Reading works of art, we first of all pay attention to its main characters. All of them have clear characteristics in literary theory. Which ones - we learn from this article.
The word "image" in Russian literary criticism has several meanings.
First, all art is figurative; reality is recreated by the artist with the help of images. In the image, the general, generic is revealed through the individual, transformed. In this sense, we can say: the image of the Motherland, the image of nature, the image of man, i.e. image in the art form of the Motherland, nature, man.
Secondly, at the linguistic level of the work, the image is identical to the concept of "tropes". In this case we are talking about metaphor, comparison, hyperbole, etc., i.e. about figurative means of poetic language. If we imagine the figurative structure of the work, then the first figurative layer is images-details. A second figurative layer grows out of them, consisting of actions, events, moods, i.e. everything that is dynamically deployed in time. The third layer is images of characters and circumstances, heroes who find themselves in conflicts. From the images of the third layer, a holistic image of fate and the world is formed, i.e. concept of being.
The image of the hero is an artistic generalization of human properties, character traits in the individual appearance of the hero. A hero can cause admiration or repulsion, perform actions, act. The image is an artistic category. It is impossible, for example, to say: "I despise the image of Molchalin." You can despise the silent type, but his image as an artistic phenomenon causes admiration for the skill of Griboyedov. Sometimes instead of the concept of "image" the concept of "character" is used.
The concept of "character" is broader than the concept of "image". A character is any character in a work. You can not say instead of "lyrical hero" " lyrical character". A lyrical hero is an image of a hero in a lyrical work, experiences, feelings, whose thoughts reflect the author's worldview. This is an artistic "double" of the author-poet, having his own inner world, his own destiny. The lyrical hero is not an autobiographical image, although it reflects personal experiences, attitude To different parties"the life of the author himself. The lyrical hero embodies spiritual world the author and his contemporaries. The lyrical hero of A. S. Pushkin is a harmonious, spiritually rich personality who believes in love, friendship, and is optimistic in his outlook on life. Another lyrical hero of M. Yu. Lermontov. This is the "son of suffering", disappointed in reality, lonely, romantically striving for will and freedom and tragically not finding them. Characters, like heroes, can be main and secondary, but only the term "character" is used in relation to episodic actors.
Often, a character is understood as a minor person who does not influence events, and a literary hero is a multifaceted character that is important for expressing the idea of a work. You can meet the judgment that the hero is only that character who carries positive principles and is the spokesman for the author's ideal (Chatsky, Tatyana Larina, Bolkonsky, Katerina). The statement that negative satirical characters (Plyushkin, Iudushka Golovlev, Kabanikha) are not heroes is incorrect. Two concepts are mixed here - the hero as a character and the heroic as a way of human behavior.
The satirical hero of a work is a character, a character against whom the point of satire is directed. Naturally, such a hero is hardly capable of heroic deeds, i.e. is not a hero in the behavioral sense of the word. IN creative process creating images of heroes in "some of them embody the most characteristic features for a given time and environment. Such an image is called a literary type.
The literary type is a generalized image of human individuality, the most possible, characteristic of a certain public environment V certain time. The literary type reflects patterns community development. It combines two sides: individual (single) and general. Typical (and this is important to remember) does not mean average; the type always concentrates in itself everything that is most striking, characteristic of a whole group of people - social, national, age, etc. Literature has created types of goodies (Tatyana Larina, Chatsky), "superfluous people" (Eugene Onegin, Pechorin), Turgenev's girls. In aesthetically perfect works, each type is a character.
Character - human individuality, consisting of certain mental, moral, mental traits. This is the unity of emotional reaction, temperament, will, and the type of behavior determined by the socio-historical situation and time (epoch). Character consists of diverse traits and qualities, but this is not an accidental combination of them. In each character there is a main, dominant feature, which gives a living unity to the whole variety of qualities and properties. The character in the work can be static, already formed and manifested in actions. But most often the character is presented in change, in development, evolution. There is a pattern in the development of character. The logic of character development sometimes comes into conflict with the author's intention (even A. S. Pushkin complained to Pushchin that Tatyana got married without his "knowledge"). Obeying this logic, the author cannot always turn the fate of the hero the way he wants.
