The plot in a work of art is the elements of the plot. The plot basis of the work

The problem of content and form is one of the key problems in literary theory. Her decision is not easy. Moreover, this problem is scientific literature appears either real or supposed, imaginary. There are three most common points of view on it. One comes from the idea of ​​the primacy of content and the secondary nature of form. Another interprets the ratio of these categories in the opposite way. The third approach eliminates the need to use these categories. A prerequisite for such a theoretical view is the idea of ​​the unity of content and form. Since such a unity is stated, the possibility of differentiation of concepts and, consequently, a separate consideration of content and form is, as it were, excluded. Let's try to express our attitude to all these views. The theory of literature is an autonomous field of knowledge, not directly subordinate to other aspects of the science of art, and even more so to artistic practice. However, there is always a natural need to "test" the concepts and terms of science with a real picture of this practice, with artistic material. And the very primary idea of ​​a work of art, as well as the process of its creation, makes us discover some different moments, which prompt us to give them the appropriate terminological designation: content and form. Even at the level of ordinary consciousness, it is very often easy to notice the differences between essential and less essential moments in a work of art. And at the same level, questions often arise: what and how? And most often, in this unsystematized view of art, an idea of ​​​​more significant and less significant is obtained. Thus, any reader or spectator who recreates his reaction to what he has seen or read characterizes the action in the work and only then the form in which this action is presented: the color of the painting paint, the narrative style in the novel, the camera style in the film work, etc.

The creative process itself, about which the artist often willingly tells himself, prompts the perceiver of the existence of these various aspects in art. We often notice how an artist in his creative process, making some seemingly private adjustments, fundamentally changes the feeling of the work or its individual components. So. it is known that Gogol, starting his "Inspector General", put long phrases into the mouth of the mayor, giving the beginning of the comedy a certain stylistic lethargy. In the last version, which is familiar to everyone, this beginning has acquired dynamism, reinforced by the repetition common in verbal art, one of the most revealing in poetic syntax.

Gorky's formula is well-known, which has long been considered almost classical: "the word is the primary element of literature." It is not difficult to agree with this, but the question arises, what element of literature is thought? It is unlikely that the latter can be attributed to the secondary elements of art, rather the opposite. Strictly speaking, the dispute about what is primary in art, thought or word, is metaphysical, just as the old dispute in European philosophy is metaphysical about what is higher: beautiful in life or beautiful in art. This dispute, as is well known, was carried on between German epigones like Fischer and Russian materialists headed by Chernyshevsky. In passing, we add that in general, raising the question of what is higher, art or life, is meaningless from the point of view of logic. For art is also life, perhaps the most essential part of it. But judgments about the word and thought contribute to the differentiation of the concepts of content and form. Simply put, in this case, it is more natural to attribute thought to the content sphere, the word - to the formal one. To support the thesis about the difference between these categories, the difference that many artistic and theoretical minds, such as Kant, Hegel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, have stated, can be illustrated with several examples. Thus, it is known that in the first part of Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" the credo of the central character is stated. Underground man opposes various utopian ideas, which, however, are of an altruistic nature, clinging to the inaccurate terminology of the utopian socialists, he accuses them of egocentrism, considering the consequences of any individualistic knowledge to be destructive. Here one can guess the dispute between Dostoevsky and his ideological antipode, a contemporary who went through the same stages of dramatic life path, as Fyodor Mikhailovich himself (at the end of the 40s, the civil execution of Dostoevsky took place on one of the squares in St. Petersburg, after a decade and a half it was repeated with Chernyshevsky). These judgments underground man seem compelling and psychologically motivated. Now let's look at the second part of Notes from the Underground. If we called the first part the "creed" of the underground man, then the second can be called the "history" of the underground man. What is this story? The little official was walking along the street and accidentally ran into a confidently walking officer on the sidewalk. The officer, wanting to get rid of the hindrance, took our hero and moved it to the side, rearranging it from place to place, as it is said in the story, like a chair.

The offended official decided to take revenge on the officer. He had been preparing for this revenge for a long time. Actively arouse this feeling in yourself. This long period of preparation absorbed various everyday episodes, in particular, a meeting with a girl who treated him with complete sympathy. How did it all end? Wanting to take revenge on the officer, he abused the girl, satisfying, as it seemed to him, his wounded sense of pride. Before us is the story of a man with a painful ambition, weak spiritually, in fact crippled morally. And if we had known in advance the inner appearance of this character, we would have reacted differently to his theses regarding utopian socialism. But Dostoevsky simply rearranged the parts, he violated the logical course of the narrative, according to which one should first recognize a person, and then listen to his philosophy. But a purely external factor, the composition itself, the rearrangement of parts of the narrative played a certain role in the perception of the content.

