Theories of borrowing. theory of wandering and wandering plots in

Wandering plots, wandering plots are the concept of comparative historical literary criticism and folkloristics, which explains the similarity of folklore stories of different peoples as a result of their cultural and historical interaction. Migration theory (see), also known as the theory of borrowing, also known as theory wandering stories(the largest representatives in Germany are T. Benfey, F. Liebrecht, in Russia - A.N. Pypin, V.F. Miller, V.V. Stasov) arose as a reaction to the dominance of the mythological school (brothers Ya. and V. " people's soul" Benfey, an Orientalist scholar, Sanskrit researcher, translator of the Vedic book of hymns “Samaveda” (1848) and the “Panchatantra” created in the 3rd-4th centuries (1859), considered India the ancestral home of most Western folklore stories and epic images. Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who hoped to capture the essence, the “core of poetry” (F. Schlegel), in the pre-plot, Benfey was guided in his theory by the positivist principle of constructing strict cause-and-effect relationships. The deepest follower of Benfey in Russia, who corrected many of his provisions, was A.N. Veselovsky, who described plot forms as constant quantities created in prehistoric times by the collective human psyche and since then dominating the creative personality: “Plots are complex circuits, in the imagery of which well-known acts of human life and psyche in alternating forms of everyday reality were generalized.” “Everyday reality” (specific cultural and historical circumstances of each era) requires turning to one or another plot form, filling it each time with new content, adapting it to the demands of the time, so that borrowing a plot always falls on prepared ground and means a new acquisition sometime famous. Without changing in essence, plot forms are inherited from generation to generation, wandering between nations.

At the same time, Veselovsky assumed it was possible to establish the specific temporal and spatial ancestral home of plot forms by exploring the methods and directions of their distribution. Such interest in the genesis of folklore, primitive thinking, lower forms of religion, and rituals, based on the achievements of the anthropological school (E.B. Taylor, A. Lang, J. Fraser), brought Veselovsky closer to supporters of the theory of spontaneous generation of plots (G. Uzener, V. .Manhardt, R.R.Marett, S.Reinak). The latter explained the similarity of national plot options by similar forms of primitive beliefs and rituals that arise in accordance with the universal laws of the human psyche and culture. Veselovsky considered it possible to combine the theory of spontaneous generation of plots and migration theory, provided there was a natural division of their spheres of application, when the first would deal with the origin of motives, the simplest plot units. “By motive I mean a formula that at first answered the questions that nature posed to man, or that consolidated especially vivid, seemingly important or repeated impressions of reality,” while the second would explore the mechanism of borrowing more complex plots and, accordingly, the cultural interaction of peoples. This approach has become established in Russian literary criticism. It was defended by V.M. Zhirmunsky, as well as A.N. Veselovsky, who gravitated toward migration theory, but recognized the independence of development national epics and the general typological similarity in the development of national literatures. Vagrant stories, which were the subject of fierce controversy in the 19th century, later lost their meaning, becoming an ordinary term in folkloristics. At the same time, Veselovsky’s “motive” was no longer considered as an indivisible formula: plots were studied mainly at the morphological level, their components were invariant - the functions of the characters, the order of their appearance (works of V.Ya. Propp). Issues of migration of individual wandering subjects often became secondary. The Western anthropological school, ritual and mythological criticism (including the doctrine of archetypes), which represented, as it were, a new round of the romantic mythological school, not to mention ethnological research and psychoanalysis, Almost no attention was paid to the problem of wandering plots.

The wandering plot, as the name suggests, moves from culture to culture, undergoing minor contextual changes. By tracing how the same plot is transformed, you can understand a lot about the mentality of a particular people in a particular era.

Stray stories and their origins

Migration theory, or the theory of wandering plots, appeared in the second half of the 19th century. It is believed that its founder is the German T. Benfey, translator and critic of the Panchatantra (1859), who showed how stories from Indian folklore spread throughout the world. Because of its association with Indian folklore, it is sometimes called "Indianism". Among the supporters of migration theory one can name A.N. Veselovsky, V.F. Miller, F.I. Buslavev, A. Clauston, A d'Ancona, M. Landau, etc. The essence of this theory is that the similarity of folklore of different peoples is explained by a single source. Benfey proved that India is the birthplace of fairy tales, and they came to Europe through Byzantium and Africa. Interesting way Indian fairy tales to Russia and Eastern Europe - through Siam, China, Tibet and Mongolia. The predecessor of migration theory was mythological theory; Now migration theory is morally outdated, and it has been replaced by comparative literature.

M. K. Ciurlionis. "Fairytale castle". 1909

A striking example of a wandering plot can be the stories about Cinderella, the Caucasian prisoner, Don Juan, etc. So, we can say that the plays of the folk puppet theater - performances about Parsley, Punchy and Judy, Pierrot - are also an example of a wandering plot.

In general, it is obvious that the original stories were invented in antiquity, and since then human nature has not changed very much. Literary scholars are vigorously arguing about the number of these plots. Borges, for example, in the short story “The Four Cycles” identifies four motives: the fall of the city, the return, search and suicide of God. Christopher Bocker believes that there are 7 plots: adventure, exaltation, back and forth, tragedy, comedy, resurrection, victory over the monster.

Robert Tobias has 20 plots, including search, revenge, and mystery. J. Polti went the furthest, highlighting 36 subjects, for example, “a victim of immeasurable joy,” “a victim of someone,” “a struggle against God,” and “an achievement.”

One way or another, these motifs are found in the literature of any era and any culture, whether in the Homeric epic, in the Bible, or in folk tales. Let's look at fairy tales, because they exist in almost every culture. The heroes of fairy tales are archetypal characters. The term "archetype", introduced by G.K. Jung, denotes “forms and patterns that are collective in nature, found almost throughout the entire earth as constituent elements of myths and at the same time being autochthonous individual products of unconscious origin. Archetypal motifs originate from archetypal images in the human mind, which are transmitted not only through tradition and migration, but also through heredity. This hypothesis is necessary because even the most complex archetypal patterns can be spontaneously reproduced without any tradition. The prototype or archetype is the formulated result of the vast technical experience of countless ancestors.” Note that a folk tale is an example of spontaneous reproduction.

Fairy tales grew out of rituals, told about the rules of life in society, and introduced children to the dangers that may be encountered along the path of life. Hence the commonality of plots and archetypal characters. Veselovsky writes about it this way: “This legend, as far as it concerns the elements of style and rhythm, imagery and schematism of the simplest poetic forms, once served as a natural expression of the collective psyche and the living conditions corresponding to it in the early days of human society. The one-dimensionality of this psyche and these conditions explains the one-dimensionality of their poetic expression among peoples who have never come into contact with each other. This is how a series of formulas and schemes arose, many of which remained in later circulation if they met the conditions of a new application, just as other words of the primitive dictionary expanded their real meaning to express abstract concepts.”

Hero's Journey

Travel is a necessary element of hero formation and initiation. Often a journey begins with “go there, I don’t know where, bring that, I don’t know what.” One of the possible decodings of this phrase is to go to the kingdom of the dead and meet a magical assistant there. Even if we put aside the magical connotations, the journey is a plot-forming element. It is built in relation to several stable points: the father's house - the thirtieth kingdom - the father's house. In the 20th century, the structure became fundamentally more complicated: the hero can alternate points and pass through the same points several times. However, this does not cancel the initiation.

Take Beauty and the Beast for example. We know it in the version of Charles Perrault, but in fact similar plot appeared in antiquity. The first Beauty and the Beast - Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius.

In 1740, an edition of the fairy tale appeared under the authorship of Madame Villeneuve, and in her version the plot is much more complicated: the evil witch bewitches the Beast when he rejects her attempts to seduce him, and Belle, the king’s daughter, by order of the same evil fairy, becomes a foundling in the merchant’s family. 17 years later, in 1757, Madame Beaumont releases her version of the fairy tale, significantly simplifying the plot, and it is this version that is translated into English. In Russia, this fairy tale is known as “The Scarlet Flower,” and its plot is close to Madame Beaumont’s version, although it was written down from the words of the housekeeper. The beauty travels from her home to the Beast's castle, then back home, and again to the Beast - a nonlinearity more typical of later fairy tales. During this journey, she grows up and learns to see the essence behind the shell.

W. Goble. Illustration for the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast”. 1913

The refraction of this motif in the 1991 cartoon and the latest film adaptation with Emma Watson and Dan Stevenson is interesting. In addition to the sensational line with Gaston and his friend, there are much more significant differences in the film. In the spirit of the times, Beauty is already the mistress of the house, a mature personality. She herself rushes to help her father, she decides to save him (in the original fairy tales, the father asked his daughters for help, but only the youngest volunteered). The role of the evil sisters is given to the townspeople who mock Beauty and her aloofness. Beauty's path runs through a forest with wild wolves, which are a sign of mortal danger. Still, townspeople and people pose a much more significant danger, since you can protect yourself from wolves with the help of dexterity or brute force, but practically nothing can save you from the betrayal and anger of the crowd (except love, of course).

Often a journey begins with “go there, I don’t know where, bring that, I don’t know what.” One of the possible decodings of this phrase is to go to the kingdom of the dead and meet a magical assistant there.

The journey reveals in her strength and adventurism, which she did not really need until that moment. In addition, the film added the motif of a trip to Paris, where Beauty was born. This is a significant journey for both, as it reveals to Belle the secret of her childhood, and to the Beast - the very essence of Beauty. Paris is visually very different from the rest of the film precisely in order to emphasize the mystery, mystery and even intimacy of the moment.

Travels of the plot

But, as was already said at the very beginning, not only the heroes travel, but also the plots themselves. Of the most popular, of course, “Faust” comes to mind. This story appears for the first time in Germany under the title “The Story of Doctor Faustus, the Famous Sorcerer and Warlock” (1587). At the same time, " Tragic story Doctor Faust" by K. Marlowe, and already in the 19th century Goethe wrote about Faust. In Russian literature, Faustian motifs appear in Dostoevsky, which is not surprising. In modern literature, Ackroyd writes about Faust in the novel “The House of Doctor Dee.” Also, R. Sheckley and R. Zelazny are writing a trilogy about the demon Azzi, the second part of the trilogy is called “If you were unlucky with Faust” (“ If at Faust You Don" t Succeed"). It is interesting that the early Fausts sell their souls for Absolute Knowledge, being disillusioned with everything else, while the later ones demonstrate a thirst for life unusual for postmodernism.

In "A Ring with Faust," the forces of Light and Darkness are involved in a competition for the right to control human souls for the next 1000 years.

F. Reber. Scene of Walpurgis Night from the tragedy of I.-V. Goethe "Faust". 1910

The unlucky demon tries to win Faust himself over to his side, not knowing that instead of him he came across the bandit Mac Trefa, who, to the best of his understanding, portrays the great sorcerer.

But the real Faust, of course, is not delighted that some impostor has taken his place, and he also joins the competition. In the end, it all ends with the Great Judgment, at which Faust talks with Ilit - the one who is destined to take the place of Margarita. The novel ends with the promise of a new journey:

“I want to start all over again,” said Ilit. “Start a new life “beyond Good and Evil.” I thought about you, Faust. For better or worse, you always go your own way. I wanted to ask you if you need an assistant?

Faust looked at Ilit with interest. She was beautiful and smart. And she smiled at him. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He felt like Faust again.

“Yes,” he said. “We will both start all over again.” We have a long way to go. Sit down, my dear. Take a moment. It seems to me that the time has come to say: “Stop, beautiful moment!”

In Ackroyd’s novel, the action takes place in two time layers: modernity and the 16th century. Typologically, Doctor Dee is close to Faust: an unusually educated and outstanding scientist, a genius ahead of his time. But the book also has a direct connection with Faust. Dee travels to Witterburg, which is similar to Wittenberg, where he is shown the forest in which Faust either died or was carried away by the devil to fulfill the terms of the contract. And again, the forest acts as the locus of the journey, a dark, mysterious, almost mystical force that changes the character forever.

In addition, the Faustian theme runs like a red thread through Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” It all starts with Woland’s visit to Moscow, in his hands he has a cane with a dog’s head, and, as we know, it was the dog who embodied the evil spirit in the early stories about Faust and Mephistopheles. The master recalls the opera “Faust” to emphasize the connection between the two works.

In conclusion, I would like to say that travel is important not only for the characters, but also for the plots themselves. Literature cannot stand still, it is constantly evolving, and travel, as we know, is one of the most powerful incentives for development. ■

Maria Dubkova

motive(Latin moveo - to move) is a stable formal-substantive component of a text that can be repeated within the work of one writer, as well as in the context of world literature as a whole. Motives can be repeated. The motif is a stable semiotic unit of the text and has a historically universal set of meanings. Comedy is characterized by the “quid pro quo” motif (“who is talking about what”), epic is characterized by the wandering motif, and ballad is characterized by a fantastic motif (the appearance of the living dead).

