Delving into the historical distance of the question of plot (from French - content, development of events in time and space (in epic and dramatic works, sometimes in lyric)) and plot, we find theoretical discussions on this subject for the first time in Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle does not use the terms “plot” or “plot” themselves, but in his reasoning he shows an interest in what we now mean by plot, and makes a number of valuable observations and remarks on this subject. Not knowing the term "plot", as well as the term "plot", Aristotle uses a term close to the concept of "myth". By it, he understands the combination of facts in their relation to verbal expression, vividly presented before his eyes.
When translating Aristotle into Russian, sometimes the term "myth" is translated as "plot". But this is inaccurate: the term "fabula" is Latin in origin, "Gabullage", which means to tell, narrate, and in exact translation means a story, a narration. The term "plot" in Russian literature and literary criticism begins to be used around the middle of the 19th century, that is, somewhat later than the term "plot".
For example, “plot” as a term is found in Dostoevsky, who said that in the novel “Demons” he used the plot of the famous “Nechaevsky case”, and in A. N. Ostrovsky, who believed that “the plot often means completely ready-made content ... with all the details, but there is a plot short story about some incident, case, story, devoid of any colors.
In the novel by G. P. Danilevsky "Mirovich", written in 1875, one of the characters, wanting to tell another funny story, says: “... And you listen to this comedy plot!” Although the novel is set in mid-eighteenth century and the author follows the speech authenticity of this time, he uses a word that has recently appeared in literary use.
The term "plot" in its literary sense was widely introduced by representatives of French classicism. In the Poetic Art of Boileau we read: “You must introduce us into the plot without delay. // You should observe the unity of the place in it, // Than with an endless, meaningless story // We tire our ears and revolt our mind. AT critical articles Corneille, theater, the term "plot" is also found.
Mastering the French tradition, the Russian critical literature uses the term plot in a similar sense. In the article “On the Russian story and the stories of N. V. Gogol” (1835), V. Belinsky writes: “Thought is the subject of his (modern lyric poet) inspiration. Just as words are written for music in an opera and a plot is invented, so he creates, at the behest of his imagination, a form for his thought. In this case, his field is limitless.
Subsequently, such a major literary theorist of the second half of XIX century, as A. N. Veselovsky, who laid the foundation for the theoretical study of the plot in Russian literary criticism, is limited only to this term.
Dividing the story into constituent elements- motives, having traced and explained their origin, Veselovsky gave his definition of the plot: “Plots are complex schemes, in the imagery of which generalized famous acts human life and psyche in alternating forms of everyday reality.
The evaluation of the action, both positive and negative, is already connected with generalization. And then he concludes: “By plot, I mean a scheme in which different positions- motives.
As we see, in Russian criticism and literary tradition enough long time both terms are used: “plot” and “plot”, although without distinguishing between their conceptual and categorical essence.
The most detailed development of these concepts and terms was made by representatives of the Russian "formal school".
It was in the works of its participants that the categories of plot and plot were first clearly distinguished. In the writings of the formalists, the plot and plot were subjected to careful study and comparison.
B. Tomashevsky in Theory of Literature writes: “But it is not enough to invent an entertaining chain of events, limiting them to a beginning and an end. It is necessary to distribute these events, to arrange them in a certain order, to expound them, to make a literary combination out of the plot material. The artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot.
Thus, the plot here is understood as something predetermined, like some kind of story, incident, event taken from the life or works of other authors.
So, for quite a long time in Russian literary criticism and criticism, the term “plot” has been used, which originates and is borrowed from French historians and literary theorists. Along with it, the term “plot” is also used, which has been quite widely used since the middle of the 19th century. In the 20s of the XX century, the meaning of these concepts is terminologically divided within the same work.
At all stages of the development of literature, the plot occupied a central place in the process of creating a work. But to mid-nineteenth centuries, having received a brilliant development in the novels of Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and many others, the plot seems to be beginning to weigh on some novelists ... “What seems beautiful to me and what I would like to create,” writes the great French the stylist Gustave Flaubert (whose novels are beautifully plotted) is a book that would have almost no plot, or at least one in which the plot would be almost invisible. Most beautiful works those in which there is the least matter ... I think that the future of art lies in these perspectives ... "
In Flaubert's desire to free himself from the plot, the desire for a free plot form is noticeable. Indeed, in the future, in some novels of the 20th century, the plot no longer has such a dominant meaning as in the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev. The genre of lyrical confession, memoirs with in-depth analysis got the right to exist.
But one of the most common genres today - the detective novel genre, has made a swift and unusually sharp plot its basic law and only principle.
