Literary hero: what it is?

The word "hero" has rich history. Translated from Greek, “heros” means demigod, deified person. In pre-Homeric times (X-IX centuries BC) heroes in Ancient Greece the children of a god and a mortal woman or a mortal and a goddess were called (Hercules, Dionysus, Achilles, Aeneas, etc.). Heroes were worshiped, poems were written in their honor, and temples were erected for them. The right to the hero's name gave the advantage of clan and origin. The hero served as an intermediary between the earth and Olympus, he helped people comprehend the will of the gods, and sometimes he himself acquired the miraculous functions of a deity.

Such a function, for example, gets beautiful Elena in the ancient Greek temple legend-tale about the healing of the daughter of a friend of Ariston, the king of the Spartans. This nameless friend of the king, as the legend tells, had a very beautiful wife, who was very ugly in infancy. The nurse often carried the girl to the temple of Helen and prayed to the goddess to save the girl from deformity (Elena had her own temple in Sparta). And Elena came and helped the girl.

In the era of Homer (8th century BC) and up to the literature of the 5th century BC. inclusively, the word “hero” is filled with a different meaning. It is no longer only the descendant of the gods who turns into a hero. Any mortal who has achieved outstanding success in earthly life becomes one; any person who has made a name for himself in the field of war, morality, and travel. Such are the heroes of Homer (Menelaus, Patroclus, Penelope, Odysseus), such are Theseus of Bacchylides. The authors call these people “heroes” because they became famous for certain exploits and thereby went beyond the historical and geographical.

Finally, starting from the 5th century BC, not only an outstanding person turns into a hero, but any “husband”, both “noble” and “worthless”, who finds himself in the world literary work. A craftsman, a messenger, a servant and even a slave also act as a hero. Aristotle scientifically substantiates such a reduction and desacralization of the hero’s image. In “Poetics” there is a chapter “Parts of tragedy. Heroes of tragedy" - he notes that the hero may no longer be distinguished by "(special) virtue and justice." He becomes a hero simply by falling into tragedy and experiencing the “terrible”.

In literary criticism, the meaning of the term “hero” is very ambiguous. Historically, this meaning grows from the meanings indicated above. However, in theoretical terms, it reveals a new, transformed content, which can be read on several semantic levels: the artistic reality of the work, literature itself, and ontology as the science of being.

In the artistic world of creation, a hero is any person endowed with appearance and internal content. This is not a passive observer, but an actant, a person actually acting in the work (translated from Latin, “actant” means “acting”). The hero in the work necessarily creates something, protects someone. the main task hero at this level is the development and transformation of poetic reality, the construction artistic meaning. At the general literary level, a hero is an artistic image of a person who summarizes the most character traits reality; living through repeated patterns of existence. In this regard, the hero is the bearer of certain ideological principles, expresses the author's intention. It models a special imprint of existence, becomes the seal of the era. A classic example is Lermontov's Pechorin, “the hero of our time.” Finally, at the ontological level, the hero forms a special way of understanding the world. He must bring the truth to people, acquaint them with the diversity of forms human life. In this regard, the hero is a spiritual guide, leading the reader through all circles of human life and showing the path to the truth, God. Such is Virgil D. Alighieri (“ The Divine Comedy"), Faust I. Goethe, Ivan Flyagin N.S. Leskova (“The Enchanted Wanderer”) etc.

The term “hero” is often used adjacent to the term “character” (sometimes these words are understood as synonyms). The word "character" is of French origin, but has Latin roots. Translated from Latin language“regzopa” is a person, a face, a guise. The ancient Romans called a “persona” the mask that an actor put on before a performance: tragic or comic. In literary criticism, a character is the subject of a literary action or statement in a work. The character represents social appearance a person, his external, sensually perceived person.

However, a hero and a character are far from the same thing. The hero is something holistic, complete; character - partial, requiring explanation. The hero embodies an eternal idea and is destined for higher spiritual and practical activity; the character simply denotes the presence of a person; “works” as a statistician. The hero is an actor in a mask, and the character is only a mask.

Evgeniy Petrovich Baryshnikov in his article about the literary hero Baryshnikov E.P. Literary hero) first of all mentions that the concept of “literary hero” in modern literary criticism identical to the concept of “character”, “actor”. This is the first thing to understand before we proceed directly to the analysis of the text. We will also mention that literary heroes are often conventionally divided into positive and negative. It is in this spirit that we need this term. If at the beginning of the development of literature the term “hero” was used to define a certain character who embodied bright idealistic traits, now this has been abolished.

It should also be mentioned that fantastic literature revived some romantic traditions, and at the same time, romanticism, as a movement in literature, invariably included fantastic techniques. You can read more about this in the book by T.A. Chernysheva. The nature of fiction. Let us remember the distinctive features of the romantic hero: opposition to reality, commitment to chaos as the destroyer of all conventions and barriers that prevent individuality and personality from revealing itself.