In Anna Karenina, the artist Mikhailov, whom Vronsky and Anna met in Italy, could not remember what a person in anger looks like. What kind of pose to give to this character reproduced by the artist - the pose of one who is in anger. Fingering sketches created portrait, he found one, filled with a large stearin drop, and this random external detail clarified the pictorial concept for him, and he quickly sketched a portrait. Tolstoy was very fond of distinguishing between the concepts of content and form. He repeatedly said how important it is for an artist to master the form, if Gogol wrote his works badly, not artistically, no one would read them. The case with this stearin drop is a particular manifestation of the interaction of different sides in art. When at the beginning of the 20th century there was new school in literary criticism, which rejected all the previous ideas of philosophers and writers about the primacy of content and the secondary nature of form (hence, it did not accept Tolstoy’s position just stated), a widespread belief arose that in art the “controlling force” is form. This formal school was represented by great minds such as Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and to some extent Zhirmunsky and Vinogradov. But even those who did not consider themselves formalists experienced the magic of their logic. Here is the famous outstanding psychologist Vygotsky. In his fundamental study "Psychology of Art" a short essay on Bunin's short story "Light Breath" is directly related to our topic. Vygotsky says that the content of Bunin's short story, or "material", is "worldly dregs". The plot of the novel is the story of the high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, who received angry remarks from the head of the gymnasium for her frivolous behavior, who made an early moral fall and was killed by a Cossack officer on the platform of the station. Ordinary, it would seem, the story of provincial Russian life, but why is its ending so poetic and joyful? At the cemetery, to the grave of Olya, over which a cross rises and with the image of a young beautiful face, one of the mentors - a gymnasium teacher - comes to this face with concentrated tenderness, sentimental and almost some kind of joyful feeling of relief. And these final words short stories "in this spring frosty air it was poured easy breath Some liberation was felt in everything. Why does Bunin want to convey a feeling of some kind of liberation from any worldly turbidity. From everything bad, to convey a feeling even in the cemetery of something affirming and beautiful? Vygotsky answers this way: it’s all about the novelistic form, which in my own way genre structure always presents the event and its consequences as unexpected. Vygotsky believes that Bunin chose a special "teleology" of style for his novelistic form. "It could be stated as follows: the hiding of the terrible in the fearless. The head of the gymnasium, in her comfortable office, carefully dressed, with her hair styled well, scolds young Olya for that she runs noisily along the corridors of the gymnasium, that she has ink spots on her face, a disheveled head, and her phrase sounds like the finale of these moralizing maxims: “Olya, you are a girl! How are you behaving?" And Olya quietly replies: "No, I'm not a girl; and your brother is to blame for this. " Subsequently, Olya's reminiscences of how this happened. But the reader does not seem to notice this, because this "information" is furnished with so many different details that this confession in the fall, in essence, did not take place (did not sound).

When she met her fiancé, a Cossack officer, on the station platform, she immediately handed him her diary so that he would immediately read the relevant pages. He read the lines where she wrote that she did not love him and, due to sad circumstances, was forced to marry a stranger to her. And then he killed her right there, on the platform, with a pistol. And here, according to Vygotsky, the teleology of style also worked: it was as if we did not hear this shot in this station hubbub, again the terrible was hidden in the fearless. From all this, Vygotsky concludes that the form dictated to the reader a sense of a certain freedom, a certain lightness of being, a lightness of breathing, i.e. the form drove the content. However, the outstanding theoretician made a fundamental theoretical mistake. We should have noticed it at the very beginning of his essay, when he called the content of the story her material. But this is a fundamental difference - material and content. Material is passive, content is active. The concept of content includes the attitude of the author to the subject of the image. And then it turns out that Bunin portrays a young natural being who does not recognize regulation, moral and aesthetic escort by adults, who, as we see, have no moral right to do so.

This is a Pushkin theme. Pushkin - this is the most important thing in his poetry and prose - saw the main watershed in being. Here is life artificial, regulated, false. Miserly knight he counts money, sorts through the coins he does not need, living in this strange alienation from living life, in some kind of spiritual underground, and his nephew Albert jumps in tournaments, life plays in him, its triumph, this natural life, natural!

Salieri came up with a craft for himself - he wanted to become a musician and became one, he began to strain, carefully, but compose and perform his works. And Mozart, as if sent by God to earth, personifies the natural impulses and abilities to create great music. Pushkin considers this regulated, artificial form of existence to be a misfortune both for the person himself and for the other person. It may sound paradoxical and untrue, but Don Juan in Pushkin's "Stone Guest" dies because he violated the natural law, which is present in him, in his appearance as dominant. He loved many women, and then he fell in love with one Donna Anna and must die under the steps of the Commander.

