Types (genres) of literature. Genre characteristics of a story The difference between a story and a story
Genre is a type of literary work. There are epic, lyrical, dramatic genres. There are also lyric epic genres. Genres are also divided by volume into large (including Romani and epic novels), medium (literary works of “medium size” - stories and poems), small (short story, novella, essay). They have genres and thematic divisions: adventure novel, psychological novel, sentimental, philosophical, etc. The main division is related to the types of literature. We present to your attention the genres of literature in the table.
The thematic division of genres is rather arbitrary. There is no strict classification of genres by topic. For example, if they talk about the genre and thematic diversity of lyrics, they usually single out love, philosophical, and landscape lyrics. But, as you understand, the variety of lyrics is not exhausted by this set.
If you set out to study the theory of literature, it is worth mastering the groups of genres:
- epic, that is, prose genres (epic novel, novel, story, short story, short story, parable, fairy tale);
- lyrical, that is, poetic genres (lyric poem, elegy, message, ode, epigram, epitaph),
- dramatic – types of plays (comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy),
- lyroepic (ballad, poem).
Literary genres in tables
Epic genres
Epic novel
Epic novel- a novel depicting folk life in critical historical eras. “War and Peace” by Tolstoy, “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov.
Novel
Novel– a multi-issue work depicting a person in the process of his formation and development. The action in the novel is full of external or internal conflicts. By topic there are: historical, satirical, fantastic, philosophical, etc. By structure: novel in verse, epistolary novel, etc.
Tale
Tale- an epic work of medium or large form, constructed in the form of a narrative about events in their natural sequence. Unlike the novel, in P. the material is presented chronically, there is no sharp plot, there is no shallow analysis of the feelings of the characters. P. does not pose tasks of a global historical nature.
Story
Story– small epic form, a small work with a limited number of characters. In R. most often one problem is posed or one event is described. The novella differs from R. in its unexpected ending.
Parable
Parable- moral teaching in allegorical form. A parable differs from a fable in that it draws its artistic material from human life. Example: Gospel parables, the parable of the righteous land, told by Luke in the play “At the Bottom.”
Lyrical genres
Lyric poem
Lyric poem- a small form of poetry, written either on behalf of the author or on behalf of a fictional lyrical character. Description of the inner world of the lyrical hero, his feelings, emotions.
Elegy
Elegy- a poem imbued with moods of sadness and sadness. As a rule, the content of elegies consists of philosophical reflections, sad thoughts, and grief.
Message
Message- a poetic letter addressed to a person. According to the content of the message, there are friendly, lyrical, satirical, etc. The message may be addressed to one person or group of people.
Epigram
Epigram- a poem that makes fun of a specific person. Characteristic features are wit and brevity.
Oh yeah
Oh yeah- a poem distinguished by solemnity of style and sublimity of content. Praise in verse.
Sonnet
Sonnet– a solid poetic form, usually consisting of 14 verses (lines): 2 quatrains (2 rhymes) and 2 tercet tercets
Dramatic genres
Comedy
Comedy- a type of drama in which characters, situations and actions are presented in funny forms or imbued with the comic. There are satirical comedies ("The Minor", "The Inspector General"), high comedies ("Woe from Wit") and lyrical ones ("The Cherry Orchard").
Tragedy
Tragedy- a work based on an irreconcilable conflict in life, leading to the suffering and death of the heroes. William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet".
Drama
Drama- a play with an acute conflict, which, unlike the tragic one, is not so sublime, more mundane, ordinary and can be resolved one way or another. The drama is based on modern rather than ancient material and establishes a new hero who rebelled against circumstances.
Lyric epic genres
(intermediate between epic and lyric)
Poem
Poem- an average lyric-epic form, a work with a plot-narrative organization, in which not one, but a whole series of experiences are embodied. Features: the presence of a detailed plot and at the same time close attention to the inner world of the lyrical hero - or an abundance of lyrical digressions. Poem “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol
Ballad
Ballad- a medium lyric-epic form, a work with an unusual, intense plot. This is a story in verse. A story, told in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads “Svetlana”, “Lyudmila” V.A. Zhukovsky
A story is a large literary form of written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story became isolated as an independent genre in written literature.