Motif more than other components artistic form correlates with the thoughts and feelings of the author. According to Gasparov, “motive is a semantic spot.” In psychology, a motive is an incentive to act; in literary theory, it is a recurring element of a plot. Some researchers classify the motive as an element of the plot. This type of motive is called narrative. But any detail may be repeated in the motif. This motive is called lyrical. Narrative motifs are based on some event; they are unfolded in time and space and presuppose the presence of actants. In lyrical motifs, it is not the process of action that is actualized, but its significance for the consciousness that perceives this event. But both types of motive are characterized by repetition.

The most important feature of the motive is its ability to be half-realized in the text, its mystery, and incompleteness. The scope of the motif consists of works marked with invisible italics. Attention to the structure of the motive allows us to consider the content of the literary text in a deeper and more interesting way. The same motive sounds differently in different authors.

Researchers talk about the dual nature of the motive, meaning that the motive exists as an invariant (contains a stable core, repeated in many texts) and as individuality (each author has his own motive in terms of embodiment, individual increment of meaning). Repeated in literature, the motif can acquire philosophical fullness.

Motive as literary concept brought out by A.N. Veselovsky in 1906 in his work “Poetics of Plots”. By motive, he assumed the simplest formula that answers the questions that nature poses to man and consolidates especially vivid impressions of reality. The motif was defined by Veselovsky as the simplest narrative unit. Veselovsky considered imagery, one-dimensionality, and schematic features of a motif. Motives, in his opinion, cannot be broken down into their component elements. The combination of motifs forms a plot. Thus, primitive consciousness produced motives that formed plots. Motive is the oldest, primitive form of artistic consciousness.

Veselovsky tried to identify the main motives and trace their combination into plots. Comparative scientists tried to check the relationship between plot schemes. Moreover, this similarity turned out to be very conditional, because only formal elements were taken into account. Veselovsky’s merit lies in the fact that he put forward the idea of “wandering plots”, i.e. plots that wander through time and space among different peoples. This can be explained not only by the unity of everyday and psychological conditions of different peoples, but also by borrowings. IN XIX literature centuries, the motive for the husband’s self-removal from his wife’s life was widespread. In Russia, the hero returned under his own name, having faked his own death. The core of the motif was repeated, which determined the typological similarity of works of world literature.

10. Detail. Portrait. Scenery.

The smallest unit objective world traditionally called an artistic detail. "Detail"(French detail) – small component anything; detail, particularity; also detail. It is fundamental to attribute the detail to the meta-verbal, objective world of the work: “The figurative form of the literary work contains three sides: a system of details of object-based representation. system of compositional techniques and verbal (speech) structure.” Artistic detail mainly includes subject details: landscape, portrait. Poetic devices, tropes and stylistic figures are usually not classified as artistic. details. Detailing is not decoration, but the essence of the image. After all, a writer is not able to recreate an object in all its features, and it is the detail, their totality that “replaces” the whole in the text, evoking in the reader the associations the author needs. The degree of detail of the image, especially of the external world, can be motivated in the text by the “place from which the story is told,” otherwise, by the spatial and/or temporal point of view of the narrator (storyteller, character, lyrical subject). Detail, like a “close-up” in a movie, needs a background – “ in general terms" In literary criticism short message about any events, the summary designation of objects is often called generalization. The alternation of detail and generalization is involved in creating the rhythm of the image. The classification of details repeats the structure of the objective world - events, actions of characters, their portraits, psychological and speech characteristics, landscape, interior, etc. At the same time, in a given work, some type(s) of details may be absent, which emphasizes the conventionality of its world. In literary descriptions of style, related details are often combined. This typology was proposed by A.B. Esin, who identified 3 groups: plot details, descriptive, psychological. the predominance of one type or another gives rise to the corresponding characteristic, or dominant, style: “plot-based” (“Taras Bulba” by Gogol), “descriptiveness” (Dead Souls), “psychologism” (Crime and Punishment); the named saints “may not exclude each other within the same production.” Just as a word lives a full life in a text or statement, a detail reveals its meaning in a series, sequence, or roll call of details. The analysis examines a fragment of text in which there are co- and/or contrasting details. Dynamics of the portrait: gesture, elements of facial expressions and pantomimes, changes in skin color, trembling, as well as paralinguistic elements, such as laughter, crying, speech rate, speech pauses, etc. All these signs of non-verbal communication that people can use purposefully widely represented in fiction literature; in particular, they act as details of a dynamic portrait of a character. Details can be given in opposition, but can, on the contrary, form an ensemble, creating a single and holistic impression. E.S. Dobin proposed a typology of details based on the criterion: singularity/multiple, and used different terms to designate the identified types: “Details act in multitudes. The detail tends towards singularity. It replaces a number of details.” The detail can be expressed using synecdoche, hyperbole. The visibility of a detail, which contrasts to one degree or another with the general background, is facilitated by compositional techniques: repetitions, “ close-up", "montage", retardation, etc. By repeating and acquiring additional meanings, a detail becomes a motif and often grows into a symbol. In Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” the reader may at first find Myshkin’s ability to imitate handwriting strange. However, when reading the entire novel, it becomes clear that Myshkin's main talent is understanding different characters, different styles of behavior, and reproducing writing styles - a hint of this. A symbolic detail can be included in the title of a work: “Gooseberries” by A.P. Chekhov, “Easy Breathing” by Bunin.
Portrait character - a description of his appearance: face, figure, clothing, visible behavioral properties: gestures, facial expressions, gait, demeanor. The reader gets an idea of the character from the description of his thoughts, feelings, actions, and from his speech characteristics, so a portrait description may be absent. The correspondence between external and internal m/s observed in life allows writers to use a character’s appearance when creating him as a generalized image. A character can become the embodiment of any one saint of human nature (Italian “comedy of masks”). Thanks to the correspondence between external and internal m/s, glorification and satirization of a character through his portrait were possible. Thus, Don Quixote, who combines both the comic and the heroic, is thin and tall, and his squire is fat and squat. The requirement for conformity is at the same time a requirement for the integrity of the character’s image. Appearance The lit character is not described. but is created and subject to choice,” and “some details may be absent, while others are brought to the fore.” The place and role of a portrait in a work, as well as the methods of its creation, vary depending on the type and genre of literature. In drama, the author limits himself to indicating the age of the characters and the general characteristics of their behavior given in the stage directions; he is forced to leave everything else to the actors and the director. A playwright can understand his task somewhat more broadly: Gogol, for example, prefaced the comedy “The Inspector General” with detailed characteristics of the characters, as well as an accurate description of the actors’ poses in the final “silent” scene. In lyric poetry, the poetically generalized impression of the lyrical subject is important. The lyrics make maximum use of the technique of replacing the description of appearance with an impression of it. Such a replacement is often accompanied by the use of epithets “beautiful”, “charming”, “charming”, “captivating”, “incomparable”, etc. The poetic transformation of the visible into the realm of ideal ideas of the author and his emotions is often manifested in the use of tropes, etc. . Wed in verbal-artistic depiction. The material for comparisons and metaphors is the colorful abundance of the natural world - plants, animals, precious stones. stones, heavenly bodies. A slender figure is compared to cypress, poplar, birch, willow, etc. Drag. stones are used to convey the shine and color of eyes, lips, hair: lips - garnet, skin - marble, etc. The choice of material for comparison is determined by the nature of the experiences being expressed. The poetry of Dante and Petrarch shows the spiritual essence of love, which is emphasized by the epithets “unearthly”, “heavenly”, “divine”. Baudelaire praises the “exotic scent” of love. The hierarchy of canonical genres of literature corresponds to the principles of portraiture. The appearance of characters in high genres is idealized, while in low genres (fables, comedies, etc.), on the contrary, it indicates various kinds of bodily imperfections. The grotesque predominates in the depiction of comic characters. For metaphors and comparisons with the natural world, not roses and lilies are used, but radishes, pumpkins, and cucumbers; not an eagle, but a gander, not a doe, but a bear, etc. In works of the epic type, the character’s appearance and behavior are associated with his character, with individuals “ inner world“production with its inherent specificity of space-time relations, psychology, and system of moral assessments. The character of the early epic genres - heroic songs, legends - is an example of direct correspondence to m/s character and appearance. No direct description of appearance is given; it can be judged by the character’s actions. The hero's opponent, on the contrary, is externally described. In creating a portrait of a character, the leading trend until the end of the 18th century. the predominance of the general over the individual remained. The conventional form of the portrait prevailed, with its characteristic static description, picturesqueness and verbosity. A characteristic feature of the conventional description of appearance is the listing of emotions that the characters evoke in others or the narrator (delight, admiration, etc.). The portrait is given against the backdrop of nature; in the literature of sentimentalism, this is a flowering meadow or field, the bank of a river or pond. Romantics will prefer forests, mountains, stormy seas, and exotic nature. The ruddy freshness of the face will be replaced by the pallor of the brow. In the literature of realism of the 19th century. There was a transition from a static image to a dynamic one. At the same time, during this period, 2 main types of portraits are distinguished: an expositional portrait, which tends to be static, and a dynamic one, turning into plastic action. Expositional - a detailed listing of the details of the face, figure, clothing, individual gestures and other signs of appearance; comes from a narrator interested in character appearance representatives of any social community: petty officials, townspeople, merchants, cab drivers, etc. A more complex modification of the exposition portrait is psychological, where external features predominate, indicating the saints of character and the inner world (Pechorin’s portrait in “A Hero of Our Time”). Dynamic – we find it in the works of L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, where the individual and unique in the characters noticeably prevails over the socially typical and where their involvement in the dynamic process of life is important. A detailed listing of appearance features gives way to brief, expressive details that emerge as the narrative progresses. Sometimes the portrait is given as other characters’ impressions of the hero (the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna as perceived by Myshkin). An important component of appearance is the suit. Clothes can be casual or festive, “befitting” or “from someone else’s shoulder.” Khlestakov’s “capital” dress has a magical effect on ordinary people.
Scenery(French pays - country, locality) - one of the components of the world of literary production, an image of an open space. Landscape features: 1.Designation of the place and time of action (“The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway); 2. Plot motivation (natural, meteorological processes can direct the course of events in one direction or another. Thus, in Pushkin’s story “The Snowstorm,” nature intervenes in the plans of the heroes and connects Marya Gavrilovna not with Vladimir, but with Burmin); 3. Form of psychologism (Landscape helps to reveal the internal state of the characters. Prepares the reader for changes in their lives. The landscape given through the perception of the hero is a sign of his mental state at the moment of action, but can also speak about his character). 4. Landscape as a form of the author’s presence (Methods of conveying the author’s attitude: *the point of view of the author and the hero merge, *the landscape, given through the eyes of the author and at the same time the psyches of the heroes close to him, is “closed” to characters who are carriers of a worldview alien to the author (Bazarov)) . The landscape expresses national identity (Lermontov’s “Motherland”). In works with philosophical issues, through images of nature (even episodic), through attitudes towards it, basic ideas are often expressed. Landscape in the birth of literature. It is most sparingly represented in the drama, hence the increasing symbolist load of the landscape. In the epic he performs a wide variety of functions. In the lyrics, the landscape is emphatically expressive, often symbolic: psychological parallelism, personification, metaphors and other tropes are widely used. Depending on the subject or the texture of the description, landscapes are distinguished between rural and urban, or urban (Hugo's Notre Dame Cathedral), steppe (Gogol's Taras Bulba), and sea (Melville's Moby Dick). forest (“Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev), mountain (Dante, J.-J. Rousseau), northern and southern, exotic (“Frigate “Pallada” by Goncharov). Various types of landscape are semiotized in the literary process. This becomes the subject of the study of historical poetics.
11. Author's problem.

Lecture!

In archaic culture there was no author, there was no such need. There was collective creativity. This continued until Medieval literature. The fiction was not realized. Therefore, the fates of authorship and fiction run parallel. The artist begins to gradually realize his responsibility over what he writes and realizes his capabilities. The Romantics were the first to clearly define literary work as professional. “I” comes first. The place of the author in archaic collective creativity was occupied by a storyteller, narrator, bard, etc. At the same time, the author has been understood for centuries as an authority, as a divine authority, a mediator between God and people. These are Aesop's Fables, David's Psalms, etc. These are the authorities. These works are not taken out of context. These may not be the works of David, Aesop, Solomon, but were attributed to them.

