Features of the plot composition of writers' stories. What are elements of composition in literary criticism?

In addition to external connections, temporary and cause-and-effect, there are internal, emotional and semantic connections between the events depicted. They are

mainly constitute the sphere of plot composition. Thus, the juxtaposition of the chapters of “War and Peace” dedicated to the death of old Bezukhov and the merry name days in the Rostovs’ house, externally motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content. This compositional technique sets the reader in the mood of Tolstoy’s thoughts about the inseparability of life and death.

In many works, the composition of plot episodes becomes crucial. Such, for example, is the novel by T. Mann “The Magic Mountain”. Consistently, without any chronological rearrangements, capturing the course of Hans Castorp's life in a tuberculosis sanatorium, this novel at the same time contains a meaningful and complex system of comparisons between the depicted events, facts, and episodes. It is not for nothing that T. Mann advised people interested in his work to read “The Magic Mountain” twice: the first time - to understand the relationships of the characters, i.e. the plot; in the second - to delve into the internal logic of connections between chapters, that is, to understand the artistic meaning of the composition of the plot.

The composition of the plot is also a certain order of telling the reader about what happened. In works with a large volume of text, the sequence of plot episodes usually reveals the author's idea gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas that are truly artistic, each subsequent episode reveals to the reader something new for him - and so on until the ending, which is usually, as it were, a supporting moment in the composition of the plot. “The force of the blow (artistic) is at the end,” noted D. Furmanov (82, 4, 714). The role of the final effect in small one-act plays, short stories, fables, and ballads is even more important. Ideological meaning Such works are often discovered suddenly and only in the last lines of the text. This is how OTenry's short stories are structured: often their endings turn inside out what was said earlier.

Sometimes the writer seems to intrigue his readers: for some time he keeps them in the dark about the true essence of the events depicted. This compositional technique is called by default and the moment when I read Finally, together with the heroes, he learns about what happened earlier - recognition(the last term belongs to

lives by Aristotle). Let us recall the tragedy of Sophocles “Oedipus the King”, where neither the hero, nor the viewer and readers for a long time They do not realize that Oedipus himself is to blame for the murder of Laius. In modern times, such compositional techniques are used mainly in the picaresque and adventure genres, where, as V. Shklovsky put it, “the technique of mystery” is of paramount importance.

But realist writers sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. Pushkin’s story “The Blizzard” is based on default. Only at the very end does the reader learn that Maria Gavrilovna is married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin.

Silences about events can add greater tension to the depiction of action. So, reading “War and Peace” for the first time, for a long time, together with the Bolkonsky family, we believe that Prince Andrei died after the Battle of Austerlitz, and only at the moment of his appearance in Bald Mountains do we learn that this is not so. Such omissions are very characteristic of Dostoevsky. In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, the reader believes for some time that Fyodor Pavlovich was killed by his son Dmitry, and only Smerdyakov’s story puts an end to this misconception.

Chronological rearrangements of events become an important means of plot composition. Usually they (like omissions and recognitions) intrigue the reader and thereby make the action more entertaining. But sometimes (especially in realistic literature) rearrangements are dictated by the desire of the authors to switch readers from the external side of what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its deeper background. Thus, in Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time,” the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets inner world Main character. First, we learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych (“Bela”), then from the narrator-author, who gives a detailed portrait of the hero (“Maksim Maksimych”), and only after that Lermontov introduces the diary of Pechorin himself (the stories “Taman”, “Princess Mary", "Fatalist"). Thanks to the sequence of chapters chosen by the author, the reader’s attention is transferred from the adventures undertaken by Pechorin to the mystery of his character, which is “solved” from story to story.

For realistic literature of the 20th century. works with detailed backstories of the characters are typical,

given in independent plot episodes. In order to more fully discover the successive connections of eras and generations, in order to reveal the complex and difficult ways of forming human characters, writers often resort to a kind of “montage” of the past (sometimes very distant) and the present of the characters: the action is periodically transferred from one time to another. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened before) composition of the plot is characteristic of the works of G. Green and W. Faulkner. It is also found in some dramatic works. Thus, the heroes of Ibsen’s dramas often tell each other about long-standing events. In a number modern dramas what the characters remember is depicted directly: in stage episodes that interrupt the main line of action (“Death of a Salesman” by A. Miller).

Internal, emotional and semantic connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be more important than the plot connections themselves, cause and time. The composition of such works can be called active, or, using the term of filmmakers, “montage”. An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, and facts. It is typical for the works of L. Tolstoy and Chekhov, Brecht and Bulgakov. The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be characterized by Blok’s words from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life accessible to my vision in given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure" (32, 297).

The composition of the plot in the system of artistic means of epic and drama, therefore, has a very important place.

CHARACTERS' STATEMENTS

The most important aspect of the substantive depiction of epic and drama is the statements of the characters, that is, their dialogues and monologues. In epics and novels, stories and short stories, the speech of the heroes is very significant, and sometimes even most. In the dramatic genre of literature, it dominates unconditionally and absolutely.

Dialogues and monologues are expressively significant statements, as if emphasizing, demonstrating their “authorship”. Dialogue is invariably associated with mutual, two-way communication, in which the speaker takes into account the immediate reaction of the listener, and the main thing is that activity and passivity pass from one participant in communication to another. The most favorable for dialogue is the oral form of contact, its relaxed and non-hierarchical nature: the absence of social and spiritual distance between speakers.

Dialogue speech is characterized by the alternation of short statements by two (sometimes more) persons. A monologue, on the contrary, does not require anyone's immediate response and proceeds regardless of the reactions of the perceiver. This is speaking that is not interrupted by “someone else’s” speech. Monologues can be “solitary and”, taking place outside the direct contact of the speaker with anyone: they are pronounced (aloud or silently) alone or in an atmosphere of psychological isolation of the speaker from those present. But much more common are addressed monologues, designed to actively influence the consciousness of listeners. These are the speeches of speakers, lecturers, teachers before students 1.

In the early stages of formation and development verbal art(in myths, parables, fairy tales) the statements of the characters usually represented practically significant remarks: the depicted people (or animals) briefly informed each other about their intentions, expressed their desires or demands. Casually spoken dialogue was present in comedies and farces.

However, in leading

high genres

Pre-realistic literature was dominated by oratorical, declamatory, rhetorical-poetic speech of characters, lengthy, solemn, outwardly effective, mostly monologue.

These are the words Hecuba addresses in the Iliad to his son Hector, who briefly left the battlefield and came to his home:

Why do you, O my son, come, leaving a fierce battle?

It is true that the hated Achaeans are cruelly oppressing them,

Ratuja close to the walls? And your heart turned to us:

Do you want to raise your hands to the Olympian from the Trojan castle?

But wait, my Hector, I will take out the cup of wine

Give libations to Father Zeus and other eternal deities.

And Hector answers in even more detail why he does not dare to pour wine to Zeus “with an unwashed hand.”