The story as an epic genre
The distinctive features of the story are a small number of characters, little content, and one storyline. The story does not have intertwining events and cannot contain a variety of artistic colors.
Thus, a story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. This type of epic genre goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling, to allegories and parables.
In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet defined, but over time, a story began to be distinguished from an essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but often this distinction is arbitrary.
There are stories in which the characteristic features of a novel can be traced, and there are also small works with one plot line, which are still called a novel and not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.
Novella as an epic genre
Many people believe that a short story is a certain type of story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a type of short prose work. The short story differs from the short story in its plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of its composition and volume.
A novella most often reveals a pressing problem or issue through one event. As an example of a literary genre, the short story arose during the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the novella began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.
The heyday of the short story as a genre is considered to be the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman and Gogol wrote short stories, the central line of which was to destroy the impression of familiar everyday life.
Novels that depicted fateful events and the play of fate with man appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers such as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.
The story as an epic genre
A prose genre such as a story is an intermediate place between a story and a novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about some real, historical events ("The Tale of Bygone Years", "The Tale of the Battle of Kalka"), but later it became a separate genre for reproducing the natural course of life.
The peculiarity of the story is that at the center of its plot there is always the main character and his life - the revelation of his personality and the path of his destiny. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which harsh reality is revealed.
And such a topic is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are “The Station Agent” by A. Pushkin, “Poor Liza” by N. Karamzin, “The Life of Arsenyev” by I. Bunin, “The Steppe” by A. Chekhov.
The importance of artistic detail in storytelling
For a full disclosure of the writer’s intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning of a literary work, artistic detail is very important. This could be a detail of an interior, a landscape or a portrait; the key point here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.
This serves as a way to highlight some psychological trait of the main character or mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that the important role of artistic detail is that it alone can replace many narrative details. In this way, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude towards the situation or person.
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Genres of literature- these are historically emerging groups of works of literature that are united by a set of formal and substantive properties based on formal features.
Fable- a poetic or prosaic literary work of a moralizing, satirical nature. At the end of the fable there is a short moralizing conclusion - the so-called morality.
Ballad is a lyric-epic work, that is, a story told in poetic form of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of a ballad is usually borrowed from folklore.
Epics- these are heroic and patriotic songs and tales, telling about the exploits of heroes and reflecting the life of Ancient Rus' of the 9th-13th centuries; a type of oral folk art, which is characterized by a song-epic way of reflecting reality.
Visions- this is a genre of medieval literature, which is characterized, on the one hand, by the presence of the image of a “clairvoyant” in the center of the narrative and the afterlife, otherworldly, eschatological content of the visual images themselves, revealed to the clairvoyant, on the other.
Detective- This is primarily a literary genre, the works of which describe the process of investigating a mysterious incident in order to clarify its circumstances and solve the mystery.
Comedy- a type of dramatic work. Displays everything ugly and absurd, funny and absurd, ridicules the vices of society.
Comedy of manners(comedy of characters) is a comedy in which the source of the funny is the inner essence of the characters and morals of high society, a funny and ugly one-sidedness, an exaggerated trait or passion (vice, flaw). Very often, a comedy of manners is a satirical comedy that makes fun of all these human qualities.
Lyric poem(in prose) - a type of fiction that emotionally and poetically expresses the author’s feelings.
Melodrama- a type of drama whose characters are sharply divided into positive and negative.
Myth is a narrative that conveys people’s ideas about the world, man’s place in it, the origin of all things, about gods and heroes.
Feature article- the most reliable type of narrative, epic literature, reflecting facts from real life.
Song, or Song- the most ancient type of lyric poetry; a poem consisting of several verses and a chorus. Songs are divided into folk, heroic, historical, lyrical, etc.
Science fiction- a genre in literature and other forms of art, one of the varieties of fiction. Science fiction is based on fantastic assumptions (fiction) in the field of science, including various types of sciences, such as the exact sciences, natural sciences, and humanities.
Novella- this is the main genre of short narrative prose, a shorter form of artistic prose than a story or novel. The author of the stories is usually called a short story writer, and the collection of stories is called a short story.
Tale- medium shape; a work that highlights a number of events in the life of the main character.
Oh yeah- a genre of lyric poetry, which is a solemn poem dedicated to an event or hero, or a separate work of such a genre.