Character (fr. personnage, from lat. persona - person, face, mask) - a type of artistic image, the subject of action, experience, statements in the work. In the same sense in modern literary criticism, phrases are used literary hero character(predominantly in drama, where the list of characters traditionally follows the title of the play). In this synonymous series, the word character- the most neutral, its etymology (persona - the mask worn by the actor in ancient theater) is hardly perceptible. In some contexts, it is embarrassing to call a hero (from the Greek heros - a demigod, a deified person) someone who is devoid of heroic traits ("It is impossible for a hero to be petty and insignificant" 1, Boileau wrote about the tragedy), and an inactive person (Podkolesin or Oblomov).
The concept of a character (hero, character) is the most important in the analysis epic and dramatic works, where the characters that form a certain system, and the plot (system of events) form the basis of the objective world.
Most often, a literary character is a person. The degree of specificity of its representation can be different and depends on many reasons: on the place in the system of characters, on the type and genre of the work, etc. But most of all, the principles of depiction, the very direction of detailing are determined by the idea of the work, the creative method of the writer: about a secondary character in a realistic story ( for example, about Gagin in "Ace" by I.S. Turgenev), biographically, socially, more can be reported than about the protagonist of a modernist novel. Along with people, animals, plants, things, natural elements, fantastic creatures, robots, etc. can act and talk in the work. (“The Blue Bird” by M. Maeterlinck, “Mowgli” by R. Kipling, “Amphibian Man” by A. Belyaev). There are genres, types of literature in which such characters are obligatory or very likely: a fairy tale, a fable, a ballad, animalistic literature, science fiction, etc.
The character sphere of literature consists not only of isolated individuals, but also collectible heroes (their prototype is the chorus in ancient drama). Interest in the problems of nationality, social psychology stimulated in the literature of the XIX-XX centuries. the development of this aspect of the image (the crowd in the "Notre Dame Cathedral" by V. Hugo, the market in the "Womb of Paris" by E. Zola, the working settlement in M. Gorky's novel "Mother", "old women", "neighbors", "guests", " drunkards" in L. Andreev's play "The Life of a Man", etc.).
The variety of character types comes close to the question of the subject of artistic knowledge: non-human characters act as carriers of moral, i.e. human, qualities; existence collective heroes reveals the writers' interest in the common in different faces. No matter how broadly one interprets the subject of knowledge in fiction, its center is "human beings , i.e., primarily social” 2 . In relation to epic and drama, this characters(from gr. charakter - a sign, a distinctive feature), i.e. socially significant features that are manifested with sufficient clarity in the behavior and mentality of people; highest degree characteristic - type(from gr. typos - imprint, imprint). (often words character And type used as synonyms.)
Creating a literary hero, the writer usually endows him with one or another character: one-sided or multilateral, integral or contradictory, static or developing, commanding respect or contempt, etc. The writer conveys his understanding, assessment of life characters to the reader, conjecturing and implementing prototypes, creating fictional identities. " Character" and "character" are not identical concepts, which was noted by Aristotle:"A character will have character if<...>in speech or action will find any direction of the will, whatever it may be ... ”In literature focused on the embodiment of characters (namely, this is the classic), the latter constitute the main content - the subject of reflection, and often disputes between readers and critics . Critics see different characters in the same character.
Thus, the character appears, on the one hand, as a character, on the other, as an artistic image embodying a given character with varying degrees of aesthetic perfection.
In the stories of A.P. Chekhov's "The Death of an Official" and "Thick and Thin" Chervyakov and "Thin" as images are unique: we meet the first in the theater, "at the top of bliss", the second - at the station, "laden" with his luggage; the first is endowed with a surname and position, the second - with a name and rank, etc. The plots of the works and their denouement are different. But the stories are interchangeable when discussing the theme of servility in Chekhov, the characters of the characters are so similar: both act according to the same stereotype, not noticing the comedy of their voluntary servility, which only harms them. The characters are reduced to a comic discrepancy between the behavior of the characters and ethical standard, unknown to them; as a result, Chervyakov's death causes laughter: this is the "death of an official", a comic hero.