Thus, the modern plot arsenal of the writer is so huge, he has at his disposal so many plot devices and principles for the construction and arrangement of events that this gives him inexhaustible opportunities for creative solutions.
Not only plot principles have become more complicated, the very way of narration has become incredibly complicated in the 20th century. In the novels and stories of G. Hesse, X. Borges, G. Marquez, complex associative memories and reflections, the displacement of different episodes that are far apart in time, and multiple interpretations of the same situations become the basis of the narrative.
Events in epic work can be combined different ways. In the “Family Chronicle” by S. Aksakov, in the stories of L. Tolstoy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, Youth” or in “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, the plot events are interconnected by a purely temporal connection, as they consistently develop one after another over a long period of time.
The English novelist Forster presented such an order in the development of events in a short figurative form: "The king died, and then the queen died." Plots of this type began to be called chronicles, in contrast to concentric ones, where the main events are concentrated around one central moment, are interconnected by a close causal relationship and develop in a short time period. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" - so continued his thought about concentric plots the same Forster.
Of course, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the two types of plots, and such a division is very conditional. Most a prime example novel concentric could be called the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky.
For example, in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" plot events unfold rapidly over several days, are interconnected exclusively causation and are concentrated around one central moment of the murder of the old man F. P. Karamazov. The most common type of plot is the most frequently used in contemporary literature— chronicle-concentric type, where events are in a causal-temporal relationship.
Today, having the opportunity to compare and study the classic examples of plot perfection (the novels of M. Bulgakov, M. Sholokhov, V. Nabokov), we can hardly imagine that in its development the plot went through numerous stages of formation and developed its own principles of organization and formation. Already Aristotle noted that the plot should have “a beginning that presupposes further action, the middle, which presupposes both the previous and the following, and the final, which requires the previous action, but has no subsequent.
Writers have always had to deal with a lot of plot and compositional problems: how to introduce new characters into the unfolding action, how to take them away from the pages of the story, how to group and distribute them in time and space. Such a seemingly necessary plot moment as a climax was first truly developed only by the English novelist Walter Scott, the creator of tense and fascinating plots.
Introduction to Literary Studies (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin and others) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005
Event in a literary text. Storytelling and non-storytelling. Features of plot construction: plot components (plot, course of action, climax, denouement - if any), sequence of main components. Relationship between plot and plot. Plot motives. Motive system. Plot types.
Difference between " plot" and " plot”is defined in different ways, some literary critics do not see a fundamental difference between these concepts, while for others, “plot” is the sequence of events as they happen, and “plot” is the sequence in which the author arranges them.
plot- the actual side of the narrative, those events, cases, actions, states in their causal-chronological sequence. The term "plot" refers to what is preserved as the "basis", "core" of the narrative.
Plot- this is a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of an action unfolding in a work, in the form of interrelated (by causal relationship) actions of characters, events that form a unity, that make up some complete whole. The plot is a form of development of the theme - an artistically constructed distribution of events.
The driving force behind the development of the plot, as a rule, is conflict(literally "collision"), a conflicting life situation, put by the writer at the center of the work. In a broad sense conflict we should call that system of contradictions that organizes a work of art into a certain unity, that struggle of images, characters, ideas, which is especially widely and fully developed in epic and dramatic works
Conflict- a more or less acute contradiction or clash between characters with their characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within the character and consciousness of a character or a lyrical subject; this is the central moment not only of epic and dramatic action, but also of lyrical experience.
There are various types of conflicts: between individual characters; between character and environment; psychological. The conflict can be external (the struggle of the hero with the forces opposing him) and internal (the struggle in the mind of the hero with himself). There are plots based only on internal conflicts (“psychological”, “intellectual”), the action in them is based not on events, but on the ups and downs of feelings, thoughts, experiences. In one work there can be a combination of different types of conflicts. Sharply pronounced contradictions, the opposite of the forces acting in the work, is called a collision.
Composition (architectonics) is the construction literary work, composition and sequence of arrangement of its individual parts and elements (prologue, exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue).
Prologue – introductory part literary work. The prologue tells about the events that precede and motivate the main action, or explains the author's artistic intention.