Such conventionally declamatory, rhetorical, pathetic speech is especially characteristic of tragedies: from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller, Sumarkov, Ozerov. It was also characteristic of characters in a number of other genres of pre-realistic eras. As part of this speech, monological principles, as a rule, took precedence over dialogical ones: rhetoric and declamation were relegated to the background, or even negated the natural conversationality. Ordinary, unvarnished speech was used mainly in comedies and satires, as well as in works of a parody nature.

At the same time, the so-called monophony prevailed in literature: characters spoke in the speech manner required by the literary (primarily genre) tradition 1 .

The character's statement still to a small extent became his speech characteristic. The diversity of speech manners and styles in pre-realistic eras was captured only in a few outstanding works - in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Rabelais’s stories, Shakespeare's plays, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes. According to the observations of one of the famous translators, the novel “Don Quixote” is multilingual and polyphonic: “... there is the language of the peasants, and the language of the then “intelligentsia”, and the language of the clergy, and the language of the nobility, and student jargon, and even “thieves’ music” (68, 114).

Realistic creativity of the 19th-20th centuries. inherent

1 Note that in modern literary criticism, dialogical speech is often understood broadly, as any implementation of contact, so that it is given universality. In this case, monologue speech is considered as having secondary importance

and practically non-existent in its pure form. This kind of sharp and unconditional preference for dialogical speech occurs in the works of M. M. Bakhtin. 1 “The speech of the character,” writes D. S. Likhachev about

heteroglossia. Here, as never before, the socio-ideological and individual characteristics of the speech of characters who acquired their own “voices” began to be widely mastered. At the same time, the character’s inner world is revealed not only by the logical meaning of what is said, but also by the very manner, the very organization of speech.

He thinks: “I will be her savior. I will not tolerate the corrupter tempting a young heart with fire and sighs and praises; So that the despicable, poisonous worm sharpens the stem of the lily; So that the two-morning flower fades while still half-open.” All this meant, friends: I’m shooting with a friend.

These lines from “Eugene Onegin” perfectly characterize the structure of Lensky’s soul, who elevates his experiences to a romantic pedestal and is therefore prone to emphatically sublime, conventionally poetic speech, syntactically complicated and replete with metaphorical phrases. These features of the hero’s statement are especially striking thanks to the naturally free, worldly ingenuous, completely “unliterary” commentary of the narrator (“All this meant, friends: || I’m shooting with a friend”). And Lensky’s romantically effective monologue bears the stamp of irony.

Writers of the 19th-20th centuries. (and this is their greatest artistic achievement) with a hitherto unprecedented breadth they introduced relaxed colloquial speech, mainly dialogical, into their works. Lively conversation in its social diversity and wealth of individually expressive principles and aesthetic organization was reflected in “Eugene Onegin”, in the narrative works of Gogol, Nekrasov, Leskov, Melyshkov-Pechersky, in the dramaturgy of Griboedov, Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky.

The speech of the characters often conveys their unique psychological states; statements, in the words of G. O. Vinokur, are built on “clumps of conversational expression” (39, 304). “The talkativeness of the heart” (an expression from the novel “Poor People”) is not characteristic only of Dostoevsky’s heroes. This mental ability of a person has been mastered by many realist writers.

“To think “figuratively” and write like this, it is necessary that

The writer’s heroes each spoke in their own language, characteristic of their position... - said N. S. Leskov. - A person lives by words, and you need to know at what moments of psychological life which of us will have what words... I carefully and for many years listened to the pronunciation and pronunciation of Russian people at different levels of their social status. They all talk to me in my own wayhim, and not in a literary way" (82, 3, 221). This tradition was inherited by many Soviet writers: “in their own way, not in a literary way,” the heroes of Sholokhov and Zoshchenko, Shukshin and Belov speak.

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

Omen- hints that foreshadow further development of the plot.

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

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

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

Rising Action- a series of events that originates from a conflict. The action builds up and reaches its peak at the climax.

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

The climax is the result of a crisis. This is often the most interesting and significant moment in the work. The hero either breaks down or grits his teeth and prepares to go to the end.

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

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

Why is it important to know the basics of plotting?

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

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

Plausibility

Transitions from initiation to conflict to resolution must be believable. For example, you cannot send a lazy hero on a journey just because you want to. Any character must have a good reason to act one way or another.

If Ivanushka the Fool mounts a horse, let him drive strong emotion: love, fear, thirst for revenge, etc.

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

God ex machina

The denouement is the result of the characters' actions and nothing else. In ancient plays, all problems could be resolved by a deity lowered onto the stage on strings. Since then, the absurd ending, when all conflicts are eliminated with a wave of the wand of a sorcerer, angel or boss, is called “god ex machina.” What suited the ancients only irritates the moderns.

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

The integrity of a work of art is achieved through various means. Among these means, composition and plot play an important role.

Composition(from lat. componere - to compose, connect) - the construction of a work, the relationship of all its elements, creating a holistic picture of life and promoting expression ideological content. The composition distinguishes between external elements - division into parts, chapters, and internal elements - grouping and arrangement of images. When creating a work, the writer carefully considers the composition, place and relationship of images and other elements, trying to give the material the greatest ideological and artistic expressiveness. The composition can be simple or complex. Thus, A. Chekhov’s story “Ionych” has a simple composition. It consists of five small chapters (external elements) and a simple internal system of images. In the center of the image is Dmitry Startsev, who is opposed by a group of images of local inhabitants, the Turkins. The composition of L. Tolstoy’s epic novel “War and Peace” looks completely different. It consists of four parts, each part is divided into many chapters, significant place are occupied by the author's philosophical reflections. These are the external elements of the composition. The grouping and arrangement of images-characters, of which there are over 550, is very complex. The outstanding skill of the writer is manifested in the fact that, despite the complexity of the material, it is arranged in the most expedient manner and is subordinated to the disclosure of the main idea: the people are the decisive force of history.

In scientific literature the terms are sometimes used architectonics, structure as synonyms of the word composition.

Plot(from the French sujet - subject) - a system of events in a work of art that reveals the characters of the characters and contributes to the most complete expression of the ideological content. The system of events is a unity developing over time, and the driving force of the plot is conflict. There are different conflicts: social, love, psychological, everyday, military and others. The hero, as a rule, comes into conflict with the social environment, with other people, with himself. There are usually several conflicts in a work. In L. Chekhov's story “Ionych” the hero’s conflict with the environment is combined with a love one. A striking example psychological conflict- “Hamlet” by Shakespeare. The most common type of conflict is social. To denote a social conflict, literary scholars often use the term conflict, and a love conflict - intrigue.

The plot consists of a number of elements: exposition, beginning, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue.

Exposition - initial information about the actors that motivate their behavior in the context of the conflict that has arisen. In the story “Ionych” this is the arrival of Startsev, a description of the “most educated” Turkin family in the city.

Tie - an event that initiates the development of an action, a conflict. In the story “Ionych” Startsev meets the Turkin family.

After the beginning, the development of the action begins, highest point of which is the climax of L. Chekhov's story - Startsev's declaration of love, Katya's refusal.

