis and all its conclusions must immanently grow out of the work itself. The author himself contains all the ends and beginnings. Any retreat into the realm of draft manuscripts or biographical references would threaten with the danger of changing and distorting the qualitative and quantitative ratio of the ingredients of the work, and this would, as a result, have an impact on the elucidation of the final intention "..." Judgments based on drafts would be judgments about what the work is wanted to be or could be, but not about what it has become and is now in its final form consecrated by the author.
The literary scholar seems to be echoed by the poet; Here is what Tvardovsky writes on the subject of interest to us: “You can and should not know any “early” and other works, no “variants” - and write on the basis of the well-known and generally significant works of the writer the most important and most essential” (Letter to P. S. Vykhodtsev dated April 21, 1959).
In solving complex and controversial issues of interpretation, literary practitioners and especially teachers of literature are often inclined to resort to the author's own judgment about his work, and this argument is given unconditionally decisive importance ("The author himself said ..."). For example, in the interpretation of Turgenev's Bazarov, the phrase from Turgenev's letter becomes such an argument: "... if he is called a nihilist, then it must be read: revolutionary" (Letter to K.K. Sluchevsky dated April 14, 1862). Let us pay attention, however, to the fact that this definition does not sound in the text, and certainly not because of fear of censorship, but in essence: not a single character trait speaks of Bazarov as a revolutionary, that is, according to Mayakovsky , as about a person who "understanding or guessing the coming centuries, fights for them and leads humanity to them." And mere hatred of the aristocrats, disbelief in God and the denial of noble culture for a revolutionary is clearly not enough.
Another example is Gorky's interpretation of the image of Luka from the play "At the Bottom". Gorky wrote already in the Soviet era: “... There are still a very large number of comforters who console only so that they do not get bored with their complaints, do not disturb the usual peace of a cold soul that has endured everything. The most precious thing for them is this peace, this stable balance of their feelings and thoughts. Then their own knapsack, their own teapot and a cooking pot are very dear to them “…” Comforters of this kind are the most intelligent, knowledgeable and eloquent. That is why they are the most harmful. Luka was supposed to be such a comforter in the play "At the Bottom", but apparently I did not manage to make him like that.
It was on this statement that the understanding of the play, which was dominant for many years, was based as a denunciation of the “comforting lie” and discrediting the “harmful old man”. But again, the objective meaning of the play resists such an interpretation: Gorky nowhere discredits the image of Luka artistic means - neither in the plot, nor in the statements of the characters he likes. On the contrary, only embittered cynics mock him maliciously - Bubnov, Baron, and partly Kleshch; does not accept either Luka or his philosophy Kostylev. Those who have preserved the “soul of life” - Nastya, Anna, the Actor, the Tatar - feel in him the truth they really need - the truth of participation and pity for the person. Even Satin, who supposedly should be the ideological antagonist of Luka, even he declares: “Dubye ... keep silent about the old man! The old man is not a charlatan. What is truth? Man is the truth! He understood this ... He is smart! .. He ... acted on me like acid on an old and dirty coin ... ”. And in the plot, Luka shows himself only from the very best side: he speaks humanly with the dying Anna, tries to save the Actor and Ash, listens to Nastya, etc. The conclusion inevitably follows from the whole structure of the play: Luka is the bearer of a humane attitude towards man, and his lies are sometimes more necessary to people than the humiliating truth.
Other examples of this kind of discrepancy between the objective meaning of the text and its author's interpretation can be cited. So what, the authors do not know what they are doing? How can such discrepancies be explained? Many reasons.
First, the objective discrepancy between intent and execution, when the author, often without noticing it himself, does not say exactly what he was going to say. This happens as a result of a general and still not quite clear for us law of artistic creation: a work is always richer in meaning than the original idea. Obviously, Dobrolyubov came closest to understanding this law: “No, we do not impose anything on the author, we say in advance that we do not know for what purpose, due to what preliminary considerations he depicted the story that constitutes the content of the story “On the Eve”. It is not so important for us that wanted tell the author how much what affected them, even unintentionally, simply as a result of a faithful reproduction of the facts of life” (“When will the real day come?”).
Secondly, between the creation of a work and the statement about it, there may be a significant period of time during which the author's experience, worldview, likes and dislikes, creative and ethical principles, etc. change. This happened, in particular, with Gorky in the above case. , and even earlier with Gogol, who at the end of his life gave a moralistic interpretation of The Inspector General, which clearly did not coincide with its original objective meaning. Sometimes a writer can be strongly influenced by literary criticism of his work (as happened, for example, with Turgenev after the release of "Fathers and Sons"), which can also cause a desire to retroactively "correct" his creation.