Exposure- a part of the work that precedes the beginning of the plot and is directly related to it. The exposition should be arranged actors and the circumstances are formed, the reasons that “trigger” the plot conflict are shown.
tie in the plot - the event that served as the beginning of the conflict in a work of art; an episode that determines the entire subsequent deployment of the action (in N.V. Gogol's "Inspector General", for example, the plot is the message of the mayor about the arrival of the auditor). The plot is present at the beginning of the work, indicates the beginning of the development of artistic action. As a rule, it immediately introduces the work into the main conflict, determining the entire narrative and plot in the future. Sometimes the plot comes before the exposition (for example, the plot of the novel "Anna Karenina" by L. Tolstoy: "Everything is mixed up in the Oblonsky's house"). The writer's choice of one or another type of plot is determined by the stylistic and genre system in terms of which he draws up his work.
climax- the point of the highest rise, tension in the development of the plot (conflict).
denouement- conflict resolution; it completes the struggle of contradictions that make up the content of the work. The denouement marks the victory of one side over the other. The effectiveness of the denouement is determined by the significance of the entire preceding struggle and the climactic sharpness of the episode preceding the denouement.
Epilogue- the final part of the work, which briefly reports on the fate of the characters after the events depicted in it, and sometimes discusses the moral, philosophical aspects of the depicted (“Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).
The composition of a literary work includes off-plot elements– author's digressions, inserted episodes, various descriptions(portrait, landscape, world of things), etc., serving to create artistic images, the disclosure of which, in fact, the whole work serves.
So, for example, episode as a relatively complete and independent part of the work, which depicts a completed event or an important moment in the fate of the character, can become an integral link in the problematics of the work or an important part of its general idea.
Landscape in a work of art, it is not just a picture of nature, a description of a part of the real environment in which the action unfolds. The role of the landscape in the work is not limited to depicting the scene. It serves to create a certain mood; is a way of expressing the author's position (for example, in the story of I.S. Turgenev "Date"). The landscape can emphasize or convey the state of mind of the characters, while the internal state of a person is likened or contrasted with the life of nature. The landscape can be rural, urban, industrial, marine, historical (pictures of the past), fantastic (the image of the future), etc. The landscape can also perform a social function (for example, the landscape in the 3rd chapter of the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", the urban landscape in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"). In lyrics, the landscape usually has an independent meaning and reflects the perception of nature by a lyrical hero or a lyrical subject.
Even small artistic detail often plays an important role in a literary work and performs a variety of functions: it can serve as an important addition to the characterization of heroes, their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create overall picture morals, have the meaning of a symbol, etc. Artistic details in the work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, psychological details.
Main literature: 20, 22, 50, 54.68, 69, 80, 86, 90
Further reading: 27, 28, 48, 58
features of a work of art are taken into account in the editorial analysis.
a work of art, an artistic object can be viewed from two points of view - from the point of view of its meaning (as an aesthetic object) and from the point of view of its form (as outer product).
the meaning of the artistic object, enclosed in a certain form, is aimed at reflecting the understanding of the artist surrounding reality. and the editor, when evaluating the essay, must proceed from the analysis of the “plan of meaning” and the “plan of fact” of the work (M. M. Bakhtin).
an artistic object is a point of interaction between the meaning and the fact of art. art object demonstrates the world, conveying it in an aesthetic form and revealing the ethical side of the world.
for editorial analysis, such an approach to considering artwork in which the work is examined in its connection with the reader. it is the influence of the work on the personality that should be the starting point in the evaluation of the artistic object.
An artistic object includes three stages: the stage of creating a work, the stage of its alienation from the master and independent existence, the stage of perception of the work.
as the starting point of the unifying beginning of the work of the artistic process in the editorial analysis, it is necessary to consider the idea of the work. it is the idea that merges together all the stages of the artistic object. this is evidenced by the attention of the artist, musician, writer to the selection of appropriate means of expression when creating works that are aimed at expressing the intention of the master.
In the book “How Our Word Responds,” the writer Yu. Trifonov notes: “the highest idea of a thing - that is, why all this damage to paper - is constantly in you, this is a given, your breath, which you do not notice, but without which you cannot live.”
the idea embodied in a work of art, it is the idea, first of all, that is perceived by the reader, the stage of perception artistic creativity.
but the whole artistic process is, as already mentioned, a dialogical process of communication between the artist and those who perceive the work.
the writer evaluates what surrounds him and talks about how he would like to see reality. rather, it does not “speak”, but reflects the world in such a way that the reader understands it. in a work of art, the existence and obligation of life is realized, the interpretation by the artist is carried out life values. it is the idea that absorbs the writer's value orientations and determines the selection of vital material for the work.
but the concept of design not only characterizes the main meaning of the work. the idea is the main component of the impact of a work of art at the time of its perception.
thus, the subject of art is not only a person and his connections and relations with the world. the composition of the subject area of the work also includes the personality of the author of the book, who evaluates the surrounding reality.