Denouement- an event that resolves a conflict. In the story “Ionych” there is a breakdown in Startsev’s relationship with the Turkins.

Epilogue - information about the events that followed after the denouement. Sometimes. The author himself calls the final part of the story an epilogue. In L. Chekhov's story there is information about the fate of the heroes, which can be attributed to the epilogue.

In a large work of art, as a rule, there is a lot storylines and each of them. developing, intertwined with others. Individual elements plot may be common. Defining a classic pattern can be difficult.

The movement of the plot in a work of art occurs simultaneously in time and space. To denote the relationship between temporal and spatial relations, M. Bakhtin proposed the term chronotope. Artistic time is not a direct reflection of real time, but arises through the montage of certain ideas about real time. Real time moves irreversibly and only in one direction - from the past to the future, but artistic time can slow down, stop and move in the opposite direction. Returning to the image of the past is called retrospection. Artistic time is a complex interweaving of the times of the narrator and heroes, and often a complex layering of times from different historical eras (“The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov). It can be closed, closed in on itself, and open, included in the flow of historical time. An example of the first is “Ionych” by L. Chekhov, the second is “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov.

Parallel to the term plot there is a term plot, which are usually used as synonyms. Meanwhile, some theorists consider them inadequate, insisting on their independent meaning. The plot, in their opinion, is a system of events in a cause-time sequence, and the plot is a system of events in the author’s presentation. Thus, the plot of I. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” begins with a description of the life of an adult hero living in St. Petersburg with his servant Zakhar in a house on Gorokhovaya Street. The plot involves a presentation of the events of Oblomov’s life. starting from childhood (chapter “Oblomov’s Dream”).

We define a plot as a system, a chain of events. In many cases, the writer, in addition to telling stories about events, introduces descriptions of nature, everyday pictures, lyrical digressions, reflections, geographical or historical information. They are usually called extra-plot elements.

It should be noted that there are different principles for organizing the plot. Sometimes events develop sequentially, in chronological order, sometimes with retrospective digressions, and times overlap. The technique of framing a plot within a plot is quite common. A striking example is “The Fate of Man” by Sholokhov. In it, the author talks about his meeting with a driver at the crossing of a flooded river. While waiting for the ferry, Sokolov spoke about his difficult life, about being in German captivity, the loss of family. At the end, the author said goodbye to this man and thought about his fate. The main, main story of Andrei Sokolov is taken within the framework of the author's story. This technique is called framing.

The plot and composition are very unique lyrical works. The author depicts in them not events, but thoughts and experiences. The unity and integrity of a lyrical work is ensured by the main lyrical motif, the bearer of which is the lyrical hero. The composition of the poem is subordinated to the disclosure of thoughts and feelings. “The lyrical development of a theme,” writes the famous literary theorist B. Tomashevsky, “reminiscent of the dialectics of theoretical reasoning, with the difference that in reasoning we have a logically justified introduction of new motives... and in lyric poetry the introduction of motives is justified by the emotional development of the theme.” Typical, in his opinion, is the three-part structure of lyrical poems, when the first part gives the theme, the second develops it through lateral motives, and the third provides an emotional conclusion. An example is A. Pushkin’s poem “To Chaadaev.”

Part 1 of Love, Hope, Quiet Glory

The deception did not endure us for long.

Part 2 We wait with longing hope

Minutes of holy freedom...

Part 3 Comrade, believe! She will rise

Star of captivating happiness...

The lyrical development of a theme is of two types: deductive - from the general to the particular and inductive - from the particular to the general. The first is in the above poem by A. Pushkin, the second in the poem by K. Simonov “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region...”.

Some lyrical works have a plot: “The Railway” by I. Nekrasov, ballads, songs. They are called story lyrics.

Visual details serve to reproduce concrete sensory details of the characters’ world, created by the creative imagination of the artist and directly embodying the ideological content of the work. The term “visual details” is not recognized by all theorists (the terms “thematic” or “objective” details are also used), but everyone agrees that the artist recreates details appearance and the speech of the heroes, their inner world, the environment in order to express their thoughts. However, accepting this position, one must not interpret it too straightforwardly and think that every detail (eye color, gestures, clothing, description of the area, etc.) is directly related to the author’s goal setting and has a very definite, unambiguous meaning. If this were so, the work would lose its artistic specificity and would become tendentiously illustrative.

Visual details help ensure that the world of the characters appears before the reader’s inner gaze in all its fullness of life, in sounds, colors, volumes, smells, in spatial and temporal extent. Unable to convey all the details of the picture being drawn, the writer reproduces only some of them, trying to give impetus to the reader’s imagination and force him to fill in the missing features using his own imagination. Without “seeing” or imagining “living” characters, the reader will not be able to empathize with them, and his aesthetic perception of the work will be incomplete.

Fine details allow the artist to plastically, visibly recreate the lives of the characters and reveal their characters through individual details. At the same time, they convey the author’s evaluative attitude to the depicted reality and create the emotional atmosphere of the narrative. Thus, re-reading the crowd scenes in the story “Taras Bulba”, we can be convinced that the seemingly scattered remarks and statements of the Cossacks help us “hear” the polyphonic crowd of Cossacks, and various portrait and everyday details help us visually imagine it. At the same time, the heroic disposition is gradually becoming clearer folk characters, which developed in the conditions of wild freemen and poeticized by Gogol. At the same time, many details are comical, cause a smile, and create a humorous tone of the story (especially in scenes of peaceful life). Fine details here, as in most works, perform pictorial, characterizing and expressive functions.

In drama, visual details are conveyed not by verbal, but by other means (there is no description of the external appearance of the characters, their actions, or the setting, because there are actors on stage and there is scenery). The speech characteristics of the characters acquire special significance.

In lyric poetry, visual details are subordinated to the task of recreating the experience in its development, movement, and inconsistency. Here they serve as signs of the event that caused the experience, but they mainly serve as a psychological characteristic of the lyrical hero. At the same time, their expressive role is also preserved; the experience is conveyed as sublimely romantic, heroic, tragic, or in lowered, for example, ironic tones.

The plot also belongs to the sphere of pictorial detail, but stands out for its dynamic character. In epic and dramatic works, these are the actions of the characters and the events depicted. The actions of the characters that make up the plot are varied - this various kinds actions, statements, experiences and thoughts of the characters. The plot most directly and effectively reveals the character of the character, the protagonist. However, it is important to understand that the actions of the characters also reveal the author's understanding typical character and author's assessment. By forcing the hero to act in one way or another, the artist evokes in the reader a certain evaluative attitude not only towards the hero, but towards the whole type of people whom he represents. Thus, by forcing his fictional hero to kill a friend in a duel in the name of secular prejudices, Pushkin evokes in the reader a feeling of condemnation and makes him think about the inconsistency of Onegin, about the contradictions of his character. This is the expressive role of the plot.