If the characters in a work are usually easy to count, then the understanding of the characters embodied in them and the corresponding grouping of persons is an act of interpretation, analysis. In "Thick and Thin" there are four characters, but, obviously, only two characters: "Thin", his wife Louise, "nee Wanzenbach ... Lutheran", and son Nathanael (redundancy of information is an additional touch to the portrait of a funny person) form one close-knit family group. “The thin one shook three fingers, bowed with his whole body and giggled like a Chinese: “Hee-hee-hee.” The wife smiled. Nathanael shuffled his foot and dropped his cap. All three were pleasantly stunned.” The number of characters and characters in the work (as in the work of the writer as a whole) usually does not match: there are much more characters. There are persons who do not have a character, performing only a plot role. There are twins, variants of the same type (six princesses Tugoukhovsky in "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov, The existence of characters of the same type gives reason to critics for classifications, to involve a number of characters in the analysis of one type ("tyrants" and "unrequited" in the article by N.A. Dobrolyubov " dark kingdom», dedicated to creativity Ostrovsky; Turgenev "extra person" in the articles “Literary type of a weak person” by P.V. Annenkova, "When the real one will come day?" Dobrolyubova). Writers return to the type, character they discovered, finding new facets in it, achieving the aesthetic impeccability of the image.
In accordance with their status in the structure of the work, the character and character have different evaluation criteria. Unlike the characters that cause ethically colored attitude towards oneself, the characters are evaluated primarily with aesthetic point of view, that is, depending on how brightly, fully and concentratedly they embody the characters.
Various components and details of the objective world act as means of revealing the character in the work: the plot, speech characteristics, portrait, costume, interior, etc. At the same time, the perception of a character as a character does not necessarily need a detailed structure of the image. Images differ in particular cost savings off-stage heroes (for example, in the story "Chameleon" - the general and his brother, lovers of dogs of different breeds). The originality of the character category lies in its final, integral function in relation to all means of representation.
There is another way to study a character - exclusively as a participant in the plot, current person (but not as a character). In relation to archaic genres of folklore (in particular, to Russian fairy tale, considered by V.Ya. Propp in the book "Morphology of a Fairy Tale", 1928), to the early stages of the development of literature, such an approach is to some extent motivated by the material: there are still no characters as such or they are less important than action. Aristotle considered action (plot) to be the main thing in tragedy: “So, plot is the basis and, as it were, the soul of tragedy, and characters already follow it, for tragedy icrb is an imitation of action, and therefore especially actors” 1 .
With the formation of personality, it is the characters that become the main subject of artistic knowledge. In the programs of literary trends (starting with classicism), the concept of personality is of fundamental importance, in close connection with its understanding in philosophy, social sciences. Affirmed in aesthetics and look yes plot both on the most important way disclosure of character, its test and stimulus for development. “The character of a person can be revealed in the most insignificant deeds; from the point of view of poetic evaluation, the greatest deeds are those that shed the most light on the character of the individual” 2 - many writers, critics, and aestheticians could subscribe to these words of Lessing.
The plot functions of the characters - in abstraction from their characters - have become the subject of special analysis in some areas of literary criticism of the 20th century. In the structuralist theory of plot, this is connected with the task of constructing general models (structures) found in a variety of narrative texts.
Character
A character is a kind of artistic image, the subject of an action. This term in a certain context can be replaced by the concepts of "actor" or "literary hero", but in a strict theoretical sense, these are different terms. This interchangeability is explained by the fact that, translated from Latin (persona- mask) the word "character" means an actor playing a role in a mask expressing a certain type of character, therefore, literally a character. Therefore, the term "character" should be attributed to the formal components of the text. It is permissible to use this term in the analysis of the system of images-characters, the features of the composition. A literary character is a carrier of a constructive role in a work, autonomous and personified in the representation of the imagination (it can be a person, but also an animal, plant, landscape, utensils, fantastic creature, concept), involved in the action (hero) or only episodically indicated (for example, personality important for the characterization of the environment). Taking into account the role of literary characters in the integrity of the work, they can be divided into main (first plan), secondary (second plan) and episodic, and in terms of their participation in the development of events - into incoming (active) and passive.
The concept of "character" is applicable to epic and dramatic works, to a lesser extent to lyrical ones, although lyric theorists as a kind of literature allow the use of this term. For example, G. Pospelov calls one of the types of lyrics character: "Characters ... are personalities depicted in epic and dramatic works. They always embody certain characteristics of social life and therefore have certain individual traits, receive proper names and create by their actions, taking place in some conditions of place and time, the plots of such works. lyrical works the hero does not form the plot, unlike the epic and dramatic ones, the personality does not act directly in the work, but it is presented as an artistic image.