evaluating the intent, the editor determines how the material used by the author corresponds to the intent. so, a large, large-scale plan requires large form, for example, can be implemented in the genre of the novel. an idea that reveals the intimate aspects of a person's fate, in the genre of a story, a short story. considering the genre of the work, the editor answers the most main question related to the evaluation of the quality of the work - the question of the completeness of the disclosure of the idea. thus, having considered the plan of the meaning of the work, the editor analyzes the plan of the fact. details of the editor's evaluation of the concept and genre originality artistic will be discussed below. having answered the question of what the author said, the editor evaluates what he said, i.e., analyzes the skill of the writer. while the editor focuses on the basic laws, patterns, nature of art.
in art artistic image is a means of cognizing the surrounding reality, a means of mastering the world, as well as a means of recreating reality in a work of art - in an artistic object.
more details - on znanija.com - znanija.com/task/25069751#readmore
Delving into the historical distance of the question of the plot (from fr. sujet- content, development of events in time and space - in epic and dramatic works, sometimes in lyric) and plot, we find theoretical discussions on this issue for the first time in Aristotle's "Poetics". Aristotle does not use the terms "plot" or "plot" themselves, but in his reasoning he shows interest in what we now mean by plot, and makes a number of valuable observations and remarks on this subject. Not knowing the term "plot", as well as the term "plot", Aristotle uses a term close to the concept of "myth". By it, he understands the combination of facts in their relation to verbal expression, vividly presented before his eyes.
When translating Aristotle into Russian, sometimes the term "myth" is translated as "plot". But this is inaccurate: the term "plot" is Latin in origin, "fabulare", which means to tell, narrate, and in exact translation means a story, a narration. The term "plot" in Russian literature and literary criticism begins to be used approximately from the middle of the 19th century, i.e. somewhat later than the term "plot".
For example, "plot" as a term is found in Dostoevsky, who said that in the novel "Demons" he used the plot of the famous "Nechaevsky case", and in A. N. Ostrovsky, who believed that "the plot often means completely ready-made content ... with all the details, and the plot is a short story about some incident, case, a story devoid of any colors.
In G. P. Danilevsky's novel "Mirovich", written in 1875, one of the characters, wanting to tell another funny story, says: "... And listen to this comedy plot!" Despite the fact that the action of the novel takes place in the middle of the XVIII century. and the author follows the speech reliability of this time, he uses a word that has recently appeared in literary use.
The term "plot" in its literary sense was widely used by representatives of French classicism. In the "Poetic Art" of Boileau we read: "You should not delay us in plot enter. // You should observe the unity of place in it, // Than with an endless, meaningless story // We tire our ears and revolt our mind. "In Corneille's critical articles on the theater, the term "plot" is also found ( sujet).
Assuming the French tradition, Russian critical literature uses the term plot in a similar sense. In the article "On the Russian story and the stories of N.V. Gogol" (1835), V. Belinsky writes: to the will of one's imagination a form for one's thought. In this case, the field is limitless."
Subsequently, such a major literary theorist of the second half of the 19th century as A. N. Veselovsky, who laid the foundation for the theoretical study of the plot in Russian literary criticism, limited himself only to this term.
Having divided the plot into constituent elements - motives, tracing and explaining their origin, Veselovsky gave his definition of the plot: "Plots are complex schemes, in the imagery of which certain acts of human life and the psyche are generalized in alternating forms of everyday reality. The evaluation of the action is already connected with generalization , positive and negative. And then he concludes: "Under the plot, I mean a scheme in which various positions - motives - scurry." As we can see, both terms "plot" and "plot" have been used in Russian criticism and literary tradition for quite a long time, although without distinguishing between their conceptual and categorical essence.
The most detailed development of these concepts and terms was made by representatives of the Russian "formal school". It was in the works of its participants that the categories of plot and plot were first clearly distinguished. In the writings of the formalists, the plot and plot were subjected to careful study and comparison. B. Tomashevsky writes in Theory of Literature: “But it is not enough to invent an entertaining chain of events, limiting them to a beginning and an end. You need to distribute these events, you need to build them in a certain order, set them out, make a literary combination out of plot material. Artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot.
Thus, the plot here is understood as something predetermined, like some kind of story, incident, event taken from the life or works of other authors.
So, for quite a long time in Russian literary criticism and criticism, the term "plot" has been used, which originates and is borrowed from French historians and literary theorists. Along with it, the term "plot" is also used, which has been quite widely used since the middle of the 19th century. In the 1920s the meaning of these concepts is terminologically divided within one work.
At all stages of the development of literature, the plot occupied a central place in the process of creating a work. But towards the middle 19th century, having received a brilliant development in the novels of Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and many others, the plot seems to be beginning to burden some novelists ... "What seems beautiful to me and what I would like to create," writes the great French in one of his letters in 1870 stylist Gustave Flaubert (whose novels are beautifully organized by plot) is a book that would have almost no plot, or one, at least, in which the plot would be almost invisible. The most beautiful works are those in which there is the least matter ... I think that the future of art lies in these perspectives ... ".
