So, we are armed with knowledge about some of the techniques that are used in fiction. We now have an idea of how to write. We have an idea, an idea, we came up with characters, we know what they will do and what they will fight, but... But how to "build" our work? In what order will we tell our story? After all, it depends on whether we can intrigue the reader, capture his interest, with maximum accuracy and power to convey to him what we wanted to say. It is very important to know build. In order to understand this issue, let's introduce concepts such as plot, plot and composition. literary work. There are various interpretations of the concepts "plot" and "plot". We will accept those based on the following representations. Suppose we have an idea for a work. That is, we are in in general terms we know what we're talking about. This means that we know the plot. The plot is the events taking place in a literary work, but built in their natural, chronological order, as they would or could actually occur. That is, this is our story, story or novel, stated "simply", "directly", in one or several phrases. For example, we could formulate the simplified plot of Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" as follows: "The brother of the Danish king secretly kills his brother, takes possession of the crown and marries the royal widow. The ghost of his father appears to the son of the murdered man, Prince Hamlet, and tells about the perfect villainy. Hamlet tries to take revenge killer king, but dies in a duel." Simple and clear. But in "Hamlet" the actions unfold in a completely different sequence! For example, the first scene of the tragedy is the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's father in front of the castle guards and Hamlet's friend, Horatio. And the assassination of the king takes place long before the action presented to us by Shakespeare begins, and even then "behind the scenes", it is not in the play. We can observe it only in the interpretation of visitors to the Royal Castle actors whom Hamlet asked (in the third act of the tragedy) to perform a play according to a script suggested by him. If we strictly follow the author's sequence of presentation in the retelling, then we will tell the plot. The plot is an artistically expedient system of events described, which the author sets out in such a sequence and using such literary forms and techniques that most fully meet his creative task. It is clear that sometimes it is not easy to tell the plot - as much as the author "built" the work is not easy. After all, the direction of the event plan in the plot may coincide with the plot (and then the plot is "equal" to the plot), but most often differs from it (as in "Hamlet"). Therefore, the plot is also called a "rectified" plot, and in the case when it is "not equal to the plot", one speaks of a reverse plot composition. Here we come to the concept of "composition". From the work of T.T. Davydova, V.A. Pronin "Theory of Literature": "Composition - construction, arrangement of all elements of the art form. The composition is external and internal. To the sphere external compositions include the division of the epic work into books, parts and chapters, the lyrical work into parts and stanzas, the lyric-epic work into songs, the dramatic work into acts and pictures. Region internal compositions includes all static elements of the work: -- different types descriptions- portrait, landscape, description of the interior and everyday life of the heroes, summarizing characteristics; -- off-plot elements - exposure(prologue, introduction, "prehistory" of the hero's life), epilogue(the "subsequent" story of the hero's life), inserted episodes, short stories; -- all kinds of retreats(lyrical, philosophical, journalistic); -- narrative motivations and descriptions; character speech patterns: monologue, dialogue, letter (correspondence), diary, notes; -- narrative forms, called points of view (the position from which the story is told or from which the event of the story is perceived by the hero of the story. The concept of point of view in literature is similar to the concept of angle in painting and cinema) ". But this is only what the composition includes. How is it " works"? From the work of M. Weller "Story Technology": "Composition (construction, structure, architectonics) of a story is the arrangement of the selected material in such an order that the effect of a greater impact on the reader is achieved than would be possible with a simple statement of facts . Changes in the sequence and neighborhood of episodes cause different associative, emotional semantic perception of the material as a whole. A successful composition allows you to achieve a maximum of semantic and emotional load with a minimum of volume. 1. Direct-flow composition. The most ancient, simple and traditional way transfer of material: some simple story with a minimum number of significant characters is told in a sequence of events connected by a single causal chain. For such a composition, slowness and detail of presentation are characteristic: such and such did such and such, and then it happened like that. This allows you to delve deeply into the psychology of the hero, gives the reader the opportunity to identify himself with the hero, get into his shoes, sympathize and empathize. The outward simplicity, as it were, the ingenuity and artlessness of such a construction inspire additional confidence in the reader, a single thread of the narration allows not to scatter attention and concentrate entirely on the depicted. So, for example, Y. Kazakov's story "Blue and Green" is built - a nostalgic story of the first youthful love: an eternal theme, banal material, simple urban language, but, living with the hero day after day, the reader rejoices, sad, yearns. 2. Ringing. Usually differs from the composition of the previous type in only one way: the author's framing at the beginning and at the end. It is like a story within a story, where the author introduces the reader to the hero, who later acts as the narrator. Thus, a double author's view of the story is created: since the narrator is first characterized, then in the story itself, a correction for the narrator can be taken - the images of the author and the narrator are deliberately dissimilar. The author, as a rule, is wiser and more informed than the narrator, he acts as a judge and commentator on his own story. The benefits of this technique are that a) the narrator can speak any language - not only rude vernacular, which is excusable, but also literary stamps, which is sometimes beneficial to the author, because it is simple and intelligible: the author has a free hand, possible accusations of primitive language, bad taste, cynicism, anti-humanism, etc. he puts on his shoulders his innocent narrator, and in the frame he can dissociate himself from him and even condemn him; b) additional reliability is achieved: the framing is deliberately simple, ordinary, in the first person, - the reader, as it were, is preparing for further history; c) the "double look" can play a provocative role: the reader does not agree with the opinion of both the narrator and the author, he is, as it were, drawn into the discussion, pushed to his own thoughts and assessments, if he does not receive a single assessment in finished form. As examples - such well-known stories as "The Happiness of Maupassant", "Under the deck awning" of London, "The Fate of a Man" by Sholokhov; acceptance is widespread. Ringing is also used with more complex types of composition, but less often. 3. Dotted (short story) composition. It differs in that a certain number of small details and circumstances are fanned out to one event of an insignificant scale. The trinity of time, place and action is observed. Typical for everyday prose. The author, as it were, points a magnifying glass at one point and intently examines it and the nearest surrounding space. In the "dotted" short story there is no development of characters, no change in the situation: this is a picture from life. This is most clearly expressed in the short stories by Shukshin and Zoshchenko. Here is Shukshin's story "Cut off". It is about the village, about the Zhuravlev family, about Gleb Kapustin: background, characters, circumstances. Then - the essence; table talk, when Gleb "proves" his "lack of education" to the candidate of sciences. Details, vocabulary, emotional tension turn the genre sketch into a fundamental clash of triumphant and envious rudeness with naive intelligence. We can say that a short story is one small touch from life, under the gaze of the author, it takes on the scale and depth of a work of art. These are Hemingway's famous short stories. Through a gesture, a look, a remark, a single and outwardly insignificant incident turns into a display of the whole inner world of the hero, the whole atmosphere surrounding him. The difference between direct-flow and point composition is that "nothing happens" in the latter. 4. Wicker composition. There is action in it, there is also a sequence of events, but the channel of the narrative is blurred into a network of streams, the author's thought now and then returns to the past time and runs into the future, moves in space from one character to another. This achieves spatio-temporal scale, reveals the relationship of various phenomena and their mutual influence. In the limited space of the story, this is not easy to do, this technique rather characteristic of such novelists as Thomas Wolfe. However, Vladimir Lidin's late short stories are an example of the successful use of compositional "braiding", where behind simple deeds ordinary people all their past stands, the whole range of interests and sympathies, memory and imagination, the influence of acquaintances and traces of past events. If each type of composition is imagined as a graph-illustration, then a long thread of "braiding" will write out a lot of lace until it reaches the final goal. 5. Action composition. Its essence is that the most significant event is placed at the very end of the story, and the life or death of the hero depends on whether it happens or not. As an option - a confrontation between two heroes, which is resolved at the very end. In short, the climax is the denouement. In general, this is a commercial, speculative move - the author plays on natural human curiosity: "How will it all end?" Chase's thrillers are built according to this scheme, the most famous of Haley's novels - "Airport" is built on this technique: will the attacker blow up the plane or not? Interest in this makes the reader greedily swallow the novel, stuffed with a lot of side details. In short stories, this technique is clearly manifested by Stephen King. 6. Detective composition. Doesn't match the previous one. Here the central event - a major crime, an extraordinary incident, a murder - is taken out of the brackets, and all further narration is, as it were, a reverse path to what has already happened before. The author of a detective story always faces two tasks: firstly, to invent a crime, and secondly, to figure out how to solve it - in that order, not in reverse! All steps and events are initially predetermined by the crime, as if strings are drawn from each segment of the path to a single organizing point. The construction of the detective story is, as it were, a mirror image: its action lies in the fact that the characters model and recreate the already former action. For commercial reasons, the authors of detective stories ship them to the volume of novels, but originally, created by Edgar Allan Poe and canonized by Conan Doyle, the detective story was a story. 