Poem- type of lyric epic work; poetic story telling.
Message(uh pistol literature) is a literary genre that uses the form of “letters” or “epistles” (epistole).
Story- a small form, a work about one event in the life of a character.
Fairy tale- This genre of literary creativity, h Most often, fairy tales contain magic and various incredible adventures. .
Novel- large shape; a work in which events usually involve many characters whose destinies are intertwined. Novels can be philosophical, adventure, historical, family, social.
Tragedy- a type of dramatic work telling about the unfortunate fate of the main character, often doomed to death.
Folklore- a type of folk art that reflects the general patterns of social development of peoples. There are three types of works in folklore: epic, lyrical and dramatic. At the same time, epic genres have poetic and prose forms (in literature, the epic genre is represented only by prose works: short story, novella, novel, etc.). A feature of folklore is its traditionalism and orientation towards the oral method of transmitting information. The carriers were usually rural residents (peasants).
Epic- a work or a series of works depicting a significant historical era or a major historical event.
Elegy- a lyrical genre that contains in free poetic form any complaint, expression of sadness, or the emotional result of philosophical reflection on the complex problems of life.
Epigram is a short satirical poem that makes fun of a person or social phenomenon.
Epic- this is a heroic narrative about the past, containing a holistic picture of people's life and representing in harmonious unity a certain epic world of heroic heroes.
Essay is a literary genre, a prose work of small volume and free composition.
EVERYDAY NARRATIVE, as a new independent genre of ancient Russian literature, the everyday tale appears in the 2nd half. XVII century Elements of this genre were already present in hagiographic works of the 15th - 16th centuries, such as the hagiographic “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, “The Tale of Luka Kolochsky”. In the 1st half. XVII century the life begins to transform into an everyday story. This is, for example, “The Life of Uliani Osorina.”
Complex social relationships in society are depicted in “The Tale of the Appearance of the Unzhensky Cross.” Loving sisters Martha and Maria are separated from each other by the enmity of the spouses: the noble and poor Ivan and the rich, but not noble Logvin.
The most significant everyday story is “The Tale of Misfortune.” Unlike a historical story, its hero is a fictional, generalized image.
No less interesting and important is the everyday “Tale of Savva Grudtsyn,” which is based on a Western European Faustian motif.
The entertaining plot of the everyday story and the depiction of the hero’s inner experiences place it on the threshold of the Russian novel.
If the struggle between the “old” and the “new” in the stories about Mount Misfortune and Savva Grudtsyn ends outwardly with the victory of the “old” and the heroes suffer a fiasco in life, then in the picaresque short story “The Tale of Frol Skobeev” a new hero triumphs - a poor seedy nobleman, a petty clerk .
Household stories responded to the needs of what appeared in the 17th century. a new reader from the townspeople's merchant environment, small employees. The authors of everyday stories abandoned etiquette and symbolic-allegorical imagery inherent in medieval literature. They are clear evidence of the beginning of the transition period.
50. The problem of “Baroque” in Russian literature of the 17th century.
– Term “B” - 18th century. Supporters of classicism: a designation for rough, tasteless art. Associated with architecture and will depict. is-yours. Later the term was extended to liter
- Adyal, Morozov. Liter 2 half 17 and 1 half 18 – Baroque.
– Belkov – negation of noun. R. baroque. Virshi, drama – the origin of classicism
– Mathauzerova: 2 types of baroque: national. R. and borrowing. Polish-Ukrainian
– Likhachev: only r. baroque, cat was borrowed. from Polish-Ukrainian liters, then acquired its own specifics. peculiarities.
– Eremin about the features of the baroque style in the poetry of S. Polotsky.
– Baroque features: 1) aesthetic. exaggerated expressions. pathos. 2) pomp, ceremoniality, external. emotionality, a jumble of styles, ornamentation.
– 2 aspects of Baroque: 1) how art. method and style 2) as a type of thin. creativity.
– Appears in the 2nd half. 17th century, served the emerging enlightened absolutism. An aristocratic phenomenon opposed to a democratic one. liter Will illuminate the character.