“The enviable constancy of the romantics’ love for everything fantastic and wonderful has deep roots in their views on life, art, tasks and principles of creativity, in their ideological and philosophical concepts. First of all, the romantics not only separated art and reality as completely various areas, but also sharply contrasted them.[…]

From this view of art logically followed the rebellion so characteristic of the romantics against one of the fundamental principles of aesthetics

Aristotle - the principle of imitation of nature. Since reality is the opposite of art, should it be imitated? It needs to be recreated, improved, and only in this form allowed into art! Poetry is not intended to imitate nature, but to improve and enrich it with fiction and imagination.”

The task of improving and enriching nature as a reality fell on the shoulders of the romantic hero, which is why he must be strong, exceptional and unlike anyone else, and at the same time have poetic thinking. But at the same time, poetry is perceived by romantics in a completely unusual way:

“A fairy tale is like a canon of poetry. Everything poetic should be fabulous."

Thus, we see that the literary hero in science fiction is a romantic hero. Of course, given the process of development of literature, it is completely and hopelessly romantic heroes fantasy novels cannot be named, but the main train of thought is clear. Moreover, in modern fiction The hero embodies the fairy tale into which reality must be transformed not with the help of poetry, imagination and personal strength, but with the help of scientific achievements. Science became the factor that made such a transformation theoretically possible.

The hero became not a means, but a guiding instrument; personal qualities, mental and spiritual wealth, personality and poetry were replaced by starships, all kinds of converters, emitters and robots. A person no longer needs to change the whole world himself, while changing his personality, but only needs to invent something that will change the world and create a long-awaited fairy tale. That is why fantasy, although it has the features of romanticism, is not it.

What features does a typical fantasy hero have? And how does this relate to a robot hero?

A character easily turns into a hero if it receives an individual, personal dimension or character. According to Aristotle, character refers to the manifestation of the direction of “the will, whatever it may be.”

In modern literary criticism, character is the unique individuality of a character; his inner appearance; that is, everything that makes a person a person, that distinguishes him from other people. In other words, the character is the same actor who plays behind the mask - the character. At the heart of character is the inner “I” of a person, his self. Character reveals the image of the soul with all its searches and mistakes, hopes and disappointments. It denotes versatility human individuality; reveals her moral and spiritual potential.

Character can be simple or complex. A simple character is distinguished by integrity and staticity. He endows the hero with an unshakable set of value guidelines; makes it either positive or negative. Positive and negative heroes usually divide the system of characters in a work into two warring factions. For example: patriots and aggressors in the tragedy of Aeschylus (“Persians”); Russians and foreigners (English) in the story by N.S. Leskova “Lefty”; “last” and “sets” in the story by A.G. Malyshkina "The Fall of Dire".

Simple characters are traditionally combined into pairs, most often on the basis of opposition (Shvabrin - Grinev in “ The captain's daughter» A.S. Pushkin, Javert - Bishop Miriel in “Les Miserables” by V. Hugo). The contrast accentuates the merits of positive heroes and diminishes the merits of negative heroes. It arises not only on an ethical basis. It is also formed by philosophical oppositions (such is the confrontation between Joseph Knecht and Plinio Designori in G. Hesse’s novel “The Glass Bead Game”).

A complex character manifests itself in a constant search and internal evolution. It expresses diversity mental life personality. It reveals both the brightest, highest aspirations of the human soul, and its darkest, basest impulses. A complex character lays, on the one hand, the prerequisites for human degradation (“Ionych” by A.P. Chekhov); on the other hand, the possibility of his future transformation and salvation. A complex character is very difficult to define in the dyad of “positive” and “negative”. As a rule, it stands between these terms or, more precisely, above them. The paradox and contradictoriness of life thickens in it; all the most mysterious and strange things that make up a person’s secret are concentrated. These are the heroes of F.M. Dostoevsky R. Musil, A. Strindberg and others.

“A literary character is, in essence, a series of successive appearances of one person within of this text. Over the course of one text, the hero can be found in the most different forms: mention of him in the speeches of other characters, narration by the author or narrator about events related to the character, analysis of his character, depiction of his experiences, thoughts, speeches, appearance, scenes in which he takes part in words, gestures, actions, etc.”

We already remember that the hero and the character are one and the same. But what does a face mean? Obviously, we are talking about the term “actor”. Thus, we are faced with the fact that we cannot call the term “literary hero” unambiguous. Terms such as “image”, “type”, “character” merge into one and it is impossible to give a clear definition to anything. Thus, in order to continue this research, we will resolve this ambiguity, as above we defined for ourselves what artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence are.

“...the person depicted in literature is not an abstraction (as a person studied by statistics, sociology, economics, biology can be), but rather a concrete unity. But a unity that is not reducible to a particular, isolated case (as a person can be, say, in a newsreel), a unity that has an expanding symbolic meaning, therefore capable of representing an idea.”

Let us note that here we are talking specifically about a person; to expand the term, let’s say “a thinking being.” Thus, without losing the main meaning, we can say that fantasy characters, no matter what planet or factory they are from, they are just as much a unity as a human character. Let's figure out what a character is.