But the main reason for the discrepancy between the artistic meaning and the author's interpretation is the discrepancy between the artistic worldview and the writer's theoretical worldview, which often conflict and almost never coincide. The worldview is logically and conceptually ordered, while the worldview is based on the direct feeling of the artist, includes emotional, irrational, subconscious moments in which a person simply cannot be aware of. This spontaneous and largely uncontrolled concept of the world and man forms the basis of a work of art, while the basis of the author's extra-artistic statements is a rationally ordered worldview. This is where writers' “conscientious misconceptions” about their creations mainly come from.
Theoretical literary criticism realized quite a long time ago the danger of referring to the author's extra-artistic statements in order to understand the meaning of the work. Remembering Dobrolyubov's principle of "real criticism" quoted above, let us turn again to Skaftymov's article: "The third-party testimony of the author, which goes beyond the limits of the work, can only have a suggestive value and, for its recognition, requires verification by theoretical means of immanent analysis." The writers themselves are also often aware of the impossibility, uselessness or harmfulness of self-interpretations. So, Blok refused to comment on the author's intention of his poem "The Twelve". Tolstoy wrote: “If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write the same novel that I wrote, first” (Letter to N.N. Strakhov dated April 23 and 26, 1876 G.). The prominent contemporary writer U. Eco speaks even more sharply: “The author should not interpret his work. Or he should not have written a novel, which by definition is an interpretation machine “…” The author should have died after finishing the book. In order not to get in the way of the text.
In general, it must be said that often writers, in addition to their artistic heritage, leave behind philosophical, journalistic, literary-critical, epistolary works, and so on. To what extent does their study help in the analysis of a work of art? The answer to this question is ambiguous. Ideally, a literary critic is obliged to give a full-fledged analysis of a literary text, completely without resorting to extra-textual data, which in any case are auxiliary. However, in a number of cases, an appeal to the author's non-fictional statements can be useful, primarily in terms of studying poetics. In the literary-critical or epistolary heritage, aesthetic principles formulated by the writer himself can be found, the application of which to the analysis of a literary text can have a positive effect. Thus, the key to the complex unity of Tolstoy's novels is given to us by the following statement by Tolstoy: "In everything, almost in everything that I wrote, I was guided by the need to collect thoughts linked together in order to express myself, but each thought, expressed in words separately, loses its meaning is terribly lowered when one is taken from the clutch in which it is located. The linkage itself is composed not by a thought (I think), but by something else, and it is impossible to express the basis of this linkage directly in words, but only indirectly - in words describing images, actions, positions ”(Letter to N.N. Strakhov dated 23 and April 26, 1876). An understanding of Chekhov's principles of expressing the author's subjectivity is facilitated by a letter to Suvorin, in which one of the basic principles of Chekhov's poetics is formulated: "When I write, I fully rely on the reader, believing that he himself will add the subjective elements missing in the story" (Letter to A.S. Suvorin on April 1, 1890). To understand Mayakovsky's poetics, his theoretical and literary article "How to make poetry" gives a lot. Attracting such and similar materials of a general nature can bring nothing but benefit for analysis.
The situation is more complicated with attempts to clarify the content of a work of art by drawing on the non-artistic statements of the writer. Here we are always in danger, which was discussed above - as a rule, it is possible to reconstruct the worldview of the author from non-artistic statements, but not his artistic worldview. Their discrepancy takes place in all cases and can lead to a depleted and even distorted understanding of the literary text. Contextual analysis in this direction can be useful if the worldview and worldview of the writer in general terms coincide, and the creative person is distinguished by a kind of solidity, integrity (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov). When the consciousness of the writer is internally contradictory and his theoretical attitudes diverge from artistic practice (Gogol, Ostrovsky, Tolstoy, Gorky), the danger of replacing the worldview with a worldview and distorting the content of the work increases sharply. In any case, it should be remembered that any involvement of extra-textual data can be useful only when it complements immanent analysis, and does not replace it.