7. Two-tailed composition. Perhaps the most spectacular technique in the construction of prose. In the literature of the first half of XIX century met in this form: some described event turns out to be a dream, and then the work ends in a completely different way than the reader thought (Pushkin's Undertaker). The most famous example is Ambros Bierce's story "The Case on the Bridge over Owl Creek": a scout is hanged, the rope breaks, he falls into the water, flees from shooting and persecution, after ordeals reaches his native home - but all this only seemed to him in the last moments of his life, "the body swayed under the railing of the bridge." Such a construction is akin to the inquisitorial "torture by hope": the condemned is given the opportunity to escape, but at the last moment he falls into the arms of the jailers, waiting for him at the very exit to freedom. The reader tunes in to a successful outcome, empathizes with the hero, and the strongest contrast between the happy ending, which the story has already reached, and the tragic one, which turns out to be in reality, gives rise to a huge emotional impact. Here, at the key moment, the narrative splits in two, and the reader is offered two options for continuing and ending: first, a prosperous and happy one, then they cross it out, declaring it an unfulfilled dream, and give the second, real one. 8. Inversion composition. Its effect, like the previous one, is based on contrast. Some event is removed from the natural chronological chain and placed next to the opposite in tone; as a rule, an episode from the future of the heroes is transferred to the present, and the neighborhood of youth full of hope and fun - and tired old age, which has not achieved much, gives rise to a poignant feeling of the transience of life, the futility of hopes, the frailty of life. In Priestley's play "Time and the Conway Family" in the first act, young people make plans, in the second - ten years later - they vegetate, in the third, which is a direct continuation of the first tomorrow, they continue to hope and fight (and the viewer already knows that their hopes are not destined come true). Usually, two-tailed and inversion compositions are used to create a tragic tone, "bad endings", although, in principle, it is possible the other way around - to affirm a bright ending, completing events gloomy in color with a life-affirming episode from another time layer. 9. Hinged composition. A classic example is O. Henry's short stories. An interesting hybrid using elements of detective, false move and inversion. At the key point in the development of the action, the most fundamentally important event is withdrawn by the author and reported at the very end. A completely unexpected ending gives the whole story a different meaning than the reader has seen before: the actions of the characters acquire a different motivation, their goal and result turn out to be different. The author until the last lines, as it were, fools the reader, who is convinced that he did not know the main thing in the story. Such a composition could be called reverse: the ending of the story is the opposite of what the reader expects. The bottom line is that any story by O. Henry could well exist without a "crown" ending. At the end, as if on a hinge, the story turns its other side, turning into actually a second story: it could be like this, but in reality it's like that. The detective turns out to be a rogue, a tame lion turns out to be wild, and so on. 10. Counterpoint. Similarly musical term- parallel development of two or more lines. The classic example is Dos Passos' "42nd Parallel". People who do not know each other live their own lives, touching only occasionally. In general, such a construction is more characteristic of long prose, a novel. There are two versions of counterpoint in short stories: a) two or three unrelated plot lines are combined according to the spatio-temporal principle - both, and the other, and the third happens here and now: as a result of such montage, a completely new associative, emotional, semantic coloring (for example, in the famous scene of the explanation of Rodolphe and Emma in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the alternation of the seducer's phrases with passages from an agricultural report creates a feeling of vulgarity - and at the same time Emma's desire to escape from this vulgarity); b) a line from the past, a story from a previous life is interspersed with a front plan, explaining the behavior of the hero in this moment by opening it inner world, - the past seems to live in the present (as, say, in Sergei Voronin's story "Romance without Love"). 11. Revolver composition. Here the event is shown from different points of view through the eyes of several heroes, just as a part, brought to the desired shape, is processed in turn by several cutters supplied by a rotating clip. This allows both dialectically to consider what is happening, and show the characters both from the side and from the inside, with their own eyes. In one case a) each of the characters repeats his version of the same event ("In the thicket" by Akutagawa); in another b) the narrators are replaced as the action develops, as in the relay race ("Senorita Cora" Cortazar) ".
"The ABC of LITERARY CREATIVITY, or FROM THE SAMPLE OF THE PEN TO THE MASTER OF THE WORD" Igor Getmansky
The structure of the plot, its functions. Story composition. Plot and plot.
The plot (from fr.
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sujet) - a chain of events depicted in a literary work, i.e. the life of characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in successive positions and circumstances. The events recreated by the writers form (along with the characters) the basis objective world works and thus an integral ʼʼlinkʼʼ of its form. The plot is the organizing principle of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It should be significant in the lyrical kind of literature as well.
Story elements: The main ones include exposition, plot, development of action, ups and downs, climax, denouement. Optional: prologue, epilogue, background, ending.
We will call a plot the system of events and actions contained in a work, its event chain, and moreover, in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. The last remark is important, since quite often the events are not told in chronological order, and the reader can learn about what happened earlier. If we take only the main, key episodes of the plot, absolutely necessary for its understanding, and arrange them in chronological order, then we get plot - plot outline or, as is sometimes said, ʼʼstraightened plotʼʼ. The plots in different works are very similar to each other, but the plot is always uniquely individual.
There are two types of stories. In the first type, the development of the action takes place tensely and as rapidly as possible, the main meaning and interest for the reader lies in the events of the plot, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge content load. This type of plot is found, for example, in Pushkin's ʼʼTales of Belkinʼʼ, Turgenev's ʼʼOn the Eveʼʼ, Dostoevsky's ʼʼPlayerʼʼ and others.
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Let's call this type of plot dynamic.
In another type of plot - let's call it, in contrast to the first, adynamic
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the development of the action is slow and does not tend to a denouement, the events of the plot do not contain much interest, the 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, there are many extra-plot elements in the overall composition of the work ( see below about them), which often shift the center of gravity of the reader's attention to themselves. We observe this type of plot, for example, in ʼʼ Dead soulsʼʼ Gogol, ʼʼ Peasantsʼʼ and other works of Chekhov, etc. There is a fairly simple way to check which plot you are dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be re-read from any place. Works with a dynamic plot are characterized by reading and rereading only from beginning to end. Dynamic plots, usually, built on local conflicts, adynamic - on substantial. This regularity does not have the character of a rigid 100% dependence, but nevertheless, in most cases, this correlation between the type of conflict and the type of plot takes place.
concentric plot - one event (one event situation) comes to the fore. Characteristic for small epic forms, dramatic genres, literature of antiquity and classicism. (ʼʼTelegramʼʼ by K. Paustovsky, ʼʼNotes of a hunterʼʼ by I. Turgenev) Chronicle - events do not have causal relationships among themselves and are correlated with each other only in time (ʼʼDon Quixoteʼʼ Cervantes, ʼʼOdysseyʼʼ Homer, Don Juanʼʼ Byron).
plot and composition. The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the work, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, based on the intentions of the author. There is also an internal composition of the plot, to which we now turn.