“...the work covered the study of the rich area of ​​attributes of the characters (i.e. characters, as such […] The names (and with them the attributes) of the characters change, but their actions or functions do not change. Hence the conclusion that the fairy tale often attributes the same actions for different characters. This gives us the opportunity to study a fairy tale based on the functions of the characters."

That is, the character is a certain function in the text, the position of the character in relation to other characters, the artistic world, the author and the reader.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that a literary hero is a system that consists, as we see from the position of the hero, what we will call an actor, and a character, i.e., a personality, a special case of the manifestation of an actor. To clarify the term “image,” let us turn to G. A. Gukovsky, who gave the most comprehensive and complete definition on this matter.

"IN school practice The custom of using the term “image” to designate not only primarily, but also exclusively the image-character of a character in a literary work has become established. This word usage is so ingrained that it tends to move into university teaching of literature, and among some associate professors at pedagogical institutes and universities it has already become a rule. Meanwhile, this use of the term and concept “image” is unscientific, and it distorts the correct understanding of art in general and literature in particular. The science of art teaches us that in a work of art the image is not only the external and internal (psychological) appearance of the character, that all its elements are semantically constructed as images, that in general art is a figurative reflection and interpretation of reality

[…]in a work of fiction we find a complex system of images, in which one of the most important, but not the only important role is played by the images of the characters

When we talk about “images” in the traditional and non-scientific sense, we often forget that every image is certainly an image of something, that an image in itself and for itself does not exist, because a representation that does not express anything generally ideological - this is not yet an image, this is not yet art, this is not yet an ideology at all.”

How does the term “literary hero” relate to the term “image”? Based on the above, we can assume that an image is something that arises precisely in the reader, in his head, but not only. Each writer has his own image of each hero, but based on the text, each creates his own own image. It turns out that the image is the result of the subjective perception of a literary character, arising precisely in the imagination of the reader as a perceiving subject.

In connection with this subjectivity, as well as the fact that each author perceives the hero in his own way, just like the reader, M. M. Bakhtin identified several patterns that characterize the relationship between the author and the hero.

“The first case: the hero takes possession of the author. The hero’s emotional-volitional objective attitude, his cognitive-ethical position in the world are so authoritative for the author that he cannot help but see the objective world only through the eyes of the hero and cannot help but experience the events of his life only from within; the author cannot find a convincing and stable value point of support outside the hero. Of course, in order for the artistic whole, even if incomplete, to take place, some final moments are needed, and therefore, you need to somehow become outside the hero (usually there is more than one hero, and these relationships take place only for the main character ), otherwise there will be either a philosophical treatise, or a self-report-confession, or, finally, this cognitive-ethical tension will find a way out in purely vital, ethical actions. But these points outside the hero, which the author nevertheless takes, are random, unprincipled and uncertain; these precarious points of non-location usually change throughout the work, being occupied only in relation to a given moment in the development of the hero, then the hero again knocks the author out of the position he temporarily occupied, and he is forced to grope for another; often these random points of support are given to the author by other characters, with the help of which, getting used to their emotional-volitional attitude towards the autobiographical hero, he tries to free himself from him, that is, from himself. The final moments are scattered and unconvincing.”

That is, if the author is dealing with familiar hero, the personality of the hero can become emotionally dominant over the author, moreover, not a literary author, who is in the text, but a biographical author, a real and living person. But at the same time, we see this only when the hero is completely unconvincing, his helplessness. It is not for nothing that Bakhtin talks about the unconvincingness of the final moments. Without them, the image in the reader’s head is incomplete, and the author differs from the reader in that he is able to complete his character as he pleases without harming the plot and the finished work in general. Such an author, creating art world, thus, creates an idol for himself or a hero in his original sense words, but at the same time does not work so that others see the image that he sees. The text turns out to be unfinished, semantic voids are formed in it. In some cases, this does not prevent the work from becoming a classic and entering the Golden Fund of Literature, but such an anomaly makes reading and perception difficult.

If we talk about artificial intelligence and its life-likeness, then with all the desire it is impossible to do this with a hero who is not a living being in in every sense this word. This is largely due to the fact that, with proper lifelikeness, such a character does not reveal emotions, and this complicates the relationship between the author and the hero. It is impossible to be emotionally and mentally imbued with a being who does not experience emotions and thinks in other categories. We will talk about this in more detail in the third chapter, when we encounter directly the cycle of A. Azimov “Positronic Robots” and the work of S. Lukyanenko “False Mirrors,” which tell about artificial intelligence.

The second case of anomalies in the relationship between the hero and the author sounds like this:

“The second case: the author takes possession of the hero, brings the final moments inside him, the author’s attitude towards the hero becomes partly the hero’s attitude towards himself. The hero begins to define himself, the author’s reflex is put into the soul or into the mouth of the hero.