In Flaubert's desire to free himself from the plot, the desire for a free plot form is noticeable. Indeed, later in some novels of the XX century. the plot no longer has such a dominant meaning as in the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev. The genre of lyrical confession, memoirs with in-depth analysis got the right to exist.
But one of the most common genres today - the detective novel genre, has made a swift and unusually sharp plot its basic law and only principle.
Thus, the modern plot arsenal of the writer is so huge, he has at his disposal so many plot devices and principles for the construction and arrangement of events that this gives him inexhaustible opportunities for creative solutions.
Not only the plot principles have become more complicated, it has become incredibly complicated in the 20th century. the way of storytelling. In the novels and stories of G. Hesse, X. Borges, G. Marquez, complex associative memories and reflections, the displacement of different episodes that are far apart in time, and multiple interpretations of the same situations become the basis of the narrative.
Events in an epic work can be combined in many ways. In the "Family Chronicle" by S. Aksakov, in the stories of L. Tolstoy "Childhood", "Boyhood", "Youth" or in "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, the plot events are interconnected by a purely temporal connection, as they consistently develop one after another over long period of time. The English novelist Forster presented such an order in the development of events in a short figurative form: "The king died, and then the queen died." Plots of this type began to be called chronicles, in contrast to concentric ones, where the main events are concentrated around one central moment, are interconnected by a close causal relationship and develop in a short time period. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief," - this is how the same Forster continued his thought about concentric plots. Of course, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the two types of plots, and such a division is very conditional. The most striking example of a concentric novel could be the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky. For example, in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" plot events unfold rapidly over several days, are interconnected by an exclusively causal relationship and are concentrated around one central moment of the murder of the old man F. P. Karamazov. The most common type of plot - the most frequently used in modern literature as well - is the chronicle-concentric type, where events are in a causal-temporal relationship.
Today, having the opportunity to compare and study the classic examples of plot perfection (the novels of M. Bulgakov, M. Sholokhov, V. Nabokov), we can hardly imagine that in its development the plot went through numerous stages of formation and developed its own principles of organization and formation. Already Aristotle noted that the plot must have "a beginning, which presupposes a further action, a middle, which presupposes both the previous and the subsequent, and an ending, which requires a previous action, but does not have a subsequent one."
Writers have always had to face many plot and compositional problems: how to introduce new characters into the unfolding action, how to lead them away from the pages of the story, how to group and distribute them in time and space. Such a seemingly necessary plot moment as a climax was first truly developed only by the English novelist Walter Scott, the creator of tense and fascinating plots.
The plot consists of episodes constructively organized in different ways. These episodes are: differently participate in the preparation of the plot climax and, in this regard, have varying degrees of "accent" or tension.
Specific narrative episodes are a narrative about specific events, the actions of characters, their actions, etc. These episodes can only be stage, as they depict only what is happening before the eyes of the reader at the moment.
summary-narrative episodes recount events in in general terms occurring as in the present story time, and with large digressions and excursions into the past, along with the author's comments, passing characteristics, etc.
descriptive episodes consist almost entirely of descriptions of the different nature: landscape, interior, time, place of action, certain circumstances and situations.
Psychological episodes depict inner experiences, the processes of the psychological state of the characters, etc.
These are the main types of episodes from which the plot is built in an epic work. However, much more important is the question of how each episode of the plot is built and what narrative components it consists of. After all, everyone plot episode there is its own composition of those forms of the image from which it is built. This composition is best called construction plot episodes.
There are a great many options for the construction of episodes and the use of various narrative components in them, but they, as a rule, are repeated by each author. It should also be noted that the components of the plot episode in different writers have varying degrees of expressiveness and intensity. So, in the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov" there are relatively few components that participate in the constructions of episodes of different nature and alternate with each other in a certain order. These are backstories, conversations between two characters (with or without a witness), dialogues, triologues and crowded gathering scenes. Conversations between two characters are divided into conversations in the form of a confession of one of the characters (this constructive-narrative form can be called a confession) and conversations-dialogues. Separate narrative components can be considered the image of the external actions of the characters and various descriptions. All other components are not clearly expressed, they serve only as a link and cannot be singled out as independent ones.
Similarly, the use of narrative components by other novelists can be distinguished and classified.