Bunin - both in poetry and prose - Pushkin of the early 20th century. And all his work demonstrates the same dividing line - between the natural and the artificial. For him, there is no doubt that both the spots on the face and the disheveled hair of Olya Meshcherskaya are all the poetry of natural behavior. But for him it is also certain that in certain circumstances of being, one can even say that at a certain stage of human civilization, human impulses for the natural are interrupted by a boring or even cynical course of things, determined by bad adults. And all the same, this victory of the dark and nasty over the natural is a temporary phenomenon. Ultimately in human life light breath, pure, should triumph and triumph bright world liberation from everything invented by false norms and regulations.

So, in favor of the differentiated principle of considering content and form, a theoretical judgment and creative practice itself are in favor. Moreover, in the first case, thinkers of different philosophical and aesthetic orientations are united. Now it is fashionable to be ironic about the views of Marx, but it was he who said that if the form of manifestation and the essence of things directly coincided, then any science would be superfluous. But a similar thought, albeit not in such theoretical certainty, was expressed by Leo Tolstoy: “a terrible thing is concern for the perfection of form. It’s not without reason. But it’s not without reason when the content is good. millionth of those who read it now. Belinsky called Baratynsky's poems "On the death of Goethe" "wonderful", but denied the poem the value of the content: "Uncertainty of ideas, infidelity in content."

Chernyshevsky called Goethe's poem "Hermann and Dorothea" "excellent in artistic terms", but in content "harmful and pathetic, sugary-sentimental." The point here is not the actual accuracy of the estimates, but their theoretical orientation.

The history of culture in the 20th century also showed countless variants of discrepancies between content and form. Sometimes they, especially in those cases when they tried to clothe the old content in new form, acquired comic effect. For example: famous classical motif"here a young gentleman drove up to me" they tried to transform with the help of modern details - "here a collective farm truck drove up to us." This was especially common in folklore modifications, for example, "a hero sat down here, and in a speedy ZIS."

In a word, not artificial terminological enrichment of literary science, but real practice dictates the need for a separate consideration of these categories. And there is no need to talk about educational goals and benefits. But the final solution of the question, of course, is possible after the systematization of the elements of content and form.

A careful, systematic view of the content in last years stimulated by the fact that the traditional Hegelian concept of the formal specifics of art has been replaced by a meaningful one. Art appeared in the current scientific systems as a form of consciousness that has not only an external (imagery), but also an internal semantic feature. The dominance of the Hegelian point of view objectively at times reduced art to an illustrative function, or, in any case, was most often perceived as a secondary phenomenon. public consciousness: after all, such forms of consciousness as philosophy, and even more so journalism, turned out to be, as it were, more operational forms. Hence, by the way, there was a very arrogant attitude of politics towards art, disbelief in its ability to get ahead of political doctrines, or even more so specific social and public recommendations. A new look at the specifics of artistic creativity equated art with all other forms of social consciousness. As a result of this new concept it became necessary to consider not only the content itself, but also its sources. There are different approaches here. One can not agree with all of them, even with those that follow from the recognition of the specific content of figurative reflection. The most preferable idea should be that which takes into account the specifics and content, and, at the same time, forms, and also evaluates art not only as a social phenomenon, but also as an aesthetic phenomenon. According to the German aesthetician Baumgarten, the beautiful is a concretely sensual, objective phenomenon; This provision also applies to art. Therefore, the idea of ​​the source of artistic content, which considers the ideological views of the writer as such, is a kind of extreme that arose in a polemic with the concept of figurative specificity.

Another source of content should be named. Not ideology as a system of views, but social psychology, ordinary consciousness, unsystematic impression, emotional reaction to what is happening, etc. This was well understood by the young Dobrolyubov, who found two sides in the creative mind of the writer: theoretical views and worldview. The latter is the content source. And due to a number of features and its activity, it often comes into conflict with the author's theories.

But the same circumstance makes it difficult to analyze the specific features of the content and the "mechanism" of the impact of some of the objective ideas of the work, its theoretical premises.

So what is content? Undoubtedly, this is the subject of the image, what is often called material. Recognizing that Vygotsky narrows the artistic content, reducing it to the subject of reproduction, one cannot, of course, exclude the latter from the content. We should talk about the unity, so to speak, of the "passive" and "active" sides of the content of a literary text. Activity is the essence of the author's relationship to the object of narration. It is clear that these relationships are multifaceted. They consist in highlighting the special aspects of the subject under consideration, then in their specific emotional assessment.