A hero of this type can develop in two directions: firstly, the hero is not autobiographical and the author’s reflex introduced into him really completes him; If in the first case we analyzed the form suffered, then here the realistic persuasiveness of the hero’s emotional-volitional attitude in life in the event suffers. Such is the hero of false classicism, who in his life attitude from within himself maintains the purely artistic final unity given to him by the author, in each of his manifestations, in action, in facial expressions, in feeling, in word remains true to his aesthetic principle. In such false classics as Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Ozerov, the heroes often very naively express the moral and ethical idea that completes them, which they embody from the author’s point of view. Secondly, the hero is autobiographical; Having mastered the author’s final reflex, his total formative reaction, the hero makes it a moment of self-experience and overcomes it; such a hero is incomplete, he internally outgrows every total definition as inadequate to him, he experiences completed integrity as a limitation and contrasts it with some kind of internal secret that cannot be expressed.”

In modern fantastic literature This anomaly occurs most often in the environment mass literature, or rather, in numerous cycles of adventure fantasy, which is distinguished by such a simple plot: a hero, very similar to the author in appearance and character, finds himself in another world, different from ours in the presence of magic or technology. Such a plot provides many loopholes for the author to express his position on any issue, to place himself, albeit a fake one, in some space of adventure, and so on. That is, such a hero does not carry any semantic meaning. If a literary hero in the world, whose author is at the point of being out of place, carries within himself not only his character and structure as a whole, but also a certain symbol, the personification of an idea, although not as comprehensive as in the case of the first anomaly.

MM. Bakhtin identifies the third case of an anomaly in the relationship between the author and the hero, and then we will move on to those features that were discovered during the analysis of the works of A. Azimov “Positronic Robots” and S. Lukyanenko “False Mirrors”.

“Finally, the third case: the hero is his own author, comprehends his own life aesthetically, as if playing a role; such a hero, unlike the endless hero of romanticism and the unredeemed hero of Dostoevsky, is self-satisfied and confidently complete.

The author’s attitude towards the hero, which we have characterized in the most general terms, is complicated and varied by those cognitive and aesthetic definitions of the whole hero, which, as we saw earlier, are inextricably fused with his purely artistic design. Thus, the emotional-volitional objective attitude of the hero can be cognitively, ethically, religiously authoritative for the author - glorification; this attitude can be exposed as an incorrect claim to significance - satire, irony, etc. Each final moment, transgredient to the hero’s self-awareness, can be used in all these directions (satirical, heroic, humorous, etc.).”

This anomaly cannot be applied to artificial intelligence, no matter how independent it may be, and why exactly, you will read below. In the meantime, it should be said here that this is a common misconception among writers, as if the hero himself decides to choose his own path. This does not happen if the author, being in a position of being outside himself, really sees the character and his entire world through and through, knowing every movement in the world he himself wrote.

But we should not forget that the hero is not the most important thing in the work. In a literary work, the most important thing is the structure as a whole, and in this structure what is more important is not one hero, whoever he may be, but a system of characters.

A literary hero is a person who is clearly individual and at the same time clearly collective, that is, generated by the social environment, interpersonal relationships. He is rarely presented in isolation, in a one-man show. The hero flourishes in a certain social sphere, among their own kind or in a society of people, if we are talking about artificial intelligence. He is included in the “list of characters,” in the system of characters that most often appears in works of major genres (novels). The hero can be surrounded, on the one hand, by relatives, friends, comrades-in-arms, on the other - by enemies, ill-wishers, on the third - by other thinking beings who are alien to him.

The character system is a strict hierarchical structure. Heroes are usually differentiated based on their artistic significance(values). They are separated by the degree of authorial attention (or frequency of image), ontological purpose and the functions they perform. Traditionally, there are main, secondary and episodic characters.

Heroes, as a rule, actively master and transform artistic reality: predetermine events, perform actions, conduct dialogues. The main characters are characterized by a well-remembered appearance and a clear value orientation. Sometimes they express the basic, general idea of ​​creation; become the “mouthpiece” of the author, especially if the first anomaly described by Bakhtin in the article “The Author and the Hero in aesthetic activity. The problem of the author's attitude towards the hero"

Number of characters in the center literary storytelling may be different. At I.A. Bunin in “The Life of Arsenyev” we see only one main character. In the Old Russian “Tale of Peter and Fevronya” there are two characters in the center. In J. London's novel “The Hearts of Three” there are already three main characters.

Secondary characters are located next to the main characters, but somewhat behind them, in the background artistic image. The heroes of the second row, as a rule, are the parents, relatives, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues of the heroes of the first row. The personalities and portraits of minor characters are rarely detailed; rather, they appear dotted. These heroes help the main characters “open up” and ensure the development of the action.

This is, for example, a mother poor Lisa in the story of the same name by N.M. Karamzin. This is Kazbich M.Yu. Lermontov from the story “Bela”.

Episodic characters are on the periphery of the world of the work. They don’t quite have characters and act as passive executors of the author’s will. Their functions are purely official. They only appear in one select episode, which is why they are called cameos. Such are the servants and messengers in ancient literature, janitors, carters, casual acquaintances in XIX literature century. Artificial intelligence, as will be proven below, differs from such characters in that in some cases artificial intelligence creates the illusion of a full-fledged character, as happens in the series of stories by Isaac Asimov “Positronic Robots”, which reveals the world created by Asimov in series such as “Academy” , in the series of stories “I, Robot,” etc.. This can be compared with a hero obsessed with someone, who at the end finds out that he was controlled and all the actions committed throughout the plot are only the result of an order that he accepted and could not resist. In this case, the main character will not be the one who committed the actions, but the one who forced them to perform these actions. The reader perceives the hero as the same person as himself, and thus, if the actions are performed by someone else, then all attention was actually directed to him.