How is the author understood in modern literary criticism? Firstly, this is a biographical person with a whole range of qualities. Secondly, he is a writer. Thirdly, the author is the highest semantic authority of the work (the author's position). The author is sometimes understood as the ideal of the poet, as the designation of an integral individual world. Author's in this meaning is synonymous with original (a certain stylistic manner). Fifthly, the image of the author is the image of himself in the work in the most general form.

The problem of the author's image. The term itself was coined V.V. Vinogradov. Analyzing the work, the researcher inevitably comes to the image of the author. Accordingly, the poetics of a particular writer is the image of this writer. Vinogradov understood the image of the author as a multi-valued stylistic characteristic of an individual work and the entire fiction. The image of the author was conceived by Vinogradov in terms of stylistic individuality. The image of the author is a concentrated embodiment of the essence of the work. For example, the novel “War and Peace” was written in an impersonal narrative, but we perfectly feel the image of the author.

MM. Bakhtin was against this category, because he distinguished between the creative nature (the author) and the created nature (the work). The image of the author, in his understanding, is allowed as a game, a special technique.

The image of the author is a concept and a technique. This is the narrative authority that is located between the author-creator and the artistic world. The image of the author in school practice is the Self. It is included in the system of characters (“Eugene Onegin”).

Spheres of manifestation of the author's consciousness. The sphere of the unintentional consists of 3 layers: the collective unconscious (C. Jung), the individual unconscious (painful complexes that are repressed from consciousness, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated and limited in analysis! Freud), writer's psychoideology (writer's ideas, his system of ethical and aesthetic values, beliefs). What is intentional is the author’s concept, the direct work on the text.

The concept of the death of the author in postmodernism is outlined in Roland Barthes’s article “The Death of the Author.” He believes that in modern literature the author as such does not exist and in general the author as the creator of the work is absent. The author is the father of the text, but the work is independent of its father. There is no father's power over the work. The father is dead, the text is alive. Instead of the author, there is the figure of a scriptwriter, who in turn makes up a cocktail of quotes and words, and the author's pathos (the highest semantic substance) is understood as imaginary, ideological violence. Only the reader owns the text. This concept is not new, it is close to the ideas of A.A. Potebni. Potebnya's psychological school was the first in literary criticism to actualize the role of the reader. “You can judge a writer according to the laws he has developed for himself” - Pushkin A.S. The author cannot be removed from the text. Reader perception is secondary.
12. Subjective organization of an epic work.

The author of the term and concept is B.A. TO O rman. Subjective organization is the correlation between the work of subjects of speech and subjects of consciousness. The subjects of speech are those who speak. And the subjects of consciousness are those whose consciousnesses are expressed. They may or may not coincide. The non-coincidence of the subjects of speech and the subjects of consciousness is not proper – direct speech. For example, “Lady with a dog” “these words are so ordinary, for some reason they outraged Gurov. What wild customs, what faces! What stupid nights etc. Depending on the type and type of the subject of speech there are: a) the degree of breadth, b) the depth of comprehension of the world, c) the nature of its aesthetic assessment

Types of storytelling: Personal (there is a personified narrator), Impersonal (narrator outside the artistic world)

Personal P. 2 types: *P. on behalf of the lyrical hero (form of the story) *P. on behalf of the hero-storyteller

*P. on behalf of the lyrical hero created. atmospheres trust, sincerity, allows max. immersed in the world of personality through the self-revelation of the hero. /but his knowledge of the world is not objective.

*P.on behalf of Mr. narrator preserved. atmospheres trust, enhancing the objectification of the transmission of events.

Personal P. creates the illusion of identification of the hero with the author. L.P. outwardly it looks like a monologue, but this is a hidden dialogue A-C

Impersonal P. is a way to achieve maxims. objectivity of the image. Novel P. is impressed, as if life is telling itself. no direct word from the narrator.

Main types: narration in first person (I) and third person (HE). Depending on which type is chosen by the narrator, there are the following points: the breadth and scale of exploration of the world and reality. The depth of mastering this reality. the nature of his aesthetic assessment, time and space. With 1st person: Maria Alekseevna probably thought that... There is no way to move and can be done hypothetically. Limited by your life experience. First person – intimate, emotional narration.

First person narration– personal, subjectivized, etc. first-person narration is divided into: 1. autobiographical narration (on behalf of lyrical hero, narration in the form of confession). For example, childhood, adolescence and youth. These works are interesting because I, the narrator, is not equal to the biographical author. It's easier when they have different names. 2) the hero is the narrator. In this case, an atmosphere of intimacy is maintained. But here the hero-narrator speaks not about himself, but about other heroes. Here the objectivity of the narrative is enhanced. The process of the characters’ mental life is a mystery for the hero – the narrator. (Maxim Maksimich and Pechorin). Solzhenitsyn's story “Matrenin's Dvor”. (autobiographical narrative). The second case is difficult, but advantageous - a double portrait is created. The subjective sphere of the work is expanded by epigraphs. Often they contain the author's position in order to understand the meaning of the work. Sometimes the second type of narrative includes works written from the point of view of animals. (“Dreams of Chang”, “Faithful Ruslan”). The culture of impersonal storytelling developed very slowly in European culture. Classic works are written in the first person. The intermediate stage was the epistolary novel - a few first persons. This is due to the fact that prose, as a form of rhythmic organization of artistic speech, tried to find its place and pushed poetry aside. Until the 19th century. At the same time, the development of the novel genre took place. Before the epistolary form, there was something impersonal - you need to move away from the author's emotionality and subjectivity. Ultimate objectivity - achieved when judgments, etc. are avoided. (Maupassant and Flaubert “Madame Bovary”, Dostoevsky and Chekhov). The life and idea of a person becomes more complex, and therefore impersonality becomes more complex. The author does not have the right to give a clear assessment (complex subject organization). The form is meaningful. Hence a lot of research. Complex modernist works. There are no two identical works from the point of view of subject organization. Maybe the narrative is YOU. In the form of an appeal. Bunin “Numbers”, “Unknown Friend” in the form of letters. Yuri Kazakov “Candle”, “In a dream you cried bitterly.” The story “Twin” by Anatoly Kim. Nabokov “Grab” (we are an additional characteristic of his vulgarity). Analysis of the subject organization is the key to understanding the work. In some it is irreplaceable.

Narratology (storyteller, storyteller) is a field of Western literary criticism that addresses the subject organization. The narrator is for the story (impersonal narration), the narrator is the primary narration. The story may be included in the narrative. Author, intermediate – the image of the author (for example, Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”, “Dead Souls” by Gogol) – narrator – storyteller. The expansion and deepening of the subjective sphere in the 20th century occurs with the complication of the subjective and spatial-temporal organization. The same is in lyrics.

13. Non-author's word in the work.

The text of a literary work is generated by the creative will of the writer: it is created and completed by it. At the same time, individual links of speech tissue can be in a very complex, even conflicting relationship with the consciousness of the author. First of all: the text is not always maintained in one, the author’s own speech manner. In literary works (especially widely in the artistic prose of eras close to us; often in the poetry of A. Blok) heteroglossia is imprinted, i.e. various manners (ways, forms) of thinking and speaking are recreated. At the same time, the non-author’s word, which literary scholars (following M.M. Bakhtin) call someone else’s word, turns out to be artistically significant (along with the direct author’s word). Khalizev Non-author's word. Literature in literature. Bakhtin distinguishes between three types of words: 1) “a direct word directly aimed at its object, as an expression of the speaker’s final semantic authority”; 2) external to the speaker’s consciousness “object word (word of the person depicted)”; 3) a “two-voice word” belonging simultaneously to two subjects and perceived and experienced differently by them.

motive as the primary element of the plot. The theory of “wandering plots” by A.N. Veselovsky

motive(Latin moveo - to move) is a stable formal and content component of a text that can be repeated within the work of one writer, as well as in the context of world literature as a whole. Motives can be repeated. The motif is a stable semiotic unit of the text and has a historically universal set of meanings. Comedy is characterized by the “quid pro quo” motif (“who is talking about what”), epic is characterized by the wandering motif, and ballad is characterized by a fantastic motif (the appearance of the living dead).

The motif, more than other components of the artistic form, correlates with the thoughts and feelings of the author. According to Gasparov, “motive is a semantic spot.” In psychology, a motive is an incentive to act; in literary theory, it is a recurring element of a plot. Some researchers classify the motive as an element of the plot. This type of motive is called narrative. But any detail may be repeated in the motif. This motive is called lyrical. Narrative motifs are based on some event; they are unfolded in time and space and presuppose the presence of actants. In lyrical motifs, it is not the process of action that is actualized, but its significance for the consciousness that perceives this event. But both types of motive are characterized by repetition.

Researchers talk about the dual nature of the motive, meaning that the motive exists as an invariant (contains a stable core that is repeated in many texts) and as an individuality (each author has his own motive in terms of embodiment, individual increment of meaning). Repeated in literature, the motif can acquire philosophical fullness.

The motif as a literary concept was developed by A.N. Veselovsky in 1906 in his work “Poetics of Plots”. By motive, he assumed the simplest formula that answers the questions that nature poses to man and consolidates especially vivid impressions of reality. The motif was defined by Veselovsky as the simplest narrative unit. Veselovsky considered imagery, one-dimensionality, and schematic features of a motif. Motives, in his opinion, cannot be broken down into their component elements. The combination of motifs forms a plot. Thus, primitive consciousness produced motives that formed plots. Motive is the oldest, primitive form of artistic consciousness.

Veselovsky tried to identify the main motives and trace their combination into plots. Comparative scientists tried to check the relationship between plot schemes. Moreover, this similarity turned out to be very conditional, because only formal elements were taken into account. Veselovsky’s merit lies in the fact that he put forward the idea of “wandering plots”, i.e. plots that wander through time and space among different peoples. This can be explained not only by the unity of everyday and psychological conditions of different peoples, but also by borrowings. In the literature of the 19th century, the motive of the husband’s self-removal from his wife’s life was widespread. In Russia, the hero returned under his own name, having faked his own death. The core of the motif was repeated, which determined the typological similarity of works of world literature.

