What is a novel as a genre of literature? The concept of genre

Accent placement: ROMAN'N

ROMAN (from the French roman - originally a work in Romance languages) - large shape epic genre of literature of modern times. Its the most common features: image of a person in complex forms life process, multi-linearity of the plot, covering the destinies of a number of characters, polyphony, hence the large volume compared to other genres. It is clear, of course, that these features characterize the main trends in the development of the novel and manifest themselves in extremely diverse ways.

The very emergence of this genre - or, more precisely, its prerequisites - is often attributed to antiquity or the Middle Ages. So, they talk about “ancient R.” ("Daphnis and Chloe", "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass" by Apuleius, "Satyricon" by Petronius, etc.) and "R. knightly" ("Tristan and Isolde", "Lohengrin" by von Eschenbach, "Le Morte d'Arthur" by Malory etc.). These prose narratives actually have certain features that bring them closer to R. in the modern, proper sense of the word. However, we still have before us rather similar, analogous, rather than homogeneous phenomena.

In ancient and medieval narrative prose literature there is not a whole series of those essential properties of content and form that play a decisive role in poetry. It would be more correct to understand these works of antiquity as special genres of idyllic (Daphnis and Chloe) or comic (Satyricon ") stories, and consider the stories of medieval knights as, again, a unique genre knightly epic in prose. R. in its proper sense begins to take shape only at the end of the Renaissance. Its origin is inextricably linked with that new artistic element, which was originally embodied in the Renaissance short story (see), more precisely, in a special genre of “book of short stories” such as “The Decameron” by Boccaccio.

R. was an epic privacy. If in the previous epic the central role was played by images of representatives of the people, society, state (leaders, generals, priests) or images of heroes who openly embodied the strength and wisdom of the entire human collective, then in R. the images of ordinary people, people , in the actions of which only their individual fate, their personal aspirations are directly expressed. The previous epic was based on major historical (even legendary) events, in which the main characters were participants or, more precisely, direct creators. Meanwhile, R. (with the exception of the special form of historical R., as well as R.-epic) is based on events in private life and, moreover, usually on fictional by the author events.

Further, the action of the folk and, more broadly, historical epic, as a rule, unfolded in the distant past, a kind of “epic time,” while for R. the connection with living modernity or at least with the most recent past is typical, with the exception special type R. - historical. Finally, the epic had, above all, heroic character, was the embodiment of high poetic element; R. acts as prose genre, like an image of everyday life, Everyday life in all the versatility of its manifestations. More or less conventionally, one can define the novel as a fundamentally “average”, neutral genre. And this clearly expresses the historical novelty of the genre, because previously the “high” (heroic) or “low” (comic) genres dominated, and the “average”, neutral genres did not receive any widespread development. R. was the most complete and complete expression of the art of epic prose. But despite all the profound differences from previous forms of epic, R. is a true heir to ancient and medieval epic literature, a genuine epic of modern times. On a brand new artistic basis in R., as Hegel said, “the wealth and diversity of interests, states, characters, life relationships, the broad background of the entire world" (Oc., vol. 14, p. 273). This is not at all contradicted by the fact that in the center of R. there is usually the image of a “private” person with his purely personal fate and experiences. In the era of the emergence of R. "... individual appears freed from natural connections, etc., which in previous historical eras made him a part of a certain limited human conglomerate" (K. Marx, On Criticism political economy, 1953, p. 193-94). On the one hand, this means that the individual no longer acts primarily as a representative of a certain group of people; he acquires his own personal destiny and individual consciousness. But at the same time, this means that an individual person is now directly connected not with a certain limited group, but with the life of an entire society or even all of humanity. And this, in turn, leads to the fact that artistic development becomes possible and, moreover, necessary. public life through the prism of the individual fate of a “private” person.

Of course, this mastery is accomplished in a much more complex and indirect way than mastering the fate of the people in the image of a majestic folk hero, as was the case in ancient epic. But there is no doubt that the novels of Prevost, Fielding, Stendhal, Lermontov, Dickens, Turgenev, etc., in the personal destinies of the main characters, reveal the broadest and deepest content of the social life of the era. Moreover, in many R. there is not even a somewhat detailed picture of the life of society as such; the entire image is focused on the private life of the individual. However, since in the new society, built after the Renaissance, the private life of a person turned out to be inextricably linked with the entire life of the social whole (even if the person did not act as a politician, leader, ideologist), Tom’s completely “private” actions and experiences Jones (in Fielding), Werther (in Goethe), Pechorin, Madame Bovary appear as an artistic exploration of the holistic essence of the social world that gave birth to these heroes. Therefore, R. was able to become a genuine epic of modern times and, in its most monumental manifestations, seemed to revive the genre of epic (see). The first historical form of R., which was preceded by the short story and the epic of the Renaissance, was the picaresque R., which actively developed in the late 16th century - early. 18th century (“Lazarillo from Tormes”, “Franción” by Sorel, “Simpli-cissimus” by Grimmelhausen, “Gilles Blas” by Lesage, etc.). From the end of the 17th century. psychological prose developed, which was of great importance for the development of R. (books by La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Lafayette’s story “The Princess of Cleves”). Finally, very important role Memoir literature of the 16th and 17th centuries played a role in the formation of R., in which for the first time the private lives and personal experiences of people began to be objectively depicted (books by Benvenuto Cellini, Montaigne, Sevigny, etc.); Thus, it was memoirs (or, more precisely, travel notes of a sailor) that served as the basis and incentive for the creation of one of the first great works of literature, Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” (1719). R. reaches maturity in the 18th century. One of the earliest genuine examples of the genre is “Manon Lescaut” (1731) by Antoine Prevost. In this R., the traditions of picaresque R., psychological prose (in the spirit of “Maxim” by La Rochefoucauld) and memoir literature seemed to merge into an innovative organic integrity (it is characteristic that this R. originally appeared as a fragment of multi-volume fictional memoirs of a certain person).