Hero of a literary work- a character in a work of art who has distinct character traits and behavior, a certain attitude towards other characters and life phenomena shown in the work.

A hero is often called any multifaceted character depicted in a work. Such a main or one of the main characters can be a positive artistic image, a positive hero, expressing in his views, actions, experiences the traits of a leading person of his time and causing the reader to desire to become like him, to follow him in life. Positive heroes are many heroes of works of art by Russian classics, for example: Chatsky, Tatyana Larina, Mtsyri, Taras Bulba, Insarov and others. Heroes for a number of generations of revolutionaries were the heroes of the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What is to be done?” - Vera Pavlovna and Rakhmetov, the hero of A. M. Gorky’s novel “Mother” - Pavel Vlasov.

The main or one of the main characters can also be a negative image, in the behavior and experiences of which the writer shows people with backward or reactionary views hostile to the people, causing anger and disgust with their attitude towards their homeland, towards people. Such a negative artistic image helps to understand reality more deeply, shows what the writer condemns and thereby what he considers positive in life, arouses the desire to fight against negative phenomena in it.

Russian classical literature has created a number of negative images: Chichikov, Plyushkin, Khlestakov and others in the works of N.V. Gogol, Karenin (“Anna Karenina” by L.N. Tolstoy), Judushka Golovlev (“The Lord Golovlevs” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ), Mayakin, Vassa Zheleznova, Klim Samgin and others in the works of A. M. Gorky.

Soviet writers created a gallery of new positive heroes, whose images reflected the traits of a person in a socialist society.

Such, for example, are Chapaev and Klychkov in the works of D. Furmanov, Levinson and others in A. Fadeev’s novel “Destruction”, communists and underground Komsomol members in his novel “The Young Guard”, Davydov (“Virgin Soil Upturned” by M. A. Sholokhov) , Pavel Korchagin and his comrades in N. Ostrovsky’s work “How the Steel Was Tempered”, Basov (“Tanker “Derbent”” by Y. Krymov), Vorobyov and Meresyev in “The Tale of a Real Man” by B. Polevoy and others. Along with this Soviet writers (A. A. Fadeev, A. N. Tolstoy, M. A. Sholokhov, L. M. Leonov and others) created a number of negative images - White Guards, kulaks, fascists, adventurers, fake people, etc.

It is clear that in literature, as in life, a person appears in the process of growth, in development, in the struggle of contradictions, in the interweaving of positive and negative properties. Therefore, we encounter a wide variety of characters in literature, which we only ultimately classify as positive and negative images. These concepts express the most sharply differentiated types of images. In almost every given literary work they receive specific embodiment in the most various forms and shades. It should be emphasized that in Soviet literature, the most important task of which is to depict the advanced fighters for communism, creating the image of a positive hero is of primary importance.

It would be more correct to call a hero only the positive hero of the work - a character whose actions and thoughts can be, from the writer’s point of view, an example of behavior for a person. Unlike positive heroes, other people depicted in works are better called artistic images, characters, or, if they do not influence the development of events in the work, characters.

Hero, character, character in a work of art.

Parameter name	Meaning
Article topic:	Hero, character, character in a work of art.
Rubric (thematic category)	Literature

Character (French)
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personnage, from lat. persona - person, face, mask) - appearance artistic image, subject of action, experience, statement in a work. The phrases used in modern literary criticism have the same meaning literary hero, character(mainly 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 - a mask worn by an actor in ancient theater) is barely noticeable. Hero (from gr.
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heros - demigod, deified person) in some contexts it is awkward to call someone who is devoid of heroic traits ("It is impossible for a hero to be petty and insignificant," Boileau wrote about the tragedy), and an actor - an inactive one (Podkolesin or Oblomov).

The concept of character (hero, protagonist) is the most important in the analysis epic and dramatic works, where exactly characters forming a certain system, and the plot (system of events) form the basis objective world.

Most often, a literary character is a person. The degree of concreteness of its presentation should be different and depends on many reasons: on the place in the system of characters, on the type and genre of the work, etc.
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But most of all, the principles of depiction, the very direction of detailing are determined by the concept of the work, the creative method of the writer: more should be said about the minor character of a realistic story (for example, about Gagin in “Ace” by I.S. Turgenev) in biographical and social terms, 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 a 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: fairy tale, fable, ballad, animalistic literature, Science fiction and etc.

The character sphere of literature consists not only of isolated individuals, but also collective heroes (their prototype is the chorus in ancient drama). Interest in national problems social psychology stimulated in literature XIX-XX V. development of this image angle (the crowd in the “Cathedral” Notre Dame of Parisʼʼ V. Hugo, the bazaar in ʼʼThe Belly of Parisʼʼ E. Zola, the workers' settlement in M. Gorky's novel ʼʼMotherʼʼ, ʼʼold womenʼʼ, ʼʼsocediʼʼ, ʼʼguestsʼʼ, ʼʼdrunkardsʼ in L. Andreev's play ʼLife Human, etc.).