How to start classifying the content aspects of a work? Most likely, from the answer to the question - is such a classification necessary? Strictly speaking, in such a question it is the methodological key to any theoretical knowledge. The answer in our case is obvious. We must try to consider "morphology" at an unsystematized, ordinary level artwork. And that's what such a consideration leads to. With all the endless variety creative individuals plots, motifs, and the very objects of their image are very often similar or even almost identical. But the latter has a relative property, that is, artists can coincide or in a common drawing life situation, or in its particulars. But in any case, all these similarities and differences encourage typology, and, therefore, terminologically designate aspects of the content. In the most general sense and volume, the subject artistic knowledge one is life. But that's why artistic individuality exists, because it always has its own artistic life as a product of her observation and imagination. There are many easily accessible understandings and very convenient examples for teaching purposes that convince of the need for this terminological distinction. Here is one of the classic and, one might say, school examples that belong to the category of self-evident truths. Russian literature XIX centuries, according to a long-standing traditional definition, are various stories about the so-called superfluous people and the little man. A set of relevant artistic types allows you to talk about a broad topic fiction the last century. But it is equally obvious that the general object of artistic attention is greatly multiplied in the eyes of the writer. No matter how close the moral properties of Onegin, Pechorin and Rudin, their differences are striking at the most approximate examination. Generic signs the superfluous person is, as it were, realized in his specific qualities. Of course, here one should not ignore the fact that the generic and specific classifications are rather arbitrary. And for theoretical consciousness, in this case, a metonymic approach is unacceptable, when it is possible to reduce the general to the particular and vice versa. The picture of such a unification and separation of artistic types is especially visible when we are talking about the little man. Here is also a school example, allowed in a university course for the reason that the explanatory function of literary thought should operate here. Any attentive reader of Russian classics, talking about the little man in it, will name three stories: "The Stationmaster" by Pushkin, "The Overcoat" by Gogol and "Poor People" by Dostoevsky. Three giants of Russian prose, three founders of the great humanistic theme. Once upon a time, in the 30s of the 20th century, in the theory of the "single stream", in this dictatorial leveling of Russian culture, the analysis of the differences between the named stories was, as it were, not supposed. Culture had to be interpreted in terms of the unity of common motives and moral premises. Because in all these stories humanistic pathos their authors dominated, it was hardly necessary to bother yourself with the search for fundamental substantive differences. People interested in the history of science know that the one-stream concept, capable of ascertaining, for example, the coincidence of humanistic motives in the novels of Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky, was not able to explain the major ideological differences between the "sixties". Yes, Samson Vyrin, Akaki Bashmachkin and Makar Devushkin are siblings in the social and hierarchical sense, but it is easy to see that in Pushkin's character the "controlling force" of his actions is the protection of human and paternal honor, which, as it seems to him, is desecrated. A.A. Bashmachkin, where as a modification different from Vyrin spiritual state poor official. It may even seem at all that here actually spirituality exhausted to the limit by material concerns. The almost selfless dream of an overcoat threatens to turn for Bashmachkin into a complete loss of his own human appearance. In her social invisibility and spiritual obliteration, there are signs of rejection from normal life. human society. If there were no motive in the story, expressed by the words "this is your brother", there would be every reason to talk about the transformation of a person into a thing. That "electricity order", which Gogol considered a factor determining the absurdity, grotesqueness of human relations in cold St. Petersburg, in fact makes the whole legal order and way of life unreal. In Gogol's story, a person appears in a rigid social determinism, which has certain consequences: he was a good man Yes, he became a general. Makar Devushkin is a completely different type of official from the St. Petersburg slums. He has great internal dynamism in the perception of what is happening. The range of his judgments is so great and contrasting that sometimes it even seems artificial, but it is not. There is a logic in the transition from spontaneous consciousness of the social absurdity of life to a conciliatory consolation for its troubles. Yes, says Makar Devushkin, I am a rat, but I with my own hands I earn bread. Yes. He soberly understands that some people travel in carriages, while others spank through the mud. But the phrases “morbid ambition” and “submissive self-consolation” are suitable for the emotional characterization of his reflection: the ancient philosophers went barefoot, and wealth often goes to fools alone. “We all came out of The Overcoat,” Dostoevsky seemed to say. This is true, but only in a general sense, because Gogol’s coloring is unacceptable for Makar Devushkin. He likes Pushkin’s character and the whole story about Vyrin much more. This is easy to explain. Love Makara Devushkin to Varenka and care for her is, in fact, the only thread connecting him with spiritual forms of life. Soon they will break, the landowner Bykov will appear, and Devushkin will lose Varenka. And, fearing this approaching future, Devushkin is indignant at its possible reproduction. Makar Devushkin stands, as it were, between Samson Vyrin and Akaky Akakievich Therefore, it is clear that we do not have the same forms of incarnation of the little man, i.e. different problems.