Considering the dependence on the relationship between the plot and the plot in specific work talk about different types and techniques of plot composition. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in a direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or plot sequence. More complicated is the method in which we learn about the event that happened before the rest at the very end of the work- this technique is called by 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 default technique is almost always used in works detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Another method of breaking the chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection , 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. Finally, the plot sequence must be broken in such a way that events of different times are given mixed up; the narrative all the time returns from the moment of the action in progress 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. She is called free composition and is used to some extent by different writers quite often: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. At the same time, it happens that free composition becomes the main and defining principle of constructing a plot, in this case, as a rule, we are talking about free composition itself.
Extraplot 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. If the plot of the work - ϶ᴛᴏ the dynamic side of its composition, then extraplot elements are static; extra-plot elements are those that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions. There are three main types of extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes(otherwise they are also called inserted short stories or inserted plots). Description - this is a literary image 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 the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of non-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work. Author's digressions - these 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 do appear there (Eugene Onegin, Pushkin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, etc.), they play, as a rule, the most important role and are subject to mandatory analysis. Finally, insert episodes - these are relatively finished fragments of the action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to a different time and place, etc. Sometimes insert episodes start to play and the work even big role than the main plot: for example, in Gogol's Dead Souls.
In some cases, extra-plot elements can also include psychological image, if state of mind or the hero's thoughts are not a consequence or cause of plot events, they are switched off from the plot chain. At the same time, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms of psychological depiction are somehow included in the plot, insofar as they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.
In general, elements outside the plot often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.
Anchor points compositions. The composition of any literary work is built in such a way that from beginning to end, the reader's tension does not weaken, but intensifies. In a work of small volume, the composition is most often a linear development in ascending order, striving for the finale, the ending, in which the point of highest tension is located. In larger works, the composition alternates between ups and downs in tension during general development ascending. We will call the points of greatest reader tension the reference points of the composition.
The simplest case: the reference points of the composition coincide with the elements of the plot, primarily with the climax and denouement. We meet with this when the dynamic plot is not just the basis of the composition of the work, but in fact exhausts its originality. The composition in this case practically does not contain extra-plot elements, it uses compositional techniques to a minimum. An excellent example of such a construction is an anecdote story, such as Chekhov's story ʼʼThe Death of an Officialʼʼ considered above.
In the event that the plot traces different turns in the external fate of the hero with a relative or absolute static nature of his character, it is useful to look for reference points in the so-called ups and downs - sharp turns in the fate of the hero. It was this construction of reference points that was typical, for example, for ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later used and is still being used in adventure literature.
Almost always, one of the reference points falls on the end of the work (but not necessarily on the denouement, which may not coincide with the end!). In small, mostly lyrical works, this, as already mentioned, is often the only reference point, and all the previous ones only lead to it, increase tension, providing its ʼʼʼʼʼ in the end.
In large works of art, the ending, as a rule, also contains one of the reference points. It is no coincidence that many writers said that they worked especially carefully on the last phrase, and Chekhov pointed out to novice writers that it should sound ʼʼmusicalʼʼ.
Sometimes - although not very often - one of the reference points of the composition is, on the contrary, in the very the beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy's novel ʼʼResurrectionʼʼ.
Reference points of a composition can sometimes be located at the beginning and end (more often) of parts, chapters, acts, etc. Composition types. In the most general form, two types of composition can be distinguished - let's call them conditionally simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining parts of a work into a single whole, and this association is always carried out in the simplest and most natural way. In the field of plot formation, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the field of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the field of subject details - a simple list of them without highlighting especially important, supporting, symbolic details etc.
With a complex composition, a special artistic meaning is embodied in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements. So, for example, the consistent change of narrators and the violation of the chronological sequence in Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" focus on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin's character and allow you to "get close" to it, gradually unraveling the character.
Simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a particular work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be purely quantitative to a certain extent: we can talk about the greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of, say, Krylov's fables or Gogol's story "The Carriage" is simple in all respects, while Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" or Chekhov's "Lady with a Dog" is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition rather complicated, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become style dominants works and, thus, determine its artistic originality.
The structure of the plot, its functions. Story composition. Plot and plot. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Structure of the plot, its functions. Composition of the plot. Plot and plot." 2017, 2018.
There are three levels of literary work:
Subject figurativeness - vital material
Composition - the organization of this material
Artistic language is the speech structure of a literary work, at all four levels of artistic language: phonics, vocabulary, semantics, syntax.
Each of these layers has its own complex hierarchy.
The seeming complexity of a literary work is created by the hard work of the writer on all three levels of the artistic whole.
Let's get acquainted with several definitions of this concept and its various classifications, when the composition of the text is revealed according to different signs and indicators.
A literary text is a communicative, structural and semantic unity, which is manifested in its composition. That is, it is the unity of communication - structure - and meaning.
The composition of a literary text is "mutual correlation and location units of depicted and artistic and speech means. The units depicted here mean: theme, problem, idea, characters, all aspects of the depicted external and internal world. Artistic and speech means are the entire figurative system of the language at the level of its 4 layers.
Composition is the construction of a work, which determines its integrity, completeness and unity.
The composition is "system connections" all of its elements. This system also has an independent content, which should be revealed in the process of philological analysis of the text.
Composition, or structure, or architectonics is the construction of a work of art.
Composition is an element of the form of a work of art.
Composition contributes to the creation of a work as an artistic integrity.
The composition unites all the components and subordinates them to the idea, the idea of the work. Moreover, this connection is so close that it is impossible to remove or rearrange any component from the composition.
Types of compositional organization of the work:
Plot view - that is, plot (epos, lyrics, drama)
Non-plot type - plotless (in lyrics, in epic and drama, created by the creative method of modernism and postmodernism)
The plot view of the compositional organization of a work can be of two types:
Eventive (in epic and drama)
Descriptive (in lyrics)
Let's consider the first type of plot composition - event. It has three forms:
Chronological form - events develop in a straight line of time movement, the natural time sequence is not violated, there may be time intervals between events
Retrospective form - deviation from the natural chronological sequence, violation of the linear order of the passage of events in life, interruption by the memories of the heroes or the author, familiarizing the reader with the background of events and the life of the characters (Bunin, "Easy breathing")
Free or montage form - a significant violation of the spatio-temporal and causal relationships between events; the connection between individual episodes is associative-emotional, not logical-semantic (“A Hero of Our Time”, Kafka’s “Trial” and other works of modernism and postmodernism)
Consider the second type of composition - descriptive:
It is present in lyrical works, they basically lack a clearly limited and coherently developed action, the experiences of a lyrical hero or character are brought to the fore, and the whole composition is subject to the goals of his image, this is a description of thoughts, impressions, feelings, pictures inspired by the experiences of a lyrical hero .
Composition is external and internal
External composition(architectonics): chapters, parts, sections, paragraphs, books, volumes, their arrangement may be different depending on the methods of creating the plot chosen by the author.
External composition- this is the division of a text characterized by continuity into discrete units. Composition, therefore, is the manifestation of a significant discontinuity in continuity.
External composition: the boundaries of each compositional unit highlighted in the text are clearly defined, defined by the author (chapters, chapters, sections, parts, epilogues, phenomena in the drama, etc.), this organizes and directs the reader's perception. The architectonics of the text serves as a way of "portioning" the meaning; with the help of ... compositional units, the author indicates to the reader the unification, or, conversely, the dismemberment of the elements of the text (and hence its content).