– Writers peered into worldly life, put forward demands for a reasonable approach to reality, despite recognizing the idea of fate and the idea of God, combined with didacticism. Fiction was built on this belief system. A system of allegories and symbols, as well as a complex structure of works
– The Baroque style prepared the phenomenon. classicism, received its most vivid embodiment in Virsch’s poetry and drama.
51. Ideological and artistic originality of “The Tale of the Mountain of Misfortune.”
“The Tale of Misfortune” was created among merchants in the 2nd half of the 17th century. The story is written in folk verse, based on an everyday story, accompanied by lyrical moral teachings. The hero of the story, Well done, he has no name, did not listen to his parents, who said: “Don’t go, child, to feasts and brother’s parties, don’t sit on a larger place, don’t drink, child, two drinks for one!” so as not to be beggars He “wanted to live as he pleased” and did the opposite, so he fell “into immeasurable nakedness and barefootedness.” And the story draws a parallel between Adam and Eve, who succumbed to temptation, and Well done. The image of a serpent-tempter, a “called brother,” appears, who gets him drunk and then robs him. Further, the parallel runs through the motive of exile - Well done “it’s shameful ... to appear to his father and mother” and he decides to leave “to a foreign country.” There he goes to a feast, where he tells people about everything and asks for help. They help him and give him advice based on Domostroevsky morality. Thanks to them, Well done “from his great intelligence he gained more belly than Starov; I looked for a bride for myself according to custom.” Misfortune-Grief learned about this and appeared to the Well-Behaved in a dream, foreshadowing: “you will be taken away from your bride... of gold and silver, you will be killed.” But the Good Man didn’t believe the dream, then Grief appeared to him in a dream in the form of the Archangel Gabriel, saying that bliss is to be poor and drunk. After this, the Good Man follows the instructions of Grief, but then he realizes his mistake: “I, the good fellow, have been pushed into trouble.” But Grief does not let him go, saying that the Good Man will not go anywhere from him. Having struggled in vain with Grief, “the fine fellow went to the monastery to take monastic vows,” which is how he was saved. The hero of the story is a degraded person, but he worries about it. This is the first image of a tramp in Russian literature, with whom the author sympathizes, but at the same time condemns. The image of Grief is built on folklore principles. Grief forces a person to choose the wrong path, but it is also retribution for his mistakes when it says: “And whoever does not listen to his parents’ teachings is good, I will teach him, O unfortunate grief.” This work is similar in genre to a parable or a lesson, because... full of morality given by concrete example. Also, the story is very close to folk songs about the Mountain; certain passages are of an epic nature (for example, the arrival of the Young One to the feast and his boast). The work is close to folklore, as can be seen in the comparisons: Well done - “rock dove”, Woe - “Gray hawk”, etc. Based on this, we can say that the story is a fusion of folklore and literature; it goes beyond genre systems, combining many genres and traditions.
52. Ideological and artistic originality of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn.”
“The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is a work created by an unknown author in the 60s. XVII century The work reflected the historical events of the first half of the century and many everyday features of that time.
The combination in the "Tale" of a romantic theme with detailed descriptions of the life and customs of Rus' in the 17th century. gave grounds to a number of researchers to see in this work the experience of creating the first Russian novel.
The Tale tells how the merchant son Savva from the real-life wealthy merchant family of the Grudtsyn-Usovs, finding himself on trade business in the city of Orel (on the Kama River, near Solikamsk), was seduced by the wife of the merchant Bazhen II. By refusing a sinful activity on the day of the Holy Ascension, Savva aroused the wrath of his mistress, and she, having drugged the young man with a love potion, persuaded her husband to refuse him the house. Suffering from unsatisfied passion, Savva thinks that he is ready to serve the devil in order to return his former love affair, and the demon immediately appears in the guise of a young man. Savva gives him his “handwriting”, in which he renounces Christ (however, due to illiteracy, he wrote under the dictation of the demon “without composing,” that is, without reading what was written as a coherent text). Subsequently, the demon plays a role similar to the “magic assistant” of a folk tale, helping the hero not only to achieve the love of Bazhen II’s wife, but also to perform military feats during the siege of Smolensk by Russian troops.
Returning to Moscow, Savva became seriously ill and decided to confess. The demons who appeared try to prevent him from doing this and show Savva his “God-marking letter.” And after confession, demons continue to torment the hero until the Mother of God appears to him along with John the Theologian and Metropolitan Peter, who show the path of salvation: just like the hero of “The Tale of Misfortune.”