10. Detail. Portrait. Scenery.

The smallest unit of the objective world is traditionally called an artistic detail. "Detail" (French detail) – a small component of something; detail, particularity; also detail. It is fundamental to attribute the detail to the meta-verbal, objective world of the work: “The figurative form of the literary work contains three sides: a system of details of object-based representation. system of compositional techniques and verbal (speech) structure.” Artistic detail mainly includes subject details: details of everyday life, landscape, portrait. Poetic devices, tropes and stylistic figures are usually not classified as artistic. details. Detailing is not decoration, but the essence of the image. After all, a writer is not able to recreate an object in all its features, and it is the detail, their totality that “replaces” the whole in the text, evoking in the reader the associations the author needs. The degree of detail of the image, especially of the external world, can be motivated in the text by the “place from which the story is told,” otherwise, by the spatial and/or temporal point of view of the narrator (storyteller, character, lyrical subject). Detail, like a “close-up” in a movie, needs a background – a “long shot”. In literary criticism, a brief report about any events, a summary designation of objects is often called generalization. The alternation of detail and generalization is involved in creating the rhythm of the image. The classification of details repeats the structure of the objective world - events, actions of characters, their portraits, psychological and speech characteristics, landscape, interior, etc. At the same time, in a given work, some type(s) of details may be absent, which emphasizes the conventionality of its world. In literary descriptions of style, related details are often combined. This typology was proposed by A.B. Esin, who identified 3 groups: plot details, descriptive, psychological. the predominance of one type or another gives rise to the corresponding characteristic, or dominant, style: “plot-based” (“Taras Bulba” by Gogol), “descriptiveness” (Dead Souls), “psychologism” (Crime and Punishment); the named saints “may not exclude each other within the same production.” Just as a word lives a full life in a text or statement, a detail reveals its meaning in a series, sequence, and roll call of details. The analysis examines a fragment of text in which there are co- and/or contrasting details. Dynamics of the portrait: gesture, elements of facial expressions and pantomimes, changes in skin color, trembling, as well as paralinguistic elements, such as laughter, crying, speech rate, speech pauses, etc. All these signs of non-verbal communication that people can use purposefully widely represented in fiction literature; in particular, they act as details of a dynamic portrait of a character. Details can be given in opposition, but can, on the contrary, form an ensemble, creating a single and holistic impression. E.S. Dobin proposed a typology of details based on the criterion: singularity/multiple, and used different terms to designate the identified types: “Details act in multitudes. The detail tends towards singularity. It replaces a number of details.” The detail can be expressed using synecdoche, hyperbole. The visibility of a detail, which to one degree or another contrasts with the general background, is facilitated by compositional techniques: repetitions, “close-up”, “montage”, retardation, etc. By repeating itself and acquiring additional meanings, a detail becomes a motif and often grows into a symbol. In Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” the reader may at first find Myshkin’s ability to imitate handwriting strange. However, when reading the entire novel, it becomes clear that Myshkin's main talent is understanding different characters, different styles of behavior, and reproducing writing styles - a hint of this. A symbolic detail can be included in the title of a work: “Gooseberries” by A.P. Chekhov, “Easy Breathing” by Bunin.
Portrait character - a description of his appearance: face, figure, clothing, visible behavioral properties: gestures, facial expressions, gait, demeanor. The reader gets an idea of the character from the description of his thoughts, feelings, actions, and from his speech characteristics, so a portrait description may be absent. The correspondence between external and internal m/s observed in life allows writers to use a character’s appearance when creating him as a generalized image. A character can become the embodiment of any one saint of human nature (Italian “comedy of masks”). Thanks to the correspondence between external and internal m/s, glorification and satirization of a character through his portrait were possible. Thus, Don Quixote, who combines both the comic and the heroic, is thin and tall, and his squire is fat and squat. The requirement for conformity is at the same time a requirement for the integrity of the character’s image. The appearance of the lit character “is not described. but is created and subject to choice,” and “some details may be absent, while others are brought to the fore.” The place and role of a portrait in a work, as well as the methods of its creation, vary depending on the type and genre of literature. In drama, the author limits himself to indicating the age of the characters and the general characteristics of their behavior given in the stage directions; he is forced to leave everything else to the actors and the director. A playwright can understand his task somewhat more broadly: Gogol, for example, prefaced the comedy “The Inspector General” with detailed characteristics of the characters, as well as an accurate description of the actors’ poses in the final “silent” scene. In lyric poetry, the poetically generalized impression of the lyrical subject is important. The lyrics make maximum use of the technique of replacing the description of appearance with an impression of it. Such a replacement is often accompanied by the use of epithets “beautiful”, “charming”, “charming”, “captivating”, “incomparable”, etc. The poetic transformation of the visible into the realm of ideal ideas of the author and his emotions is often manifested in the use of tropes, etc. . Wed in verbal-artistic depiction. The material for comparisons and metaphors is the colorful abundance of the natural world - plants, animals, precious stones. stones, heavenly bodies. A slender figure is compared to cypress, poplar, birch, willow, etc. Drag. stones are used to convey the shine and color of eyes, lips, hair: lips - garnet, skin - marble, etc. The choice of material for comparison is determined by the nature of the experiences being expressed. The poetry of Dante and Petrarch shows the spiritual essence of love, which is emphasized by the epithets “unearthly”, “heavenly”, “divine”. Baudelaire praises the “exotic scent” of love. The hierarchy of canonical genres of literature corresponds to the principles of portraiture. The appearance of characters in high genres is idealized, while in low genres (fables, comedies, etc.), on the contrary, it indicates various kinds of bodily imperfections. The grotesque predominates in the depiction of comic characters. For metaphors and comparisons with the natural world, not roses and lilies are used, but radishes, pumpkins, and cucumbers; not an eagle, but a gander, not a doe, but a bear, etc. In epic works, the appearance and behavior of a character are associated with his character, with the characteristics of the “inner world” of the work with its characteristic spatio-temporal relations, psychology, and system of moral assessments. The character of the early epic genres - heroic songs, legends - is an example of direct correspondence to m/s character and appearance. No direct description of appearance is given; it can be judged by the character’s actions. The hero's opponent, on the contrary, is externally described. In creating a portrait of a character, the leading trend until the end of the 18th century. the predominance of the general over the individual remained. The conventional form of the portrait prevailed, with its characteristic static description, picturesqueness and verbosity. A characteristic feature of the conventional description of appearance is the listing of emotions that the characters evoke in others or the narrator (delight, admiration, etc.). The portrait is given against the backdrop of nature; in the literature of sentimentalism, this is a flowering meadow or field, the bank of a river or pond. Romantics will prefer forests, mountains, stormy seas, and exotic nature. The ruddy freshness of the face will be replaced by the pallor of the brow. In the literature of realism of the 19th century. There was a transition from a static image to a dynamic one. At the same time, during this period, 2 main types of portraits are distinguished: an expositional portrait, which tends to be static, and a dynamic one, turning into plastic action. Expositional - a detailed listing of the details of the face, figure, clothing, individual gestures and other signs of appearance; is given by a narrator interested in the characteristic external appearance of representatives of any social community: petty officials, townspeople, merchants, cab drivers, etc. A more complex modification of the exposition portrait is psychological, where the predominant features of appearance are indicative of the sacred character and inner world (portrait of Pechorin in “Hero of Our Time”). Dynamic – we find it in the works of L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, where the individual and unique in the characters noticeably prevails over the socially typical and where their involvement in the dynamic process of life is important. A detailed listing of appearance features gives way to brief, expressive details that emerge as the narrative progresses. Sometimes the portrait is given as other characters’ impressions of the hero (the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna as perceived by Myshkin). An important component of appearance is the suit. Clothes can be casual or festive, “befitting” or “from someone else’s shoulder.” Khlestakov’s “capital” dress has a magical effect on ordinary people.
Scenery(French pays - country, locality) - one of the components of the world of literary production, an image of an open space. Landscape features: 1.Designation of the place and time of action (“The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway); 2. Plot motivation (natural, meteorological processes can direct the course of events in one direction or another. Thus, in Pushkin’s story “The Snowstorm,” nature intervenes in the plans of the heroes and connects Marya Gavrilovna not with Vladimir, but with Burmin); 3. Form of psychologism (Landscape helps to reveal the internal state of the characters. Prepares the reader for changes in their lives. The landscape given through the perception of the hero is a sign of his mental state at the moment of action, but can also speak about his character). 4. Landscape as a form of the author’s presence (Methods of conveying the author’s attitude: *the point of view of the author and the hero merge, *the landscape, given through the eyes of the author and at the same time the psyche of the heroes close to him, is “closed” to characters who are carriers of a worldview alien to the author (Bazarov)) . The landscape expresses national identity (Lermontov’s “Motherland”). In works with philosophical issues, through images of nature (even episodic), through attitudes towards it, basic ideas are often expressed. Landscape in the birth of literature. It is most sparingly represented in the drama, hence the increasing symbolist load of the landscape. In the epic he performs a wide variety of functions. In the lyrics, the landscape is emphatically expressive, often symbolic: psychological parallelism, personification, metaphors and other tropes are widely used. Depending on the subject or the texture of the description, landscapes are distinguished between rural and urban, or urban (Hugo's Notre Dame Cathedral), steppe (Gogol's Taras Bulba), and sea (Melville's Moby Dick). forest (“Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev), mountain (Dante, J.-J. Rousseau), northern and southern, exotic (“Frigate “Pallada” by Goncharov). Various types of landscape are semiotized in the literary process. This becomes the subject of the study of historical poetics.

Lecture!

The problem of the author's image. The term itself was coined V.V. Vinogradov. Analyzing the work, the researcher inevitably comes to the image of the author. Accordingly, the poetics of a particular writer is the image of this writer. Vinogradov understood the image of the author as a multi-valued stylistic characteristic of an individual work and of all fiction. The image of the author was conceived by Vinogradov in terms of stylistic individuality. The image of the author is a concentrated embodiment of the essence of the work. For example, the novel “War and Peace” was written in an impersonal narrative, but we perfectly feel the image of the author.

Spheres of manifestation of the author's consciousness. The sphere of the unintentional consists of 3 layers: the collective unconscious (C. Jung), the individual unconscious (painful complexes that are repressed from consciousness, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated and should not be limited in analysis! Freud), writer's psychoideology (writer's ideas, his system of ethical and aesthetic values, beliefs). What is intentional is the author’s concept, the direct work on the text.

The concept of the death of the author in postmodernism is outlined in Roland Barthes’s article “The Death of the Author.” He believes that in modern literature the author as such does not exist and, in general, the author as the creator of the work is absent. The author is the father of the text, but the work is independent of its father. There is no father's power over the work. The father is dead, the text is alive. Instead of the author, there is the figure of a scriptwriter, who in turn makes up a cocktail of quotes and words, and the author's pathos (the highest semantic substance) is understood as imaginary, ideological violence. Only the reader owns the text. This concept is not new, it is close to the ideas of A.A. Potebni. Potebnya's psychological school was the first in literary criticism to actualize the role of the reader. “You can judge a writer according to the laws he has developed for himself” - Pushkin A.S. The author cannot be removed from the text. Reader perception is secondary.

12. Subjective organization of an epic work.

Depending on the type and type of the subject of speech there are: a) the degree of breadth, b) the depth of comprehension of the world, c) the nature of its aesthetic assessment Types of storytelling:

Personal (there is a personified narrator), Impersonal (narrator outside the artistic world)

Personal P. 2 types: *P. on behalf of the lyrical hero (form of the story) *P. on behalf of the hero-storyteller

Personal P. creates the illusion of identification of the hero with the author. L.P. outwardly it looks like a monologue, but this is a hidden dialogue A-C

Impersonal P. is a way to achieve maxims. objectivity of the image. Novel P. is impressed, as if life is telling itself. no direct word from the narrator.

Main types: narration in first person (I) and third person (HE). Depending on what type is chosen by the narrator, there are the following points: the breadth and scale of exploration of the world and reality. The depth of mastering this reality. the nature of his aesthetic assessment, time and space. With 1st person: Maria Alekseevna probably thought that... There is no way to move and can be done hypothetically. Limited by your life experience. First person – intimate, emotional narration.

First person narration– personal, subjectivized, etc. First-person narration is divided into: 1. autobiographical narration (on behalf of the lyrical hero, narration in the form of a confession). For example, childhood, adolescence and youth. These works are interesting because I, the narrator, is not equal to the biographical author. It's easier when they have different names. 2) the hero is the narrator. In this case, an atmosphere of intimacy is maintained. But here the hero - the narrator speaks not about himself, but about other heroes. Here the objectivity of the narrative is enhanced. The process of the characters’ mental life is a mystery for the hero – the narrator. (Maxim Maksimich and Pechorin). Solzhenitsyn's story “Matrenin's Dvor”. (autobiographical narrative). The second case is difficult, but advantageous - a double portrait is created. The subjective sphere of the work is expanded by epigraphs. Often they contain the author's position in order to understand the meaning of the work. Sometimes the second type of narrative includes works written from the point of view of animals. (“Dreams of Chang”, “Faithful Ruslan”). The culture of impersonal storytelling developed very slowly in European culture. Classic works are written in the first person. The intermediate stage was the epistolary novel - a few first persons. This is due to the fact that prose, as a form of rhythmic organization of artistic speech, tried to find its place and pushed poetry aside. Until the 19th century. At the same time, the development of the novel genre took place. Before the epistolary form, there was something impersonal - you need to move away from the author's emotionality and subjectivity. Ultimate objectivity - achieved when judgments, etc. are avoided. (Maupassant and Flaubert “Madame Bovary”, Dostoevsky and Chekhov). The life and idea of a person becomes more complex, and therefore impersonality becomes more complex. The author does not have the right to give a clear assessment (complex subject organization). The form is meaningful. Hence a lot of research. Complex modernist works. There are no two identical works from the point of view of subject organization. Maybe the narrative is YOU. In the form of an appeal. Bunin “Numbers”, “Unknown Friend” in the form of letters. Yuri Kazakov “Candle”, “In a dream you cried bitterly.” The story “Twin” by Anatoly Kim. Nabokov “Grab” (we are an additional characteristic of his vulgarity). Analysis of the subject organization is the key to understanding the work. In some it is irreplaceable.