External composition: no less significant is the absence of division of the text or its extended fragments: this emphasizes the integrity of the spatial continuum, the fundamental non-discreteness of the organization of the narrative, the non-differentiation, the fluidity of the picture of the world of the narrator or character (for example, in the literature of the “stream of consciousness”).
Internal composition : this is the composition (construction, arrangement) of images - characters, events, action settings, landscapes, interiors, etc.
Internal(meaningful) composition is determined by the system of images-characters, the features of the conflict and the originality of the plot.
Not to be confused: the plot has elements plot, the composition has tricks(internal composition) and parts(external composition) compositions.
The composition includes, in its construction, both all the elements of the plot - plot elements, and extra-plot elements.
Techniques of internal composition:
Prologue (often referred to as the plot)
Epilogue (often referred to as the plot)
Monologue
Character portraits
Interiors
landscapes
Extra-plot elements in the composition
Classification of compositional techniques for the selection of individual elements:
Each compositional unit is characterized by extension techniques that provide emphasis the most important meanings of the text and engage the reader's attention. It:
geography: various graphic highlights,
repetitions: repetitions of language units of different levels,
amplification: strong positions of the text or its compositional part - promotional positions associated with establishing a hierarchy of meanings, focusing attention on the most important, enhancing emotionality and aesthetic effect, establishing meaningful links between adjacent and distant elements belonging to the same and different levels, ensuring the coherence of the text and its memorability. The strong positions of the text traditionally include titles, epigraphs, beginningandthe end works (parts, chapters, chapters). With their help, the author emphasizes the most significant elements of the structure for understanding the work and at the same time determines the main "semantic milestones" of one or another compositional part (the text as a whole).
Widespread in Russian literature of the late XX century. montage and collage techniques, on the one hand, led to increased fragmentation of the text, on the other hand, opened up the possibility of new combinations of "semantic planes".
Composition in terms of its connectedness
In the features of the architectonics of the text, such its most important feature is manifested as connectivity. The segments (parts) of the text selected as a result of segmentation correlate with each other, “link” on the basis of common elements. There are two types of connectivity: cohesion and coherence (terms proposed by W. Dressler)
cohesion (from Lat. - “to be connected”), or local connectivity, is a connection of a linear type, expressed formally, mainly by linguistic means. It is based on pronominal substitution, lexical repetitions, the presence of conjunctions, correlation of grammatical forms, etc.
coherence(from lat. - “linkage”), or global connectivity, is a connection of a non-linear type that combines elements of different levels of the text (for example, the title, epigraph, “text in the text” and the main text, etc.). The most important means of creating coherence are repetitions (primarily words with common semantic components) and parallelism.
In a literary text, semantic chains arise - rows of words with common semes, the interaction of which gives rise to new semantic connections and relationships, as well as "mean increments".
Any literary text is permeated with semantic roll calls, or repetitions. Words related on this basis can take different positions: they can be located at the beginning and at the end of the text (ring semantic composition), symmetrically, form a gradation series, etc.
Consideration of the semantic composition is a necessary stage of philological analysis. It is especially important for the analysis of "plotless" texts, texts with weakened cause-and-effect relationships of components, texts saturated with complex images. The identification of semantic chains in them and the establishment of their connections is the key to the interpretation of the work.
Extraplot Elements
insert episodes,
lyrical digressions,
artistic advance,
artistic framing,
dedication,
Epigraph,
header
Insert episodes- these are parts of the narrative that are not directly related to the course of the plot, events that are only associatively connected and are remembered in connection with the current events of the work (“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” in “Dead Souls”)
Lyrical digressions- are lyrical, philosophical, journalistic, express the writer's thoughts and feelings directly, in the direct author's word, reflect the author's position, the writer's attitude to the characters, some elements of the theme, problem, idea of the work (in "Dead Souls" - about youth and old age , about Russia as a bird - a troika)
Artistic lead - depiction of scenes that are ahead of the further course of events (
Artistic framing - scenes that begin and end a work of art, most often this is the same scene, given in development, and creating ring composition(“The Fate of a Man” by M. Sholokhov)
Dedication - a short description or lyrical work that has a specific addressee to whom the work is addressed and dedicated
Epigraph - an aphorism or a quotation from another famous work or folklore, located before the entire text or before its individual parts (proverb in The Captain's Daughter)
header- the name of the work, which always contains the theme, problem or idea of the work, a very brief formulation with deep expressiveness, figurativeness or symbolism.
The object of literary analysis in the study of composition I can be different aspects compositions:
1) architectonics, or the external composition of the text, - its division into certain parts (chapters, subchapters, paragraphs, stanzas, etc.), their sequence and interconnection;
2) a system of images of characters in a work of art;
3) change of points of view in the structure of the text; so, according to B.A. Uspensky, it is the problem of point of view that makes "the central problem of composition»; consideration in the structure of the text of different points of view in relation to the architectonics of the work allows us to identify the dynamics of the deployment of artistic content;
4) the system of details presented in the text (composition of details); their analysis makes it possible to reveal ways of deepening the depicted: as I.A. Goncharov, “details that appear fragmentarily and separately in the long term of the general plan”, in the context of the whole, “merge in a common system ... as if thin invisible threads or, perhaps, magnetic currents are operating”;
5) correlation with each other and with other components of the text of its extra-plot elements (inserted novels, stories, lyrical digressions, "scenes on the stage" in the drama).
Compositional analysis thus takes into account different aspects of the text.
The term "composition" in modern philology is very ambiguous, which makes it difficult to use.
To analyze the composition of a literary text, you need to be able to:
To single out repetitions in its structure that are significant for the interpretation of the work, serving as the basis of cohesion and coherence;
Detect semantic overlaps in parts of the text;
Highlight markers - separators of different compositional parts of the work;
Correlate the features of the division of the text with its content and determine the role of discrete (individual parts) compositional units in the whole;
Establish a connection between the narrative structure of the text as its “deep compositional structure” (B.A. Uspensky) and its external composition.
Determine all the methods of external and internal composition in F. Tyutchev's poem "Silentium" (namely: parts of the composition, plot type - non-plot, event - descriptive, vision of individual elements, type of their connection, - NB
In addition to external connections, temporal and causal, there are internal, emotional and semantic connections between the events depicted. They
basically constitute the sphere of composition of the plot. Thus, the proximity of the chapters of "War and Peace", dedicated to the dying of the old Bezukhov and the cheerful name day in the Rostovs' house, outwardly motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content load. This compositional technique sets the reader in the mood of Tolstoy's reflections on the inseparability of life and death.
In many works, the composition of plot episodes is of decisive importance. Such, for example, is T. Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. Consistently, without any chronological permutations, depicting the course of Hans Castorp's life in a tuberculosis sanatorium, this novel at the same time contains a meaningful and complex system of comparisons between the events, facts, and episodes depicted. No wonder T. Mann advised people interested in his work to read The Magic Mountain twice: for the first time - to understand the relationship of the characters, that is, the plot; in the second - to delve into the internal logic of the links between the chapters, that is, to understand the artistic meaning of the composition of the plot.
The composition of the plot is also a certain order of telling the reader about what happened. In works with a large amount of text, the sequence of plot episodes usually reveals the author's idea gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas, truly artistic, each subsequent episode opens up something new for the reader - and so on until the finale, which is usually, as it were, a pivotal moment in the composition of the plot. "The force of impact (artistic) refers to the end", - noted D. Furmanov (82, 4, 714). All the more responsible is the role of the final effect in small one-act plays, short stories, fables, ballads. The ideological meaning of such works is often revealed suddenly and only in the last lines of the text. This is how the short stories of OTenry are built: often their finals turn inside out what was said earlier.