", having become dependent on a hostile force, Savva ends his journey in the monastery.
The Tale has two main genre prototypes - a religious legend and a fairy tale, on the basis of which the author created a fundamentally new work. The use of two genre prototypes allows the author, according to the observation of A. M. Panchenko, to move in the course of the narrative from one plot scheme to another, which creates the “effect of disappointed expectations”, which is not typical for ancient Russian literature.
In addition, the author fills traditional plot schemes with features of living life in the 1st floor. XVII century with a description of real trade routes, training a young merchant’s son, recruitment into soldier regiments, etc. The Tale reflected both real-life demonological ideas of the 17th century and real historical events (the Time of Troubles, the siege of Smolensk 1632-1634, etc. ). Among the historical figures, in addition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the author mentions the boyars Shein and Streshnev, the steward Vorontsov-Velyaminov, and the Streltsy centurion Shilov.
In his views, the author of the Tale is a conservative; he opposes the new trends that the “rebellious age” brought with him; everything that violates traditional norms of behavior is for him “of the devil.” But the author himself involuntarily submits to the spirit of the time and turns out to be an innovator - both in mixing genre schemes, and in using surprise as an artistic device, and in depicting a developed love affair, and in vivid everyday sketches.
53. Ideological and artistic originality of “The Tale of Karp Sutulov.”
THE TALE ABOUT CARP SUTULOV is an ancient Russian short story that appeared in Rus' at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. It attracted readers with an entertaining plot, close to a folk tale. The rich merchant Karp Sutulov, going on trade business to the Lithuanian land, asked his friend the rich merchant Afanasy Berdov to provide his wife Tatyana with money if she did not have enough before her husband’s arrival. Three years later, Tatyana turned to Afanasy Berdov, but he broke his promise and agreed to give her 100 rubles only in exchange for her love. Tatyana goes to consult the priest, her confessor, and then the archbishop, but they promise her money on the same terms as the merchant. Tatyana makes an appointment for them at her home, one after another, and by cunning forces all three to climb into the chests, taking off the outer clothing of two, and dressing the archbishop in a woman’s shirt, which was completely unacceptable according to church rules. The voivode, to whom Tatyana delivered the chests, laughed at the unlucky lovers and imposed a fine on them, dividing the money with Tatyana.
In P., characters are introduced that are well known to the Russian reader: Tatyana, an ordinary secular woman, merchants, clerics who are not distinguished by moral behavior. In some ways, these heroes are akin to the characters of translated Western short stories such as “The Decameron” by Boccaccio. Tatyana shows ingenuity, cunning, and knows how to turn life’s difficulties to her advantage. P. refers to the democratic laughter works of Ancient Rus'. Many of her situations are comedic - deception, changing clothes, hiding in chests, and finally, the scene of the appearance of unlucky lovers in the voivode's courtyard. P.’s hidden laughter is also in her “inversion”: it is not the priests who instruct the woman on the true path, but she teaches them with the help of sayings close to the texts of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps humor lies in the meaning of names.
The skill of the author P. indicates a professional writer, although it is not possible to determine exactly what social strata he came from. He had a good command of book techniques and was familiar with the peculiarities of oral folk art.
As the researchers noted, P.'s plot is not original. It is widespread in world literature. The Russian version is closest to the fairy tales found in eastern literatures - ancient Indian, ancient Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Afghan, etc. It was suggested that in Rus' this story first spread in the form of an oral fairy tale. However, in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian folklore there is not a single work containing all the motifs of P. The fairy tale “The Clever Wife” by A. K. Baryshnikova, recorded in the Voronezh region, is closest to the ancient Russian plot, but it also has a completely different ending and is missing a number of important details.
STORY. The word "story" comes from the verb "to tell." The ancient meaning of the term - “news about some event” indicates that this genre includes oral stories, events seen or heard by the narrator. An important source of such “stories” are chronicles (The Tale of Bygone Years, etc.). In ancient Russian literature, a “story” was any narrative about any events (the Tale of Batu’s invasion of Ryazan, the Tale of the Battle of Kalka, the Tale of Peter and Fevronia, etc.).