During the 18th century. R. gains a dominant position in literature (in the 17th century it still appeared as a side, secondary sphere of word art). In R. 18th century. two are already developing different lines- social and everyday R. (Fielding, Smollett, Louvet de Couvray, etc.) and a more powerful line of psychological R. (Richardson, Rousseau, Stern, Goethe, etc.).

At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, during the era of romanticism, the genre of romance was experiencing a kind of crisis; the subjective-lyrical character of romantic literature contradicts the epic essence of R. Many writers of this time (Chateaubriand, Senancourt, Schlegel, Novalis, Constant) created R., which are more reminiscent lyric poems in prose.

However, at the same time, a special form was flourishing - historical literature, which acts as a kind of synthesis of poetry in the proper sense and the epic poem of the past (novels by Walter Scott, Vigny, Hugo, Gogol).

In general, the period of romanticism had a renewing significance for R., preparing for its new rise and flowering. In the second third of the 19th century. dates back to the classical era of R. (Stendhal, Lermontov, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Turgenev, Flaubert, Maupassant, etc.). A special role is played by Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, primarily the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. In the works of these greatest writers one of the decisive properties of R. reaches a qualitatively new level - its ability to embody universal, pan-human meaning in the private destinies and personal experiences of heroes. In-depth psychologism, mastery of the subtlest movements of the soul, characteristic of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, not only do not contradict, but, on the contrary, determine this property. Tolstoy, noting that in R. Dostoevsky “not only we, people related to him, but foreigners recognize ourselves, our soul...”, explained it this way: “The deeper you scoop, the more common to all, more familiar and dear” (Tolstoy L N., About literature, M., 1955, p. 264).

The novel by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky had a huge impact on the further development of the genre in world literature. The greatest novelists of the 20th century. - T. Mann, France, Rolland, Hamsun, Martin du Gard, Galsworthy, Laxness, Faulkner, Hemingway, Tagore, Akutagawa - were direct students and followers of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. T. Mann said that Tolstoy’s novels “lead us into the temptation to overturn the relationship between the novel and the epic, affirmed by school aesthetics, and to consider not the novel as a product of the collapse of the epic, but the epic as a primitive prototype of the novel.” (Collected works, vol. 10, M., 1961, p. 279).

The traditions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were innovatively continued by Gorky, who became the founder of R. socialist realism. In the highest examples of this art, life and existence are presented as a creative act of the people, and therefore the art of socialist realism especially organically embodies the epic essence of the genre and gravitates toward epic in the strict sense of the word. This is clearly evident in such major phenomena of Soviet R. as “The Life of Klim Samgin” and “Quiet Don”. But this does not mean at all that the R. of socialist realism abandons the multifaceted nature of the genre. Even just the works mentioned above characterize a deep understanding of the life and consciousness of the individual, which has always been characteristic of R.

In the first post-October years, the idea was popular that in the new, revolutionary R. the main or even the only content should be the image of the masses. However, when implementing this idea, R. was in danger of collapse; he turned into a chain of incoherent episodes (for example, in the works of B. Pilnyak). In 20th century literature. the frequent desire to limit oneself to depicting the inner world of the individual is expressed in attempts to recreate the so-called. "stream of consciousness" (Proust, Joyce, modern school"new R." in France). But, deprived of an objective and effective basis, R., in essence, loses its epic nature and ceases to be R. in in the truest sense words.

R. can really develop only on the basis of the harmonious unity of the objective and subjective, external and internal in a person. This unity is characteristic of the largest novels of recent times - the novels of Sholokhov, Laxness, Graham Greene, Faulkner, and others.

Lit.: Griftsov B. A., Theory of the Novel, M., 1927; Chicherin A.V., The emergence of an epic novel, M., 1958; Fox R., Roman and the people, M., 1960; Dneprov V., Roman - a new kind of poetry, in his book: Problems of Realism, L., 1961; Kozhinov V., The Origin of the Novel, M., 1963; The present and future of the novel (Discussion materials), "In. Literature", 1964, No. 6, 10; Bakhtin M., The Word in the Novel, "Vopr. Literary", 1965, No. 8; History of the Russian novel, vol. 1 - 2, M. - L., 1962 - 64; Russian history Soviet novel, book 1 - 2, M. - L., 1965; D e k s P., Seven centuries of the novel. Sat. Art., trans. from French, M., 1962.

V. Nozhinov.

Sources:

Dictionary of literary terms. Ed. From 48 comp.: L. I. Timofeev and S. V. Turaev. M., "Enlightenment", 1974. 509 p.

M. M. Bakhtin

Epic and novel (On the methodology of researching the novel)

The study of the novel as a genre is characterized by special difficulties. This is due to the uniqueness of the object itself : the novel is the only emerging and not yet ready genre. Genre-forming forces act before our eyes: the birth and development of the novel genre takes place in the full light of historical day. The genre backbone of the novel is far from solidified, and we cannot yet predict all its plastic possibilities.

We know the remaining genres as genres, that is, as certain solid forms for casting artistic experience, in a ready-made form. The ancient process of their formation lies beyond historically documented observation. We find the epic not only a long-prepared, but already deeply aged genre.. The same can be said, with some reservations, about other major genres, even about tragedy. Their historical life known to us is their life as ready-made genres with a solid and already low-plastic backbone. Each of them has a canon that acts in literature as a real historical force.

All these genres, or at least their basic elements, are much older than writing and books, and they retain their original oral and loud nature to a greater or lesser extent even to this day. Of the large genres, one novel is younger than writing and the book, and it alone is organically adapted to new forms of silent perception, that is, to reading. But the main thing is that the novel does not have such a canon as other genres: only individual examples of the novel are historically effective, but not the genre canon as such. Learning other genres is similar to learning dead languages; the study of the novel is the study of living languages, and young ones at that.