L. Ya. Ginzburg noted that the concepts of "lyrical subject" and "lyrical hero" should not be confused as special forms of embodiment of the poet's personality.
Hero
The term "literary hero" refers to a holistic image of a person - in the aggregate of his appearance, way of thinking, behavior and spiritual world; the term “character”, which is close in meaning, if taken in a narrow, and not in a broad sense, denotes the internal psychological section of the personality, its natural properties, nature.
The heroes of works can be not only people, but also animals, fantastic images and even objects. In any case, all of them are artistic images that reflect reality in the refracted consciousness of the author.
The hero is one of the central characters in a literary work, active in incidents, the main ones for the development of the action, focusing the reader's attention on himself.
The protagonist is a literary character who is most involved in the action, his fate is in the center of attention of the author and the reader.
A literary hero is an image of a person in literature. Definitely, with a literary hero, the concepts of "actor" and "character" are often used. Sometimes they are distinguished: literary heroes are called actors (characters) drawn in a more multifaceted way and more weighty for the idea of \u200b\u200bthe work. Sometimes the concept of "literary hero" refers only to actors close to the author's ideal of a person (the so-called positive hero) or embodying the heroic principle (for example, the heroes of epics, epics, tragedies). It should be noted, however, that in literary criticism these concepts, along with the concepts of "character", "type" and "image", are interchangeable.
From the point of view of the figurative structure, the literary hero combines the character as the inner content of the character, and his behavior, actions as something external. Character allows us to consider the actions of the depicted person as natural, ascending to some kind of vital reason; it is the content and law (motivation) of behavior.
Character in the usual sense is the same as a literary hero. In literary criticism, the term "character" is used in a narrower, but not always the same sense. Most often, a character is understood as a protagonist. But here, too, two interpretations differ: a person represented and characterized in action, and not in descriptions: then the concept of "character" most of all corresponds to the heroes of dramaturgy, images-roles. Any actor, subject of action in general. In such an interpretation, the protagonist is opposed only to the “pure” subject of experience, acting in the lyrics, which is why the term “character” is inapplicable to the so-called lyrical hero: one cannot say “lyrical character”.
The character is sometimes understood only as a secondary person. In this understanding, the term "character" corresponds to the narrowed meaning of the term "hero" - the central person or one of the main persons of the work. On this basis, the expression " episodic character" (and not "episodic hero").
Literary image with the character of "stubborn"
Literary character is a human or humanized image, through which both the type of behavior (actions, thoughts, experiences, speech activity) determined by the biology of the individual and the given socio-historical situation, and the moral and aesthetic concept of the worldview inherent in the author are revealed. Literary character is an organic unity of the general, repetitive and individual, unique; objective (the socio-psychological reality of human life, which served as a prototype for a literary character) and subjective (comprehension and evaluation of the prototype by the author). The literary character, therefore, appears in art " new reality”, an artistically “created” personality, which, reflecting the real human type, ideologically clarifies it. It is the conceptual literary image a person is distinguished by the concept of a literary character in literary criticism and film criticism from the meanings of this term in psychology, philosophy, and sociology.
The idea of the character of a literary hero is created through external and internal "gestures" (including speech) of the character, his appearance, author's and other characteristics, place and role of the character in the development of the plot. The ratio within the work of character and circumstances, which are an artistic reproduction of the socio-historical, spiritual and cultural and natural environment, constitutes an artistic situation. The contradictions between man and society, between man and nature, his "earthly destiny", as well as internal contradiction literary characters are embodied in artistic conflicts.
Reproduction of a literary character in its diversity and dynamics - specific property fiction in general, as well as most theatrical and cinematic genres built on a verbal-plot basis. The appeal to the image of a literary character marks the separation of literature as an art from the syncretic, "pre-literary" religious and journalistic literature of the "biblical" or medieval type. The very concept of "literary character" is formed in Ancient Greece, where for the first time the separation of literary and artistic creativity into a special area of \u200b\u200bspiritual culture was fully realized.