Stylization- this is the author’s deliberate and explicit orientation towards the previously existing artistic literature style, its imitation, reproduction of its features and properties. Thus, in the era of romanticism, writers often created works in the spirit and manner of folklore genres. Lermontov "Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich...", fairy tales by Pushkin, "The Little Humpbacked Horse" by P.P. Ershov, and later - ballads of A. K. Tolstoy, oriented towards the epic style. In stylizations, the author strives for the adequacy of recreating a certain artistic style and does not distance himself from it, in parodies and - a reworking of previous literary facts, be they individual works or “typical” phenomena of literary creativity (genres, stylistic settings, rooted artistic techniques). They signify good-natured ridicule or ironic, or even sarcastic ridicule of the person being parodied. They are based on a sharp discrepancy between their subject-thematic and speech (stylistic) plans. This genre is essentially secondary. One of the earliest examples is the ancient Greek parody poem “The War of Mice and Frogs” (VI century BC), which ridiculed the high epic. Zhukovsky’s ballad “The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors” (1812) caused a huge number of parody responses. The principle of parody is present in literature and beyond parody as such. It is palpable and significant in such works as “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by F. Rabelais, “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and “Belkin’s Tales” by A.S. Pushkin, “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The original theory of parody in the 1920s was developed by Yu.N. Tynyanov in the articles “Dostoevsky and Gogol (towards the theory of parody)” and “On parody”. Considering this literary phenomenon as an analogue of caricature in graphics and painting, the scientist emphasized that parody is primarily a lever of literary struggle. According to him, the task of parody is to “expose convention” and reveal “speech posture.”

Tale is focused on “extraliterary” speech: oral, everyday, colloquial, which at the same time is alien to the writer, non-author. The most important, essential property of a skaz is “the focus on reproducing the spoken monologue of the hero-storyteller,” “imitation of a “live” conversation, born as if this very minute, here and now, at the moment of its perception.” This form of narration seems to return the works to the world of living language, freeing them from the usual literary conventions. Vivid examples of tales are “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” by N.V. Gogol, "Tale"<...>about Lefty...", "Enchanted Wanderer", "Sealed Angel" by N.S. Leskov; at the beginning of our century - prose by A.M. Remizov (for example, "Posolon"), E.I. Zamyatin, B.A. Pilnyak, Vs. Ivanova, M.M. REMINISCENCE- “references” to previous literary facts present in literary texts; individual works or their groups, reminders about them. The most common form of reminiscence is a quotation, accurate or inaccurate; “quoted” or remaining implicit, subtextual. Reminiscences can be included in works consciously and purposefully, or arise independently of the will of the author, involuntarily (“literary recollection”). Literary reminiscences themselves are also related to references to creations of other types of art as real ones (a majestic monument gothic architecture in V. Hugo’s novel “Notre Dame de Paris” or Mozart’s “Requiem” in the little tragedy of A.S. Pushkin), and a fictional writer ("Portrait" by N.V. Gogol or "Doctor Faustus" by T. Mann, "drawing" pictorial and musical creations in detail). INTERTEXTUALITY- Y. Kristeva, French philologist. “Any text is constructed as a mosaic of citations; any text is a product of the absorption and transformation of some other text.” A mosaic of unconscious and automated citations is most characteristic of epigonic and eclectic works, of mass, grassroots literature that naively does not distinguish between language codes, styles, and genre-speech manners. However, what J. Kristeva and R. Barth called intertextuality is not only a form of embodiment of a naive, inexperienced literary consciousness, but also the property of the creativity of great and original writers. Implicit quotation of the poems of Andrei Bely, reliance on the speech manner of this poet, failure to distinguish what comes from him and what from his own experience is characteristic of the early work of Pasternak, who “conceptualized his individuality and the individuality of his predecessor not as different or similar, but as forming a single continuum, a united creative phenomenon"3. In a similar way, folk speech and the language of folklore genres were refracted by A.V. Koltsova, S.A. Yesenina, S.A. Klychkova, N.A. Klyueva. In modern literary criticism, the term “intertextuality” is widely used and very prestigious. It often denotes the totality of intertextual connections, which include not only unconscious, automatic or self-sufficient playful quotation, but also directed, meaningful, evaluative references to previous texts and literary facts.I often visit Moscow; often I see Shpet. ..., or sectarian, or poet and tl, from V.K. Shvartsalon, in these... // XXV Herzen Readings. Literary criticism. LR 1972. "Rachinsky...

In order to highlight the necessary research functions and methods of using the wandering plot in the process of political communication, it is necessary, first of all, to consider in detail the evolution of the term “wandering plot” (sometimes also called “wandering plot” by literary theorists). This needs to be done as carefully as possible, since a step-by-step examination of how the theory developed will allow us not only to better define the essence of the term itself, but also to consider what concepts and definitions are inextricably linked with it, how the “wandering plot” interacts with other terms and theories. In addition, monitoring step by step development The theory will help in the future in determining the functions of the wandering plot, and will also allow us to make some considerations regarding the mechanism and patterns of using this technique.

Before talking directly about the emergence of the theory, it is worth noting the fact that the plot as such has come to the attention of thinkers since antiquity. It was the plot that was one of the elements that Aristotle considered in his Poetics. Aristotle operated with the concept of “fable,” clarifying in his work “I call a combination of events a fable,” Aristotle Poetics. Thus, Aristotle was the first to point out the possibility that some combinations of events can be distinguished as separate constructs. It is also important to make a remark here, which will be very useful for further work, that it was the plot that Aristotle considered the most important element of any work. Aristotle’s logic in this matter was as follows: since the essence of poetic creativity is imitation, and the plot is the main tool for reproducing the action in any work of dramatic art (this is what Aristotle considers in this chapter of his “Poetics”), then the plot is the most important and the most important element of the work. Aristotle once again emphasizes this idea in the words “the creator must be more a creator of plots than of meters..” Aristotle Decree. Op. . Characters for Aristotle are secondary, since characters are also recognized through the actions of the heroes, which are contained in the plot. In addition, as Aristotle notes, “without action, tragedy is impossible, but without characters it is possible” Ibid. Explaining this idea, the philosopher says that many tragedies do not depict individual characters, but depict actions.

Aristotle explains the very need for poetic creativity for two reasons: 1) people tend to imitate; 2) they find pleasure in watching imitation, since they see in this action an opportunity to learn something new. In the same chapter, Aristotle notes that some poets (Epicharmus and Formides) began to compose comic plots, while Crates began to compose plots of a general nature.

Thus, although we do not have a direct phrase from Aristotle, which would clearly make it clear that the compilation of well-established constructions in art from a sequence of actions was practiced everywhere, nevertheless, we can judge that such constructions existed. Aristotle himself points out that the creator should draw inspiration from stories famous genera, although in this case he has quite few sources for the tragedy - for this reason, many poets turn to the same subjects. It is also impossible to distort significant details of the plot: “myths preserved by tradition cannot be changed.<...>The poet must find the appropriate one and skillfully use the tradition.” Ibid. And finally, Aristotle makes the following remark, important for this work: “At first the poets moved from one random plot (italics mine - Yu.Ch.) to another, and now the best tragedies depict the fate of a few families, for example, Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus and others...” Aristotle Decree. Op..

Thus, we can judge that already in ancient Greece there were prerequisites for a single body of legends and sources of plots, which, according to Aristotle, evoke the same and strongest feelings in all viewers or readers, such as the story of Oedipus. However, after the era of antiquity, plots were forgotten for a long time, returning to the consideration of this element only in the 19th century, when the theory of “wandering plots” began to emerge, which gave rise to the term necessary for our research.

It was at the beginning of the 19th century that the remark that some plots, motives, poetic images and symbols are often repeated in folklore and literature, despite the difference in cultures and the distance that often separates peoples and makes any “transfer” of such stories from the bearers of one culture to the bearers of another impossible. Goethe was one of the first who, in 1825, in the wake of romanticism, pointed out the “psychological parallelism” of some images, speaking, in particular, about the “folk origin” of Serbian songs. The very movement of romanticism, which relied not only on folk legends and songs, but also often on motifs borrowed from other cultures, served as the impetus for the first steps in the development of the theory of “wandering plots,” since the romantics could not help but notice that the cross - the cultural nature of some elements often allows completely different images and plots to take root in an environment that is completely alien to them. Just two years after his first remark, Goethe said in a letter to Eckermann: “National literature now means little, the era of world literature is coming, and everyone must contribute to its speedy advent.” Quote. According to Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989. P. 308. Thus, in the first half of the 19th century, the beginning was made of the separation of two concepts: world literature as a complex of literary phenomena of global significance and universal literature as the sum of national literatures. Ibid. P. 308. Simultaneously with the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon, some poets began to make attempts to define a list of “fundamental plots”, which would list all possible plots for a particular type of creativity. For example, the list of plots was compiled by Schiller and Gozzi, who tried to derive “fundamental plots” for the drama. Ibid. P. 300. A little later (in 1895), a list of 36 plots to which all can be reduced also became famous. famous plays, compiled by the French writer and literary critic Georges Polti. Unsuccessful attempts to supplement this list with new situations prove the correctness of the fundamental classification of “vagrant” plots for the drama by Lunacharsky A.V. Thirty-six plots // magazine "Theater and Art", 1912, No. 34. / .

It is worth noting that the described work at this stage did not come down to understanding the root causes and origins of the phenomenon, but only to compiling an exhaustive list of “fundamental” subjects that would make it possible to identify the patterns of all already written works of art, regardless of their place of origin - and also have ready-made tools for further creativity. Clear organization literary works according to the developed closed list, it became one of the ideas that later fueled literary studies, giving rise to the so-called “Finnish school”, which will be discussed a little later.

Thus, at the early stage of their development, ideas about the relationship of images were closely related to issues of the emergence and development of various genres of literature: from drama to poetry. In addition, these ideas were originally not among literary researchers, but among those who were the direct creators of works of art - poets and writers. Apparently, this is precisely what was associated with the shift in focus to purely practical use and the search for a list of subjects - a kind of “ philosopher's stone”, which would give any creator a ready-made set of situations for new works. When scientists took up the issue of “wandering” of plots, they began to explore the reasons why certain symbols and images arose in literature and became “worldwide.” The study of “wandering plots” gave rise to several main theories, which sometimes came to contradict each other.

Among the founders of the theory of wandering plots are the German philologists the Brothers Grimm, who collected and systematized tales of the German principalities. The followers of the Brothers Grimm, called mythologists, came to the idea that the soil for the birth of poetry was pagan (namely, Aryan and ancient Germanic) mythology and that all modern plots can in one way or another be reduced to proto-plots, just as all the languages of the world can be reduced to several proto-languages. Theodore Benfey (1809-1881) fundamentally disagreed with them, who, after publishing the Panchatantra he analyzed, made an assumption about the Indian origin of most of the fundamental motifs of the whole world. He, thus, denied mythologists the Aryan root of all known plots, explaining the similarity not so much by a common prehistoric ancestor, but by the migration of plots “from century to century and from region to region” Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989. P. 12. The thoughts developed by Benfey’s followers led to the emergence of a theory that began to be called “migration” Veselovsky A.N. Decree. Op. P. 12. In some scientific works, another formulation is also found - “borrowing theory”.

In parallel with the research of philologists, representatives of another science, anthropology, also contributed to the theory. It was anthropologists, among whom it is especially worth highlighting the representative of comparative ethnography E. Taylor, who conducted a number of studies of the life of primitive peoples, which made it possible to replace vague thoughts about the “folk spirit” with a more significant observation that similar living conditions gave rise to similar mental reflections, How can one explain the uniformity and repetition of many myths, legends and fairy tales? Right there. pp. 12-13 It can be considered that it was then that the first prerequisites for the idea of the “spontaneous generation” of certain subjects appeared, the basis for which was provided by the very life of the people. This greatly complicated the theory of plot wandering, giving such important representatives as the Russian academician Alexander Veselovsky, who will be discussed later, and his followers rich material for thoughts and conclusions. Among anthropological researchers, it is also worth highlighting James Frazer and his work “The Golden Bough”, which can be called the first significant attempt to find out the underlying reasons for the emergence of many rituals and images, as well as to search for parallels between the realities of life and the myths of ancient peoples. Despite the fact that already in the 20th century Frazer’s work was subject to significant criticism, it cannot be denied that for its time it was a very useful work that presented a lot of materials, which also helped in the development of the theory of “plot wandering.”

As noted earlier, among those who made the most significant contribution to the development of the theory, it is necessary to mention the followers of the Finnish school, led by the literary critic Antti Aarne. Scientists of this school were engaged in the categorization and classification of wandering plots in fairy tales of the peoples of the world. The fruit of their research was one of the most famous collections plot indexes folklore works according to the Aarne system. In 1928, Vladimir Propp wrote in his book “ Historical roots fairy tale": "The works of this school currently represent the pinnacle of fairy tale study." The principle of work of representatives of this school was to obtain and compare variants of individual plots according to their worldwide distribution, grouping the material according to geo-ethnographic criteria according to a system developed for this, in order to then draw conclusions about the basic structure, distribution and origin of the plots. Later, the Finnish school was also criticized by many scientists, among whom was Vladimir Propp, who paid tribute to them, but the essence of the researchers’ claims will have to be written later, since they already relate to a new stage in the genesis of the theory. For now, it is only worth noting that Aarne’s followers made a significant contribution to folklore, and Aarne’s index of plots is still taken as the basis for the creation of later classifications of folklore plots, including for the Index of plots for East Slavic fairy tales by N.P. Andreev, as well as “Index of Fairy-tale Types” by Stith Thompson.