This creates an extraordinary difficulty for the theory of the novel. After all, this theory has, in essence, a completely different object of study than the theory of other genres. The novel is not just a genre among genres. This is the only emerging genre among long-ready and partly already dead genres. This is the only genre born and nurtured new era world history and therefore deeply akin to it, while other large genres were inherited by it in a ready-made form and only adapt - some better, others worse - to new conditions of existence. Compared to them, the novel seems to be a creature of a different breed. It doesn't fit well with other genres. He fights for his dominance in literature, and where he wins, other, old, genres decay. No wonder the best history book ancient novel- Erwin Rohde's book - does not so much tell his story as depict the process of decomposition of all great high genres on ancient soil.

The problem of interaction of genres in the unity of literature of a given period is very important and interesting. In some eras - in the classical period of Greek, in the golden age of Roman literature, in the era of classicism - in great literature (that is, in the literature of the dominant social groups), all genres to a certain extent harmoniously complement each other and all literature, as a set of genres, is in to a large extent, a certain organic whole of a higher order. But it is characteristic: the novel is never included in this whole, it does not participate in the harmony of genres. In these eras, the novel leads an unofficial existence beyond the threshold of great literature. The organic whole of literature, hierarchically organized, includes only ready-made genres with established and defined genre faces. They can be mutually limited and mutually complement each other, maintaining their genre nature. They are united and related to each other in their deep structural features.

The great organic poets of the past - Aristotle, Horace, Boileau - are imbued with a deep sense of the whole of literature and the harmonious combination of all genres in this whole. They seem to specifically hear this harmony of genres. This is the strength, the unique holistic completeness and exhaustion of these poetics. They all consistently ignore the novel. Scientific poetics The 19th century is deprived of this integrity: they are eclectic, descriptive, striving not for living and organic, but for abstract encyclopedic completeness; they are focused not on the actual possibility of the coexistence of certain genres in the living whole of the literature of a given era, but on their coexistence in the most complete anthology. They, of course, no longer ignore the novel, but they simply add it (in a place of honor) to existing genres (as a genre among genres, it is included in the anthology; but the novel enters into the living whole of literature in a completely different way).

The novel, as we have already said, does not fit well with other genres. There can be no talk of any harmony based on mutual differentiation and complementarity. The novel parodies other genres (precisely as genres), exposes the conventionality of their forms and language, displaces some genres, introduces others into its own design, rethinking and reemphasizing them. Literary historians are sometimes inclined to see this only as a struggle between literary movements and schools. Such a struggle, of course, exists, but it is a peripheral and historically small phenomenon. Behind it, one must be able to see the deeper and historical struggle of genres, the formation and growth of the genre backbone of literature.

Particularly interesting phenomena are observed in those eras when the novel becomes the leading genre. All literature is then embraced by the process of formation and a kind of “genre criticism.” This took place in some periods of Hellenism, in the era late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but especially strongly and brightly from the second half of the 18th century. In the era of the dominance of the novel, almost all other genres are “romanized” to a greater or lesser extent: drama is novelized (for example, the drama of Ibsen, Hauptmann, all naturalistic drama), the poem (for example, “Childe Harold” and especially “Don Juan” by Byron), even lyrics (a sharp example is Heine's lyrics). The same genres that stubbornly retain their old canonicity acquire the character of stylization. In general, any strict consistency of the genre, in addition to the artistic will of the author, begins to respond with stylization, or even parodic stylization. In the presence of the novel, as the dominant genre, the conventional languages of strict canonical genres begin to sound in a new way, differently than they sounded in eras when the novel did not exist in great literature.

Parodic stylizations of direct genres and styles occupy a significant place in the novel. In the era of the creative upsurge of the novel - and especially during the periods of preparation for this upsurge - literature is flooded with parodies and travesties of all high genres (namely genres, and not individual writers and movements) - parodies that are harbingers, companions and a kind of sketches to novel. But it is characteristic that the novel does not allow any of its own varieties to stabilize. Throughout the entire history of the novel, there is a consistent parody or travesty of the dominant and fashionable varieties of this genre, tending to become stereotyped: parodies of the knightly novel (the first parody of the adventurous knightly novel dates back to the 13th century, this is "Dit d'aventures"), of the baroque novel, of the shepherd's novel. novel ("The Extravagant Shepherd Boy" by Sorel), on sentimental novel(in Fielding, “Grandison the Second” by Museus), etc. This self-criticism of the novel is a remarkable feature of it as an emerging genre.

How is the novelization of other genres noted above expressed? They become freer and more plastic, their language is updated due to extra-literary heteroglossia and due to the “novel” layers of the literary language, they are dialogized, further, laughter, irony, humor, elements of self-parody penetrate widely into them, and finally - and this is the most important thing - the novel introduces into them problematic, specific semantic incompleteness and living contact with unfinished, becoming modernity (unfinished present). All these phenomena, as we will see later, are explained by the transposition of genres into a new special zone for the construction of artistic images (the zone of contact with the present in its incompleteness), a zone first mastered by the novel.

Of course, the phenomenon of novelization cannot be explained only by the direct and immediate influence of the novel itself. Even where such influence can be accurately established and shown, it is inextricably intertwined with the direct effect of those changes in reality itself that determine the novel, which determined the dominance of the novel in a given era. The novel is the only genre that is becoming, therefore it more deeply, significantly, sensitively and quickly reflects the formation of reality itself. Only the one who becomes can understand becoming. Roman became the leading character of the drama literary development of the new time precisely because it best expresses the trends in the formation of a new world, because it is the only genre born of this new world and in everything congenial to it. The novel in many ways anticipated and anticipates the future development of all literature. Therefore, coming to dominance, he contributes to the renewal of all other genres, he infects them with formation and incompleteness. He imperiously draws them into his orbit precisely because this orbit coincides with the main direction of development of all literature. This is the exceptional importance of the novel both as an object of study for theory and for the history of literature.