However, among the ancients, the understanding of character as a literary category differed from the modern one: since the plot (event) dominated the disclosure of the ideological content, the characters differed primarily not in their characters, but in their role in the events depicted. In modern times, a different correlation of character and plot is affirmed: not facts, but, as he wrote G.E.Lessing, “... the characters of the characters, thanks to which the facts were realized, force the poet to choose one rather than another event. Only characters are sacred to him." Understanding the independent ideological and artistic significance of the character's character arises already in ancient literature; For example, in "Parallel Lives" Plutarch heroes are compared both by the type of "fate" and by the type of character. This characterological two-dimensionality dominates until the 18th century. (By D. Diderot- the ratio of innate "morality" and "social status").
In this period, two epochs stand out: the literature of the Renaissance and classicism. The Renaissance character loses the outlines of a certain “nature”, dissolving in the natural generic element of human “nature” (the hero could arbitrarily, as if acting, change types of behavior). At the same time, the correlation of the universal in the character of the hero with his situational function - fate - revealed the inadequacy of the hero of his socio-historical fate (anticipation of the characterological principle realism XIX-XX centuries: "A man is either greater than his destiny, or less than his humanity" - M. M. Bakhtin). At Shakespeare many actors appeared in the "third dimension" - carriers of individual self-consciousness. Classicism, returning to the rigid static character of a literary character, at the same time focused on the self-consciousness of a person who makes a choice between "duty" and "feeling". But perceived against the "background" of duty and impersonal passion, the personality in the literature of classicism is not valuable in itself, it is only a means of correlating two parallel series of universality.
At all these stages of spiritual and literary development literary character was understood as an ahistorical, universal and self-identical given human nature. In romanticism, which proclaimed the self-sufficiency and autonomy of the individual, elevated it both above the psychological "nature" and above social destiny, there was a new understanding of character - as identical inner world personality. Finally, the reconstruction of the individual character as a historically unique relationship between the individual and the environment was the discovery of the critical realism of the 19th century. (the romantic tradition was continued by the symbolists and existentialists).
In theory, a new understanding of artistic character was put forward Hegel: character - "... an integral human individuality ...", in which certain "... universal substantial forces of action" are revealed; character is the "true center" of the image, since it combines universality and individuality "... as moments of its wholeness." The character should be revealed in all the richness of its individual characteristics, and not be "... the plaything of only one passion ...", because in this case it "... appears as existing outside of itself ..."; he should be "... a whole independent world, a complete, living person, and not an allegorical abstraction of any one character trait." This theory, based on the artistic achievements of the past, in many respects anticipated the practice of subsequent realistic literature, where there is a self-developing character - an incomplete and unfinished, "fluid" individuality, determined by its continuous interaction with historically specific circumstances.
Post-Hegelian literary theory, based on realistic art, persistently emphasized the importance of the individual-concrete in literary character, but most importantly - she put forward and developed the problem of his "conceptuality", established the need for the "presence" of the author's ideological understanding in the depiction of character. In realistic literature of the XIX-XX centuries. character really embody different, sometimes opposite author's concepts human personality. At O. Balzac the fundamental principle of individuality is universal human nature, understood in the spirit of anthropologism, and its “fluidity” is explained by the incompletion of the external influences of the environment on the fundamental principle, the measure of which is “measured” by the individuality of the individual. At F.M. Dostoevsky individuality is perceived against the background of the determinism of circumstances as a measure of personal self-determination, when the character of the hero remains an inexhaustible focus of individual possibilities. A different meaning of "incompleteness" is the character of L.N. Tolstoy: the need to "clearly express the fluidity of a person, that he is one and the same, either a villain, or an angel, or a sage, or an idiot, or a strong man, or a powerless being", is explained by the desire to discover in an individuality alienated from other people by social conditions life, universal, generic, "full man".