The plot moves through the emergence, development, and resolution of various conflicts between the characters of the work. Conflicts can be of a private nature (Onegin’s quarrel with Lensky), or they can be a moment, part of socio-historical conflicts that arose in historical reality itself (war, revolution, social movement). By depicting plot conflicts, the writer draws the greatest attention to the problems of the work. But it would be wrong to identify these concepts on the basis of this (there is a tendency towards such identification in Abramovich’s textbook, section 2, chapter 2). The problematic is the leading side of the ideological content, and the plot conflict is an element of the form. It is equally wrong to equate plot with content (as is common in spoken language). Therefore, the terminology of Timofeev, who proposed calling the plot in conjunction with all other details of the life depicted “immediate content” (Fundamentals of the Theory of Literature, Part 2, Chapters 1, 2, 3), was not recognized.

The question of the plot in the lyrics is resolved in different ways. There is no doubt, however, that this term can only be applied to lyrics with great reservations, denoting with it the outline of those events that “shine through” the hero’s lyrical experience and motivate him. Sometimes this term denotes the very movement of lyrical experience.

The composition of visual details, including plot details, is their location in the text. Using antitheses, repetitions, parallelisms, changing the pace and chronological sequence of events in the narrative, establishing chronicle and causal-temporal connections between events, the artist achieves a relationship that expands and deepens their meaning. All textbooks quite fully define the compositional techniques of narration, the introduction of the narrator, framing, introductory episodes, the main points in the development of the action, and various motivations for plot episodes. Discrepancy between the order story events and the order of narration about them in the work makes us talk about such an expressive means as plot. It should be taken into account that another terminology is also common, when the actual compositional technique of rearranging events is called the plot (Abramovich, Kozhinov, etc.).

To master the material in this section, we recommend that you independently analyze the visual details, plot and their composition in any epic or dramatic work. It is necessary to pay attention to how the development of the action serves the development of artistic thought - the introduction of new themes, the deepening of problematic motives, the gradual revelation of the characters’ characters and the author’s attitude towards them. Each new plot scene or description is prepared and motivated by the entire previous image, but does not repeat it, but develops, complements and deepens it. These components of form are most directly related to artistic content and depend on it. Therefore, they are unique, just like the content of each work.

In view of this, the student needs to get acquainted with those theories that ignore the close connection between the plot and visual sphere of form and content. This is primarily the so-called comparative theory, which was based on a comparative historical study of the literatures of the world, but misinterpreted the results of such a study. Comparativists paid main attention to the influence of literatures on each other. But they did not take into account that influence is due to similarity or difference public relations in the respective countries, but proceeded from immanent, i.e., internal, seemingly completely autonomous laws of the development of literature. Therefore, comparativists wrote about “stable motives”, about “bequeathed images” of literature, as well as about “ wandering stories”, without distinguishing between the plot and its scheme. The characteristics of this theory are also in the textbook ed. G.N. Pospelov and G.L. Abramovich.

QUESTIONS FOR SELF-PREPARATION (m. 2)

1. A literary work as an integral unity.

2. The theme of the work of art and its features.

3. The idea of ​​a work of art and its features.

4. Composition of a work of art. External and internal elements.

5. Plot literary work. The concept of conflict. Plot elements. Extra-plot elements. Plot and plot.

6. What is the role of the plot in revealing the ideological content of the work?

7. What is plot composition? What is the difference between narration and description? What are extra-plot episodes and lyrical digressions?

8. What is the function of the landscape, everyday environment, portrait and speech characteristics of the character in the work?

9. Features of the plot of lyrical works.

10. Spatio-temporal organization of the work. The concept of chronotope.

LITERATURE

Corman B.O. Studying the text of a work of art. - M., 1972.

Abramovich G.L. Introduction to literary criticism. Edition 6. - M., 1975.

Introduction to literary criticism / Ed. L.V. Chernets/. M., 2000. - P. 11 -20,

209-219, 228-239, 245-251.

Galich O. ta in. Theory of literature. K., 2001. -S. 83-115.

Getmanets M.F. Such a dictionary of literary terms. - Kharkiv, 2003.

MODULE THREE

LANGUAGE OF FICTION

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The science of literature and its components

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All topics in this section:

Features of the subject of literature
1. Living integrity. A scientist splits a subject, studies a person in parts: an anatomist - the structure of the body, a psychologist - mental activity, etc. In literature, man appears alive and whole.

Features of the artistic image
1. Concreteness - a reflection of the individual qualities of objects and phenomena. Specificity makes the image recognizable and different from others. In the image of a person, this is appearance, originality of speech

Tools for creating a character image
1. Portrait - an image of the hero’s appearance. As noted, this is one of the techniques for character individualization. Through a portrait, the writer often reveals the inner world of the hero, especially

Literary genera and genres
We should talk about the difference three kinds literature on content, namely, on the aspect of cognition and reproduction of life. Because of this, the general principles of creative typification of life in each genus manifest

Genres of epic works
Myth (from the gr. mythos - word, speech) is one of the most ancient types of folklore, fantastic story, explaining in figurative form the phenomena of the surrounding world.

Legend
Genres of lyrical works Song - small lyric poem

, intended for singing. The song genre has its roots in ancient times. There are folklore and literary songs.
Genres of dramatic works

Tragedy (from gr. Tragos - goat and ode - song) is one of the types of drama, which is based on the irreconcilable conflict of an unusual personality with insurmountable external circumstances. About
Genre and style of literary work

The question of the genre of a work is one of the most difficult in the course; it is covered differently in textbooks, since in modern science there is no unity in the understanding of this category. Meanwhile, this is one of the
LITERARY WORK

Fiction exists in the form of literary works. The basic properties of literature, which were discussed in the first section, are manifested in each individual work. Artist
Theme Features

1. Socio-historical conditioning. The writer does not invent themes, but takes them from life itself, or rather, life itself suggests themes to him. Thus, in the 19th century, the topic of cre
Features of the idea

1. We said that the idea is the main idea of ​​the work. This definition is correct, but it needs clarification. It must be borne in mind that the idea in a work of art is expressed very differently.
Artistic speech

Philologists distinguish between language and speech. Language is a stock of words and grammatical principles of their combination, which change historically. Speech is language in action, it is a statement, an expression of thoughts and feelings in a
FEATURES OF LITERARY SPEECH 1. Imagery. Word in artistic speech

contains not only meaning, but in combination with other words will create an image of an object or phenomenon. The generally accepted meaning of the subject acquired
Lexical resources of the literary language As noted, the basis of the language fiction constitutes a literary language. Literary language

has rich lexical resources that allow the writer to express the subtlest meanings
The most common trope, based on the principle of similarity, less often - contrast of phenomena; often used in everyday speech. The art of words to revitalize style and activate perception using

Types of metaphor
Personification-likening inanimate object living creature.