In Russia, the founder of the theory of wandering plots should be considered academician Alexander Veselovsky, who became the founder of such directions in literary criticism as historical poetics and comparative literature. It is worth noting that Alexander Veselovsky largely accepted both the ideas of the mythologists and the theories of Benfey, since the period of his studies coincided with heated debates between representatives of these two movements. However, Veselovsky could not completely agree with either theory. Accepting only some of the postulates of mythologists, Veselovsky agreed with folk roots poetry about the origin of literature from pagan mythology, but he could not accept the postulates about the common Aryan origin of all legends. The last hypothesis contradicted the scientist’s ideas that literature is only a reflection of successive eras, and also could not get along with other theories of the cultural-historical school, the follower of which Veselovsky was O.M. Fraidenberg. Poetics of plot and genre. M., 1997. P. 20. The academician partly accepted Benfey’s theories about the migration of plots, but could not agree with the fact that Benfey ignored the best conjectures of the school of mythologists. It seemed to Veselovsky that these two fundamental ideas not only should not oppose each other, but “even necessarily complement each other, should go hand in hand..<…>..that an attempt at mythological exegesis should begin when all accounts with history are already settled” Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989. P. 16. Thus, Veselovsky gave the development of a separate category of literary criticism, called historical poetics, which studied historical and cultural patterns that influence the creation of a work.

It is worth noting that the plot and plot scheme were particularly highlighted by Veselovsky - in fact, he brought plot structures into a separate category of study. It was at the instigation of Veselovsky that the term “wandering plot” itself appeared in Russian literary criticism, which, according to Veselovsky, is a complex complex of originally given motives and which, due to this complexity, can rather be attributed to borrowed elements than to those originally developed. In the comparative study of works, Veselovsky considered the motif to be indecomposable - that is, this element could, in its entirety, migrate from one scheme to another, being a component of more complex structures. Subsequently, it was this idea of Veselovsky about the “indecomposability” of motives that caused criticism of the scientist’s ideas, which will be discussed below. However, if you follow the logic set out by Tomashevsky, one of Veselovsky’s followers, this issue was not fundamental. Tomashevsky pointed out: “In comparative poetics it does not matter whether they can be decomposed into smaller motives. The only important thing is that within the given genre being studied, these “motifs” are always found in their entirety. Consequently, instead of the word “decomposable” in comparative study, one can speak of something that is historically non-decomposable, preserving its unity in wandering from work to work.” Cit. according to Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989. S. 400-401.

However, with the advent of the 20th century, the focus of attention in literary criticism shifted again - there was a turn from the joint study of a complex of literatures to the study of the characteristics of a particular national literature. In the minds of philologists there was no longer a single understanding of literature, and the complex of works of art began to be divided into different components. As a result, myths, legends and fairy tales, and with them “wandering stories” became the subject of study mainly for researchers folk art, therefore, among Veselovsky’s followers who were influenced by his ideas, one can name such folklorists as Vladimir Propp, Eleazar Meletinsky and Olga Freidenberg, who will be discussed later. Further diversification of literary studies and the isolation of theories led to the fact that the theory of wandering plots itself began to be reduced to the study of “individual, often random literary contacts,” which essentially constituted Theodore Benfey’s theory of borrowing. However, this direction also received its development within the framework of literary studies, and over time grew into a separate movement, the purpose of which was to search and explain literary connections in works that were in no way related to folklore. This movement was called “literary compartivism.” Among the communists, Alexander Veselovsky's brother, Alexey Veselovsky, made a great contribution. It is also worth noting the work of the remarkable Soviet communist communist Viktor Zhirmunsky, who in many ways became the second teacher of more younger generation philologists. It is useful to analyze some of Zhirmunsky’s conclusions within the framework of this study.

After the formation of the USSR and the general reorientation, criticism of the postulates and achievements of “bourgeois science” began to appear quite often in the works of Soviet folklorists. The primacy of the thoughts expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in all sciences led Soviet folklore studies and researchers who paid attention to the study of plots to the idea of the social and historical premises of their origin, and, consequently, to their social interpretation. Thus, Vladimir Propp looked for the roots of the fairy tale, considering the forms of production during its inception. Propp V.Ya. Historical roots of fairy tales. 1998., and Olga Freidenberg spoke about the difference between the consciousness of pre-class and class society Freidenberg O.M. Myth and literature of antiquity. Ekaterinburg, 2008. pp. 36-37, while the compartivist Viktor Zhirmunsky explained by the common social structure and structure not only the emergence of plots, but also the reasons why this or that plot is borrowed by one people from another Zhirmunsky V.M. Comparative Literature. L., 1979. S. 20-23. Attention to issues of the evolution of consciousness, which entails the evolution of ideas about the world and the mythological plots reflecting these ideas, ultimately led Soviet philologists to the so-called “genetic” approach to the study of literature. Below we will look in more detail at the views of each of these prominent researchers to better understand how understanding of the essence of the wandering plot and its roots has changed.

First of all, it is worth paying attention to the contribution made to the development of ideas about plots by the Soviet folklorist Vladimir Propp. The influence of this researcher is all the greater because he subjected the most significant criticism not only to Veselovsky, but also to many other developments of various schools of folklore. For example, he examined in detail the research carried out by representatives of the Finnish school, and made many comments on this matter. The most important among his amendments was the following: representatives of the Finnish school did not take into account, according to Propp, the obvious fact that the plots of fairy tales are closely related to each other, and it is often very difficult and difficult to determine where one plot ends with its variants and where another begins. is possible only after “inter-plot study of fairy tales and precise fixation of the principle of selection of plots and options” Propp V.Ya. Morphology of a fairy tale. 1998. . In addition, the Finnish school forgets about the potential transferability of some elements from fairy tale to fairy tale. “The works of this school are based on the unconscious premise that each plot is something organically integral, that it can be snatched from a number of other plots and studied independently” Ibid. This same “integrity” (or, more precisely, “indecomposability”) became the reason why Propp criticized his predecessor, Alexander Veselovsky. The Soviet folklorist noted in his work that the studies done before him, although they provided rich material, were completely unsuitable for the current state and study of fairy tales. Propp saw the reason for unsuccessful attempts to classify and compile a list of fairy tale plots in the fact that these lists and classifications were not derived on the basis of available material, but were introduced from above, contrived. Propp especially emphasizes that “..the entire classification of fairy tales should be put on a new basis” Ibid. For this reason, he began to develop a fundamentally new approach, based on considerations of “socialist science.” The approach was to look for an explanation of fairy tales in forms of reproduction and social institutions ancient peoples, which are directly reflected in fairy-tale texts. However, Propp recognized that not all features of a fairy tale can be explained in this way, therefore, as a supplement, he proposed the study of the rituals and rites of ancient societies, which could also leave their mark on the fairy-tale “canon.” This is what his work “Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale” is dedicated to. The researcher examined the plots, which Propp also paid attention to, from a fundamentally new point of view, rejecting old theories about the “wandering” of fairy tales and their transition from culture to culture, which would explain their similarities in different parts Sveta. In his work, the researcher writes: “All questions of fairy tale study should ultimately lead to the resolution of the most important, still unresolved problem - the problem of the similarity of fairy tales around the globe.<...>this similarity cannot be explained if we have incorrect ideas about the nature of this similarity” Propp V.Ya. Decree. Op. .

New theory Propp allowed him to analyze rich empirical material from a qualitatively new point of view. An important conclusion of the researcher about the evolution of motives and plots, which should be noted within the framework of this work, was that plots could be modified to explain rituals that had lost their force, that is, contribute to a change in rituals in society. Propp examines this situation using the example of the hero’s motive for saving a beauty who was destined to be sacrificed to a monster ( famous example This motif is the myth of Perseus). An important function of stories is that it was through changing the myth that early society overcame the feeling of possible cognitive dissonance from the fact that a previously revered custom was no longer observed. However, as Propp himself noted, the old rite did not “die”, i.e. did not disappear without a trace, it only changed as the rationalization of society took place. As we can judge, myths also played no role in preserving the memory of old rituals. last role, passing on stories about such rituals from generation to generation. The plot describing this ritual becomes the backbone of the stories, which change as the realities prevail in society. Thus, we can see that a new important turn has taken place in the understanding of “wandering plots.”

Even more significant in this regard were the works of the Soviet philologist Olga Freidenberg, who agreed with Propp’s ideas and made her contribution to their development. As part of this study, it is necessary to consider three of her works, in which an important part is devoted specifically to plots and their evolution: “Myth and Literature of Antiquity”, “Poetics of Plot and Genre”, as well as the article “The System of Literary Plot”.

Freudenberg, like Propp, decisively rejected both the developments of mythologists and the theory of borrowing, briefly analyzing these schools in the first chapters of “The Poetics of Plot and Genre.” The main drawback of mythologists, which the researcher highlighted, was that they viewed myth as a product of folk art, and not as “a universal and only possible form of perception of the world at a certain stage of development of society” Freidenberg O.M. Poetics of plot and genre. M., 1997. P. 17, while any poetic forms and expressions were only fragments of this myth. The conclusions that the researcher made became fundamental for a new stage in considering the issue of plotting: Freudenberg writes about image-creativity as one of the integral functions of primitive consciousness, which thus developed its own ideas about the world. In this matter, Frydenberg supports Propp's ideas about the continuity of plots due to the fact that they perform in the mind the function of accepting old experience and moving towards new experience. Thus, primitive culture naturally relied on previous experience: “ It's about about the natural state of primitive consciousness, which still does not know how to overcome what has been passed. It is thanks to this law that a whole diverse system of myth, plot, mythical character and everything that will later be reflected in the cult is created: the trampling of the same motives, connected to each other without cause-and-effect threads, differing only in stages” Freidenberg O.M. Decree. Op. P. 34. Thus, the evolution of literature and its elements, among which plot and genre play an important role, occurs “in the clash and struggle of two social ideologies, of which the old, defeated, remains a component of the new” Ibid. P. 49. Thus, the constant processing of worldview leads to the fact that the “semantic code” developed by the first human society lost its original meaning when social conditions changed. This, however, was not a reason to discard it - all subsequent experience was superimposed on this initial meaning, changing it. As a result of this process, the original meaning turned over time into the value of culture, to characterize which Frydenberg selects a very successful and important for our study definition of “spiritual equipment” Ibid. P. 13. At the same time, the researcher makes a significant clarification that it was this “inventory” that was later used for the purposes of a new ideology and a new culture.

Here is a fairly accurate description of this process given by Olga Freidenberg: “The former concrete meaning is abstracted from its significance, remaining a bare structure and scheme; it is taken for a new ideological need, and taken in certain doses, adapting it to new specific goals. But the accuracy and strict extremeness of these goals are no longer immune to the identical semantic permeation within the scheme itself” Freidenberg O.M. Decree. Op. P. 13. The concept itself "semantic permeation", indicating its different degrees, can be very useful within the framework of this study for determining the plots and motives we need based on this criterion, but for this we first need to compare this concept with the theories of the collective unconscious of Carl Gustav Jung, which will be discussed later.

In addition, it is important to note on the pages of the study the fact that in his work “The Poetics of Plot and Genre” Freudenberg repeatedly refers to the provisions of Emile Durkheim, agreeing with his thoughts about the primacy of the collective principle in the formation of archaic forms of consciousness. Durkheim himself, as Freudenberg noted, often emphasized the role of the public as the creator of cultural forms and values, which echoes theories about the collective unconscious.