Topic 19. The problem of a literary hero. Character, character, type
I. Dictionaries
Hero and character (plot feature)
1) Sierotwinski S. Slownik terminow literackich. “ Hero. One of the central characters in a literary work, active in incidents, the main ones for the development of the action, focusing attention on himself. hero main. A literary character who is most involved in the action, whose fate is at the center of the plot” (S. 47). “The character is literary. The carrier of a constructive role in a work, autonomous and personified in the representation of the imagination (it can be a person, but also an animal, plant, landscape, utensils, fantastic creature, concept), involved in the action (hero) or only episodically indicated (for example, a person, important for the characterization of the environment). Taking into account the role of literary characters in the integrity of the work, they can be divided into main (first plan), secondary (second plan) and episodic, and in terms of their participation in the development of the plot - into incoming (active) and passive ”(S. 200). 2) Wilpert G. von. Character
II. Textbooks, teaching aids
1) Farino J. Introduction to Literary Studies. Part 1. (4. Literary characters. 4.0. General characteristics). “...under the concept of "character" we mean any person (including anthropomorphic creatures) who receives in the work the status of an object of description (in literary text), images (in painting), demonstrations (in drama, play, film)”. “Not all anthropomorphic creatures or persons found in the text of the work are present in it in the same way. Some of them have the status of objects of the world there. this work. These are, so to speak, "character-objects". Others are given only as images, but the works themselves do not appear in the world. These are "image characters". And others are only mentioned, but are not displayed in the text either as objects present, or even as images. These are the missing characters. They should be distinguished from references to persons who, by convention this world cannot appear at all. “Absent” by the convention are not excluded, but on the contrary, are allowed. Therefore, their absence is noticeable and by this very significant” (p. 103).
III. Special Studies
Character and type 1) Hegel G.W.F. Aesthetics: In 4 vols. T. I. “We proceeded from universal substantive forces of action. For their active implementation, they need human individuality in which they act as the driving pathos. The general content of these forces must close in on itself and appear in separate individuals as integrity And singularity. Such integrity is a person in his concrete spirituality and subjectivity, an integral human individuality as a character. The gods become human pathos, and pathos in concrete activity is the human character” (p. 244). “Only such versatility gives character a lively interest. At the same time, this fullness should act as a merged into a single subject, and not be scattered, superficial and simply diverse excitability.<...>To portray such an integral character, epic poetry is most suitable, less dramatic and lyrical” (pp. 246-247). “Such multilateralism within the limits of a single dominant certainty may seem inconsistent when viewed through the eyes of reason.<...>But for one who comprehends the rationality of a character that is integral within himself and therefore of a living character, this inconsistency is precisely what constitutes consistency and coherence. For man differs in that he not only bears in himself the contradiction of diversity, but also endures this contradiction and remains in it equal and true to himself” (p. 248-249). “If a person does not have such unified center, then the various sides of its manifold inner life disintegrate and appear devoid of any meaning.<...>From this side, firmness and determination are an important aspect of the ideal portrayal of character” (p. 249). 2) Bakhtin M.M. Author and hero in aesthetic activity // Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. “ character we call such a form of interaction between the hero and the author, which carries out the task of creating the whole of the hero as a certain personality<...>the hero is given as a whole from the very beginning<...>everything is perceived as a moment of characterization of the hero, has a characterological function, everything is reduced and serves to answer the question: who is he” (p. 151). “Character building can go in two main directions. The first we will call classical character building, the second - romantic. For the first type of character building, the basis is artistic value fate...“ (p. 152). “Unlike the classical romantic character, it is self-made and value-initiative.<...>The value of fate, which presupposes genus and tradition, is unsuitable for artistic completion.<..>Here the hero's individuality is revealed not as fate, but as an idea, or, more precisely, as an embodiment of an idea” (pp. 156-157). “If the character is established in relation to the last values of the worldview<...>expresses the cognitive and ethical attitude of a person in the world<...>, then the type is far from the boundaries of the world and expresses the attitude of a person in relation to the values already concretized and limited by the era and environment, to benefits, i.e., to a meaning that has already become being (in an act of character, meaning for the first time becomes being). Character in the past, type in the present; the environment of the character is somewhat symbolized, the objective world around the type is inventory. Type - passive the position of the collective personality” (p. 159). “The type is not only sharply intertwined with the world around it (objective environment), but is depicted as conditioned by it in all its moments, the type is a necessary moment of some environment (not the whole, but only part of the whole).