Literary contextAs far as the literary context is concerned, bringing it into the analysis almost never does any harm. It is especially useful to compare the work under study with other works of the same author, since the mass reveals more clearly the patterns inherent in the work of the writer as a whole, his inclination to certain problems, the originality of style, etc. This path has the advantage that in the analysis of a separate work allows you to go from the general to the specific. Thus, the study of Pushkin's work in its entirety reveals a problem that is not immediately noticeable in individual works - the problem of "independence of a person", his inner freedom, based on a sense of belonging to the eternal principles of being, national tradition and world culture. Thus, a comparison of the poetics of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" with "Demons" and "The Brothers Karamazov" makes it possible to identify a typical problem situation for Dostoevsky - "blood according to conscience". Sometimes the attraction of a literary context is even an indispensable condition for the correct comprehension of a single work of art, which can be illustrated by the example of the perception of Chekhov's work by lifetime criticism. The early stories of the writer, appearing one by one in the newspapers, did not attract close attention, did not seem to be something significant. Attitude towards Chekhov changes with the advent of collections his stories: put together, they turned out to be a significant fact in Russian literature, their original problematic content and artistic originality were more clearly revealed. The same can be said about lyrical works: they somehow “do not look” alone, their natural perception is in a collection, magazine selection, collection of works, when individual artistic creations are mutually illuminated and complement each other.
Involving a wider literary context, that is, the work of the predecessors and contemporaries of a given author, is also generally desirable and useful, although not so necessary. The involvement of this kind of information serves the purpose of comparison, comparison, which makes it possible to speak more convincingly about the originality of the content and style of this author. At the same time, it is most useful for analysis to compare contrasting artistic systems (Pushkin with Lermontov, Dostoevsky with Chekhov, Mayakovsky with Pasternak) or vice versa, similar, but differing in important nuances (Fonvizin - Griboyedov, Lafontaine - Krylov, Annensky - Blok). In addition, it should be noted that the literary context is natural and closest to a work of art.
Context changes over timeThe greatest difficulty is the historical change in the context in the process of perceiving a literary work in subsequent eras, since the idea of realities, customs, stable speech formulas that were quite ordinary for readers of the past era, but completely unfamiliar to the reader of subsequent generations, is lost, as a result of which involuntary impoverishment occurs, and even a distortion of the meaning of the work. The loss of context can thus significantly affect the interpretation, therefore, when analyzing the works of cultures distant from us, a so-called real commentary, sometimes very detailed, is needed. Here, for example, with what areas of life of the Pushkin era Yu.M. Lotman, the author of the commentary to "Eugene Onegin": "Economy and property status" ... "Education and service of the nobles" ... "Interests and occupations of a noble woman" ... "Noble dwelling and its surroundings in the city and estate" ... "Day of a secular person. Entertainment “…” Ball “…” Duel “…” Vehicles. Road". And this is not counting the most detailed commentary on individual lines, names, speech formulas, etc.
The general conclusion that can be drawn from what has been said is as follows. Contextual analysis is, at best, a private auxiliary device, in no way replacing immanent analysis; the need for a particular context for the correct perception of the work is indicated by the organization of the text itself.
? CONTROL QUESTIONS:1. What is context?
2. What kinds of contexts do you know?
3. Why is it not always necessary to use contextual data, and sometimes even harmful for literary analysis?
4. What indicates to us the need to involve certain contextual data?
ExerciseWith regard to the works below, establish the expediency of involving each type of context in their analysis, using the following rating scale: a) involvement is necessary, b) acceptable, c) inappropriate, d) harmful.
Texts for analysis:
A.S. Pushkin. Mozart and Salieri
M.Yu. Lermontov. Hero of our time,
N.V. Gogol. Taras Bulba, Dead Souls,
F.M. Dostoevsky. teen, demons,
A. P. Chekhov. Student,
M.A. Sholokhov. Quiet Don,
A.A. Akhmatova. She clenched her hands under a dark veil ..., Requiem,
A.T. Tvardovsky. Terkin in the other world.
Final taskIn the texts below, determine the appropriateness of using contextual data of one kind or another and conduct a contextual analysis in accordance with this. Show how the use of context contributes to a fuller and deeper understanding of the text.
Texts for analysis
A.S. Pushkin. Arion,
M.Yu. Lermontov. Farewell, unwashed Russia...,
L.N. Tolstoy. Childhood,
F.M. Dostoevsky. poor people
N.S. Leskov. Warrior,
A. P. Chekhov. Chameleon,
Memories of A.T. Tvardovsky. M., 1978. S. 234.
Turgenev I.S. Sobr. cit.: V 12 t. M., 1958. T. 12. S. 339.
Gorky M. Sobr. cit.: V 30 t. M., 1953. T. 26. S. 425.
Dobrolyubov N.A. Sobr. cit.: V 3 t. M., 1952. T. 3. S. 29.
Skaftymov A.P. Decree. op. From 173–174.
Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: V 90 t. M., 1953. T. 62. S. 268.
Eco W. The name of the rose. M., 1989. S. 428–430.
Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: V 90 v. T. 62. S. 268.
Chekhov A.P. Full coll. op. and letters: In 30 tons. Letters. T. 4. S. 54.
Lotman Yu.M. Roman A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". Comment: Teacher's guide. L, 1980. S. 416.
Genre is a type of literary work. There are epic, lyrical, dramatic genres. Lyroepic genres are also distinguished. Genres are also divided by volume into large (including rum and epic novel), medium (literary works of “medium size” - novels and poems), small (story, short story, essay). They have genres and thematic divisions: adventure novel, psychological novel, sentimental, philosophical, etc. The main division is connected with the genres of literature. We present to your attention the genres of literature in the table.
Thematic division of genres is rather conditional. There is no strict classification of genres by topic. For example, if they talk about the genre-thematic diversity of lyrics, they usually single out love, philosophical, landscape lyrics. But, as you understand, the variety of lyrics is not exhausted by this set.
If you set out to study the theory of literature, it is worth mastering the groups of genres:
- epic, that is, genres of prose (epic novel, novel, story, short story, short story, parable, fairy tale);
- lyrical, that is, poetic genres (lyric poem, elegy, message, ode, epigram, epitaph),
- dramatic - types of plays (comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy),
- lyrical epic (ballad, poem).
Literary genres in tables
epic genres
epic novel
epic novel- a novel depicting folk life in critical historical eras. "War and Peace" by Tolstoy, "Quiet Flows the Don" by Sholokhov.
Novel
Novel- a multi-problem work depicting a person in the process of his formation and development. The action in the novel is full of external or internal conflicts. By subject, there are: historical, satirical, fantastic, philosophical, etc. By structure: a novel in verse, an epistolary novel, etc.
Tale
Tale- an epic work of medium or large form, built in the form of a narrative of events in their natural sequence. Unlike the novel, in P. the material is chronicled, there is no sharp plot, there is no blue analysis of the feelings of the characters. P. does not pose tasks of a global historical nature.
Story
Story- a small epic form, a small work with a limited number of characters. R. most often poses one problem or describes one event. The short story differs from R. in an unexpected ending.
Parable
Parable- moral teaching in allegorical form. A parable differs from a fable in that it draws its artistic material from human life. Example: Gospel parables, the parable of the righteous land, told by Luke in the play "At the Bottom".
Lyric genres
lyric poem
lyric poem- a small form of lyrics written either on behalf of the author, or on behalf of a fictional lyrical hero. Description of the inner world of the lyric hero, his feelings, emotions.
Elegy
Elegy- a poem imbued with moods of sadness and sadness. As a rule, the content of elegies is philosophical reflections, sad reflections, grief.
Message
Message- a letter of poetry addressed to a person. According to the content of the message, there are friendly, lyrical, satirical, etc. The message can be. addressed to one person or group of people.
Epigram
Epigram- a poem that makes fun of a specific person. Characteristic features are wit and brevity.
Oh yeah
Oh yeah- a poem, distinguished by the solemnity of style and sublimity of content. Praise in verse.
Sonnet
Sonnet- a solid poetic form, usually consisting of 14 verses (lines): 2 quatrains-quatrains (for 2 rhymes) and 2 three-line tercetes
Dramatic genres
Comedy
Comedy- a type of drama in which characters, situations and actions are presented in funny forms or imbued with the comic. There are satirical comedies (“Undergrowth”, “Inspector General”), high (“Woe from Wit”) and lyrical (“The Cherry Orchard”).
Tragedy
Tragedy- a work based on an irreconcilable life conflict, leading to the suffering and death of heroes. William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.
Drama
Drama- a play with a sharp conflict, which, unlike the tragic, is not so elevated, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolved. The drama is built on modern rather than ancient material and establishes a new hero who rebelled against circumstances.
Lyric epic genres
(intermediate between epic and lyric)
Poem
Poem- the average lyrical-epic form, a work with a plot-narrative organization, in which not one, but a whole series of experiences is embodied. Features: the presence of a detailed plot and at the same time close attention to the inner world of the lyrical hero - or an abundance of lyrical digressions. The poem "Dead Souls" N.V. Gogol
Ballad
Ballad- an average lyrical-epic form, a work with an unusual, tense plot. This is a story in verse. A story told in poetic form, historical, mythical, or heroic. The plot of the ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads "Svetlana", "Lyudmila" V.A. Zhukovsky