Even more revealing in this regard are Freudenberg’s statements, which can be read in her article “The Literary Plot System.” The “genetic” approach we mentioned earlier can be seen here in its most striking manifestation. Here are just a few particularly revealing quotes that explain the researcher’s logic:

1) “The plot is a condensed summary of the presentation. As one of the forms that convey representation, the plot is genetically homogeneous to its other forms: word, image, effectiveness, etc.” Freidenberg O.M. Literary plot system // Montazh. Literature, Art, Theater, Cinema. M., 1988, p. 216-236. ;
2) “As soon as the plot acquires a verbal character, it emerges from the depths of the hidden imagery of representation into independent literary imagery” Ibid (i.e., according to Freudenberg, it becomes from a “fact”, something generated due to its cause, “ factor" - that creative principle that can give rise to other designs);
3) “In each plot there is only one scheme. One scheme can contain any number of motives.<...>

Finally, Freudenberg further unquestioningly postulates the idea that the original ideas were based on genomorphism, that is, on the uniformity of the heavenly, earthly and human. It followed from this that some diverse phenomena could be expressed using the same plot. Thus, one plot could have a certain, sometimes quite large, number of different interpretations - from physical phenomena (for example, an explanation of thunder or natural disasters) to processes in the human soul and body. This idea leads Freudenberg to one of the most important conclusions within the framework of our research, that “the nature of the origin of the plot lies deeper than similarities and analogies” Ibid. In this case, only those plots can be considered “similar”, the coincidence of which is observed not only at the level of plot schemes, but also at the level of terminology of motive interpretations, as well as at the level of the focus of consideration of what is happening (as examples of such focuses, “etiologies”, Freudenberg cites religious, moral, geographical, etc.). If all these three elements are the same, then, according to Freudenberg’s theory, the following conclusion can be drawn: “Such analogies in the environment of one literature constitute a plot stencil and in the environment of different literatures - replantation.” Ibid. The biological term “replantation” in this case interests us to the greatest extent, since it is, in essence, precisely “migration,” albeit systematic, and not spontaneous, from one culture to another. Thus, despite the strong criticism of the theories of the Benfey school, Freudenberg, nevertheless, could not help but recognize the fact that in some cases the borrowing and “nomadization” of the plot takes place, although this process had previously been overestimated by her predecessors.

At the same time, Freudenberg refers to common plot schemes, which, nevertheless, have different interpretations or are used from the point of view of different etiologies, as “homologous”. However, this difference, according to the researcher, “does not eliminate the commonality of their basis” Freidenberg O.M. Decree. Op.. This is the basis - common origin. From this follows the possibility, when establishing genetic connection between homologous plots and, knowing the origin of the plot, predict future interpretations, as well as the etiology of this plot. In addition, images, metaphors and other elements can be homologous to the plot, that is, following in conjunction with it. Thus, the plot is inextricably linked with the character who acts within its framework; moreover, these two elements have a common genesis. From this follows another fundamentally important idea of Freudenberg: “The totality of heroes - the character - is identical to the totality of motives, the plot” Ibid. In this work of 1925, it was for the first time emphasized that character is inextricably linked with action and this connection is justified by cause-and-effect phenomena. Let us briefly mention two more important comments made by Freidenberg in this article: firstly, the researcher directly points out that the genesis of one of the plot cycles was based on solar-chthonic ideas. Thus, Freudenberg once again emphasizes the fact that the plot partially served as an explanation of the surrounding realities and was one of the tools for understanding the surrounding world. Subsequently, Freudenberg also points to the process of transition of the plot from essence to mechanics, which began to be used by various authors to express their author’s “I”. The researcher points to the use (i.e., in fact, to “wandering”) of plot in various literatures, naming, in particular, the names of Schiller, Boccaccio and Shakespeare, but emphasizes that the plot, in her opinion, is increasingly dying as a separate structure , becoming a tool and conductor of the author’s thoughts.

This makes Olga Freidenberg’s conclusions similar to the conclusions made by one of the most important researchers in the history of Soviet literary studies, Viktor Zhirmunsky. Thanks to the work of this Soviet philologist, a number of considerations that related to the “wandering” of plots were significantly expanded. First of all, it is worth noting the fact that Zhirmunsky, like other Soviet philologists, adhered to the idea of the social and historical conditioning of plots. Thus, literature, according to Zhirmunsky, becomes only an “ideological superstructure”, one of the tools for reflecting reality, and as social institutions and ideologies develop, an instrument for influencing it. With this main function of literature (reflection of reality), Zhirmunsky explains the unity of the literary process, regardless of region, people or country. “Art as an imaginative cognition of reality should present significant analogies at the same stages of social development,” writes the researcher in his article “Literary relations between East and West as a problem of comparative literature” Zhirmunsky V.M. Comparative Literature. L., 1979. P. 18. Zhirmunsky revises Veselovsky’s legacy, largely accepting his basic considerations, but making significant amendments to them. Thus, Zhirmunsky notes that Veselovsky had thoughts about the social and historical conditioning of literature, but he did not have time to bring them to their logical conclusion.

The most interesting in this context is Zhirmunsky’s rethinking of the theory of “counter currents”, which was also founded by Veselovsky. Here the Soviet philologist proposes a new term - “international literary interactions.” “The impossibility of completely turning off these latter is quite obvious” Zhirmunsky V.M. Decree. Op. P. 20,” the researcher concludes, citing as the main argument the fact that it is almost impossible to find examples of absolutely isolated cultural development. Postulating Marx’s thought: “every nation can and should learn from others,” Zhirmunsky explains these “interactions” by the fact that a more backward country does not necessarily have to go through the entire development path on its own - it can simply assimilate the achievements of a more developed neighbor. At the same time, “a similar international exchange of experience is observed both in the field of political practice and in the field of ideology” Ibid. P. 20. However, as Zhirmunsky notes, this exchange cannot happen in a vacuum; it requires the presence of similar images and sentiments in the borrowing society, as well as a social need for this borrowing.

Zhirmunsky makes an equally important clarification of Veselovsky’s thoughts when it comes to the repeatability of plots, that is, the possibility of random and independent spontaneous generation of two complex, but at the same time identical plot structures. Veselovsky assessed this chance from a mathematical point of view, while such an assessment, according to Zhirmunsky, is completely inappropriate to the situation. Mathematical theory probability is not applicable in this case, since the plot is not a mechanical combination of motives, its design is built according to its own logic. This logic, in turn, is built on the basis of the conditions that surrounded society during the birth of the plot. From this Zhirmunsky concludes: “Given a certain initial situation, the further movement of the plot in the specific conditions of historical life is to a certain extent predetermined by the peculiarities of everyday life, public life and social psychology” Ibid. P. 22. Due to this important feature it was necessary to expand the assumption initially made by Veselovsky about the “spontaneous generation” of the plot, since in fact parallelism not due to “wandering”, but due to such “spontaneous generation” is found in literature, according to Zhirmunsky, much more often than is commonly thought.

From this point of view, the researcher also explained the similarity of the epics of different peoples, suggesting that the epic is the most protected from outside influences, since it represents a people’s rethinking of their past and their history. About the unity of the epic, Zhirmunsky wrote: “.. the unity of living conditions and psychological acts led to the unity or similarity of symbolic expression” Zhirmunsky V.M. Decree. Op. P. 23, and added a little later: “There is no doubt that with a fairly broad comparative study of epic plots, many plot parallels, usually explained by influences, will turn out to be analogies of the above type” Ibid. pp. 29-30. As one of the striking examples of the unity of literary development, the researcher cites an explanation of the similarity between Russian epics and the set of legends about the “knights” round table", the reason for which was the similarity of the court of Prince Vladimir the Red Sun and King Charlemagne. Right there. P. 34

Zhirmunsky also touches directly on the issue of “wandering plots”, speaking about them mainly in the context of fairy tales and again proposing his term - “international fairy tale plot” Ibid. P. 336. In an article devoted to this issue, Zhirmunsky challenges, first of all, the assumption of the “spontaneous generation” of fairy tales, similar to a similar process in the epic. The “migration” of the fairy tale is facilitated by the absence of national and local references, the prose form, which facilitates the “substitution” of local color, as well as its entertaining, event-focused content. In addition, an argument in favor of the migration of fairy tales is the fact that often the motives and semantic blocks in them may not be logically interconnected, and therefore, one or another block can be excluded without prejudice to the plot, and therefore the overall plot cannot be explained by the same social structure. Another argument in favor of migration was Zhirmunsky’s mention of the fact that many fairy tales contain inserted verses, which are often too similar to each other (Zhirmunsky supports his argument with examples of analysis of different variations of the inserted verse from the fairy tale about Alyonushka and the little goat).

The consequences of such ignoring the “wandering” of fairy-tale plots, according to Zhirmunsky, are significant - as a result, an element that in fact is a global fairy-tale heritage can be mistaken for a national feature. It is in this that Zhirmunsky sees one of the most serious shortcomings of the Finnish school and the cataloging of fairy tales according to the Aarne system: the followers of this school believed that a fairy tale is built and modified “mechanically.” Those. certain elements, if we follow Aarne’s logic, disappeared or appeared in the tale due to the fact that the narrator forgot some particular move or inserted a random association. Zhirmunsky notes that this approach “completely ignores the place and role of the motif in the functional structure of the fairy tale as a holistic poetic work» Zhirmunsky V.M. Decree. Op. P. 340.

In another of his articles, “On the Question of Wandering Subjects” (1935), Zhirmunsky derives another postulate that is important for our work: in studies of folklore and literary borrowings, “a philologically accurate comparison of texts should be combined with analysis historical conditions, in which borrowings occur, that is, places and times, public relations and social environment" Ibid. P. 345. For this reason, Zhirmunsky condemns Western literary criticism, which has followed the path of empirical accumulation of material, leaving aside both theoretical and historical background plot borrowings. Among the factors influencing the “wandering” of the plot, Zhirmunsky notes, among other things, trade, military and cultural relations between the countries participating in literary interaction.

Already in one of his later articles, “Problems of comparative historical study of literature” (1960), Zhirmunsky writes that traditional comparative literary criticism used methods that did not take into account the connection of the plot to social reality, nor its historical, national and individual specificity, nor the often very significant degree of processing that the plot could undergo as a result of its “wandering.” In the same article, the researcher sums up some of the work that occupied him long years, and among the conclusions especially emphasizes the dominant role of the needs and trends of social and literary development in how this or that work influences the “receiving” party, how it is borrowed and processed. He also mentions Plekhanov’s formula, which is quite significant in this context: “The influence of one country on the literature of another is directly proportional to the similarity of social relations of these countries” Zhirmunsky V.M. Decree. Op. P. 73.

Finally, within the framework of this work, Zhirmunsky’s review article on the activities of Alexander Veselovsky is also worthy of mention, which also expresses thoughts that are fundamentally important for further work about the parallelism of literatures and the similarity of plots. Zhirmunsky here again sums up his thoughts, but this time he brings to the fore a new mental component for his statements. He writes that the similarity of primitive thinking, rituals and superstitions, as well as the similarity of folklore motifs, is determined by the “unity mental process", "people's psychological legality”, i.e. “a natural change of ideologies caused by a change in social relations” Zhirmunsky V.M. Decree. Op. P. 113. In this, according to Zhirmunsky, lies the possibility of “polygenesis” of motives, their spontaneous generation. Finally, Zhirmunsky agrees with one of the fundamental thoughts expressed by Veselovsky: “...primitive poetry took shape in unconscious collaboration of the masses, with the action of many.” Thus, having become one of the points of the strongest concentration of human ideas, one of the points of the highest “semantic permeation” (according to Freudenberg), plots that spontaneously arose in parallel in different peoples or wandered from one people to another if there was such a need on the receiving side , received part of this potential. Thus, they concentrated in themselves those fears and hopes, beliefs and disappointments that made up the “spiritual inventory” of humanity that most powerfully affects everyone.

It is worth noting that after Zhirmunsky, literary critics and scientists from other fields of knowledge began to be more interested in myths in general than in the genesis of the plot as a separate element of this complex. However, although the theory of “plot wandering” can be considered fully formed in the first half of the 20th century, it is necessary to include in our literary review one of Viktor Zhirmunsky’s followers, Eleazar Meletinsky. Although this researcher looked at plots from a more general point of view, his ideas still concerned plots. In addition, Meletinsky’s considerations were formed later than the time when scientific world learned about the theory of archetypes and the “collective” unconscious of Carl Gustav Jung and his followers, and therefore in his works Meletinsky could not help but take into account Jung’s achievements and achievements. From this point of view, within the framework of this work, it is important to include Meletinsky in the circle of researchers who have studied the topic of interest to us.