Sometimes the writer seems to intrigue his readers: for some time he keeps them in the dark about the true essence of the events depicted. This compositional technique is called by default, and the moment when you read finally, together with the heroes, he learns about what happened earlier, - recognition(the last term belongs to
lived by Aristotle). Recall the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus Rex", where neither the hero, nor the spectator and readers for a long time they do not realize that Oedipus himself is guilty of the murder of Laius. In modern times, such compositional techniques are used mainly in adventurous picaresque and adventure genres, where, as V. Shklovsky put it, the “secret technique” is of paramount importance.
But realist writers sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. By default, Pushkin's story "The Snowstorm" is built. Only at the very end does the reader learn that Maria Gavrilovna is married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin.
Silence about events can give the image of action a lot of tension. So, reading "War and Peace" for the first time, for a long time, together with the Bolkonsky family, we believe that Prince Andrei died after the battle of Austerlitz, and only at the moment of his appearance in the Bald Mountains we learn that this is not so. Such silences are very characteristic of Dostoevsky. In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, the reader believes for some time that Fyodor Pavlovich was killed by his son Dmitry, and only Smerdyakov's story puts an end to this delusion.
Chronological permutations of events become an important means of plot composition. Usually they (like defaults and recognitions) intrigue the reader and thus make the action more entertaining. But sometimes (especially in realistic literature) rearrangements are dictated by the desire of authors to switch readers from outside what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its deep background. Thus, in Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time, the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets of the protagonist's inner world. First, we learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych ("Bela"), then from the narrator-author, who gives a detailed portrait of the hero ("Maxim Maksimych"), and only after that Lermontov introduces Pechorin's diary (the stories "Taman", "Princess Mary", "The Fatalist"). Thanks to the sequence of chapters chosen by the author, the reader's attention is transferred from the adventures undertaken by Pechorin to the riddle of his character, "unraveled" from story to story.
For realistic literature of the XX century. characterized by works with detailed background stories of heroes,
given in independent plot episodes. In order to more fully discover the successive links of eras and generations, in order to reveal the complex and difficult ways of forming human characters, writers often resort to a kind of “montage” of the past (sometimes very distant) and the present of characters: the action is periodically transferred from one time to another. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened earlier) composition of the plot is characteristic of the work of G. Green and W. Faulkner. It is also found in some dramatic works. Thus, the heroes of Ibsen's dramas often tell each other about long-standing events. In a number of modern dramas, what the characters remember is depicted directly: in stage episodes that interrupt the main line of action (Death of a Salesman by A. Miller).
Internal, emotional and semantic connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be more important than plot connections, causal and temporal ones. The composition of such works can be called active, or, using the term of cinematographers, "montage". An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, and facts. It is typical for the works of L. Tolstoy and Chekhov, Brecht and Bulgakov. The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be characterized by Blok’s words from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life that are accessible to my vision at a given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure” (32, 297).
The composition of the plot in the system of artistic means of the epic and drama, therefore, has a very responsible place.
CHARACTER STATEMENTS
The most important side of the subject depiction of the epic and drama is the statements of the characters, that is, their dialogues and monologues. In epics and novels, stories and short stories, the speech of heroes occupies a very significant, and even most, part. In the dramatic kind of literature, however, it dominates unconditionally and absolutely.
Dialogues and monologues are expressively significant statements, as if emphasizing, demonstrating their "author's" affiliation. Dialogue is invariably associated with mutual, two-way communication, in which the speaker takes into account the direct reaction of the listener, the main thing is that activity and passivity pass from one participant in communication to another. For dialogue, the oral form of contact is most favorable, its relaxed and non-hierarchical nature: the absence of social and spiritual distance between the speakers. Dialogic speech is characterized by the alternation of brief statements of two (sometimes more) persons. The monologue, on the contrary, does not require anyone's immediate response and proceeds independently of the reactions of the perceiver. This is not interrupted by "foreign" speech speaking. Monologues can be "solitary and", taking place outside the direct contact of the speaker with someone: they are pronounced (out loud or to oneself) in solitude or in an atmosphere of psychological isolation of the speaker from those present. But converted monologues are much more common, designed to actively influence the minds of listeners. Such are the speeches of speakers, lecturers, teachers in front of students 1 .
On the early stages formation and development verbal art(in myths, parables, fairy tales), the statements of the characters usually were practically significant remarks: the depicted people (or animals) briefly informed each other about their intentions, expressed their desires or requirements. Casually spoken dialogue was present in comedies and farces.
However, in the leading, high genres of pre-realistic literature, the oratorical, declamatory, rhetorical and poetic speech of the characters prevailed, lengthy, solemn, outwardly effective, mostly monologue.
Here are the words Hecuba addresses in the Iliad to his son Hector, who briefly left the battlefield and came to his house:
Why do you come, my son, leaving the fierce battle?
It is true, the hated men of the Achaeans are cruelly pressing,
Ratouya close to the wall? And your heart rushed to us:
Do you want, from the castle of Trojan, to raise your hands to the Olympian?
But wait, my Hector, I'll take out the wine
Zeus the father to pour and other deities of the ages.
Afterwards, you yourself, when you want to drink, will be strengthened;
For a husband, exhausted by labor, wine renews his strength;
But you, my son, are weary, striving for your citizens.
And Hector answers even more extensively, why he does not dare to pour wine to Zeus "with an unwashed hand."
Such conditionally declamatory, rhetorical, pathetic speech is especially characteristic of tragedies: from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller, Sumarkov, Ozerov. It was also characteristic of the characters of a number of other genres of pre-realistic eras. As part of this speech, monologic beginnings, as a rule, took precedence over dialogic ones: rhetoric and recitation pushed into the background, and even nullified easy colloquialism. Speech, ordinary, unvarnished, was used mainly in comedies and satires, as well as in works of a parodic nature.
At the same time, the so-called monophony prevailed in literature: the characters expressed themselves in the speech manner required by the literary (primarily genre) tradition 1 .
The character's statement still to a small extent became his speech characteristic. The variety of speech manners and styles in pre-realistic eras was captured only in a few outstanding works- in " Divine Comedy» Dante, stories of Rabelais, Shakespeare's plays Don Quixote by Cervantes. According to the observations of one of the well-known translators, the novel "Don Quixote" is heterogeneous and polyphonic: "... here is the language of the peasants, and the language of the then "intelligentsia", and the language of the clergy, and the language of the nobility, and student jargon, and even "thieves' music" (68, 114).
realistic creativity XIX-XX centuries inherent
1 Note that in modern literary criticism Dialogic speech is often understood broadly, as any exercise of contact, so that it is given universality. At the same time, monologue speech is considered to be of secondary importance and practically non-existent in its pure form. This kind of sharp and unconditional preference for dialogical speech takes place in the works of M. M. Bakhtin.
1 "Speech actor, - writes D. S. Likhachev about ancient Russian literature, is the author's speech for him. The author is a kind of puppeteer. doll stripped own life and my own voice. The author speaks for her with his voice, his language and his usual style. The author, as it were, restates what the character said or could say ... This achieves a peculiar effect of the dumbness of the characters, despite all their outward verbosity ”(in collection: XVIII century in world literary development. M., 1969. C .313).
heteroglossia. Here, as never before, the socio-ideological and individual characteristics of the speech of the characters, who acquired their own "voices", began to be widely mastered. At the same time, the inner world of the character is revealed not only by the logical meaning of what was said, but also by the very manner, the very organization of speech.