The variety of character types comes close to the question of the subject of artistic knowledge: non-human characters act as bearers of moral, i.e. human, qualities; the existence of collective heroes reveals the writers’ interest in the general different faces. No matter how broadly interpreted subject of knowledge in fiction, its center is ʼʼhuman essences , i.e., first of all, social” 2. In relation to epic and drama, this characters(from gr.
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character - sign, distinguishing feature), i.e. socially significant features, manifested with sufficient clarity in the behavior and state of mind of people; highest degree characteristics - type(from gr.
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typos - imprint, imprint). (Often words character And type used interchangeably.)

When creating a literary hero, a writer usually endows him with one character or another: one-sided or multi-sided, integral or contradictory, static or developing, respectful or contempt, etc. The writer conveys his understanding and assessment of life characters to the reader, conjecturing and implementing prototypes, creating fictional individuals. ʼʼ Character and character are not identical concepts, which was noted by Aristotle:ʼʼThe character will have character if<...>in speech or action will reveal any direction of will, whatever it may be...ʼʼ In literature focused on the embodiment of characters (and this is what the classics are), the latter constitute the main content - the subject of reflection, and often debate among readers and critics. In the same character, critics see different tempers.

In other words, the character appears, on the one hand, as a character, and on the other, as an artistic image that embodies this character with some degree of aesthetic perfection.

In the stories of A.P. Chekhov's “The Death of an Official” and “Fat and Thin” Chervyakov and “Thin” as images are unique: we meet the first in the theater, “at the height 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 denouements are different. But the stories are interchangeable when discussing the theme of veneration of rank in Chekhov, the characters of the characters are so similar: both act according to the same stereotype, not noticing the comedy of their voluntary lackey, which only brings them harm. Characters are reduced to a comic discrepancy between the characters’ behavior and an 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 not difficult to count, then understanding the characters embodied in them and the corresponding grouping of persons is an act of interpretation and analysis. In “Fat and Thin” there are four characters, but, obviously, only two characters: “Thin”, his wife Louise, “nee Vanzenbach... a Lutheran”, and his son Nathanael (the redundancy of information is an additional touch to the portrait of a funny man) form one close-knit family group. “The thin one shook three fingers, bowed with his whole body and chuckled 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 in a work (as in the writer’s work as a whole) usually does not coincide: there are much more characters. There are persons who have no character, performing only a plot role. There are doubles, variants of the same type (six Tugoukhovsky princesses in “Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboyedov. The existence of characters of the same type gives critics the basis for classifications, for attracting a whole series of characters to the analysis of one type (ʼʼtyrantsʼʼ and ʼʼunresponsiveʼʼ in the article by N.A. Dobrolyubov ʼʼ Dark Kingdomʼʼ, dedicated to the work of Ostrovsky; Turgenevsky ʼʼan extra personʼʼ in the articles ʼʼLiterary type weak personʼʼ P.V. Annenkova, ʼʼWhen the real one will come day?ʼʼ Dobrolyubova). Writers return to the type and character they discovered, finding new facets in it, achieving aesthetic impeccability of the image.

According to their status in the structure of the work, character and character have different evaluation criteria. Unlike the characters that cause ethically attitude towards oneself, characters are assessed primarily with aesthetic point of view, that is, based on how brightly, fully and concentratedly they embody the characters.

The means of revealing character in a work are various components and details of the objective world: plot, speech characteristics, portrait, costume, interior, etc. At the same time, the perception of a character as a character does not necessarily require a detailed structure of the image. Images are particularly cost-saving off-stage heroes (for example, in the story “Chameleon” - the general and his brother, lovers of dogs of different breeds). The uniqueness of the category of character lies in its final, integral function in relation to all means of representation.

There is another way to study a character - solely as a participant in the plot. current face (but not as a character). In relation to archaic genres of folklore (in particular, to the Russian fairy tale, considered by V.Ya. Propp in the book “Morphology of a Fairy Tale”, 1928), to early stages In the development of literature, this approach is to some extent motivated by the material: there are no characters as such yet or they are less important than the action. Aristotle considered the main thing in tragedy to be the action (plot): “So, the plot is the basis and, as it were, the soul of the tragedy, and characters follow it, for tragedy is an imitation of the action, and in connection with this, especially the characters” 1.

With the formation of personality, it is characters that become the main subject of artistic knowledge. In the programs of literary directions (starting with classicism), the concept of personality is of fundamental importance, in close connection with its understanding in philosophy and social sciences. Both the view and the plot are affirmed in aesthetics as the most important way of revealing character, its testing and stimulus for development. “A person’s character can be revealed in the most insignificant actions; from the point of view of poetic evaluation, the greatest deeds are those that shed the most light on the character of a person" 2 - many writers, critics, and aestheticians could subscribe to these words of Lessing.

The plot functions of the characters - in abstraction from their characters - became the subject of special analysis in some areas of literary criticism of the 20th century. In the structuralist theory of plot, this is associated with the task of constructing general models (structures) found in the variety of narrative texts.