A golden cloud spent the night on the chest of a giant cliff (M. Lermontov)
Types of metonymy

1) Replacing the title of a work with the name of its author. Read Pushkin, study Belinsky.
2) Replacing the name of people with the name of a country, city, or specific place. Ukraine

Main types of figures
1. Repetition - repetition of a word or group of words in order to give them a special meaning. I love you, life, which in itself is not new. I love Rhythm of artistic speech Tutorials guides the student well in

complex issues
rhythmic orderliness of artistic speech - prosaic and poetic. As in

previous sections
course, it is important to consider the general

Features of poetic speech
1. Particular emotional expressiveness. Poetic speech is effective in its essence. Poems are created in a state of emotional excitement and convey emotional excitement. L. Timofeev in his book “Essays on those

VERSE SYSTEMS
In world poetry, there are four systems of versification: metric, tonic, syllabic and syllabic-tonic. They differ in the way they create rhythm within a line, and these methods depend on Free verse At the end of the 19th century, the so-called free verse or free verse (from the French Vers - verse, libre - free) was established in Russian poetry, in which there is no internal symmetry of lines, as in syllabic-tonic si

REGULARITIES OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LITERATURE
This topic is very extensive. But in this section we will limit ourselves to only the most necessary.

Literary development
usually referred to as the "literary process". So, the literary process is

XIX-XX centuries.
In the 19th century (especially in its first third) the development of literature went under the sign of romanticism, which opposed classicist and enlightenment rationalism. Originally Romanticism

THEORETICAL SCHOOLS AND DIRECTIONS
We find the origins of phenomenology in the works of the early 20th century philosopher Edmund Husserl. This direction tries to circumvent the problem of separation of subject and object, consciousness and the surrounding world by focusing

Structuralism
Reader-centered literary criticism is somewhat akin to structuralism, which also focuses on questions of meaning-making. But structuralism originated as an opposition to phenomenology

Poststructuralism
When structuralism became a movement or “school,” structuralist theorists distanced themselves from it. It became clear that the work of the supposed structuralists did not correspond to the idea of ​​structuralism as an attempt

Deconstructivism
The term "poststructuralism" refers to wide range theoretical discourses containing criticism of the concepts of objective knowledge and a subject capable of self-knowledge. Thus, owls

Feminist theory
Since feminism considers it its duty to destroy the opposition “man - woman” and other oppositions associated with it throughout its existence Western culture, then this direction is

Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic theory has influenced literary studies both as a mode of interpretation and as a theory of language, identity, and the subject. On the one hand, psychoanalysis, along with Marxism, has become the most influential

Marxism
Unlike the United States, poststructuralism came to Britain not through the work of Derrida and then Lacan and Foucault, but through the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser. Taken into con

New historicism/cultural materialism
In Britain and the United States, the 1980s and 1990s were marked by the emergence of powerful, theoretically informed historical criticism. On the one hand, a British cultural swear word appeared

Postcolonial theory
A similar set of issues is addressed by postcolonial theory, which is an attempt to understand the problems generated by European colonial policy and the subsequent period. Pos

Minority theory
One of the policy changes that has occurred within academic institutions in the United States has been the rise in the study of ethnic minority literature. Major efforts and

TEXTOLOGY
Textual criticism (from Latin textus - fabric, plexus; gr. logos - word, concept) is a philological discipline that studies handwritten and printed texts of artistic, literary-critical, public

Plot and composition
ANTITHESIS - opposition of characters, events, actions, words. Can be used at the level of details, particulars (“Black evening, White snow" - A. Blok), and can serve with

Language of fiction
ALLEGORY is an allegory, a type of metaphor. The allegory captures a conventional image: in fables the fox is cunning, the donkey is stupidity, etc. Allegory is also used in fairy tales, parables, and satire.

Basics of poetry
ACROSTIC - a poem in which the initial letters of each verse form a word or phrase vertically: An angel lay down at the edge of the sky, bending down,

Literary process
AVANT-GARDISM is the general name for a number of movements in the art of the 20th century, which are united by a rejection of the traditions of their predecessors, primarily the realists. The principles of avant-gardeism as a literary and artistic

General literary concepts and terms
AUTONIM - the real name of the author writing under a pseudonym. Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov (pseudonym Maxim Gorky).

AUTHOR – 1. Writer, poet – creator of a literary work; 2. Narrative
BASIC RESEARCH ON THE THEORY OF LITERATURE

Abramovich G. L Introduction to literary criticism. M, 1975. Aristotle. Rhetoric // Aristotle and ancient literature. M., 1978. 3. Arnheim R. Language, image and concrete poetry

A literary work represents a holistic picture of life and recreates some experience. The integrity of a literary work is determined by the specific content revealed in it.

E. in the appropriate system of means and methods of expression. The image, genre, rhythm, vocabulary, plot, composition are meaningful and illuminated by the artist’s ideals.

In a work of art, content and form are inseparable. The unity of content and form is dynamic, moving, because art is a living process of reflecting objective reality. Time gives birth to new art forms. As I wrote

V. Mayakovsky, “...novelty of material and technique is mandatory for every poetic work”94. New rhythms of time demanded new forms from the poet.

Each literary work is a unique, special artistic world with its own, unique content and with a form expressing this content. Violation of the integrity of a work leads to a decrease or destruction of its artistry. The criterion of artistry is the harmonious unity of the content and form of the work. A literary work is the aesthetic unity of all aspects of its form, serving to embody artistic content.

The artistic embodiment of a holistic picture of life in all its complexity and inconsistency, which manifests itself in events, relationships, circumstances, thoughts and feelings of characters, is carried out by very different means.

The creative techniques of each artist are unique, but there are common means arising from the characteristics of literature. This, to use Gorky's term, is the primary element of literature - the language with the help of which verbal images. This is a depiction of life in its processes, movement, which highlights the plot, in which human characters and social conflicts are revealed. This is a composition, that is, the construction of a literary work, because in order to realize the ideological and artistic concept, the writer has to resort to various techniques. And the last thing is genre features, with which the embodiment of the artist’s creative concept is always associated.

The concept of artistry, like the definition of artistic, serves to indicate the specifics of art. The basis of the specificity of art is its aesthetic nature. Artistry is the highest cultural form of aesthetic attitude towards the world, for “the aesthetic fully realizes itself only in art”95.

In a work of art, Hegel noted, “the spiritual value possessed by a certain event, individual character, action... is purer and more transparent than is possible in everyday non-artistic reality”96.

A fact of life, becoming a more artistic element! prose, is transformed into a work, participates in the construction of a plot, which is, according to V. Shklovsky’s definition, “a study of reality”97, and according to E. Dobin’s formula - “a concept of reality”98.

From the south? t (French suj?t - subject, content) is a system of events that makes up the content of the action of a literary work; in a broader sense, it is the story of a character shown in a specific system of events.

The understanding of plot as the course of events arose in the 19th century.

V. What then scientists, in particular A. Veselovsky, considered as a plot, representatives of modern literary criticism consider as a plot (Latin fabula - legend, fable); They call an artistically processed plot a plot. “The set of events in a mutual internal connection... let's call it a plot. The artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot,” noted B. Tomashevsky. He proposed the following distinction: the plot is “what actually happened”, the plot is “how the reader found out about it”99.