And here is a visual effect and an example loved by art historians. There are three monuments to Gogol in Moscow: the front one - on the Arbat, as if a government gift to the admirers of the author of "Dead Souls"; the brilliant Andreevsky in the courtyard of one of the houses on Gogolevsky Boulevard and the caustic Gogol of Manizer in the foyer of the Maly Theater. For all the mediocrity of the first one, it cannot be said that it contained an absolute lie: faith in the greatness of the future of Russia to a large extent determined the worldview position of the writer. As for the outstanding monument created by Andreev, here it is all the more necessary to see the appearance of a stern and sad truth-lover. The satirical mockery of Gogol, placed in the center of attention by Manizer, is unconditional for the author of The Government Inspector. In a word, we have before us a self-evident case of "classifying" a single historical material according to the most characteristic psychological features - one more proof of the legitimacy of the terminological definition of an artistic object: theme and problem or theme and problematic. The substitution of concepts that occurs in the scientific literature confuses the issue.

As applied to literary material proper, such a theoretical recommendation is confirmed by the greatest artistic synonyms. You can take confirmation in the case of the opposite in relation to the above interaction between the topic and the problem. In "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", of course, various subjects: historical events early XIX centuries and social and moral issues characteristic of the middle of the century, but the problems of the novels contain great similarities.

True, Tolstoy notes: in "War and Peace" - the thought of the people, in "Anna Karenina" - family. But these definitions cannot be unconditionally referred only to problems, as, indeed, to topics. Here Tolstoy emphasizes a certain point of view, the question of human behavior is considered. If we specify the problems of the novels, it turns out that it can be reduced to the thesis - the inability to live according to the laws of collective consciousness and feelings is evil. The "swarm", uniting the beginning of life according to the laws of the "world" - like a peasant gathering - is the highest salutary blessing. This ratio can be traced within the framework of one work - in different storylines. A classic example is the disintegrating and rebuilding families in Anna Karenina; here is the guarantee, so to speak, of moral success - in the altruistic feeling of the inner connection of one person with another. The discrepancy between the categories of themes and problems is almost a universal law of all kinds of arts. When there is a "translation" of the content of one type of art into the content of another, then there are cases when one type of art can give a variety of content in other types of art. For example, if the famous Pushkin's words "do not sing, beauty, in front of me" are announced as the theme of a literary work, then in the corresponding romances for these words, due to the aesthetic nuance, there will be various problems: the bright, elegant romance of Glinka and the passionate romance of Rachmaninov. If one has a general aesthetic point of view on the question under study, one can recall the essential provisions of Chernyshevsky's well-known dissertation "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality", according to which artistic creativity reproduces, explains, and sometimes "pronounces a sentence." Reproduces and explains - this, relatively speaking, is a topic and a problem. As for the verdict, it is the most "active" side of the content. This is an emotional assessment by the artist of what is depicted. It is easy to imagine how diverse such assessments are, they are the basis of a very specific classification. Of course, there is a temptation to abandon scientific systematization in this case: how many creative individuals, so many assessments and, consequently, scientific systematization is impossible, because it always presupposes the existence of common law or more rules. The first, long spoken and familiar word in this usage- an idea, but the word needs careful use. It is difficult to agree with the point of view that a direct statement of the writer in the text or outside it, for example, an epigraph, can be called the author's idea, and ideological meaning of the whole work, in all the main details, by the objective idea of ​​this work. It is clear that the famous epigraph to "Anna Karenina" - "Vengeance is mine and I will repay" - is a kind of author's idea, and the entire main text of the novel is an objective idea.

Subject detailing of artistic images as one of the main forms of narration

Usually, when they talk about art form, they first of all turn to speech, to language. There is a well-known classical formula, popular in the 20th century: language is the primary element of literature. However, taking into account the well-known position of the outstanding German aesthetics of the XVIII century A. Baumgarten that the beautiful is a concrete-sensual feature of the world, and, remembering that art is highest degree beauty, it is more logical to start the study of form with the characteristics of precisely subject details. In addition, the emphasis on object world, on a landscape, on a portrait, on a domestic situation is motivated by the fact that a person as the main subject of art very often in its content essentially boils down to this subject matter life. In other words, the essence of man, and it is precisely the psychological essence of man, can very often be reduced to this world of things.

This emphasis on detail provides a wide scope for the most various forms conventions: grotesque, anecdotal. G. Uspensky in his story "The Morals of Rasteryaeva Street" tells about the husband of a certain Balkanikh, whom he, having seen on the threshold of a closet, where he secretly entered from her to try the jam, "died his breath" from fear. In this episode, the character of Balkanikha is visible, maniacally striving for a thing, and the whole situation of their family life. This motif is repeated by Chekhov in the story "Carelessness", where the hero also secretly goes to the cupboard to drink something strong. But he drank kerosene. His sister-in-law Dashenka woke up to his cries, and when he, surprised that he had not died, began to explain this with his righteous life, the gloomy sister-in-law began to mutter: no, not because he was righteous, but because they gave the wrong kerosene, the wrong one, that for 5 kopecks, and that for three. Christ sellers! Here is another version of the manic nature of human passion.