The plot traces the stages of movement of the underlying conflict. They are referred to as:
- - "prologue" (separated from the action of the introduction);
- - "exposure" (image of life in the period immediately preceding the plot);
- - "tie" (the beginning of the action, the emergence of a conflict);
- - "development of action", "culmination" (the highest point of tension in the development of events);
- – "decoupling" (the moment of the end of the action);
- - "epilogue" (final, separate from the action of the main part of the text).
However, one should not mechanically divide the plot of any work into these elements. The options here are very different and interesting. For example, a work might begin with a prologue (" Bronze Horseman"A. S. Pushkin) or from the epilogue ("What to do?" N. G. Chernyshevsky), from the exposition ("Ionych" by A. P. Chekhov) or immediately from the plot ("Inspector General" by N. V. Gogol). For reasons of ideological and artistic expressiveness, the exposition can move (Chichikov's biography, Oblomov's childhood story, etc.) At the same time, it would be wrong to consider these elements of the plot only as an external movement of what is happening, as connecting links, as methods of chaining events. They play a significant role in the ideological and artistic sense: the writer shows in them the characters, the logic of people's relationships, which makes it possible to understand the typical conflict of the depicted era, and gives them his assessment.
AT major work, as a rule, contains several storylines that are either intertwined, or merge, or develop in parallel (for example, in the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy). A story may have one or more climaxes. So, in the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" in the storyline Evgeny Bazarov - Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, the duel scene is the climax. In the Bazarov-Odintsov storyline, the climax is the scene when the hero confesses his love to Anna Sergeevna and rushes to her in a fit of passion...
No matter how complex a literary work, no matter how storylines it didn’t have anything, everything in it is directed towards a single goal - to the expression of a cross-cutting idea that unites all the threads of the plot into one whole.
Prologue, exposition, plot, climax, denouement, epilogue - all these are integral parts of the plot that can appear in one or another combination.
In ancient times plot schemes migrated from one work to another, and write on the same plot different authors was a matter of habit and literary legitimacy. For example, tragic fate Antigones in the plot interpretation of Sophocles and Euripides. Traditional plot schemes passed from country to country, from literature to literature, became the basis of many epic and dramatic works. Such plots were called wandering. The story of Don Juan, for example, bypassed almost all European literatures and became the basis of the plots of works of various genres.
In an epic work, the plot is considered as the subject-pictorial side of the form, since the image of the characters, which consists of many different details: actions, statements, external descriptions etc., and the very temporal sequence of these actions, this or that interconnection of events is individual expression common properties life in their author's understanding and evaluation. By the sequence of its development, the plot reveals the characters, the problems, the ideological and emotional assessment of the events in the work. The connection between the plot and the content has a certain character, which should be best described as functional, because the plot performs various functions. artistic functions but in relation to the content they express.
Each time, the unique and individual sequence of events and actions of the characters is the result of the creative typification of characters in their life situations and relationships. In the typification of characters and situations, there is almost always hyperbolization and creative development. The plot of the work is almost always the most painful and painstaking work. After all, it is the plot that reveals the essence of the characters depicted, serves to highlight, strengthen, develop those aspects of life that are most significant for the writer.
The plot almost never happens all at once. Before it takes on a complete and permanent form, it changes many times, is reworked, acquires new facts from the life of the characters, plot links and motivations, each time turning into one of the future options in creative imagination writer. For example, in the drafts for the novel The Possessed, Dostoevsky goes over numerous possibilities for the relationship of several characters. There are multiple versions of the same event. There are about eight plot options for revealing the secret marriage of Stavrogin and Khromonozhka.
When creating a plot, creative expressiveness and emotionality of the image play an active role. The character needs to express himself most fully and completely in the events found and invented by the author. In connection with these events, experiences, reasoning, actions, self-revelations of heroes arise, which serve to reveal and embody their characters. Thus the plot is created creative fantasy artist to express the main ideological content and functionally related to it.
Disclosure of the characteristics of characters can be realized only in action, in actions and events, in the sequence of these events, or in plot. The development of relationships between characters, individual motivations, biographical, love stories, experiences - in other words, the entire individual-dynamic series is the plot of the work.
Usually, in the process of plot development, the writer depicts those aspects of his character's character that seem to him the most significant, revealing the idea of the work as fully as possible and which can only manifest themselves in certain events and their sequence. In revealing his plot, the author cannot, and indeed does not aim to, equally cover all plot links, episodes, relationships, etc. Concentrating his attention on the central, key moments of the event, choosing some of them for a detailed depiction and sacrificing others, the writer can build the development of the plot in a variety of ways. And this purposeful, sequential selection of events and relationships, some of which are placed at the center of the plot narrative, and the other serves as a link or an insignificant passing point, is the most important for plot construction.