A textbook example of the discrepancy between plot and plot is Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time.” If we adhere to the plot sequence, then the stories in the novel should have been arranged in the following order: “Taman”, “Princess Mary”, “Bela”, “Fatalist”, “Maksim Maksimych”. But M. Lermontov distributed the events in the novel in a different sequence, following the path of deepening the character of the hero of his time, because he set himself the task of “revealing the history of the human soul.”

In the textbook “Introduction to Literary Studies,” edited by G. Pospelov, the sequence of presentation of events in the text of a work (what V. Shklovsky called “plot”) is proposed to be called “plot composition,” and the term “plot” retains the meaning dating back to the 19th century . L. Timofeev believes that practically there is no need for the term “plot” and refuses it, and interprets the plot as one of the forms of composition100. As we see, in literary criticism XX

V. the problem of the plot remained largely debatable.

A plot in prose is a system of events, changes in situations, external or internal changes in the state of the characters. Narration in a prose work is a story about events, in a poetic work it is a sequence of the author’s emotional statement.

Let’s compare M. Lermontov’s works of different genres: the poem “Don’t cry, don’t cry, my child...” and the story “Bela” from the novel “A Hero of Our Time.”

The first of them is a story about the events in the life of a girl whom a young man who came from a distant, alien land fell in love with out of boredom, seeking glory and war, who valued affection dearly, but he will not appreciate your tears! The plot as a system of events or actions of heroes is absent here. The events seem to be outside the scope of the poem. In the center is a reaction to an earlier event: consolation of the saddened mountain woman, a feeling of compassion for her. This is how the dramatic situation is restored: the story of love and separation of two people.

The plot of the story “Bela” is a story about the tragedy of an abandoned mountain woman, the story of her death. Events here are of dominant importance. Through their dynamics, Pechorin’s character is revealed and assessed. And the main conflict, the cause of which was Pechorin’s internal duality, was expressed in his actions. He failed to appreciate Bela’s love, only for a moment he believed that her feelings would fill the void in his soul. The motive of sympathy, compassion for Bela is present here too, but only in the intonation of the narrator - Maxim Maksimych.

The events that make up the plot are with each other or in a temporary connection when they follow one another, as in Homer’s Odyssey, in “ Ordinary history“I. Goncharov, or in a cause-and-effect relationship, as in F. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment.” As a result, there are two types of plots - chronicle plots and concentric plots, or, what is also called, plots of a single action.

Aristotle spoke about these two types of plots. Each of them has special artistic possibilities. Chronicle stories recreate reality in all its diverse manifestations and are more often used in epic works. They allow the writer to talk in more detail about the formation of the human personality (M. Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”, N. Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”), they allow them to depict wide layers of life (“Journey from Petersburg to Moscow” by A. Radishchev, “The Artamonov Case” by M. Gorky). In them big role temporary connections play. Concentric plots explore the cause-and-effect relationships of events that occur in the lives of the heroes, as in Boccaccio’s “Decameron” and in the novels by I. Ilf and E. Petrov about Ostap Bender.

Concentric and chronic principles can be correlated with each other. This creates multilinear plots (“Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “At the Lower Depths” by M. Gorky).

There is no doubt that the plot reflects reality, figuratively reveals life’s conflicts and expresses the writer’s assessment of them.

The plot cannot be identified with the content of the work, since it may also contain extra-plot elements, which will be discussed below. The plot mainly consists of the actions of the characters. Moreover, they can be saturated with external dynamics, when many events occur in the lives of the heroes, rapidly changing, leading to sharp shifts in their destinies (we see this in fairy tales, in the tragedies of W. Shakespeare, in the works of A. Dumas, F. Dostoevsky, M. Sholokhov, A. Fadeev). But writers often turn to internal action when they show profound changes in the lives of their characters not as a result of their decisive actions and rapid changes of events, but as a result of their comprehension of complex human relationships and reflection on a contradictory life. In the plots of such works, much fewer events occur, the characters are less active, more inclined to introspection (recourse to internal action is typical for the plays of A. Chekhov, the stories of V. Likhonosov and Yu. Kazakov, for the novel by M. Proust “In Search of Lost Time” and etc.).

The plot of a work of art contains one degree or another of generalization. Aristotle also noted that “the task of the poet is to speak not about what actually happened, but about what could happen, therefore, about what is possible by probability or by necessity”101.

The plot of the work includes not only events from the lives of the characters, but also events from the spiritual life of the author. Thus, deviations in “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin and in “Dead Souls” by N. Gogol are deviations from the plot, and not from the plot.

The fact that the plot acts as a system of events in works is due to the fact that most works explore important social conflicts. M. Gorky spoke about the role of plot: “A writer must understand that he not only writes with a pen, but also draws with words and draws not like a master of painting, depicting a person motionless, but tries to depict people in continuous movement, in action, in endless collisions among themselves, in the struggle of classes, groups, units”102. The disclosure of the conflict in the plot (in its development and resolution) has great importance. And the most important function of the plot is to reveal life’s contradictions, that is, conflicts.

Conflict (Latin sopShsShe - collision) in literature is a clash between characters, or between characters and the environment, a hero and fate, as well as a contradiction within the consciousness of a character or the subject of a lyrical statement3.

The theory of conflict (collision) was first developed by Hegel. Subsequently, this issue was addressed by B. Shaw, L. Vygotsky, M. Bakhtin, M. Epstein and others.

The entire dynamics of the content of a literary work is based on artistic conflicts, which are a reflection of the conflicts of reality. , ^

In a literary work, in its artistic structure The ideological and aesthetic embodiment is given to the social, philosophical, and moral debates waged by the heroes of these works, and a multi-level system is formed artistic conflicts, which expresses the author’s ideological and aesthetic concept. Plot conflicts and ways of their implementation are very diverse and determined by historical and social reasons. It is in collisions that characters reveal their true properties. Because of this, the analysis of the plot cannot be separated from the analysis of the character’s character, which cannot be revealed outside of conflicts.

The plot of A. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryona’s Dvor” consists of episodes from the eventless life of the elderly peasant woman Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, in which there were few joys: hard work, the difficulties of collective farm life, war, personal grief and, most importantly, loneliness, spiritual loneliness, because those around her (even close people) considered Matryona a “holy fool” because of her disdain for property: ... and she did not pursue the acquisition of goods; and not careful; and she didn’t even keep a pig, for some reason she didn’t like to feed it; and, stupid, helped strangers for free.

The characterization of the selfless Matryona is dominated by the words: “wasn’t,” “didn’t have,” “didn’t pursue.” She had a different value system: she preferred to “give” everything to people. The story is based on the contrast of the selfless Matryona with the “money-grubbers” (Thaddeus, adopted daughter Cyrus with her husband, etc.). Conflict allows us to comprehend two philosophies of life. From the author’s point of view, the insatiable thirst for property turns out to be a national disaster, a violation of moral ideals, and a loss of spiritual values. And there is one more opposition in the story: the meager life of a person and his existence, which consists of inescapable suffering, courageous “enduring”, quiet resistance to everything that prevents a person from remaining human. The original title of the story was “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man.” Matryona, in her deepest essence, continues the type of righteous man who appeared in the works of N. Leskov (her closeness to the hero of the story “Odnodum” is especially acutely felt).