Despite the large number of works by Meletinsky devoted to myths, for the purposes of this study three of them are most interesting: the articles “Myth and the Twentieth Century”, “Semantic Organization of Mythological Narrative and the Problem of Creating a Semiotic Dictionary of Motives and Plots”, as well as the monograph “On Literary Archetypes” "

In the first of these articles, Meletinsky addresses the question of why myth remains, despite the development of mankind and the progress of science, an important element that will never be completely destroyed. The researcher refers to such concepts as “demythologization” and “remythologization”, describing the processes that occur in culture and society. Based on Meletinsky’s postulate that the main function of myth is “maintaining the harmony of personal, social, natural, support and control of the social and cosmic order” Meletinsky E.M. Myth and the twentieth century., It logically follows that remythologization is resorted to mainly when a certain instability is felt, a loss of the meaning of life or the final destination of the path, i.e. answers to those questions for which myth claims to have a sacred explanation. Due to the impossibility of science to answer these questions, Meletinsky points out that science will never be able to supplant mythology. Another remark of the researcher, which is worth mentioning in the context of this work, concerns the purpose and mechanism of action of the myth: “Myth generally excludes insoluble problems and seeks to explain those that are difficult to solve through something more solvable and understandable. Knowledge in general is neither the only nor the main goal of myth” Ibid. This idea is combined with those theories of Soviet philologists that were mentioned earlier, and will be very useful in the future when it comes to the use of unconscious elements in political communication. It is worth mentioning here another idea of Meletinsky, expressed by him in the same article: “The mythical way of conceptualization is associated with a certain type of thinking, which is specific to primitive thinking in general and to certain levels of consciousness, especially mass (italics mine - Yu.Ch.), at all times” Meletinsky E.M. Decree. Op.. This feature of mass consciousness highlighted by Meletinsky will be further examined in detail within the framework of this study.

As for the issue of plotting itself, it is discussed in much more detail in the second of the above-mentioned articles by Meletinsky. The philologist rethinks the heritage of the Finnish school and indexes according to the Aarne-Thompson system, correlating the achievements of these researchers with the theories that were later built by V. Propp, K. Levi-Strauss and scientists who worked in the field of narrative grammar (A. Zh. Greimas, K . Bremont, T. van Dyck and others). All these researchers, according to Meletinsky, although they make undoubtedly important conclusions, nevertheless, “tend to abstract from motives and plots as such.” Meletinsky E.M. Semantic organization of mythological narrative and the problem of creating a semiotic index of motives and plots. //: Works on sign systems. Tartu, 1983. XVI: Text and culture. - With. 117. But, more importantly, there is no precise definition of motive in Thompson’s Index of Motives, where not only a clichéd action, but also an object can become a motive. The same applies to some individual epithets or relationships between a character and an object, which, according to Meletinsky’s idea, cannot be separated from the main motive. “In other words,” the researcher writes, “S. Thompson loses sight of the motive as an integral structure” Ibid. P. 115. Considering the theories that were developed in literary criticism by Veselovsky, who, according to Meletinsky, anticipated the ritualists, and in the field of psychoanalysis by von der Leyen, the researcher notes: “In all these and similar theories, motive and plot were thought of as “atoms” and “ molecules" of the narrative" Ibid. P. 116. This approach did not take into account the “permeability” of plots and motifs that were later noticed by Propp and Freudenberg, which were closely related to each other, to the point of interweaving or considering all known plots only as variants of one eternal meta-plot of a fairy tale, as was the case with Propp . Meletinsky, in turn, proposes to rationalize the index by considering the motive as a “one-act microplot, the basis of which is the action” Meletinsky E.M. Decree. Op. P. 118. All other elements of a given microplot accordingly depend on this action; Meletinsky calls such elements actant arguments. Thus, the researcher proposes to consider the motive as a complex, without isolating individual elements from it, as S. Thompson did. In this case, the complex of motives can be presented in the form of a structural table, where each motive occupies one line. As examples, Meletinsky gives a similar analysis of motives that correspond to the predicate-action “creation”. This approach, according to the researcher, will allow us to better study the role of the motif in the plot and look deeper into the semantics of these two elements. The logic of plot formation that Meletinsky derives is also of some interest: microplots are formed into plots according to their own internal laws, among which the following stand out: 1) summation of homogeneous motives; 2) mirror inventory of the original motive; 3) negative parallelism; 4) metaphorical (metonymic) transformation of the original motive (or addition to the motive of its “duplicate”, often with the introduction of parallelism of codes). In addition, to more complex mechanisms of plot creation, Meletinsky includes identification (a new action in order to verify the previous one or to establish the culprit/performer of the action), dramatization (confrontation between hero and antagonist), gradation (gradual achievement of a goal), and, in addition, the identification of new motives by concretization of the old ones. When constructing a new semantic index, it is equally important to take into account how different homonymous motifs appear as part of archimotifs. Archimotives, according to Meletinsky’s logic, are larger semantic classes that can give an idea of larger semantic fields.

Thus approaching the consideration of the topic of this study from various points of view, it is worth mentioning finally about “literary archetypes,” the idea of which also attracted the attention of Meletinsky. Even in the first of the articles mentioned in this work, Meletinsky pointed to an idea that obviously interested him very much, citing N. Fry, one of the representatives of the ritual-mythological school, who called the Bible “a grammar of literary archetypes.” Meletinsky developed these thoughts in his monograph, which is also useful to refer to for research purposes.

In the book “On Literary Archetypes,” Meletinsky talks about the components of the “plot language” of world literature, which he proposes to call “plot archetypes.” Reflecting on the concept of archetype in Carl Gustav Jung, Meletinsky points out that psychoanalysts mainly talk about established images or characteristics, but not about plots. This happens, according to the researcher, because Jung and his followers believed that “the plot is somehow, by definition, secondary, while it is not secondary and not recessive, it can not only be combined with different images, but also give rise to them (my italics - Yu.Ch.)» Meletinsky E.M. About literary archetypes. M., 1994. P. 12. This function plot, expressed in this quote from Meletinsky, will be useful in the future to determine the mechanism of action of this technique in political communication. It is also important here to mention the specific feature of myth that characterizes society at the time of its inception - myth is “interpersonal”, since it was created in an era when humanity not only did not separate itself from nature, but also did not separate the individual from society, therefore the hero of the myth is only an expression of the entire society, its concentration, he acts for its purposes Meletinsky E.M. Decree. Op. P. 13. Thus, it is natural for a person not only to see some of his personal traits in the hero of a myth and therefore identify himself with him, but also to think in “heroic” categories when it comes to politics, since in essence the description of the hero’s purpose myth coincides with what his voters see in politics. However, the hero actor becomes precisely through the plot, since in order to obtain this status (or to prove it) he needs to perform certain actions or pass tests. Therefore, the fate of plot archetypes, Meletinsky concludes, “is closely connected with the expansion of the hero’s functions, with the gradual stereotyping of the plot and the shift of emphasis from the model of the world to the plot action, which roughly corresponds to the movement from myth to fairy tale” Ibid. P. 53.

Meletinsky singles out his groups of archetypal motifs, since he does not entirely agree with the “Indices of Plots” that were compiled before him. He also lists several basic archetypal motifs, which are, in essence, quite large semantic groups that include similar archetypal motifs. The researcher considers the following to be: 1) the creation of the world and the appearance of things; 2) fight against demonic forces(two types: to protect “one’s own” clan-tribe or to obtain some benefit for fellow tribesmen); 3) falling into the power of evil spirits and suffering from them; 4) tricks, pranks or adventures characteristic of a trickster; 5) plots reflecting ancient initiation rites (assignment from the stepmother as part of initiation, murder of the father and incestuous marriage with the mother as a symbol of growing up and generational change, etc.). Separately, Meletinsky identifies a group of plots “dragon fighting”, where he points out that this plot can be an integral part of the group of plots “ difficult task", "the fight against demonic forces" or the motive of "returning the treasure" (which often turns out to be a stolen princess), as well as the group of plots "wonderful wife", the origins of which he traces to the period of totemic marriages. For the purposes of this work, we are interested in only some of these groups, but not all. So, for example, no attention will be paid to the “wonderful wife” group of plots if some of its individual motives are not found within other groups, such as “a difficult task” or “the fight against demonic forces.”

Summing up the results of the first part of the work, it is worth, first of all, to outline the field of terms to which wandering plots are related, but which were used differently by the authors mentioned in this chapter. The most significant terms can be considered: “international plots” and “wandering plots” by Zhirmunsky, as well as his term “theory literary interactions“(or “the theory of counter currents”, as Veselovsky called it). No less important is the term “spiritual inventory,” which was used by Olga Freidenberg to define and describe the process of accumulating knowledge and experience in society through the transmission of myths and fairy tales from generation to generation. Finally, it is worth supplementing this chain with the term “plot archetypes”, with which Meletinsky worked, meaning by this concept the fundamental plots that make up the code of all world literature.

Having traced the development paths of the theory that interests us, we can see that work on determining the content, as well as the boundaries and functions of wandering plots, began back in the 19th century. and began with a literal definition of this concept. However, later, in the 20th century, a movement of philosophical thought looked at the phenomenon of wandering plots from a different point of view, revealing the “prehistoric” and subconscious essence of this phenomenon, which made the term much less straightforward. Some conclusions were developed that are important to consider in the context of this study.

Thus, it is undoubtedly important to determine, when considering a particular wandering plot, the most likely way of its appearance: whether it was a direct literary borrowing or whether the plot was born as a result of “literary parallelism,” which was caused by similar living conditions and rituals of societies at the same stages of development. Understanding full well that it is impossible to determine this fact with complete certainty, and also that there may always be a possibility of “incorporation” of borrowed motifs into the “native” plot as a result of the complication of the literary tradition, we will, nevertheless, try to distinguish between these two types of plots when We will consider “wandering” subjects in political communication. Although the very fact of the origin of the plot is not of fundamental importance for our research, it is important to take this nuance into account.

Another clarification made by Zhirmunsky and useful for the purposes of this work is that the “borrowing” of the plot does not occur in a chaotic or random order, “not out of nowhere” Zhirmunsky V.M. Comparative Literature. L., 1979. P. 21. Similar symbols, images and moods must circulate or be present in society, in addition, there must be a society’s need for a plot, since these are the prerequisites that determine its ability to somehow influence reality in order to be tool to change it. Or, which is a completely logical alternative, a tool for “fixing” reality. This refers to the function of stories and myths as “legitimization,” that is, the confirmation by stories of certain norms, rules and truths that need to be more firmly strengthened in the minds of the people - this is how taboos were consolidated in ancient societies, this is how experience was accumulated. With the passage of time and the change of eras, this mechanism, however, does not lose its strength and relevance.

Mention was made of another function that “storytelling” served, which is important to consider when considering plots. Human thinking in ancient times was built on the principles of “genomorphism,” as Freudenberg noted. This helped explain the surrounding world, explain the incomprehensible through the understood, celestial physical phenomena through human stories, the origin of diseases through fascinating stories of the tricks of the gods or, on the contrary, their fatal mistakes. It is precisely because of this that myths, as a complex of images, plots and principles, still have power over human consciousness, which cannot receive answers to many questions that interest it.

It is equally important to have an understanding of the “structure” of plots, examples of which we will look for in the practical part of the work. Should we accept as “wandering” plots only complex, established sets of motives that fully correspond to the most famous and exploited stories all over the world (as a shining example let us cite the story of Cinderella) or establish a less strict criterion and include in the field of consideration simpler structures, the ubiquity of which, nevertheless, is well known and proven by the fact that these motifs are noted as widespread in authoritative reference books and indexes. It is likely that the complexity of the complex of motives will be directly proportional to the likelihood of recognizing the plot or making it too “artificial.” In this case, most likely, it makes sense to look for simpler structures that, nevertheless, will not lose their psychic potential due to their belonging to the “spiritual inventory” of humanity.

It is worth taking into account the criticism of the “Plot Indexes” that was expressed by almost all the researchers mentioned in this chapter. Nevertheless, the practical part of the work will still necessarily be based on these pointers, since the enormous amount of empirical material collected in them cannot be denied. However, when working with indexes, taking into account all the amendments, only those columns and items will be used that include some very specific action or set of actions. Within the framework of this study, two indexes will be used: “Motif-Index of Folk-Literature” by Stith Thompson for the interpretation of plots used in European political communication, as well as “Comparative Index of Plots according to the Aarne System” by N.P. Andreev for plots used in Russian and Slavic political communication.

Meletinsky and Freidenberg made the remark that the plot depends on the complex of characters in the story. Consequently, plot analysis should first of all include an analysis of the complex of characters and the relationships between them. This course of analysis will be useful for understanding the principles of constructing and using stories, which can be used to create them more competently.

Based on the first chapter, we can also conclude that the plot is not “born” when this or that action was directly performed. It is born during the narrator's interpretation of what is happening. Therefore, you need to look not at the story itself, but at how it is presented in the materials, despite the form of these stories, which can be either simply text or multimedia.

Extrapolation to political communication of those inferences and conclusions that were made within the framework of this chapter can provide useful information for a more competent search and interpretation of stories in the modern political process. However, before this, it is necessary to take one more step and consider what place plots occupy in the complex of the collective unconscious of Carl Gustav Jung in order to complement the list of functions and patterns of use of plots, and then move on to the study of plot constructions in modern politics.