Literary historians, unfortunately, usually reduce this struggle of the novel with other ready-made genres and all the phenomena of novelization to the life and struggle of schools and movements. A novelized poem, for example, they call a “romantic poem” (this is true) and think that that says it all. Behind the superficial diversity and hype literary process They do not see the great and significant destinies of literature and language, the leading heroes of which are, first of all, genres, and movements and schools are heroes only of the second and third order.

Literary theory reveals its complete helplessness in relation to the novel. She works with other genres confidently and accurately - it is a ready-made and established object, definite and clear. In everything classical eras throughout their development, these genres retain their stability and canonicity; their variations across eras, trends and schools are peripheral and do not affect their hardened genre backbone. In essence, the theory of these ready-made genres, to this day, has been able to add almost nothing significant to what was already done by Aristotle. His poetics remains the unshakable foundation of the theory of genres (although sometimes it lies so deep that you cannot see it). Everything is going well until it comes to the novel. But even novelized genres put the theory at a dead end. On the problem of the novel, the theory of genres faces the need for a radical restructuring.

Thanks to the painstaking work of scientists, enormous historical material has been accumulated, a number of issues related to the origin of individual varieties of the novel have been illuminated, but the problem of the genre as a whole has not found any satisfactory solution in principle. They continue to consider it as a genre among other genres, they try to fix its differences as a ready-made genre from other ready-made genres, they try to reveal its internal canon as a certain system of stable and solid genre characteristics. Works on the novel are reduced in the vast majority of cases to the most complete registration and description of novel varieties, but as a result of such descriptions it is never possible to give any comprehensive formula for the novel as a genre. Moreover, researchers are unable to indicate a single definite and firm feature of a novel without such a reservation that this feature, as a genre feature, would not be completely annulled.

Here are examples of such “qualifying” signs: the novel is a multifaceted genre, although there are also wonderful single-layer novels; the novel is an action-packed and dynamic genre, although there are novels that reach the limit of pure descriptiveness for literature; the novel is a problematic genre, although the mass production of novels provides an example of pure entertainment and thoughtlessness that is not accessible to any other genre; novel - love story, although the greatest examples of the European novel are completely devoid of the love element; The novel is a prose genre, although there are wonderful poetic novels. Of course, many more “genre features” of a novel of this kind, destroyed by an honest disclaimer attached to them, can be cited.

Much more interesting and consistent are those normative definitions of the novel that are given by the novelists themselves, who put forward a certain type of novel and declare it the only correct, necessary and relevant form of the novel. Such, for example, is the famous preface of Rousseau to the “New Heloise”, the preface of Wieland to “Agaton”, Wetzel to “Tobias Knauth”; These are the numerous declarations and statements of romantics around “Wilhelm Meister” and “Lucinda” and others. Such statements, which do not try to embrace all varieties of the novel in an eclectic definition, but themselves participate in the living formation of the novel as a genre. They often deeply and truly reflect the struggle of the novel with other genres and with itself (in the person of other dominant and fashionable varieties of the novel) at a certain stage of its development. They come closer to understanding the special position of the novel in literature, incommensurable with other genres.

Of particular importance in this regard are a number of statements that accompanied the creation of a new type of novel in the 18th century. This series opens with Fielding's reflections on the novel and its hero in Tom Jones. Its continuation is Wieland's preface to Agathon, and the most significant link is Blankenburg's Essay on the Novel. The completion of this series is, in essence, the theory of the novel, given later by Hegel. For all these statements, reflecting the formation of the novel at one of its significant stages ("Tom Jones", "Agaton", "Wilhelm Meister"), the following requirements for the novel are characteristic: 1) the novel should not be "poetic" in the sense how poetic are other genres of fiction; 2) the hero of the novel should not be “heroic” either in the epic or tragic sense of the word: he must combine both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious; 3) the hero should be shown not as ready-made and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, educated by life; 4) the novel should become for the modern world what the epic was for the ancient world (this idea was clearly expressed by Blankenburg and then repeated by Hegel).

All these statements-demands have a very significant and productive side - this is a criticism from the point of view of the novel of other genres and their relationship to reality: their stilted glorification, their conventions, their narrow and lifeless poetry, their monotony and abstractness, the readiness and immutability of their heroes. Here, in essence, a fundamental criticism is given of the literariness and poetry inherent in other genres and previous varieties of the novel (the baroque heroic novel and the sentimental novel of Richardson). These statements are supported to a large extent by the practice of these novelists. Here the novel - both its practice and the theory associated with it - appears directly and consciously as a critical and self-critical genre, which should renew the very foundations of the dominant literary and poetic nature. The comparison of the novel with the epic (and contrasting them) is, on the one hand, a point in the criticism of others literary genres(in particular, the very type of epic heroization), on the other hand, aims to raise the importance of the novel as the leading genre of new literature.

The statements-demands we have cited are one of the peaks of the novel’s self-awareness. This is, of course, not a theory of the novel. These statements also do not differ in great philosophical depth. But nevertheless, they testify to the nature of the novel as a genre no less, if not more, than existing theories of the novel.

In what follows, I make an attempt to approach the novel precisely as an emerging genre, heading the process of development of all literature of modern times. I am not constructing a definition of the canon of the novel operating in literature (in its history) as a system of stable genre characteristics. But I'm trying to find the main ones structural features of this most plastic of genres, features that determine the direction of its own variability and the direction of its influence and influence on the rest of literature.

I find three such main features that fundamentally distinguish the novel from all other genres: 1) the stylistic three-dimensionality of the novel, associated with the multilingual consciousness realized in it; 2) a radical change in the time coordinates of the literary image in the novel; 3) a new zone for constructing a literary image in a novel, namely the zone of maximum contact with the present (modernity) in its incompleteness.