And the character of Pushkin’s hero is revealed in the plot. The severity of the conflict, the purposefulness and swiftness of the actions of the hero of “The Queen of Spades” Hermann are determined by his character and will. There is no continuous, progressive development of action in the story, although the character central character and plot are closely related. The past is involved in the present, the present is seen and assessed from the past. The nature of the movement of plot time is subject to the will of the author, who freely handles it and breaks its consistent flow.

The discontinuity of the epic plot is born of the need to comprehend the circumstances and characters motivating the development of the action. Thus, description, open author’s assessments invade, the connections between the author and the heroes change (either he is omniscient and omniscient, then he is only an observer, “accompanying” his heroes, then he simply refuses to comment on some events, then he is extremely objective when talking about his characters). In Pushkin's story there is the cohesion of everything with everything, the diversity and unity of a complex life process.

The artist cannot help but focus on conflicts that are important for his time, for the people. Thus, Gogol in his comedy “The Inspector General” showed not only the conflict between officials and the imaginary auditor Khlestakov, but also the conflict between officials and townspeople who were completely dependent on them - bribe-takers and embezzlers.

Conflict is the most important content category. The choice of conflicts and their arrangement into a system determine the uniqueness of the writer’s position. Through the study of conflicts, one can come to an understanding of the motives behind the words and actions of characters and identify the originality of author's intention, the moral position of the writer.

Using V. Belinsky’s term “pathos of sociality,” we can say that in many works conflicts are depicted as a product of specific historical situations. We encounter this in Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov”, in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, which tell about the contradictions between different classes and groups. These are common conflicts. They can be refracted in private conflicts, since historical and social upheavals pass through the fate of each individual person, for example Pechorin, the Karamazov brothers, Rudin, Grigory Melekhov, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

Conflicts can be not only external, but also internal, psychological in nature. Let us remember the spiritual struggle of Arbenin (M. Lermontov “Masquerade”), Oblomov (A. Goncharov “Oblomov”), dissatisfaction with himself in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

Very often in works, personal and social conflicts are closely interconnected (A. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”; M. Lermontov “Masquerade”; A. Ostrovsky “The Thunderstorm”).

Connections of events in the plot (cause-and-effect and chronicle) and the sequence of the story about these events or their stage presentation in dramatic works - different aspects compositions.

Chatsky’s conflict with Famusov’s Moscow reflected the struggle of two antagonistic social forces: advanced nobles and serf owners. Griboyedov reflected the internal contradictions in Russian society of the first quarter of the XIX V. The problems of the comedy “Woe from Wit” are connected with the author’s thoughts about the future of Russia, in particular, about the problems civil service, the need to educate and educate citizens.

“Woe from Wit” by Griboedov is a comedy in which the domestic and social planes are intertwined. Both conflicts were realized in it - public (external) and personal (internal, psychological). They culminate in Act III, in which Sophia becomes the culprit of gossip about Chatsky’s madness. A conversation with Repetilov (phenomena 4-7 of Act IV) opens Chatsky’s eyes to what happened during his absence in Moscow.

Features of the development of the plot lines Chatsky - Famusov (Famusov society), Chatsky - Sophia contribute to a deeper revelation of the character of Chatsky, who, as the plot develops, turns into a passionate denouncer of the existing order. The denouement of personal intrigue occurs in scenes 13-14 of Act IV. There is no formally expressed outcome of the social conflict in the play; it remains outside the boundaries of the actual stage action. Chatsky is forced to flee the capital - Griboyedov seems to anticipate the political defeat of the Decembrists in 1825. Famus Society is not going to tolerate “freethinkers”, “Jacobins”.

The genre specificity of “Woe from Wit” is complex and multifaceted - the text of the social comedy contains elements of noble satire (Chatsky’s monologue “Who are the judges?”), civil elegy (Chatsky’s monologues are in direct correlation with the problems of Pushkin’s “Village” with its denunciation of serfdom) , epigrams of the 18th century, fables, vaudeville. It also contains elements classic style: the traditional number of acts - there are five of them, adherence to the rule of “three unities” - time, place, action, the use of “speaking” surnames, traditional roles (Lisa is a “subrette”). But this is a realistic comedy: the characters in it are revealed deeply and multifaceted, individualized with the help speech characteristics. The play was extremely topical. V.G. Belinsky saw in it “an energetic protest against the vile Russian reality”1. The ideological meaning of the comedy is to expose the immorality of the serf-owners (Famusov), the social roots of the silent people (Molchalin), and the Arakcheev people (Skalozub).

Conflict plays a special role in a dramatic work, where it becomes the most important content category. Dramatic collisions are an important way of revealing the life programs of characters and self-disclosure of their characters. The conflict determines the direction of the plot movement in the play. Drama conflicts, according to their content and emotional coloring, are divided into tragic, comic and actually dramatic, which differ from tragic ones in that they can be resolved.

A.N. Ostrovsky in the drama “The Thunderstorm” managed to discover a new nature of drama, contained in the real social contradictions of the time. In "Thunderstorm" dramatic conflict era" is inextricably linked with the internal conflict of Katerina, whose character, as N. Dobrolyubov argued in the article "A Ray of Light in dark kingdom“,” “is focused, decisive and selfless in the sense that death is better for him than life under such principles...”.

As the conflict unfolds, it can transform. Thus, in I. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons,” the social conflict between the liberal nobles (the Kirsanov family) and the commoner Bazarov turns into a philosophical conflict - into disputes about life and death, love and hate, the eternal and the temporary.

In the stories of M. Gorky, written by him in the 10s of the 20th century, conflicts occur between people who were disfigured in different ways by the autocratic serfdom system (“Chelkash”), and who were freed to varying degrees from the heavy remnants of the past (“Konovalov,” “ The Orlov Spouses"), or between people who are representatives of different classes and social groups (“Ozornik”). Happening internal conflict in the souls of the heroes themselves, who have new ideas and feelings (“Poor Pavel”).

Aesthetics has always attached great importance to conflict. It also admits the insolubility of the conflict in individual works(for example, in tragedies; for example, the conflict in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is unresolved).

As noted, conflict is at the heart of the plot. Being the basis and driving force of the action, it determines the main stages of plot development.

In accordance with the main stages of development of the conflict in the plot, there are essential elements plot construction, representing the main points in the development of the depicted life conflict. The origin of a conflict is the beginning, its highest aggravation is the climax. Conflict is a relatively complete moment in the life process, having its own beginning, development and end.

The plot includes the following elements: exposition, beginning, development of action, climax, denouement and postposition. Some works have a prologue and an epilogue. Each of these elements serves its purpose.

The starting point of the plot organization is the exposition (Latin exroyaSho - presentation, explanation) - the background of the events underlying the work of art. Usually it describes the main characters, their arrangement before the start of the action, before the plot. The exposition motivates the behavior of the characters in the conflict in question.