Chekhov's example makes us pay attention to the fact that one subject detail can act as a characterological feature of the structure of a work. In Chekhov's story "On a Nail", the birthday boy Struchkov takes his official friends to dinner. They see a large nail on the wall in the hallway, and on it is a new cap with a shining visor and a cockade. The officials, turning pale, left to wait until their boss was with the birthday boy. When they return, they see: a marten's hat is already hanging on a nail. This is another boss who came to visit Struchkov's wife, and they again leave the house of their comrade.

The function of an objective detail has received a classical definition as an necessarily effective, both in terms of numbers and in terms of plot, aesthetic phenomenon. More than a hundred years ago, it was said that if a gun is displayed in one of the acts of a play, then it must fire. And not just be cleaned up at intermission. By the way, these words are inaccurately attributed to Chekhov, in reality they belong to the director V. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Although this should not be taken too bluntly: a gun may not necessarily shoot, it may function differently, but it must function. There is some special, cosmic, secret in a person's attraction to the natural concrete world. Sometimes it seems paradoxical that art speaks of a person passing away in a situation of some real pantheism. That is, a person thinks most of all about nature, and not about the people he leaves, even the closest. But this is exactly what happens in art, and one of the most indicative examples in this respect are B. Pasternak's lines in the poem "English Lessons":

When you wanted to sing to Desdemona,

And there was so little left to live

Not for her love - a star ... she

According to the willow, burst into tears.

When I wanted to sing to Ophelia,

And the bitterness of dreams is fed up,

With what sunk trophies?

With a bunch of willows and celandine.

Very often, artists resort to the substantive details of the situation for semantic characteristics. Here Turgenev in "Fathers and Sons" characterizes everyday details in the atmosphere of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, whom he does not like. Abroad, he "adheres to Slavophile views, ... he does not read anything Russian, but on his desk there is a silver ashtray in the form of a peasant's bast shoes." Here is an almost satirical image of an ostentatious people-lover: a bast shoe is a symbol of peasant poverty, but Kirsanov has it silver, that is, it is only a secular item. Such an example of a direct critical method in the writer's artistic characterology is essentially universal in classical literature. Writers, as a rule, have a direct comparison of external and internal. Here popular example. At Gogol's Sobakevich in " Dead souls"Everything in the house" was of the most difficult and restless nature, in a word, every object, every chair seemed to say: I, too, Sobakevich. Everyone knows this, but they do not always notice the meaning of the word "restless", but Sobakevich is full of anxiety before new phenomena, in front of the adventure that Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov's traveling salesmanship is. Gogol in general, perhaps the first writer in Russia to boldly introduce these very substantive details into the characterology. In his "Marriage" Podkolesin, before the wedding, no longer thinks about the bride, but about wax and cloth.

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There are two things that make this book fascinating: the character and its destiny. If you managed to create a bright, charming and original - in fact, half the battle is done. The reader's interest in your book is guaranteed. For the first hundred pages. But to justify it is the task of the plot.

What is a plot?

In Russian-language literature, there are two concepts - the plot and the plot. They mean roughly the same thing, but there are differences.

In short and simple, then:

• the plot is the facts of your history, naked and impartial, arranged in chronological order;
• the plot is that (with the eyes of which hero they showed them, what assessment they gave, maybe even changed chronological order, i.e., first they told about what happened, and then they showed the reason for what happened).

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For example, in Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" the plot is as follows:

A poor student committed the murder of an old usurer. After a long time he suffered and repented. He confessed, went to hard labor and found peace and happiness.

And the plot is more complicated:

A poor student, reflecting on the latest philosophical concepts of his time, perceives the old usurer as an impersonal evil that stands in his way, the path of an enlightened and potentially great person, and everything in his life depends on whether he has enough determination and courage to admit that he above her and has the right to destroy her in order to achieve all that he can; whether he can be a real person, and not a trembling creature.

To prove to himself that he is a man and not a creature, the student kills the old woman - with an ax, clumsily and with horror; the scene of the murder shocks him so much that he falls into a state of shock and gradually slides into mental disorder… etc.

I think this is enough for you to understand the difference between plot and plot.

The plot (unlike the plot) is internal and external.

The inner story is what happens in the head and in the heart. The path of development of his character. After all, you already know that a hero is a hero because his character, his personality change in the course of the work. These changes are the inner story.

The external plot is what happens around the main character and with his direct participation. These are all the actions that take place in your story. Actions that affect, the people you talk about. Actions that generate facts.