<...>The type presupposes the superiority of the author over the hero and complete non-participation in his hero's world in terms of value; hence the author is completely critical. The independence of the hero in type is significantly reduced...” (p. 160). 3) Mikhailov A.V. From the history of character // Man and culture: Individuality in the history of culture. “...charactër gradually reveals its orientation “inward” and, as soon as this word comes into conjugation with the “inner” person, it builds this inner from the outside - from the external and superficial. On the contrary, the new European character is built from the inside out: “character” refers to the foundation or foundation laid down in human nature, the core, as it were, the generative scheme of all human manifestations, and differences can only concern whether “character” is the deepest in a person, or in his inner being has an even deeper beginning” (p. 54). Hero and aesthetic appreciation 1) Fry N. Anatomy of criticism. Essay one / Per. A.S. Kozlov and V.T. Oleinik // Foreign aesthetics and theory of literature of the 19th-20th centuries: Treatises, articles, essays / Compiled, general. ed. G.K. Kosikov. "Plot literary work is always a story about how someone does something. "Someone", if it is a person, is a hero, and "something" that he succeeds or fails to do is determined by what he can or could do, depending on the author's intention and the resulting expectations of the audience.<...>1. If the hero is superior to people and their environment in terms of quality, then he is a deity and the story about him is myth in the ordinary sense of the word, i.e., the story of God<...>2. If the hero is superior to people and his environment in terms of degree, then this is a typical hero of the legend. His deeds are wonderful, but he himself is portrayed as a man. The hero of these tales is transported to a world where the ordinary laws of nature are partly suspended.<...>Here we depart from myth in the proper sense of the word and enter the realm of legend, fairy tale, Märchen and their literary derivatives. 3. If a hero surpasses other people in degree, but is dependent on the conditions of earthly existence, then this is a leader. He is endowed with power, passion and power of expression, but his actions are still subject to criticism of society and obey the laws of nature. This is a hero high mimetic mode, first of all - the hero of the epic and tragedy<...>4. If the hero is not superior to other people or his own environment, then he is one of us: we treat him as ordinary person, and we demand from the poet to observe those laws of likelihood that correspond to our own experience. And this is a hero low mimetic mode, above all - comedy and realistic literature.<...>At this level, it is often difficult for the author to keep the concept of "hero" used in the above modes in its strict meaning.<...>5. If the hero is inferior to us in strength and intelligence, so that we have the feeling that we are watching from above the spectacle of his lack of freedom, defeat and the absurdity of existence, then the hero belongs ironic modus. This is also true when the reader understands that he himself is or could be in the same position, which, however, he is able to judge from a more independent point of view” (pp. 232-233). 2) Tyupa V.I. Artistic modes (a synopsis of a cycle of lectures) // Discourse. Novosibirsk. 1998. No. 5/6. pp. 163-173. “The method of such deployment (artistic integrity. - N. T.) - for example, glorification, satire, dramatization - and acts as a mode of artistry, an aesthetic analogue of the existential mode of personal existence (a way of the presence of "I" in the world)” (p. 163). “Heroic<...>represents a aesthetic principle meaning generation, which consists in combining the internal givenness of being (“I”) and its external givenness ( role-playing border that connects and delimits the personality with the world order). Basically, the heroic character “is not separated from his fate, they are one, fate expresses the impersonal side of the individual, and his actions only reveal the content of fate” (A.Ya. Gurevich)” (p. 164). “ Satire is an aesthetic mastery of the incompleteness of the personal presence of the “I” in the world order, i.e., such a mismatch between the personality and its role, in which the internal reality of individual life turns out to be narrower than the external assignment and is unable to fill this or that role boundary” (p. 165). “ Tragedy- diametrically opposed to satire, the transformation of heroic artistry<...>A tragic situation is a situation of excessive “freedom of the “I” within oneself” (Hegel’s definition of personality) in relation to one’s role in the world order (fate): an excessively “broad person”<...>The tragic guilt, which contrasts with the satirical guilt of imposture, does not lie in the act itself, subjectively justified, but in its personality, in the unquenchable thirst to remain oneself” (p. 167). “Reviewed modes of artistry<...>are united in their pathos of a serious attitude to the world order. Fundamentally different aesthetic nature non-pathetic comic, whose penetration into high literature (from the era of sentimentalism) brought "a new mode of human-to-human relationships" (Bakhtin), formed on the basis of carnival laughter. The laughter world-relationship brings to man subjective freedom from the bonds of objectivity<...>and, bringing a living individuality beyond the limits of the world order, establishes “free familiar contact between all people” (Bakhtin)<...