All these three features of the novel are organically interconnected, and all of them are determined by a certain turning point in the history of European humanity: its emergence from the conditions of a socially closed and deaf semi-patriarchal state into new conditions of international, interlingual connections and relations. The diversity of languages, cultures and times was revealed to European humanity and became a determining factor in its life and thinking.

I considered the first stylistic feature of the novel, associated with the active multilingualism of the new world, new culture and new literary and creative consciousness, in my other work. Let me briefly recall only the most important things.

Multilingualism has always existed (it is older than canonical and pure monolingualism), but it was not a creative factor, artistic and intentional choice was not the creative center of the literary and linguistic process. The classical Greek felt both “languages” and eras of language, diverse Greek literary dialects (tragedy is a multilingual genre), but creative consciousness realized itself in closed pure languages (even if actually mixed). Multilingualism was ordered and canonized between genres.

A new cultural and literary-creative consciousness lives in an active multilingual world. The world has become like this once and for all and irrevocably. The period of silent and closed coexistence of national languages has ended. Languages are mutually illuminating; after all, one language can only see itself in the light of another language. The naive and consolidated coexistence of “languages” within a given national language, that is, the coexistence of territorial dialects, social and professional dialects and jargons, literary language, genre languages within a literary language, eras in the language, etc.

All this came into motion and entered into a process of active interaction and mutual illumination. The word, the language began to be felt differently, and objectively they ceased to be what they were. In the conditions of this external and internal mutual illumination of languages, each given language, even under the condition of the absolute immutability of its linguistic composition (phonetics, vocabulary, morphology, etc.), is, as it were, born anew, becoming qualitatively different for the consciousness creating on it.

In this actively multilingual world, completely new relationships are established between language and its subject, that is, the real world, fraught with enormous consequences for all ready-made genres that developed in eras of closed and deaf monolingualism. Unlike other large genres, the novel took shape and grew precisely in conditions of heightened activation of external and internal multilingualism; this is its native element. Therefore, the novel could become the head of the process of development and renewal of literature in linguistic and stylistic terms.

I tried to highlight the deep stylistic originality of the novel, determined by its connection with the conditions of multilingualism, in the already mentioned work.

I turn to two other features that relate to thematic aspects of the structure of the novel genre. These features are best revealed and understood by comparing the novel with the epic.

In the context of our problem, the epic as a certain genre is characterized by three constitutive features: 1) the subject of the epic is the national epic past, the “absolute past” in the terminology of Goethe and Schiller; 2) the source of the epic is national tradition (and not personal experience and free fiction growing on its basis); 3) the epic world is separated from modernity, that is, from the time of the singer (the author and his listeners), by an absolute epic distance.

Let us dwell in more detail on each of these constitutive features of the epic.

The world of the epic is the national heroic past, the world of the “beginnings” and “peaks” of national history, the world of fathers and ancestors, the world of the “first” and “best”. The point is not that this past is the content of the epic. The relationship of the depicted world to the past, its involvement in the past is a constitutive formal feature of the epic as a genre. The epic has never been a poem about the present, about its time (becoming only a poem about the past for posterity). Epic, as a certain genre known to us, from the very beginning was a poem about the past, and the immanent epic and the author’s constitutive attitude for it (that is, the attitude of the speaker of the epic word) is the attitude of a person speaking about a past inaccessible to him, the reverent attitude of a descendant. The epic word in its style, tone, and character of imagery is infinitely far from the word of a contemporary about a contemporary addressed to his contemporaries (“Onegin, my good friend, was born on the banks of the Neva, where, perhaps, you were born or shone, my reader...” ). Both the singer and the listener, immanent in the epic as a genre, are in the same time and on the same value (hierarchical) level, but the depicted world of the heroes stands on a completely different and inaccessible value-time level, separated by an epic distance. National tradition mediates between them. To depict an event on the same value-time level with oneself and with one’s contemporaries (and, consequently, on the basis of personal experience and fiction) means making a radical revolution, moving from the epic world to the novel one.

Of course, “my time” can be perceived as a heroic epic time, from the point of view of its historical significance, at a distance, as if from the distance of times (not from oneself, a contemporary, but in the light of the future), and the past can be perceived familiarly (as my present ). But in this way we perceive not the present in the present and not the past in the past; we remove ourselves from “my time,” from the zone of his familiar contact with me.

We are talking about epic as a specific real genre that has come down to us. We find it already a completely ready-made, even frozen and almost dead genre. Its perfection, consistency and absolute artistic non-naivety speak of its old age as a genre, of its long past. But we can only guess about this past, and it must be said frankly that we are still guessing about it very poorly. We do not know those hypothetical primary songs that preceded the composition of the epics and the creation of the genre epic tradition, which were songs about contemporaries and were a direct response to the events that had just happened. We can therefore only guess about what these primary songs of the Aeds or cantilenas were. And we have no reason to think that they were more similar to later (known to us) epic songs than, for example, to our topical feuilleton or topical ditties. Those epic heroic songs about contemporaries that are accessible to us and quite real arose after the composition of the epics, already on the basis of an ancient and powerful epic tradition. They transfer a ready-made epic form to modern events and contemporaries, that is, they transfer the value-time form of the past to them, introduce them to the world of fathers, beginnings and peaks, as if canonizing them during their lifetime. In a patriarchal system, representatives of the dominant groups, in a certain sense, belong as such to the world of “fathers” and are separated from the rest by an almost “epic” distance. The epic introduction to the world of the ancestors and founders of the contemporary hero is a specific phenomenon that grew on the soil of a long-prepared epic tradition and therefore explains the origin of the epic just as little as, for example, the neoclassical ode.