Most often, these two types of plot peacefully coexist and support each other. But, of course, there are also stories where one of the plots prevails.

In the cited novel by Dostoevsky, the advantage, as you understand, is on the side of the internal plot.

But in stories about Conan the Barbarian, the external plot prevails.

In many ways, the ratio of internal and external plots stories depends on the literary niche for which you are going to write.

If your goal is mainstream, then the stories should be brought into balance. If - or, in other words, entertaining - literature, then it is better to work properly on the external plot. If you intend to get into elite literature, then you can safely deal only with the inner world of your hero!

However, remember: best books any of the aforementioned trends are always built on an organic fusion of both types of plot. The rich spiritual world of the protagonist, his active inner life also stimulate sharp conflicts in the external world.

And vice versa.

Inspiration to you and good luck!

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Plot (from French sujet - subject) - the course of the narrative about the events unfolding and happening in a work of art. As a rule, any such episode is subordinated to the main or auxiliary storyline.

However, there is no single definition of this term in literary criticism. There are three main approaches:

1) a plot is a way of developing a theme or presenting a plot;

2) the plot is a way of deploying a theme or presenting a plot;

3) the plot and the plot do not have a fundamental difference.

The plot is based on the conflict (clash of interests and characters) between the characters. That is why where there is no narration (lyrics), there is no plot.

The term "plot" was introduced in the 11th century. classicists P. Corneille and N. Boileau, but they were followers of Aristotle. Aristotle called what is called a "plot" a "narrative." Hence the "storyline".

The plot consists of the following main elements:

exposition

Action development

climax

denouement

Exposition (lat. expositio - explanation, exposition) - an element of the plot containing a description of the life of the characters before they begin to act in the work. Direct exposure is located at the beginning of the narrative, delayed exposure is placed anywhere, but it must be said that contemporary writers rarely use this plot element.

The plot is the initial, starting episode of the plot. She usually appears at the beginning of the story, but this is not the rule. So, we learn about Chichikov's desire to buy up dead souls only at the end of Gogol's poem.

The development of action proceeds "by will" actors storytelling and authorship. The development of the action precedes the climax.

Climax (from lat. culmen - peak) - the moment of the highest tension of the action in the work, its fracture. After the climax comes the denouement.

The denouement is the final part of the plot, the end of the action, where the conflict is resolved and it turns out, the motivation for the actions of the main and some secondary characters and their psychological portraits are specified.

The denouement sometimes precedes the plot, especially in detective stories, where in order to interest the reader and capture his attention, the narrative begins with a murder.

Other ancillary plot elements are the prologue, background, digression, insert novel, and epilogue.

However, in the modern literary process, we often do not meet with detailed expositions, or with prologues and epilogues, or with other elements of the plot, and even sometimes the plot itself is blurred, barely outlined, or even completely absent.

In the limit general view the plot is a kind of basic scheme of the work, which includes the sequence of actions taking place in the work and the totality of the relations of the characters existing in it. Usually the plot includes the following elements: exposition, plot, development of the action, climax, denouement and postposition, and also, in some works, prologue and epilogue. The main prerequisite for the development of the plot is time, moreover, as historical period action, and the passage of time in the course of the work.

The concept of plot is closely related to the concept of the plot of a work. In modern Russian literary criticism(as well as in the practice of teaching literature at school) the term “plot” usually refers to the very course of events in a work, and the plot is understood as the main artistic conflict, which develops in the course of these events. Historically, there have been other, different from the above, views on the relationship between plot and plot. In the 1920s, representatives of OPOYAZ proposed to distinguish between two sides of the narrative: they called the development of events in the world of the work itself “plot”, and the way these events are depicted by the author - “plot”.

Another interpretation comes from Russian critics mid-nineteenth century and was also supported by A. N. Veselovsky and M. Gorky: they called the plot the very development of the action of the work, adding to this the relationship of the characters, and under the plot they understood the compositional side of the work, that is, how exactly the author communicates the content of the plot. It is easy to see that the meanings of the terms "plot" and "plot" in given interpretation, compared to the previous one, are interchanged.

There is also a point of view that the concept of "plot" independent value does not have, and to analyze the work it is quite enough to operate with the concepts of “plot”, “plot scheme”, “plot composition”.

Plot typology

Repeated attempts have been made to classify the plots of literary works, to separate them according to various criteria, to single out the most typical ones. The analysis made it possible, in particular, to single out large group the so-called "wandering plots" - plots that are repeated many times in various designs in different peoples and in different regions, mostly - in folk art (tales, myths, legends).