The location and nature of the exposition are determined artistic tasks posed to the writer. Thus, in M. Gorky’s story “Mother,” the exhibition describes the life of a workers’ settlement. It tells of the hard life of workers, of a growing sense of protest against unbearable living conditions. The factory “waited with indifferent confidence” for workers in the morning, and in the evening threw out “like waste slag.” And “gloomy people”, “like frightened cockroaches”, “breathing smoky, oily air”, returned home. The exposition of the story leads to the idea that it was impossible to continue living like this, that people had to appear who would try to change this life. Thus, it leads to the beginning - a meeting between Pavel Vlasov and representatives of the revolutionary intelligentsia.

The exposition can be direct, at the beginning of the work, as in Gorky’s story, but it can be delayed, given in the middle or at the end of the work. In this case, it imparts mystery and obscurity to the work of art (Katerina’s story about free life in her parents’ house in A.N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”; information about Chichikov’s life before his arrival in provincial town, given in the last chapter of the first volume of “Dead Souls”

N. Gogol). The exposition should always be considered in its meaningful purpose, this will help to establish a connection between the circumstances and the characters.

The plot is the event that is the beginning of the action. It either reveals existing contradictions, or creates (“entangles”) conflicts itself. Such a moment, for example, is Luka’s arrival at the shelter (M. Gorky “At the Lower Depths”). The plot of Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" is the mayor's receipt of a letter informing him of the expected arrival of the inspector. Officials, terribly worried about this news, begin to prepare for the meeting with the auditor: the beginning leads to the development of action.

Composition is the arrangement of parts of a literary work in a certain order, a set of forms and methods artistic expression by the author depending on his intention. Translated from Latin it means “composition”, “construction”. Composition builds all parts of the work into a single, complete whole.

It helps the reader to better understand the content of the works, maintains interest in the book and helps to draw the necessary conclusions in the end. Sometimes the composition of a book intrigues the reader and he looks for a sequel to the book or other works by this writer.

Compositional elements

Among such elements are narration, description, dialogue, monologue, inserted stories and lyrical digressions:

1. Narration- the main element of the composition, the author’s story, revealing the content of the work of art. Occupies most of the volume of the entire work. Conveys the dynamics of events; it can be retold or illustrated with drawings.
2. Description. This is a static element. During the description, events do not occur; it serves as a picture, a background for the events of the work. The description is a portrait, an interior, a landscape. A landscape is not necessarily an image of nature; it can be a city landscape, a lunar landscape, a description of fantasy cities, planets, galaxies, or a description of fictional worlds.
3. Dialogue- conversation between two people. It helps to reveal the plot and deepen the characters of the characters. Through the dialogue between two heroes, the reader learns about the events of the past of the heroes of the works, about their plans, and begins to better understand the characters’ characters.
4. Monologue- speech of one character. In the comedy by A. S. Griboyedov, through Chatsky’s monologues, the author conveys the thoughts of the leading people of his generation and the experiences of the hero himself, who learned about his beloved’s betrayal.
5. Image system. All images of a work that interact in connection with the author’s intention. These are images of people, fairy-tale characters, mythical, toponymic and subject. There are awkward images invented by the author, for example, “The Nose” from Gogol’s story of the same name. The authors simply invented many images, and their names became commonly used.
6. Insert stories, a story within a story. Many authors use this technique to create intrigue in a work or at the denouement. A work may contain several inserted stories, the events in which take place in different time. Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita” used the device of a novel within a novel.
7. Author's or lyrical digressions. Gogol has many lyrical digressions in his work “Dead Souls”. Because of them, the genre of the work has changed. This large prose work is called the poem “Dead Souls”. And “Eugene Onegin” is called a novel in verse due to the large number of author’s digressions, thanks to which readers are presented with an impressive picture of Russian life at the beginning of the 19th century.
8. Author's description. In it, the author talks about the character of the hero and does not hide his positive or negative attitude towards him. Gogol in his works often gives ironic characteristics to his heroes - so precise and succinct that his heroes often become household names.
9. Plot of the story- this is a chain of events occurring in a work. The plot is the content literary text.
10. Fable- all events, circumstances and actions that are described in the text. The main difference from the plot is the chronological sequence.
11. Scenery- description of nature, real and imaginary world, city, planet, galaxies, existing and fictional. Landscape is an artistic device, thanks to which the character of the characters is revealed more deeply and an assessment of events is given. You can remember how it changes seascape in Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish,” when the old man comes to the Golden Fish again and again with another request.
12. Portrait- this is a description of not only the appearance of the hero, but also his inner world. Thanks to the author’s talent, the portrait is so accurate that all readers have the same idea of ​​the appearance of the hero of the book they read: what Natasha Rostova, Prince Andrei, Sherlock Holmes looks like. Sometimes the author draws the reader's attention to some characteristic feature hero, for example, Poirot’s mustache in Agatha Christie’s books.

Don't miss: in the literature, examples of use.

Compositional techniques

Subject composition

The development of the plot has its own stages of development. There is always a conflict at the center of the plot, but the reader does not immediately learn about it.

Subject composition depends on the genre of the work. For example, a fable necessarily ends with a moral. Dramatic works of classicism had their own laws of composition, for example, they had to have five acts.

The composition of the works is distinguished by its unshakable features folklore. Songs, fairy tales, and epics were created according to their own laws of construction.

The composition of the fairy tale begins with the saying: “Like on the sea-ocean, and on the island of Buyan...”. The saying was often composed in poetic form and at times was far from the content of the fairy tale. The storyteller attracted the attention of the listeners with a saying and waited for them to listen to him without being distracted. Then he said: “This is a saying, not a fairy tale. There will be a fairy tale ahead."

Then came the beginning. The most famous of them begins with the words: “Once upon a time” or “In a certain kingdom, in the thirtieth state...”. Then the storyteller moved on to the fairy tale itself, to its heroes, to wonderful events.

Techniques of a fairy-tale composition, a threefold repetition of events: the hero fights three times with the Serpent Gorynych, three times the princess sits at the window of the tower, and Ivanushka on a horse flies to her and tears off the ring, three times the Tsar tests his daughter-in-law in the fairy tale “The Frog Princess”.

The ending of the fairy tale is also traditional; about the heroes of the fairy tale they say: “They live, live well and make good things.” Sometimes the ending hints at a treat: “A fairy tale for you, but a bagel for me.”

Literary composition is the arrangement of parts of a work in a certain sequence, it is complete system forms of artistic representation. The means and techniques of composition deepen the meaning of what is depicted and reveal the characteristics of the characters. Each work of art has its own unique composition, but there are its traditional laws that are observed in some genres.

During the times of classicism, there was a system of rules that prescribed certain rules for writing texts to authors, and they could not be violated. This is the rule of three unities: time, place, plot. This is a five-act structure of dramatic works. This speaking names and a clear division into negative and goodies. The compositional features of classicism are a thing of the past.

Compositional techniques in literature depend on the genre of the work of art and on the talent of the author, who has available types, elements, techniques of composition, knows its features and knows how to use these artistic methods.