Hero, character, character in a work of art. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Hero, character, character in a work of art." 2017, 2018.

The question of the literary hero - in its correlation with the author-creator - is the natural conclusion of the entire section “Structure of a literary work”. Form work of art as a whole, according to M. M. Bakhtin, represents the “total reaction” of the author “to the whole of the human hero.” In other words, the form of a work is the boundary of the hero (as a whole - hence the concept of “completion” of the hero), which is created both by his activity (self-determination) and by defining (limiting) the hero by the author.

It is clear that such an understanding cannot apply to any image of a person in a literary work. The reader intuitively distinguishes the “main” depicted persons (characters) from the secondary ones, and even more so - only those named: both by the degree of participation in the course of events, and by the degree of closeness to their author or the author’s interest, one way or another expressed - in direct or indirect assessments - and thereby controlling reader interest (this is most noticeable, for example, in adventure literature).

Hence the task is to correlate the various existing designations of persons or figures depicted in a literary work - hero, character, character, type - with their real multiplicity and difference in functions.

Referring to the definitions found in reference books, we discover two parallel and opposite trends. The concepts designated by four terms are mixed wherever the “image of a person in literature” is taken as their common basis and differ only in those cases where the hero, character and type are correlated with the concept of “character”, taking as the initial (at least) idea of a character who has certain plot functions.

The image is one of the most vague and at the same time the most frequent literary concepts. Let us note, by the way, the still popular and still unconditional use of the expression “system of images” in the sense of “system of characters”, although any story event, and any element of stylistic structure (say, simile or metaphor) is also an image.

It is not surprising that if we start from the term “image”, a literary hero, character and type turn out to be almost equally images and are recognized as interchangeable. Sometimes even the “image of the narrator” is considered “character” (N. Vladimirova).

A demarcating, differentiating role is played by the concept of character, which usually means any “subject of action”, “actor”, as well as any subject of speech, speaker. From this point of view, firstly, the character can be distinguished from the main character by the degree of participation in the action - as a secondary character and, in addition, from the lyrical subject, who can be called a hero, but not a character, since he is not the bearer of action .

Secondly, character can be contrasted with type: as an individualized character to a non-individualized one, or as a character in which an “internal” aspect is revealed, i.e. the motivating reasons for behavior and action, “independent activity” is shown to the character, shown only “from the outside”, through behavior and action.

Thus, it is necessary to take into account the differences in the roles of the depicted persons in the plot or the types of their plot functions. In addition, one should distinguish plot function character (being an object for other depicted persons or only for the author and reader) and “content” literary personality, which may not coincide with this role in the plot (the role is a possible object for itself). Hence the importance of the concepts “point of view” and “outlook” for the classification of types of hero.

Theory of Literature / Ed. N.D. Tamarchenko - M., 2004

Character (actor)– in a prose or dramatic work, an artistic image of a person (sometimes fantastic creatures, animals or objects), which is both the subject of the action and the object of the author’s research.

In a literary work there are usually characters of different levels and varying degrees participation in the development of events.

Hero. Central character, the main one for the development of action is called hero literary work. Characters who enter into ideological or everyday conflict with each other are the most important in character system. In a literary work, the relationship and role of the main, secondary, episodic characters(as well as off-stage characters in dramatic work) are determined by the author's intention.

The role that authors assign to their hero is evidenced by the so-called “character” titles of literary works (for example, “Taras Bulba” by N.V. Gogol, “Heinrich von Oftendinger” by Novalis) . This, however, does not mean that in works entitled with the name of one character, there is necessarily one main character. So, V.G. Belinsky considered Tatyana equal the main character A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, and F.M. Dostoevsky considered her image even more significant than the image of Onegin. The title can introduce not one, but several characters, which, as a rule, emphasizes their equal importance for the author.

Character- a personality type formed by individual traits. The set of psychological properties that make up the image of a literary character is called character. Incarnation in a hero, a certain character vital character.

Literary type – a character that carries a broad generalization. In other words, literary type- this is a character in whose character the universal human traits inherent in many people prevail over personal, individual traits.

Sometimes the writer’s focus is on a whole group of characters, as, for example, in “family” epic novels: “The Forsyte Saga” by J. Galsworthy, “Buddenbrooks” by T. Mann. In the 19th–20th centuries. begins to be of particular interest to writers collective character as a certain psychological type, which sometimes also manifests itself in the titles of works (“Pompadours and Pompadours” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The Humiliated and Insulted” by F.M. Dostoevsky). Typification is a means of artistic generalization.

Prototype- a specific person who served the writer as the basis for creating a generalized image-character in a work of art.

Portrait as an integral part of the character structure, one of important components works, organically fused with the composition of the text and the idea of ​​the author. Types of portrait (detailed, psychological, satirical, ironic, etc.).

