The essay “The ideological and artistic originality of D. I. Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor”

Immortal comedy D. I. Fonvizin’s “Unorosl” was and remains one of the most relevant works of Russian classics. The breadth of views of the writer, his deep convictions about the benefits of education and enlightenment, were reflected in the creation of this brilliant work. We invite you to familiarize yourself with brief analysis works according to plan. This material can be used for work in a literature lesson in 8th grade, to prepare for the Unified State Exam.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1782

History of creation– The writer’s idea for a comedy arose after returning from abroad, under the influence of the educational views of a foreign country.

Subject– The main theme of “Minor” is enlightenment and education, educating a new generation in the spirit of new trends of the times and political changes.

Composition- the comedy is built according to all the rules of the genre, three components are observed in it - the unity of action, place and time. Consists of five actions.

Genre– The play is a comedy, a bright and lively narrative that does not contain tragic episodes.

History of creation

In “The Minor,” the analysis of the work involves revealing the theme, the main idea of ​​the comedy, its essence and idea.

First, let's define the meaning of the name. In the eighteenth century, the word “minor” meant a person who did not have an education document. Such a person was not accepted into the service and was not allowed to marry.

Fonvizin more than a year lived in France, deeply delving into its educational doctrines. He was occupied with all areas social life country, he delved into philosophy and jurisprudence. Much attention the writer paid theatrical productions, in particular, comedies.

When the writer returned to Russia, he came up with a plan for the comedy “Minor”, ​​where the heroes will receive speaking names to better express the meaning of comedy. Work on the history of creation took the writer almost three years; it began in 1778, and the final year of writing was 1782.

Subject

Initially the main theme of the comedy the topic of upbringing and education of the new generation was assumed; later, social issues were included in the problems of “Undergrowth” political problems, which directly related to the decree of Peter the Great prohibiting the service and marriage of noblemen - undergrowth.

The Prostakov family, which has the undergrown Mitrofanushka, has deep noble roots. In the first place for such Prostakovs is pride in their noble class, and they do not accept anything new and progressive. They do not need education at all, because serfdom They haven’t canceled it yet, and there is someone to work for them. Above all for the Prostakovs material well-being, greed and greed turns a blind eye to his son’s education, power and wealth are more important.

The family is the example on which a person grows and is educated. Mitrofanushka fully reflects the behavior and lifestyle of her despotic mother, but Mrs. Prostakova does not understand that she is the example for her son, and wonders why he does not show her due respect.

Revealing comedy problems, intrafamily conflict Prostakov, we come to the conclusion that everything depends on a person’s upbringing. A person’s attitude towards others depends only on a decent upbringing in the family. to strangers, his integrity and honesty. What the writer’s comedy teaches is education, respect for one’s neighbor, good manners and prudence.

Composition

The masterfully executed features of the composition allow you to become familiar with the main characters at the very beginning of the play. Already at the end of the first act the plot begins. Pravdin and Sophia immediately appear in the comedy. There is intrigue in the comedy - Sophia's rich dowry, which they learn about from Starodum's story, and the fight for her hand flares up.

In the next two acts, events develop rapidly, tension grows, the peak of which occurs in the fourth act, in which Prostakova comes up with the idea of ​​kidnapping Sophia and forcefully marrying her to a minor.

Gradually, the development of the action begins to decline, and in the fifth act the comedy comes to a denouement. It becomes known about the unsuccessful abduction of Sophia. Pravdin accuses the Prostakovs of evil intentions and threatens punishment.

A paper arrives about the arrest of the Prostakovs' property, Sophia and Milon are about to leave, and Mitrofanushka is forced to join the soldiers.

Using such in your comedy artistic media as speaking surnames and names, the author gives a moral assessment to the characters, which does not raise any doubts about its justice. This is general characteristics comedies.

Main characters

Genre

Fonvizin's play is built according to the laws of classicism. Events take place during the day in one place. The comedic nature of the play is clearly expressed through sharp satire, mercilessly ridiculing the vices of society. The play also contains funny motifs, permeated with humor, and there are also sad ones, in which the landowner arrogantly mocks her serfs.