Whatever its origin, the real epic that has come down to us is an absolutely ready-made and very perfect genre form, the constitutive feature of which is the attribution of the world it depicts to the absolute past of national origins and peaks. The absolute past is a specific value (hierarchical) category. For the epic worldview, “beginning”, “first”, “initiator”, “ancestor”, “former before”, etc. are not purely temporary, but value-time categories, this is a value-time superlative degree, which is realized as in in relation to people, and in relation to all things and phenomena of the epic world: in this past everything is good, and everything essentially good (“first”) is only in this past. The epic absolute past is the only source and beginning of all good things for subsequent times. This is what the epic form says.

Memory, not cognition, is the main creative ability and power ancient literature. It was so, and it cannot be changed; the story of the past is sacred. There is still no consciousness of the relativity of any past.

Experience, knowledge and practice (the future) define the novel. In the Hellenistic era, contact arises with the heroes of the Trojan epic cycle; the epic turns into a novel. The epic material is transposed into the novel, into the contact zone, passing through the stage of familiarization and laughter. When the novel becomes the leading genre, the theory of knowledge becomes the leading philosophical discipline.

It is not for nothing that the epic past is called the “absolute past”; it, as at the same time a value-based (hierarchical) past, is devoid of any relativity, that is, devoid of those gradual purely temporal transitions that would connect it with the present. It is fenced off by an absolute boundary from all subsequent times, and above all from the time in which the singer and his listeners find themselves. This facet, therefore, is immanent in the very form of the epic and is felt and sounds in every word of it.

To destroy this line means to destroy the form of the epic as a genre. But precisely because it is fenced off from all subsequent times, the epic past is absolute and complete. It is closed, like a circle, and everything in it is ready and complete. There is no place for any incompleteness, unresolvedness, or problematic nature in the epic world. It does not leave any loopholes into the future; it is self-sufficient, does not imply any continuation and does not need it. Temporal and value definitions are merged here into one inseparable whole (as they were merged in the ancient semantic layers of language). Everything that is attached to this past is thereby attached to true materiality and significance, but at the same time it acquires completeness and finality, and is deprived, so to speak, of all rights and opportunities for real continuation. Absolute completeness and isolation are a remarkable feature of the value-time epic past.

Let's move on to the legend. The epic past, fenced off by an impenetrable line from subsequent times, is preserved and revealed only in the form of national legend. The epic is based only on this legend. The point is not that this is the actual source of the epic; what is important is that the reliance on tradition is immanent in the very form of the epic, just as the absolute past is immanent in it. An epic word is a word according to legend. The epic world of the absolute past, by its very nature, is inaccessible to personal experience and does not allow for an individual personal point of view and assessment. It cannot be seen, felt, touched, it cannot be looked at from any point of view, it cannot be tested, analyzed, decomposed, or penetrated into its insides. It is given only as a legend, sacred and indisputable, invoking a generally valid assessment and requiring a reverent attitude towards itself. We repeat and emphasize: the point is not in the actual sources of the epic, and not in its substantive moments, and not in the declarations of its authors - the whole point is in its formal feature (more precisely, formal-substantive) constitutive for the genre of epic: reliance on impersonal indisputable tradition, universal significance of the assessment and point of view, excluding any possibility of a different approach, deep reverence for the subject of the image and the very word about it as a word of legend.

The novel is one of the leading genres modern literature. Despite the fact that it appeared in the eighteenth century, the peak of its popularity falls directly on the new and modern times. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that in the modern world, novelistic issues, often dedicated to the fate of individuals, encounter fewer obstacles and restrictions than in previous eras.

If you answer the question of what a novel is, you can find two definitions. On the one hand, this epic work, exceeding several hundred pages in volume. On the other hand, it is a work that tells about the destinies of individuals who are looking for their purpose in the world. Moreover, given that there are both novels in verse and lyric-epic novels, the second definition is closer to the truth. Works in this genre tend to depict modernity, either directly or indirectly. In the second case, the novel may take place in an alternative universe or in the past, but its problems will still refer us to the world of the present.

It is impossible to talk about what a novel is without mentioning its forms. Since there are many different works of this genre, their classification was adopted depending on some specific features. The most common forms of the novel include the following:

Adventure novel. In it, the plot revolves around the adventures of heroes who find themselves in various specific situations.

Well-known epics fall into this category. In such works, the author, as a rule, refers to a specific era and seeks to depict the fate of a particular class of people.

Psychological novel. In it, the reflections and experiences of the main character (who, as a rule, is alone) come to the fore. An effective plot line may be practically absent.

Satirical novel. As the name suggests, this form of novel satirizes various social phenomena.

Realistic novel. Works of this variety are aimed at an objective reflection of the surrounding reality.

Fantastic novel. This also includes works in the fantasy genre. In novels of this form, the author creates his own world in which the action takes place. This could be some parallel reality or a distant mechanized future.

Journalistic novel. It is a work of journalism, created with the help and equipped with a plot.

So, the answers to the question of what a novel is can be extensive and varied, nevertheless, works of this genre are quite easy to distinguish from all other prose. As a rule, novels have a large length, and the characters in them develop throughout the plot. Many of them cover a wide range of problems that in one way or another relate to modern world. Therefore, when discussing what a novel is, one should remember that this genre is inseparable from the time in which its author lived and created. And then it becomes clear that the novel is an artistic reflection of reality.

Novel — literary genre, as a rule, prosaic, which involves a detailed narrative about the life and development of the personality of the main character (heroes) in a crisis, non-standard period of his life.

A novel is a work in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual in the process of its formation and development. According to Belinsky's definition, a novel is an "epic of private life" ("Oblomov" by Goncharov, "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev).