Modern literary criticism defines the “story” as an epic prose genre that occupies an intermediate place between the novel, on the one hand, and the short story and short story, on the other. However, volume alone cannot indicate genre. Turgenev's novels The Noble Nest and The Eve are smaller than some stories, for example, Kuprin's Duel. Pushkin's Captain's Daughter is not large in volume, but everything that happens to the main characters is closely connected with the largest historical event of the 18th century. - Pugachev rebellion. Obviously, this is why Pushkin himself called The Captain's Daughter not a story, but a novel. (The author's definition of genre is very important).
It’s not so much a matter of volume as it is the content of a work: coverage of events, time frame, plot, composition, system of images, etc. Thus, it is argued that a story usually depicts one event in the life of a hero, a novel a whole life, and a story a series of events. But this rule is not absolute; the boundaries between a novel and a story, as well as between a story and a short story, are fluid. Sometimes the same work is called either a story or a novel. Thus, Turgenev first called Rudin a story, and then a novel.
Due to its versatility, the genre of the story is difficult to define unambiguously. V. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of the story: “There are events, there are cases that... would not be enough for a drama, would not be enough for a novel, but which are deep, which in one moment concentrate so much life that cannot be lived out for centuries: the story catches them and encloses them in its narrow framework. Its form can contain everything you want - a light sketch of morals, a caustic sarcastic mockery of man and society, a deep mystery of the soul, and a cruel play of passions. Brief and quick, light and deep at the same time, it flies from object to object, splits life into little things and tears out leaves from the great book of this life.”
History of formation.
I. THE STORY IN ANCIENT RUSSIAN LITERATURE. - The original meaning of the word "P." in our ancient writing it is very close to its etymology: P. - what is narrated represents a complete narrative. Therefore, its use is very free and wide. Thus, P. often called works of hagiography, short stories, hagiography or chronicles (for example, “The Tale of the Life and Partly of Miracles, the Confession of Blessed Michael...”, “Tales of Wise Wives” or the famous “Behold the Tale of Bygone Years”, etc. .)
The central line of development of narrative genres is given by secular stories, which, in the conditions of their time, carried within themselves the tendency for the development of fiction as such. The church (predominant) genres alone could not serve all the needs, all aspects of the social practice of the class: the tasks of organizing secular power, versatile class education, and finally, the demands of curiosity and the desire for entertaining reading required more versatile literature. Responding to all these needs, aimed at real life, at its “secular” sides, this literature itself was generally more realistic and far from the asceticism of church writings, although this realism was often very relative; themes historical, geographical, etc. were so imbued with fabulous legendary elements that the works that developed them were sometimes of a very fantastic nature ("Alexandria", "Devgenie's Act", etc.)
Along with military poems, political and religious-political poems occupied a significant place in our medieval literature, usually using pseudo-historical or legendary plots, sometimes borrowed from translated literature, and sometimes from oral poetry, to promote a particular political idea. . Such are the legends about the Kingdom of Babylon and the White Cowl, reflecting the struggle for the dominance of Moscow and Novgorod, the works of Ivan Peresvetov of the 16th century, embodying the anti-boyar political program of the service nobility, P. about Peter and Fevronia, etc.