The writer was an ardent supporter of education; he understood that only comprehensive education and proper upbringing can help a person grow into a highly moral person and become a worthy citizen of his homeland. The institution of the family, where the foundations of human behavior are laid, should play a huge role in this.

Critics were enthusiastic about the comedy “The Minor,” calling it the pinnacle of Russian drama in the 18th century. All critics wrote that Fonvizin, with maximum accuracy and straightforwardness, described typical images and characteristics of society, which look caricatured and grotesque, but in fact, are simply taken from life and described from life. And in modern world comedy remains relevant: now it is also present in society large number“Mitrofanushki”, for whom the meaning of life lies in material wealth, and education is given a minimal place.

Exam: Russian literature of the 18th century

"Nedorosl" is the first socio-political comedy on the Russian stage.

The artistic originality of "The Minor" is determined by the fact that the play combines the features of classicism and realism. Formally, Fonvizin remained within the framework of classicism: observance of the unity of place, time and action, the conventional division of characters into positive and negative, schematism in the depiction of positive ones, “speaking names”, features of reasoning in the image of Starodum, and so on. But, at the same time, he took a certain step towards realism. This is manifested in the accuracy of the reproduction of the provincial noble type, social relations in a fortress village, faithful recreation of typical features negative characters, life-like authenticity of images. For the first time in the history of Russian drama, the love affair was relegated to the background and acquired secondary importance.

Fonvizin's comedy is a new phenomenon, because it is written on the material of Russian reality. The author innovatively approached the problem of the character of the hero, the first of the Russian playwrights sought to psychologize him, to individualize the speech of the characters (here it is worth adding examples from the text!).

“Fonvizin introduces biographies of heroes into his work, takes a comprehensive approach to solving the problem of education, denoting the trinity of this problem: family, teachers, environment, that is, the problem of education is posed here as social problem. All this allows us to conclude that “The Minor” is a work of educational realism.

K.V. Pisarev: "<...>Fonvizin sought to generalize and typify reality. IN negative images he succeeded brilliantly in comedy.<...> Positive characters"The Minor" clearly lacks artistic and life-like persuasiveness.<...>The images he created were not clothed with living human flesh and, indeed, are a kind of mouthpiece for the “voice,” “concepts,” and “way of thinking” of both Fonvizin himself and the best representatives of his time.”

Critics doubted Fonvizin’s art of constructing dramatic action and spoke about the presence of “extra” scenes in it that do not fit into the action, which must certainly be unified:

P. A. Vyazemsky: “All the other [except Prostakova] persons are secondary; some of them are completely extraneous, others only join in the action.<...>Of the forty phenomena, including several rather long ones, there is hardly a third in the entire drama, and even then short ones, that are part of the action itself."

A. N. Veselovsky: "<...>ineptitude in the structure of the play, which remains forever weak side Fonvizin's writing, despite the school of European models<...>"; "A widely developed desire to speak not in images, but in rhetoric<...>gives rise to stagnation, fading, and the viewer will then recognize Milo’s view of true fearlessness in war and in peaceful life, then sovereigns hear the unvarnished truth from virtuous people, or Starodum’s thoughts on the education of women..."

The word, the initial constructive material of the drama, emphatically appears in “Minor” in dual functions: in one case, the pictorial, plastic-depictive function of the word (negative characters) is emphasized, creating a model of the world of physical flesh, in the other - its self-valuable and independent ideal-conceptual nature (positive characters), for which a human character is needed only as an intermediary, translating ethereal thought into matter sounding word. Thus, the specificity of its dramaturgical word, which is initially and fundamentally two-valued and ambiguous, comes to the center of the aesthetics and poetics of “The Minor.”

punning nature of the word

A technique for destroying a phraseological unit that pits the traditionally conventional figurative against the direct literal meaning of a word or phrase.