The author's assessment can be expressed in different ways in the course of the plot narration. This may be direct authorial intervention, authorial maxims and moralizing, the election of one or more characters as the author's "mouthpiece", a kind of judge of what is happening. But in any case, the entire course of events, the entire causal and temporal conditionality of these events is based on the principle of the most expressive expression in them of the ideological assessment of characters.
Every scene, every episode plot device has a specific function. In each story, all the main and minor characters, performing their meaningful function, at the same time represent a certain hierarchy, individual in each case, of oppositions, confrontations, interlacings, united according to a certain artistic system.
Petr Alekseevich Nikolaev
After the substantive detailing, it is most logical to continue talking about the form, keeping in mind its most important element - the plot. According to popular ideas in science, the plot is formed by the characters and the author's thought organized by their interactions. The classic formula in this regard is M. Gorky's position on the plot: "... connections, contradictions, sympathies, antipathies and, in general, the relationship of people - the history of growth and organization of one or another character, type." In the normative theory of literature, this position is developed in every possible way. It says that the plot is the development of actions in an epic work, where there are certainly artistic types and where such elements of action as intrigue and conflict exist. The plot here acts as the central element of the composition with its beginning, climax, and denouement. This whole composition is motivated by the logic of characters with their background (prologue of the work) and completion (epilogue). Only in this way, by establishing genuine internal communications between plot and character, one can determine the aesthetic quality of the text and the degree of its artistic veracity. To do this, you should carefully look into the logic of the author's thought. Unfortunately, this is not always done. But let's take a look school example. In Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? there is one of the plot climaxes: Lopukhov commits an imaginary suicide. He motivates this by saying that he does not want to interfere with the happiness of his wife Vera Pavlovna and friend Kirsanov. This explanation comes from utopian idea "reasonable selfishness" put forward by the writer and philosopher: you can not build your happiness on the misfortune of others. But why such a way of resolving " love triangle"chooses the hero of the novel? Fear of public opinion, which can condemn the breakup of the family? Strange: after all, the book is dedicated to" new people "who, according to the logic of their internal state, disregard this opinion. But in this case it was more important for the writer and thinker to show the omnipotence of his theory, to present it as a panacea for all difficulties. And the result was not a romantic, but an illustrative resolution of the conflict - in the spirit of a romantic utopia. And because "What to do?" - far from realistic.
But let us return to the question of the connection between subject and plot details, that is, the details of the action. Plot theorists have provided an abundance of examples of this connection. So, the character from Gogol's story "The Overcoat" of the tailor Petrovich has a snuffbox, on the lid of which the general is painted, but there is no face - it is pierced with a finger and sealed with a piece of paper (as if the personification of bureaucracy). Anna Akhmatova speaks of a "significant person" in the same "Overcoat": this is the chief of the gendarmes Benkendorf, after a conversation with which Pushkin's friend, the poet A. Delvig, the editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta, died (the conversation concerned Delvig's poem about the revolution of 1830). In Gogol's story, as you know, after a conversation with the general, Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin dies. Akhmatova read in her lifetime edition: "a significant person got into the sleigh" (Benckendorff rode standing). Among other things, these examples show that plots, as a rule, are taken from life. Art critic N. Dmitrieva criticizes L. Vygotsky, famous psychologist referring to the words of Grillparzer, who speaks of the miracle of art that turns grapes into wine. Vygotsky talks about turning the water of life into the wine of art, but water cannot be turned into wine, but grapes can. This is the revelation of the real, the knowledge of life. E. Dobin and other plot theorists give numerous examples of transformation precisely real events into art scenes. The plot of the same "Overcoat" is based on the story of an official heard by the writer, to whom colleagues presented a Lepage gun. Sailing on a boat, he did not notice how it caught on the reeds and sank. The official died of frustration. Everyone who listened to this story laughed, and Gogol sat sadly thinking - probably, in his mind a story arose about an official who died due to the loss of not a luxury item, but an overcoat necessary in winter Petersburg.
Very often it is in the plot that the psychological evolution of the character is most fully represented. "War and Peace" by Tolstoy, as you know, is an epic story about the collective, "swarm" and individualistic, "Napoleonic" consciousness. This is precisely the essence of Tolstoy's artistic characterology in relation to the images of Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. Prince Andrei in his early youth dreamed of his Toulon (the place where Bonaparte began his career). And now Prince Andrei lies wounded on the field of Austerlitz. He sees and hears how Napoleon walks across the field between the corpses and, stopping near one, says: "What a beautiful death." This seems to Bolkonsky false, pictorial, and here begins the gradual disappointment of our hero in Napoleonism. Further development him inner world, complete liberation from illusions and selfish hopes. And his evolution ends with the words that the truth of Timokhin and the soldiers is dear to him.