History of the name

The name “Roman” arose in the middle of the 12th century along with the genre of chivalric romance (Old French. romanz from Late Latin romanice "in the (popular) Romance language"), as opposed to historiography in Latin. Contrary to popular belief, this name from the very beginning did not refer to any composition in in native language (heroic songs or the lyrics of the troubadours were never called novels), but to one that could be contrasted with the Latin model, even if very distant: historiography, fable (“The Romance of Renard”), vision (“The Romance of the Rose”). However, in the XII-XIII centuries, if not later, the words roman And estoire(the latter also means “image”, “illustration”) are interchangeable. In reverse translation into Latin, the novel was called (liber) romanticus, from where to European languages and the adjective “romantic” was born, which until the end of the 18th century meant “inherent in novels,” “the same as in novels,” and only later the meaning, on the one hand, was simplified to “love,” but on the other hand, it gave rise to the name of romanticism as a literary movement .

The name “novel” was preserved when, in the 13th century, the performed poetic novel was replaced by a prose novel for reading (with full preservation of the knightly topic and plot), and for all subsequent transformations of the knightly novel, right up to the works of Ariosto and Edmund Spenser, which we we call them poems, but contemporaries considered them novels. It persists even later, in the 17th-18th centuries, when the “adventurous” novel is replaced by the “realistic” and “psychological” novel (which in itself problematizes the supposed gap in continuity).

However, in England the name of the genre is also changing: the “old” novels retain the name romance, and the name “new” novels from the middle of the 17th century was assigned novel(from Italian novella - “short story”). Dichotomy novel/romance means a lot for English-language criticism, but rather introduces additional uncertainty into their actual historical relations, which makes it clearer. Generally romance is considered rather a kind of structural-plot type of genre novel.

In Spain, on the contrary, all varieties of the novel are called novela, and what happened from the same romanice word romance from the very beginning belonged to the poetic genre, which was also destined Long story, - to romance.

Bishop of Yue late XVII century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, he first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose, which since then also began to be called novels.

The epic nature of the novel

The novel dominates among the epic genres of modern literature. Its epic nature lies in its focus on the universal scope of reality, which is presented through the prism of individual consciousness. The novel appears in an era when the value of an individual personality is realized, it becomes interesting in itself, and therefore can become the subject of depiction in art. If the characters of the epic were gods and heroes, endowed with abilities much greater than those of the average person, if the epic described the events of the national past, then the hero of the novel is an ordinary person, and every reader can put himself in his place. Equally obvious are the differences between the heroes of the new genre and the exceptional heroes of the chivalric romance, whose life was presented in the form of a chain extraordinary adventures knights errant.

Tracing the destinies of private people, far removed from the feat, the novel recreates through them a panorama of modernity; the action in the novel takes place “here” and “now,” and this is its second difference from the folk and heroic epic, where the action takes place in the absolute past, and from the chivalric romance, where the space-time structure belongs to the realm of the magical.

The third significant difference between the novel and previous epic genres lies in the author’s position: heroic epic, as we remember, reflected the impersonality of tribal consciousness; although we know the names of some of the “creators” of the chivalric romance, they still did not create their own plots, but drew them from the book tradition (ancient and Byzantine cycles) or from the same inexhaustible folk tradition (Breton cycle), that is, their authorship consisted of processing finished material with a relatively small degree of independence. On the contrary, a novel of modern times is unthinkable without an author; the author does not hide the fact that his heroes and their adventures are the work of him creative imagination, and does not hide his attitude to what is being described.

The novel is a genre that, from the moment of its appearance, openly absorbs any elements of the previous literary tradition, playing with these elements; a genre that reveals its literary nature. The first novels were parodies of popular genres medieval literature. The great French humanist Francois Rabelais in the novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1532-1553) parodies popular folk books, and Miguel Cervantes in Don Quixote (part I - 1605, part II - 1616) is a chivalric romance.

In terms of its goals and characteristics, the novel contains all the characteristic features of the epic form: the desire for an adequate form of depiction of life life content, the universality and breadth of coverage of the material, the presence of many plans, the subordination of the principle of transmitting life phenomena through an exclusively personal, subjective attitude towards them (as, for example, in lyrics) to the principle of plastic representation, when people and events appear in the work as if on their own, as living images of external reality. But all these tendencies reach their complete and complete expression only in epic poetry antiquity, forming the “classical form of epic” (Marx). In this sense, the novel is a product of the decomposition of the epic form, which, along with the death of ancient society, lost the soil for its flourishing. The novel strives for the same goals as the ancient epic, but can never achieve them, because in the conditions of bourgeois society, which form the basis for the development of the novel, the methods of achieving epic goals become so different from the ancient ones that the results are directly opposite to the intentions. The contradiction in the form of the novel lies precisely in the fact that the novel, as the epic of bourgeois society, is the epic of a society that destroys the possibilities of epic creativity. But this circumstance, as we will see, constitutes main reason The artistic disadvantages of the novel in comparison with the epic, at the same time, provide it with a number of advantages. The novel, as the decomposition of the epic, opens the way to its new flowering, new artistic possibilities, which Homeric poetry did not know.

The problem of the novel

In the study of the novel, there are two main problems associated with the relativity of its genre unity:

Genetic. Between historical varieties of the novel, only a dotted, barely discernible continuity can be established. Taking this circumstance into account, as well as on the basis of the normatively understood genre content, attempts have been made more than once to exclude the “traditional” type of novel (ancient, knightly and generally adventurous) from the concept of a novel. These are the concepts of Lukács (“bourgeois epic”) and Bakhtin (“dialogism”).
Typological. There is a tendency to consider the novel not historically, but as a staged phenomenon that naturally arises in the course of literary evolution, and to classify among it some major narrative forms in “medieval” (pre-modern) China, Japan, Persia, Georgia, etc.

Despite the exceptional prevalence of this genre, its boundaries are still not clear and defined enough. Along with works bearing this name, we find in the literature of recent centuries large narrative works called stories. Some writers give their great epic works the title of a poem (just recall Gogol, his “Dead Souls”).