There are several attempts to reduce all the variety of plots to a small, but at the same time, an exhaustive set of plot schemes. In the well-known short story The Four Cycles, Borges claims that all plots come down to just four options:

• On the assault and defense of the fortified city (Troy)
• About the long return (Odysseus)
• About Search (Jason)
• On the Suicide of God (Odin, Atys)

see also

Notes

Links

• The meaning of the word "plot" in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
• Brief contents of literary works of various authors
• Lunacharsky A. V., Thirty-six plots, Theater and Art magazine, 1912, N 34.
• Nikolaev A.I. The plot of a literary work // Fundamentals of Literary Studies: tutorial for students of philological specialties. - Ivanovo: LISTOS, 2011.

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• Chen Zaidao

See what "Plot" is in other dictionaries:

Plot- 1. S. in literature, a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of an action unfolding in a work, in the form of internally connected (causally temporal) actions of characters, events that form a certain unity, constituting some ... Literary Encyclopedia

plot- a, m. sujet m. 1. An event or a series of interconnected and sequentially developing events that make up the content of a literary work. BAS 1. || trans. Relationships. He is a beginner immediately understands the plot of the camera: hidden power P … Historical dictionary gallicisms of the Russian language

Plot- PLOT - the narrative core of a work of art, a system of effective (actual) mutual orientation and disposition of speakers in this work persons (objects), the provisions put forward in it, the events developing in it. ... ... Dictionary of literary terms

PLOT- (fr., from lat. subjectum subject). The content, interweaving of external circumstances that form the basis of known. literary or arts. works; in music: the theme of the fugue. In theatrical language, an actor or actress. Dictionary foreign words included in ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

plot- Cm … Synonym dictionary

PLOT- (from French sujet subject, subject) a sequence of events in artistic text. The paradox associated with the fate of the concept of secularism in the 20th century lies in the fact that as soon as philology learned to study it, literature began to destroy it. In studying S... Encyclopedia of cultural studies

PLOT- Plot, plot, husband. (French sujet). 1. A set of actions, events in which the main content of a work of art is revealed (lit.). The plot of Pushkin's Queen of Spades. Choose something as the plot of the novel. 2. trans. Content, topic of what ... ... Dictionary Ushakov

PLOT- from life. Razg. Shuttle. iron. About what l. everyday life episode, ordinary everyday history. Mokienko 2003, 116. Plot for short story. Razg. Shuttle. iron. 1. Something worth talking about. 2. What l. strange, interesting story. /i> From… … Big dictionary of Russian sayings

Exposition - time, place of action, composition and relationships of characters. If the exposition is placed at the beginning of the work, it is called direct, if in the middle - delayed.

Omen- hints that portend further development plot.

The tie is an event that provokes the development of a conflict.

Conflict - opposition of heroes to something or someone. This is the basis of the work: there is no conflict - there is nothing to talk about. Types of conflicts:

• human (humanized character) versus human (humanized character);
• man against nature (circumstances);
• man against society;
• man against technology;
• man against the supernatural;
• man against himself.

Growing action- a series of events that originates from the conflict. The action builds up and culminates at the climax.

Crisis - the conflict reaches its peak. The opposing sides meet face to face. The crisis takes place either immediately before the climax, or simultaneously with it.

The climax is the result of a crisis. Often this is the most interesting and significant moment in the work. The hero either breaks down or grits his teeth and prepares to go all the way.

Downward action- a series of events or actions of heroes leading to a denouement.

The denouement - the conflict is resolved: the hero either achieves his goal, or is left with nothing, or dies.

Why is it important to know the basics of storytelling?

Because over the centuries of the existence of literature, mankind has developed a certain scheme for the impact of a story on the psyche. If the story does not fit into it, it seems sluggish and illogical.

AT complex works with many storylines, all of the above elements can appear repeatedly; moreover, the key scenes of the novel are subject to the same laws of plot construction: let us recall the description of the Battle of Borodino in War and Peace.

Plausibility

Transitions from the plot to the conflict and to its resolution must be believable. You can’t, for example, send a lazy hero on a journey just because you want to. Any character should have a good reason to do one way or another.

If Ivanushka the Fool mounts a horse, let him be driven strong emotion: love, fear, revenge, etc.

Logic and common sense necessary in every scene: if the hero of the novel is an idiot, he can, of course, go to a forest infested with poisonous dragons. But if he reasonable person, he will not go there without a serious reason.

god from the machine

The denouement is the result of the actions of the characters and nothing else. In ancient plays, all problems could be solved by a deity lowered onto the stage on strings. Since then, the ridiculous ending, when all conflicts are eliminated by the waving of the wand of a sorcerer, angel or boss, has been called "God from the machine." What suited the ancients only irritates the contemporaries.

The reader feels deceived if the characters are just lucky: for example, a lady finds a suitcase with money just when she needs to pay interest on a loan. The reader respects only those heroes who deserve it - that is, they did something worthy.