He thinks: “I will be her savior. I will not tolerate that the corrupter tempts the young heart with fire and sighs and praises; So that the despicable, poisonous worm Sharpened the stem of the lily; So that the two-morning flower Withered still half-opened. All this meant, friends: I'm shooting with a friend.
These lines from "Eugene Onegin" perfectly characterize the structure of the soul of Lensky, who raises his experiences to a romantic pedestal and is therefore prone to emphatically sublime, conditionally poetic speech, syntactically complicated and replete with metaphorical turns. These features of the hero's statement are especially striking thanks to the naturally free, worldly artless, completely "unliterary" commentary of the narrator ("All this meant, friends: || I'm shooting with a friend"). And Lensky's romantically spectacular monologue is stamped with irony.
Writers of the XIX-XX centuries. (and this is their greatest artistic achievement) with unprecedented breadth introduced into their works a relaxed colloquial speech, mainly dialogic. A lively conversation in its social diversity and richness of individual expressive principles and aesthetic organization was reflected in "Eugene Onegin", in the narrative works of Gogol, Nekrasov, Leskov, Melyshkov-Pechersky, in the dramaturgy of Griboyedov, Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky.
The speech of the characters often conveys their unique psychological states; utterances, in the words of G. O. Vinokur, are built on “clumps of colloquial expression” (39, 304). "Loquacity of the heart" (an expression from the novel "Poor People") is characteristic not only of Dostoevsky's heroes. This spiritual ability of a person has been mastered by many realist writers.
“In order to think “figuratively” and write like this, it is necessary that
the heroes of the writer each spoke their own language, characteristic of their position ... - said N. S. Leskov. - A person lives with words, and you need to know at what moments of psychological life which of us will find what words ... I carefully and for many years listened to the pronunciation and pronunciation of Russian people at different levels of their social status. They all talk to me in your own wayhim, and not in a literary way” (82, 3, 221). This tradition was inherited by many Soviet writers: “in their own way, and not in a literary way,” the heroes of Sholokhov and Zoshchenko, Shukshin and Belov speak.
The integrity of a work of art is achieved by various means. Among these means, composition and plot play an important role.
Composition(from lat. componere - to compose, connect) - the construction of a work, the ratio of all its elements, creating a holistic picture of life and contributing to the expression of ideological content. The composition distinguishes between external elements - division into parts, chapters, and internal - grouping and arrangement of images. When creating a work, the writer carefully thinks over the composition, place and relationship of images and other elements, trying to give the material the greatest ideological and artistic expression. The composition is simple and complex. So, A. Chekhov's story "Ionych" has a simple composition. It consists of five small chapters (external elements) and an uncomplicated internal system images. In the center of the image is Dmitry Startsev, who is opposed by a group of images of the local residents of the Turkins. The composition of L. Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" looks completely different. It consists of four parts, each part is divided into many chapters, a significant place is occupied by the author's philosophical reflections. These are the external elements of the composition. The grouping and arrangement of images-characters, of which there are more than 550, is very difficult. The outstanding skill of the writer was manifested in the fact that, with all the complexity of the material, it is arranged in the most expedient way and is subject to the disclosure of the main idea: the people are the decisive force of history.
AT scientific literature terms are sometimes used architectonics, structure as synonyms for the word composition.
Plot(from French sujet - subject) - a system of events in a work of art, revealing the characters of the characters and contributing to the most complete expression of the ideological content. The system of events is a unity that develops in time, and driving force The plot is conflict. Conflicts are different: social, love, psychological, domestic, military and others. The hero usually comes into conflict with public environment with others, with yourself. There are usually several conflicts in a work. In L. Chekhov's story "Ionych" the hero's conflict with the environment is combined with love. A striking example psychological conflict - Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The most common type of conflict is social. To designate social conflict literary critics often use the term conflict, and love - intrigue.
The plot consists of a number of elements: exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue.
Exposure - initial information about the actors that motivate their behavior in the context of the conflict that has arisen. In the story "Ionych" this is the arrival of Startsev, a description of the "most educated" Turkin family in the city.
Tie - an event that initiates the development of an action, a conflict. In the story "Ionych" Startsev's acquaintance with the Turkin family.
After the plot, the development of the action begins, the highest point of which is the culmination. In L. Chekhov's story - Startsev's declaration of love, Katya's refusal.
denouement- an event that removes the conflict. In the story "Ionych" - the rupture of relations between Startsev and the Turkins.
Epilogue - information about the events that followed after the denouement. Sometimes. the author himself calls the final part of the story an epilogue. In the story of L. Chekhov there is information about the fate of the heroes, which can be attributed to the epilogue.
In a great work of fiction, as a rule, there are many storylines and each of them. develops, intertwines with others. Individual elements of the plot may be common. Determining the classic scheme can be difficult.
The movement of the plot in a work of art occurs simultaneously in time and space. To denote the relationship of temporal and spatial relations, M. Bakhtin proposed the term chronotope. artistic time is not a direct reflection of real time, but arises by mounting certain ideas about real time. Real time moves irreversibly and only in one direction - from the past to the future, while artistic time can slow down, stop and move in the opposite direction. Return to the image of the past is called flashback. Artistic time is a complex interweaving of the times of the narrator and heroes, and often a complex layering of the times of different historical eras(“The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov). It can be closed, closed in itself, and open, included in the flow of historical time. An example of the first "Ionych" by L. Chekhov, the second - "Quiet Don" by M. Sholokhov.
Along with the term plot there is a term plot which are usually used as synonyms. Meanwhile, some theorists consider them inadequate, insisting on their independent significance. The plot, in their opinion, is a system of events in a causal-temporal sequence, and the plot is a system of events in the author's presentation. Thus, the plot of I. Goncharov's novel "Oblomov" begins with a description of the life of an adult hero living in St. Petersburg with his servant Zakhar in a house on Gorokhovaya Street. The plot involves a presentation of the events of Oblomov's life. starting from childhood (chapter "Oblomov's Dream").
We define a plot as a system, a chain of events. In many cases, the writer, in addition to the story of events, introduces descriptions of nature, household paintings, digressions, reflections, geographical or historical references. They are called extra-plot elements.
It should be noted that there are different principles of plot organization. Sometimes events develop sequentially, in chronological order, sometimes with retrospective digressions, there is an overlay of times. Quite often there is a method of framing the plot plot in the plot. A striking example is Sholokhov's The Fate of a Man. In it, the author tells about his meeting with the driver at the crossing of the overflowing river. While waiting for the ferry, Sokolov spoke about his difficult life about staying in German captivity, loss of family. At the end, the author said goodbye to this man and thought about his fate. The main, main story of Andrei Sokolov is framed by the author's story. This technique is called framing.
The plot and composition of lyrical works are very peculiar. The author depicts in them not events, but thoughts and experiences. The unity and integrity of the lyrical work is ensured by the main lyrical motive, the bearer of which is the lyrical hero. The composition of the poem is subject to the disclosure of thought-feeling. “The lyrical development of the theme,” writes the well-known literary theorist B. Tomashevsky, “reminiscent of the dialectics of theoretical reasoning, with the difference that in the reasoning we have a logically justified introduction of new motives, ... and in the lyrics, the introduction of motives is justified by the emotional development of the theme.” Typical, but in his opinion, is the three-part construction of lyrical poems, when a theme is given in the first part, in the second it develops through lateral motifs, and the third is an emotional conclusion. As an example, A. Pushkin's poem "To Chaadaev" can be cited.
Part 1 Love, Hope, Quiet Glory
The deceit did not last long.
Part 2 We wait with languor of hope
Minutes of liberty saint ...