All these great epic genres exist alongside the novel and differ from it, although their names, like those of the novel, are poorly defined. The problem, therefore, is to approach the works themselves, their distinctive features, and, based on their study, determine what a novel is, how it differs from other major narrative genres, and what its essence is. This kind of research has been repeatedly carried out by historians and literary theorists. Trying to determine the features of the novel as a genre, they, however, went into a scrupulous description of individual novels, their structure, their compositional originality; they sought an answer to the question in the plane of formal observations, based on purely morphological generalizations. They made their research static, missing the socio-historical perspective. A striking example of this kind of research can be the work of the “formal school,” in particular the work of V. B. Shklovsky.

A different kind of error occurs among those literary historians who proceeded from a completely correct methodological premise: the solution to the problem of the novel, like all other poetic forms, is possible only in a historical perspective. They gave, first of all, the history of the novel, hoping to capture its unity, its historical essence, in the succession of various branches of this genre. A clear example of this kind of research is the work of K. Tiander “Morphology of the Novel”. However, he was unable to theoretically master the mass of historical material, differentiate it and outline the correct perspective; his “morphology” of the novel boiled down to external history this genre. This is the fate of the overwhelming majority of studies of novels of this type.

IN special situation It turned out to be those researchers who combined the historicity of the study with the height of theoretical premises. Among the specialist literary critics, representatives of the old bourgeois literary criticism, there were, unfortunately, almost no such people. The greatest bourgeois dialectical philosophers, and above all Hegel, did much more for the theory of the novel. But the main conclusions of Hegelian aesthetics, in addition to the fact that they must be rearranged from the “head” to the “legs,” are still insufficient for constructing a theory of the novel. To resolve the problem of the novel, it is necessary first of all to raise the question of how and when, in what socio-historical conditions this genre arose, what and whose artistic and ideological needs it satisfied, what and whose other poetic genres he came to replace him.

Let's turn to one of the founders of Russian literary criticism- V.G. Belinsky, who wrote in the first half of the 19th century: “... now our literature has turned into a novel and a story (...) What books are most read and sold out? Novels and stories. (...) What books do all our writers write, called and uncalled (...)? Novels and stories. (...) what books expound human life, and the rules of morality, and philosophical systems, and, in a word, all sciences? In novels and stories."

The 19th century is called the “golden age of the Russian novel”: A. Pushkin and F. Dostoevsky, N. Gogol and I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoy and N. Leskov, A. Herzen and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N. Chernyshevsky and A. K. Tolstoy worked fruitfully in this large form of epic. Even A. Chekhov dreamed of writing a novel about love...

A novel, in contrast to a short story and a novella, can be called an “extensive” type of literature, since it requires a wide coverage of artistic material.

The novel is characterized by the following features:

branching plot, multiple storylines; often central characters novels have "their" storylines, the author tells their story in detail (the story of Oblomov, the story of Stolz, the story of Olga Ilyinskaya, the story of Agafya Matveena in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”);
diversity of characters (by age, social groups, personalities, types, views, etc.);
global themes and issues;
a large scope of artistic time (the action of L. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” fits into one and a half decades);
a well-developed historical background, correlation of the heroes’ destinies with the characteristics of the era, etc.

The end of the 19th century somewhat weakened the interest of writers in large epic forms, and small genres came to the fore - short stories and tales. But since the 20s of the twentieth century, the novel has again become relevant: A. Tolstoy writes “Walking in the Torment” and “Peter I”, A. Fadeev - “Destruction”, I. Babel - “Cavalry”, M. Sholokhov - “Quiet Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned", N. Ostrovsky - "Born of the Revolution" and "How the Steel Was Tempered", M. Bulgakov - "The White Guard" and "The Master and Margarita"…

There are many varieties (genres) of the novel: historical, fantastic, gothic (or horror novel), psychological, philosophical, social, novel of morals (or everyday life novel), utopian or dystopian novel, parable novel, anecdote novel, adventure (or adventure) novel, detective novel etc. TO special genre can be attributed ideological a novel in which main task The author’s goal is to convey to the reader a certain ideology, a system of views on what society should be like. The novels by N. Chernyshevsky “What to do?”, M. Gorky “Mother”, N. Ostrovsky “How the Steel Was Tempered”, M. Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned”, etc. can be considered ideological.

Historical the novel is interested in major, turning points historical events and determines the fate of a person in a particular era by the features of the depicted time;
fantastic the novel tells about fantastic events that go beyond the usual material world scientifically known by man;
psychological the novel tells about the characteristics and motives of human behavior in certain circumstances, about the manifestation of the internal properties and qualities of human nature, about the personal, individual characteristics of a person, often considering various psychological types of people;
philosophical the novel reveals the writer’s system of philosophical ideas about the world and man;
social the novel comprehends the laws of social organization, studies the influence of these laws on human destinies; depicts the state of individual social groups and explains it artistically;
novel of manners or everyday life-descriptive the novel depicts the everyday side of a person’s existence, the features of his daily life, reflects his habits, moral standards, perhaps some ethnographic details;
in the center adventurous a novel, of course, the adventures of the hero; at the same time, the characteristics of the characters, historical truth and historical details are not always interesting to the author and are often in the background, or even in the third place;
utopian novel depicts the wonderful future of a person or the ideal structure of a state, from the author’s point of view; dystopian novel on the contrary, it depicts the world and society as, in the author’s opinion, they should not be, but can become due to the fault of man.
The largest epic genre is epic novel, in which each of the above features is globally developed and developed by the writer; epic creates a wide canvas human existence. One epic is usually not enough human destiny, she is interested in the stories of entire families, dynasties in a long time context, against a broad historical background, making a person an important part of a vast and eternal world.

All these genres of the novel - except, perhaps, the Gothic or horror novel, which did not take root in Russia - are widely represented in Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Each era prefers certain genres of the novel. Thus, Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century gave preference to a realistic novel with socio-philosophical and everyday-writing content. The 20th century demanded diversity novel content, and all genres of the novel received powerful development at this time.