II. A STORY IN THE LITERATURE OF THE TRANSITIONAL AND NEW PERIOD. - Only in the later period of our medieval literature do everyday, adventurous, generally speaking about “ordinary” people and secular poems built on artistic fiction appear in it. Here is the emergence of the genre of poetry in the modern meaning of the term. This happens only in the 17th century, during a period when, as a result of the aggravation of feudal contradictions, the advancement of the nobility and merchants, the weakening of the role of the church, and the associated everyday restructuring, Russian fiction began to grow, separating itself from church, historical, and journalistic literature and freeing itself from the overwhelming authority of religious dogma. Based on examples of Western European bourgeois literature, the rising nobility, the progressive part of the merchants, and advanced groups of the petty bourgeoisie create their own, generally realistically oriented works, reflecting new social and everyday relations, and develop methods of artistic everyday life ("The Tale of Frol Skobeev" , “The Tale of Karp Sutulov”, “The Tale of Ersha Ershovich”, etc.). Conservative groups, in particular the conservative part of the merchant class, did not escape the influence of new literary trends, producing works that curiously combined elements of everyday realism with conservative religious and legendary motifs and ideas. Such are the “Tale of Savva Grudtsin” and P.-poem “About the Mountain of Misfortune”
The increasing complexity of social life as bourgeois relations grow, the expansion and deepening of the artistic and cognitive capabilities of literature - all this determines the advancement in the field of artistic prose of the short story (short story) as a form testifying to the artist’s ability to isolate a separate moment from the general flow of everyday life. , and the novel as a form that presupposes the ability to reflect a complex of various aspects of reality in their multifaceted connections. In the presence of such differentiation of narrative forms, the concept of “story” acquires a new and narrower content, occupying that position midway between the novel and the short story, which is usually indicated by literary theorists. At the same time, of course, the very nature of P. in the new literature changes and is revealed in different relationships. P.'s middle place between a short story and a novel is primarily determined by the scale of the volume and complexity of the reality covered by the work: a short story talks about any one life event, a novel provides a whole complex of intertwining plot lines
The place occupied by P. in the new Russian literature is different. In the 2nd half of the 18th century. and the first third of the 19th century. in the dominant style, that is, in the style of various groups of the nobility, predominantly poetic and dramatic genres are put forward. Only for conservative noble sentimentalism, with its call for simplicity and naturalness, is poetry a characteristic genre (Karamzin). Later, in the 30s, when prose began to grow with extreme intensity, P. So, Belinsky in the 30s came to the fore along with the novel. asserted: “Now all our literature has turned into a novel and a story” (“On the Russian story and Gogol’s stories”). The development of the story is undoubtedly connected with the appeal of literature to “prosaic”, everyday reality (it is not for nothing that Belinsky contrasts P. and the novel with the “heroic poem” and ode of classicism), although this reality itself can be perceived by the authors in a romantic aspect (for example, Gogol’s St. Petersburg stories , a number of stories by V. Odoevsky, Marlinsky, such works by N. Polevoy as “The Bliss of Madness”, “Emma”, etc.). Among the stories of the 30s. there were many with historical themes (romantic stories by Marlinsky, stories by Veltman, etc.). However, truly typical of the era, new in comparison with the previous stage, are stories with a realistic aspiration, addressed to modern, often everyday life ("Belkin's Tales" by Pushkin, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois everyday stories by Pogodin, N. Pavlov, N. Polevoy, Stepanov and others ; among the romantics - V. Odoevsky and Marlinsky - they have a similar “secular story” dedicated to the psychology and everyday life of the “salon”).
With the further development of Russian literature, in which the novel begins to play an increasingly important role, P. still retains a fairly prominent place. P. is intensively used as the most “artless”, simple and at the same time broad form by everyday life writers. Typical examples of such household P. were given, for example. Grigorovich (“Anton Goremyka”, etc.); classic realists (Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.) give predominantly psychological depictions, with greater or lesser disclosure of the social conditioning and typicality of the phenomena depicted. So. arr. throughout the 19th century. P. is represented by almost all the major prose writers (Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Korolenko, etc.), as well as a number of minor ones. The story retains approximately the same share in the works of our modern writers. An exceptional contribution to P.'s literature was made by M. Gorky with his autobiographical stories ("Childhood", "In People", "My Universities"), the structural feature of which is the great significance of the characters surrounding the main character. P. has taken a strong place in the works of a number of other modern writers, serving to design a wide variety of thematic complexes. It is enough to name such popular works of Soviet literature as "Chapaev" by Furmanov, "Tashkent - the City of Grain" by Neverov, "Blast Furnace" by Lyashko and many others. etc. That special aspect, in which real life is reflected in P. due to its structural features, retains its place in Soviet literature. At the same time, the “unilinearity” of P., the well-known simplicity of its structure in the literature of socialist realism, does not at all come at the expense of the depth of social understanding of the reflected phenomena and the aesthetic value of the work. Such examples of proletarian literature, such as the above-mentioned works of M. Gorky, provide clear confirmation of this position.
In Western European literature, which has long been highly developed and diverse in genre, we find an even greater predominance of short stories and novels, but there a number of major authors (Mérimée, Flaubert, Maupassant, Dickens, Hoffmann, etc.) produced works that differ in their characteristic features P.