Part 3 Comrade, believe! She will rise
Star of captivating happiness...
The lyrical development of the theme is of two types: deductive - from the general to the particular, and inductive - from the particular to the general. The first is in the above poem by A. Pushkin, the second in the poem by K. Simonov "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...".
In some lyrical works there is a plot: "Railway" by I. Nekrasov, ballads, songs. They are called story lyrics.
Fine details serve to reproduce the concrete-sensual details of the world of characters, created by the creative imagination of the artist and directly embodying the ideological content of the work. The term “pictorial details” is not recognized by all theorists (the terms “thematic” or “objective” details are also used), but everyone agrees that the artist recreates the details of the appearance and speech of the characters, their inner world, and the environment in order to express their thoughts . However, accepting this position, one should not interpret it too straightforwardly and think that every detail (eye color, gestures, clothing, description of the area, etc.) is directly related to the author's goal setting and has a very definite unambiguous meaning. If this were so, the work would lose its artistic specificity and become tendentious and illustrative.
Visual details contribute to the fact that the world of characters appears before the reader's inner gaze in all its fullness of life, in sounds, colors, volumes, smells, in spatial and temporal extent. Not being able to convey all the details of the picture being drawn, the writer reproduces only some of them, trying to give an impetus to the reader's imagination and force him to complete the missing features with the help of his own imagination. Without “seeing”, without imagining “living” characters, the reader will not be able to empathize with them, and his aesthetic perception of the work will be inferior.
Fine details allow the artist to plastically, visibly recreate the life of the characters, to reveal their characters through individual details. At the same time, they convey the author's evaluative attitude to the reality depicted, create an emotional atmosphere of the narrative. Yes, reading crowd scenes in the story “Taras Bulba”, one can be convinced that seemingly scattered remarks and statements of the Cossacks help us “hear” the many-voiced crowd of Cossacks, and various portrait and everyday details help us visualize it. At the same time, the heroic warehouse of folk characters, formed in the conditions of wild freemen and poeticized by Gogol, is gradually becoming clearer. At the same time, many details are comical, cause a smile, create a humorous tone of the narration (especially in the scenes of peaceful life). Fine details perform here, as in most works, pictorial, characterizing and expressive functions.
In drama, pictorial details are conveyed not by verbal means, but by other means (there is no description of the appearance of the characters, their actions, or the situation, because there are actors on the stage and there are scenery). The speech characteristics of the characters acquire special significance.
In the lyrics, pictorial details are subordinated to the task of recreating the experience in its development, movement, and inconsistency. Here they serve as signs of the event that caused the experience, but they mainly play the role of a psychological characteristic of the lyrical hero. At the same time, their expressive role is also preserved; the experience is conveyed as sublimely romantic, heroic, tragic, or in reduced, for example, ironic tones.
The plot also belongs to the realm of pictorial detail, but stands out for its dynamic character. In epic to dramatic works, these are the actions of the characters and the events depicted. The actions of the characters that make up the plot are diverse - these are all kinds of actions, statements, experiences and thoughts of the characters. The plot most directly and effectively reveals the character of the character, the protagonist. However, it is important to understand that the actions of the characters also reveal the author's understanding of the typical character and the author's assessment. By forcing the hero to act in one way or another, the artist evokes in the reader a certain evaluative attitude not only towards the hero, but towards the whole type of people that he represents. So, forcing his fictional hero to kill a friend in a duel in the name of secular prejudices, Pushkin evokes a feeling of condemnation in the reader and makes him think about Onegin's inconsistency, about the inconsistency of his character. This is the expressive role of the plot.
The plot moves due to the emergence, development, resolution of various conflicts between the characters of the work. Conflicts can be of a private nature (Onegin's quarrel with Lensky), or they can be a moment, part of socio-historical conflicts that arose in historical reality itself (war, revolution, social movement). By depicting plot conflicts, the writer draws attention to the problems of the work to the greatest extent. But it would be wrong to identify these concepts on the basis of this (there is a tendency towards such an identification in Abramovich's textbook, section 2, ch. 2). Problematics is the leading side of the ideological content, and plot conflict- form element. It is equally wrong to equate plot with content (as is common in colloquial language). Therefore, the terminology of Timofeev, who proposed calling the plot, together with all the other details of the depicted life, “direct content” (Fundamentals of the Theory of Literature, part 2, ch. 1, 2, 3), did not receive recognition.
The question of the plot in the lyrics is solved in different ways. However, there is no doubt that this term can be applied to lyrics only with great reservations, denoting by it the outline of those events that “shine” through the hero’s lyrical experience and motivate him. Sometimes this term refers to the very movement of lyrical experience.
The composition of pictorial, including plot details, is their location in the text. Using antitheses, repetitions, parallelisms, changing the pace and chronological sequence of events in the narrative, establishing chronicle and causal connections between events, the artist achieves such a relationship that expands and deepens their meaning. In all textbooks, the compositional techniques of narration, the introduction of the narrator, the framing, introductory episodes, the main points in the development of the action, and various motivations are quite fully defined. plot episodes. The discrepancy between the order of plot events and the order of narration about them in the work makes us talk about such means of expression like a plot. It should be borne in mind that another terminology is also common, when the actual compositional device of permuting events is called the plot (Abramovich, Kozhinov, etc.).
In order to master the material in this section, we recommend that you independently analyze the visual details, the plot and their composition in any epic or dramatic work. It is necessary to pay attention to how the development of the action serves the development of artistic thought - the introduction of new themes, the deepening of problematic motives, the gradual disclosure of the characters' characters and copyright to them. Each new plot scene or description is prepared, motivated by the entire previous image, but does not repeat it, but develops, supplements and deepens it. These components of the form are most directly related to the artistic content and depend on it. Therefore, they are unique as well as the content of each work.
In view of this, the student needs to get acquainted with those theories that ignore the close connection between the plot-pictorial sphere of form and content. This is primarily the so-called comparative theory, which was based on a comparative historical study of the literatures of the world, but misinterpreted the results of such a study. Comparatives focused on the influence of literatures on each other. But they did not take into account that the influence is due to the similarity or difference public relations in the respective countries, but proceeded from the immanent, i.e., internal, allegedly completely autonomous laws of the development of literature. Therefore, the comparativists wrote about "sustainable motives", about the "images bequeathed" of literature, and also about " wandering plots”, without distinguishing between the plot and its scheme. The characteristic of this theory is also in the textbook, ed. G.N. Pospelov and G.L. Abramovich.
QUESTIONS FOR SELF-EDUCATION (m. 2)
1. A literary work as an integral unity.
2. The theme of the work of art and its features.
3. The idea of a work of art and its features.
4. Composition of a work of art. External and internal elements.
5. The plot of a literary work. The concept of conflict. Plot elements. Extra-plot elements. Plot and plot.
6. What is the role of the plot in revealing the ideological content of the work?
7. What is plot composition? What is the difference between narrative and description? What are off-plot episodes and lyrical digressions?
8. What is the function of the landscape, everyday environment, portrait and speech characteristics of the character in the work?
9. Features of the plot of lyrical works.
10. Spatio-temporal organization of the work. The concept of the chronotope.
LITERATURE
Korman B.O. The study of the text of a work of art. - M., 1972.
Abramovich G.L. Introduction to Literary Studies. Ed.6. - M., 1975.
Introduction to Literary Studies / Ed. L.V. Chernets/. M., 2000. - S. 11 -20,
209-219, 228-239, 245-251.
Galich O. ta in. Theory of Literature. K., 2001. -S. 83-115.
Getmanets M.F. Suchasiny dictionary of lgeraturoznavchih terminiv. - Kharkiv, 2003.