Portrait– one of the means of creating an image: depicting the appearance of the hero of a literary work as a way of characterizing him. A portrait may include a description of the appearance (face, eyes, human figure), actions and states of the hero (the so-called dynamic portrait, which depicts facial expressions, eyes, facial expressions, gestures, posture), as well as features formed by the environment or that are a reflection of the character’s individuality: clothes , manners, hairstyles, etc. A special type of description - psychological picture– allows the author to reveal the character, inner world and emotional experiences of the hero. For example, the portrait of Pechorin in the novel “Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov, portraits of heroes of novels and stories by F.M. Dostoevsky are psychological.

An artistic image is a specificity of art, which is created through typification and individualization.

Typification – knowledge of reality and its analysis, resulting in selection and generalization vital material, its systematization, identification of the significant, discovery of the essential tendencies of the universe and folk-national forms of life.

Individualization is the embodiment of human characters and their unique identity, the artist’s personal vision of public and private existence, contradictions and conflicts of time, concrete sensory exploration of the non-human world and the objective world through artistic means. words.

The character is all the figures in the work, but excluding the lyrics.

Type (imprint, form, sample) is the highest manifestation of character, and character (imprint, distinctive feature) is the universal presence of a person in complex works. Character can grow from type, but type cannot grow from character.

The hero is a complex, multifaceted person. He is an exponent of plot action that reveals the content of works of literature, cinema, and theater. The author, who is directly present as a hero, is called a lyrical hero (epic, lyric). The literary hero opposes the literary character, who acts as a contrast to the hero, and is a participant in the plot

Prototype - a specific historical or contemporary to the author the personality that served as his starting point for creating the image. The prototype replaced the problem of the relationship between art and actual analysis the writer's personal likes and dislikes. The value of researching a prototype depends on the nature of the prototype itself.

• - a generalized artistic image, the most possible, characteristic of a certain social environment. A type is a character that contains a social generalization. For example, the type of “superfluous man” in Russian literature, with all its diversity (Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov) had common features: education, dissatisfaction real life, the desire for justice, the inability to realize oneself in society, the ability to strong feelings etc. Each time gives birth to its own types of heroes. For changing " extra person“The type of “new people” has arrived. This, for example, is the nihilist Bazarov.

Prototype- a prototype, a specific historical or contemporary personality of the author, who served as the starting point for creating the image.

Character - the image of a person in a literary work, which combines the general, repetitive and individual, unique. The author's view of the world and man is revealed through character. The principles and techniques for creating character differ depending on tragic, satirical and other ways of depicting life, from literary kind work and genre. It is necessary to distinguish literary character from character in life. When creating a character, a writer can reflect the features of the real, historical person. But he inevitably uses fiction, “invents” the prototype, even if his hero is a historical figure. "Character" and "character" - concepts are not identical. Literature is focused on creating characters, which often cause controversy and are perceived ambiguously by critics and readers. Therefore, in the same character you can see different characters (the image of Bazarov from Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”). In addition, in the system of images of a literary work, there are, as a rule, much more characters than characters. Not every character is a character; some characters only serve a plot role. Typically not in character minor characters works.

Literary hero is an image of a person in literature. Also in this sense, the concepts “actor” and “character” are used. Often, only the more important characters (characters) are called literary heroes.

Literary heroes are usually divided into positive and negative, but this division is very arbitrary.

Often in literature there was a process of formalization of the character of heroes, when they turned into a “type” of some vice, passion, etc. The creation of such “types” was especially characteristic of classicism, with the image of a person playing a auxiliary role in relation to a certain advantage, disadvantage, or inclination.

A special place among literary heroes is occupied by genuine persons introduced into a fictional context - for example, historical characters novels.

Lyrical hero - the image of the poet, the lyrical “I”. Inner world lyrical hero is revealed not through actions and events, but through specific state of mind, through experiencing a certain life situation. Lyric poem- a specific and individual manifestation of the character of the lyrical hero. The image of the lyrical hero is revealed most fully throughout the poet’s work. So, in some lyrical works Pushkin (“In the Depths” Siberian ores...", "Anchar", "Prophet", "Desire for Glory", "I Love You..." and others) express different states of the lyrical hero, but taken together, they give us a fairly holistic idea of ​​him.

The image of the lyrical hero should not be identified with the personality of the poet, just as the experiences of the lyrical hero should not be perceived as the thoughts and feelings of the author himself. The image of a lyrical hero is created by the poet in the same way as an artistic image in works of other genres, through the selection of life material, typification, and artistic invention.

Character - protagonist of a work of art. As a rule, the character takes an active part in the development of the action, but the author or one of the literary heroes can also talk about him. There are main and secondary characters. In some works the focus is on one character (for example, in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time”), in others the writer’s attention is drawn to a whole series of characters (“War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy).

Artistic image- a universal category of artistic creativity, a form of interpretation and exploration of the world from the position of a certain aesthetic ideal, through the creation of aesthetically affecting objects. Any phenomenon creatively recreated in a work of art is also called an artistic image. An artistic image is an image of art that is created by the author of a work of art in order to most fully reveal the described phenomenon of reality. At the same time, the meaning of an artistic image is revealed only in a certain communicative situation, and the final result of such communication depends on the personality, goals and even the mood of the person encountering it, as well as on the specific