>". “The comic gap between domestic and external parties I-in-the-world, between the face and the mask<...>can lead to the discovery of true individuality<...>In such cases, one usually speaks of humor which makes eccentricity (personal uniqueness of self-manifestations) a meaning-generating model of the presence of "I" in the world.<...>However, comic effects can also reveal the absence of a face under the mask, where there may be an “organ”, “stuffed brains”<...>This kind of comedy is appropriately called sarcasm <...>Here the masquerade of life turns out to be a lie not of an imaginary role in the world order, but of an imaginary personality” (pp. 168-169). Hero and text 1) Ginzburg L. About a literary hero. (Chapter three. The structure of a literary hero). “A literary character is, in essence, a series of successive appearances of one person within given text. Throughout one text, the hero can be found in a variety of forms.<...>The mechanism of the gradual build-up of these manifestations is especially evident in large novels, with a large number of characters. The character disappears, gives way to others, only to reappear a few pages later and add another link to the growing unity. Repetitive, more or less stable features form the properties of the character. It appears as one-qualitative or multi-qualitative, with unidirectional or multidirectional qualities” (p. 89). “The behavior of the hero and his character traits are interrelated. Behavior is a reversal of its inherent properties, and properties are stereotypes of behavioral processes. Moreover, the character's behavior is not only actions, actions, but also any participation in the plot movement, involvement in ongoing events, and even any change in mental states. The properties of the character are reported by the author or narrator, they arise from his self-characterization or from the judgments of other characters. At the same time, the reader himself is left to determine these properties - an act similar to the everyday stereotyping of the behavior of our acquaintances, which we carry out every minute. An act that is similar and at the same time different, because the literary hero is given to us by someone else's creative will - as a task with a predicted solution” (pp. 89-90). “The unity of a literary hero is not a sum, but a system, with its dominants organizing it.<...>It is impossible, for example, to understand and perceive in its structural unity the behavior of Zola's heroes without the mechanism of biological continuity or Dostoevsky's heroes without the premise of the need for a personal solution to the moral and philosophical question of life” (p. 90). 2) Bart R. S/Z / Per. G.K. Kosikov and V.P. Murat. “At the moment when identical semes, having permeated the proper name several times in a row, are finally assigned to it, at this moment a character is born. The character is thus nothing but the product of combinatorics; in this case, the resulting combination is distinguished both by relative stability (because it is formed by repeating semes) and relative complexity (because these semes partly agree, and partly contradict each other). This complexity just leads to the emergence of a character's "personality", which has the same combinatorial nature as the taste of a dish or a bouquet of wine. A proper name is a kind of field in which seme is magnetized; virtually such a name is correlated with a certain body, thereby involving this configuration of semes in the evolutionary (biographical) movement of time” (p. 82). “If we proceed from a realistic view of character, believing that Sarrazin (the hero of Balzac's short story. - N.T.) lives outside the paper sheet, then we should look for the motives for this suspension (the inspiration of the hero, the unconscious rejection of the truth, etc.). If we proceed from a realistic view of discourse If we regard the plot as a mechanism whose spring must be fully unfolded, then we must recognize that the iron law of narration, which presupposes its unceasing unfolding, requires that the word "neuter" should not be uttered. Although both of these views are based on different and in principle independent (even opposite) laws of likelihood, they nevertheless reinforce each other; as a result, a common phrase arises in which fragments of two various languages: Sarrazin is intoxicated because the movement of discourse should not be interrupted, and the discourse, in turn, gets the opportunity for further deployment because the intoxicated Sarrazin hears nothing, but only speaks himself. Two chains of regularities turn out to be "insoluble". Good narrative writing represents just such an embodied insolubility” (pp. 198-199).
QUESTIONS
1. Consider and compare the various definitions of the concepts "character" and "hero" in the reference and educational literature. What criteria usually distinguish the hero from other actors (characters) of the work? Why are “character” and “type” usually opposed to each other? 2. Compare the definitions of “character” in reference literature and in Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. Point out the similarities and differences. 3. How does Bakhtin's interpretation of character differ from Hegel's? Which of them is closer to the definition of the concept given by A.V. Mikhailov? 4. How does Bakhtin's interpretation of the type differ from that which we find in the reference literature? 5. Compare the solutions to the problem of classifying the aesthetic “modes” of the hero by N. Fry and V.I. Tupy. 6. Compare the judgments about the nature of a literary character made by L.Ya. Ginzburg and Roland Barthes. Point out the similarities and differences.