MODULE THREE
LANGUAGE OF ART LITERATURE
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Features of the subject of literature
1. Living integrity. A scientist breaks up an object, studies a person in parts: an anatomist - the structure of the body, a psychologist - mental activity, etc. In literature, a person appears in a living and holistic
Features of the artistic image
1. Specificity - a reflection of the individual qualities of objects and phenomena. Concreteness makes the image recognizable, unlike others. In the image of a person, this is the appearance, the originality of speech
Means of creating an image-character
1. Portrait-image character's appearance. As noted, this is one of the methods of character individualization. Through the portrait, the writer often reveals the inner world of the hero, especially
Literary genera and genres
We should talk about the difference three genera literature on content, namely, on the aspect of knowledge and reproduction of life. Because of this general principles creative typification of life in every kind of manifestation
Genres of epic works
Myth (from Gr. mythos - word, speech) is one of the oldest types of folklore, fantasy story, explaining in a figurative form the phenomena of the surrounding world. Legend
Genres of lyrical works
Song is small lyric poem designed for singing. The genre of the song has its roots in ancient times. Distinguish between folklore and literary songs.
Genres of dramatic works
Tragedy (from Gr. Tragos - goat and ode - song) is one of the types of drama, which is based on the irreconcilable conflict of an unusual personality with insurmountable external circumstances. About
Genre and style of literary work
The question of the genre of a work is one of the most difficult in the course; it is covered in different ways in textbooks, since there is no unity in understanding this category in modern science. Meanwhile, this is one of the
LITERARY WORK
Fiction exists in the form of literary works. The main properties of literature, which were discussed in the first section, are manifested in each individual work. Artists
Theme Features
1. Socio-historical conditioning. The writer does not invent themes, but takes them from life itself, or rather, life itself suggests topics to him. So, in the 19th century, the topic of creation was relevant.
Idea Features
1. We said that the idea is the main idea of the work. This definition is correct, but it needs to be clarified. It must be borne in mind that the idea in a work of art is expressed very freely.
Artistic speech
Philologists distinguish between language and speech. Language is a stock of words and grammatical principles of their combination, historically changing. Speech is a language in action, it is a statement, an expression of thoughts and feelings in
FEATURES OF ARTISTIC SPEECH
1. Imagery. Word in artistic speech contains not only meaning, but in combination with other words will create an image of an object or phenomenon. The generally accepted meaning of the subject of acquisition
Lexical resources of the literary language
As noted, the basis of the language of fiction is the literary language. The literary language has rich lexical resources, allowing the writer to express the subtlest openings
METAPHOR
The most common trope, based on the principle of similarity, less often - the contrast of phenomena; often used in everyday speech. The art of the word to enliven the style and enhance the perception of the use of
Varieties of metaphor
Personification is the likening of an inanimate object to a living being. A golden cloud spent the night On the chest of a giant's cliff (M. Lermontov)
Varieties of metonymy
1) Replacing the title of a work with the name of its author. Read Pushkin, study Belinsky. 2) Replacing the name of people with the name of the country, city, specific place. Ukraine
The main types of figures
1. Repetition - the repetition of a word or group of words in order to give them a special meaning. I love you, life, Which in itself is not new. I love
The rhythm of artistic speech
Teaching aids well orient the student in difficult questions rhythmic ordering of artistic speech - prose and poetry. As in the previous sections of the course, it is important to consider the general
Features of poetic speech
1. Special emotional expressiveness. Poetic speech is effective in its essence. Poems are created in a state of emotional excitement and convey emotional excitement. L. Timofeev in his book “Essays on those
POSING SYSTEMS
In world poetry, there are four systems of versification: metric, tonic, syllabic and syllabic-tonic. They differ in the way they create rhythm within a string, and these methods depend on
free verse
AT late XIX century in Russian poetry, the so-called free verse or free verse (from the French Vers - verse, libre - free), in which there is no internal symmetry of the lines, as in the syllabo-tonic sy
REGULARITIES OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LITERATURE
This topic is very broad. But in this section we will limit ourselves to the essentials. Literary development usually denoted by the term "literary process". So the literary process is
XIX-XX centuries.
In the 19th century (especially in its first third) the development of literature proceeded under the sign of romanticism, which opposed classicist and enlightenment rationalism. Originally Romanticism
THEORETICAL SCHOOLS AND DIRECTIONS
Literary theory is not a collection of disparate ideas, but an organized force. Theory exists in communities of readers and writers as a discursive practice inextricably linked to education.
New criticism
The phenomenon called " new criticism”, arose in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s (the appearance of the works of I.A. Richards and William Empson in England dates back to the same time). "New Cree
Phenomenology
We find the origins of phenomenology in the works of the philosopher of the early 20th century, Edmund Husserl. This direction tries to get around the problem of separation of subject and object, consciousness and the surrounding world by
Structuralism
Reader-centered literary criticism is somewhat akin to structuralism, which also focuses on the creation of meaning. But structuralism was born as an opposition to phenomenology
post-structuralism
When structuralism became a trend or "school", structuralist theorists distanced themselves from it. It became clear that the work of the ostensible structuralists did not correspond to the idea of structuralism as an attempt
Deconstructivism
The term "poststructuralism" is applied to a wide range of theoretical discourses containing criticism of the concepts of objective knowledge and a subject capable of self-knowledge. Thus, owls
Feminist theory
Since feminism considers it its duty to destroy the opposition "man - woman" and other oppositions associated with it throughout its existence Western culture, then this direction is
Psychoanalysis
The theory of psychoanalysis has influenced literary criticism both as a mode of interpretation and as a theory of language, identity, and the subject. On the one hand, psychoanalysis, along with Marxism, became the most influential
Marxism
Unlike the United States, post-structuralism entered the UK not through the work of Derrida and later Lacan and Foucault, but through the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser. Perceived in con
New historicism / cultural materialism
In Great Britain and the United States, the 1980s and 1990s were marked by the emergence of powerful, theoretically grounded historical criticism. On the one hand, there was a British cultural mat
Postcolonial theory
A similar set of questions is addressed by post-colonial theory, which is an attempt to understand the problems generated by European colonial policy and the subsequent period. pos
Minority theory
One of the political changes that took place within the walls of the academic institutions of the United States was the increase in the number of studies of the literature of ethnic minorities. Major efforts and
TEXTOLOGY
Textology (from lat. textus - fabric, interlacing; gr. logos - word, concept) - a philological discipline that studies handwritten and printed texts of artistic, literary-critical, public
Plot and composition
ANTITHESIS - opposition of characters, events, actions, words. Can be used at the level of details, particulars ("Black Evening, White snow"- A. Blok), and can serve with
Language of fiction
ALLEGORY - allegory, a kind of metaphor. The allegory fixes a conditional image: in fables, a fox is cunning, a donkey is stupidity, etc. Allegory is also used in fairy tales, parables, satire.
Fundamentals of poetry
an acrostic is a poem that initial letters of each verse vertically form a word or phrase: An angel lay down at the edge of the sky, Leaning down,
literary process
AVANT-GARDISM - common name a number of trends in the art of the 20th century, which are united by the rejection of the traditions of their predecessors, primarily realists. The principles of avant-garde as a literary and artistic
General literary concepts and terms
AUTONYM - the real name of the author who writes under a pseudonym. Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov (pseudonym Maxim Gorky). AUTHOR - 1. Writer, poet - creator of a literary work; 2. Narratives
BASIC STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF LITERATURE
Abramovich G. L. Introduction to literary criticism. M, 1975. Aristotle. Rhetoric // Aristotle and ancient literature. M., 1978. 3. Arnheim R. Language, image and concrete poetry