Careful consideration of the relationship between subject details and the plot helps to discover the true meaning artistic creation, its versatility, meaningful multi-layeredness. In Turgenology, for example, there is a point of view according to which famous cycle The writer's "Notes of a Hunter" are artistic essays poeticizing peasant types and critically evaluating social life peasant families sympathetic to children. However, it is worth looking at one of the most popular stories this series "Bezhin Meadow", how the incompleteness of such a view of art world writer. It seems mysterious the sharp metamorphosis in the impressions of the gentleman, returning from hunting at dusk, about the change of state in nature, which appears to his eyes: clear, calm, suddenly becomes foggy and frightening. There is no obvious, worldly motivation here. In the same way, similar abrupt changes are represented in the reaction of children sitting by the fire to what is happening in the night: easily cognizable, calmly perceived, abruptly turns into obscure, even into some kind of devilry. Of course, the story contains all the above motifs of the "Hunter's Notes". But there is no doubt that we must remember German philosophy, which Turgenev studied while at German universities. He returned to Russia under the influence of materialistic, Feuerbachian, and idealistic, Kantian ideas with their "thing in itself". And this mixture of the knowable and the unknowable in the writer's philosophical thinking is illustrated in his fictional plots.
The connection of the plot with its real source is an obvious thing. Plot theorists are more interested in actual artistic "prototypes" of plots. All world literature mainly relies on such continuity between artistic subjects. It is known that Dostoevsky drew attention to Kramskoy's painting "The Contemplator": winter forest, there is a peasant in bast shoes, "contemplating" something; he will leave everything, go to Jerusalem, having previously burned his native village. Just such is Yakov Smerdyakov in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; he will also do something similar, but somehow in a lackey way. Servantism is, as it were, predetermined by major historical circumstances. In the same novel by Dostoevsky, the Inquisitor speaks of people: they will be timid and cuddle up to us, like "chicks to a hen" (Smerdyakov cuddles like a lackey to Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov). Chekhov said about the plot: "I need my memory to filter the plot and that in it, as in a filter, only what is important or typical remains." What is so important in the plot? The process of influence of the plot, characterized by Chekhov, allows us to say that its basis is the conflict and the through action in it. It, this through action, is artistic reflection philosophical law, according to which the struggle of contradictions not only underlies the process of development of all phenomena, but also necessarily permeates each process from its beginning to its end. M. Gorky said: "Drama must be strictly and through and through effective." Through action is the main operating spring of the work. It is directed towards the general, central idea, towards the "super task" of the work (Stanislavsky). If not through action, all pieces of the play exist separately from each other, without any hope of coming to life (Stanislavsky). Hegel said: “Since a colliding action violates some opposing side, by this discord it causes an opposite force against itself, which it attacks, and as a result, a reaction is directly connected with the action. Only together with this action and counteraction did the ideal for the first time become completely definite and mobile "in a work of art. Stanislavsky believed that counteraction should also be through. Without all this, works are boring and gray. Hegel, however, was wrong in defining the tasks of art where there is conflict. He wrote that the task of art is that it "carries out before our eyes the bifurcation and the struggle associated with it only temporarily, so that through the resolution of conflicts, harmony will be obtained from this bifurcation as a result." This is not true because, say, the struggle between the new and the old in the field of history and psychology is uncompromising. In our history of culture there have been cases of following this Hegelian concept, often naive and false. In the film "Star" based on the novel by E. Kazakevich, suddenly dead scouts with Lieutenant Travkin at the head, to the amazement of the audience, "come to life". Instead of an optimistic tragedy, it turned out to be a sentimental drama. In this regard, I would like to recall the words of two famous figures cultures of the middle of the 20th century. Famous German writer I. Becher said: "What gives the work the necessary tension? Conflict. What excites interest? Conflict. What moves us forward - in life, in literature, in all areas of knowledge? Conflict. The deeper, the more significant the conflict, the deeper, the more significant its resolution, the deeper, the more significant the poet. When does the sky of poetry shine most brightly? After a thunderstorm. After a conflict." The outstanding film director A. Dovzhenko said: "Guided by false motives, we removed suffering from our creative palette, forgetting that it is the same great certainty of being as happiness and joy. We replaced it with something like overcoming difficulties ... We are so want a beautiful bright life that what we passionately desire and expect, we sometimes think as if realized, forgetting that suffering will always be with us, as long as a person is alive on earth, as long as he loves, rejoices, and creates. Will only disappear social causes suffering. The strength of suffering will be determined not so much by the oppression of any external circumstances, but by the depth of the shocks.