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      Those important issues, which Fonvizin staged and illuminated in the comedy “The Minor,” determined its great social significance, primarily in the modern Ideological content of Fonfizin’s comedy The Minor. The ideological content of comedy. The main themes of the comedy “The Minor” are the following four: the theme of serfdom and its corrupting influence. Among Russian writers who had the gift of seeing and conveying everything absurd in life, the first was Fonvizin. In his works, he skillfully D. I. Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor” is rightfully considered the pinnacle of Russian dramaturgy XVIII century. While maintaining some connection with traditional literary genres The topic involves revealing the personality of D. I. Fonvizin. In the process of studying the play “Minor”, ​​getting acquainted with the writer’s work, telling a story about his life
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The poster itself explains the characters.
P. A. Vyazemsky about the comedy “Minor”

A truly social comedy.
N. V. Gogop about the comedy “The Minor”

The first appearance of the comedy “The Minor” on the theater stage in 1872 caused, according to the recollections of contemporaries, “throwing wallets” - the audience threw wallets filled with ducats onto the stage, such was their admiration for what they saw.

Before D.I. Fonvizin, the public knew almost no Russian comedy. In the first public theater, organized by Peter I, Moliere's plays were staged, and the emergence of Russian comedy is associated with the name of A.P. Sumarokov. “The property of comedy is to rule the temper with mockery” - Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin embodied these words of A.P. Sumarokov in his plays.

What caused such a strong reaction from the viewer? The liveliness of the characters, especially the negative ones, their figurative speech, the author's humor, so close to the folk one, the theme of the play is a satire on the principles of life and education of the sons of landowners, denunciation of serfdom.

Fonvizin departs from one of the golden rules of classical comedy: while observing the unity of place and time, he omits the unity of action. There is virtually no plot development in the play; it consists of conversations between negative and positive characters. This is the influence of the author’s contemporary European comedy; here he goes further than Sumarokov. “French comedy is absolutely good... There are great actors in comedy... when you look at them, you, of course, forget that they are playing a comedy, but it seems that you are seeing a straight story,” Fonvizin writes to his sister while traveling around France. But Fonvizin can in no way be called an imitator. His plays are filled with a truly Russian spirit, written in a truly Russian language.

It was from “The Minor” that I. A. Krylov’s fable “Trishkin Kaftan” grew, it was from the speeches of the heroes of the play that the aphorisms “mother’s son”, “I don’t want to study, I want to get married”, “fearing the abyss of wisdom” came out...

The main idea of ​​the play is to show the fruits of bad upbringing or even the lack thereof, and it grows into a frightening picture of wild landowner evil. Contrasting “evil characters” taken from reality, presenting them in a funny way, Fonvizin puts the author’s comments into the mouths of positive heroes, unusually virtuous people. As if not hoping that the reader himself will figure out who is bad and why he is bad, the writer main role allocates to positive heroes.

“The truth is that Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but their actual originals were no more alive than their dramatic photographs... They were walking, but still lifeless, schemes of a new good morality...

Time, intensification and experiments were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations,” historian V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote about the comedy.
Negative characters appear completely alive before the viewer. And this is the main artistic merit of the play, Fonvizin’s luck. Like the positive heroes, the negative ones wear speaking names, and the surname “Skotinin” grows to a full-fledged one artistic image. In the very first act, Skotinin is naively surprised by his special love for pigs: “I love pigs, sister; and in our neighborhood there are such large pigs that there is not a single one of them that, standing on its hind legs, would not be taller than each of us by a whole head.” The author's ridicule is all the stronger because it is put into the mouth of the hero at whom we laugh. It turns out that love for pigs is a family trait.

“Prostakov. It’s a strange thing, brother, how family can resemble family! Our Mitrofanushka is just like our uncle - and he is as big a hunter as you are. When I was still three years old, when I saw a pig, I used to tremble with joy. .

Skotinin. This is truly a curiosity! Well, brother, let Mitrofan love pigs because he is my nephew. There is some similarity here: why am I so addicted to pigs?

Prostakov. And there is some similarity here. That’s how I reason.”

The author plays out the same motive in the remarks of other characters. In the fourth act, in response to Skotinin’s words that his family is “great and ancient,” Pravdin ironically remarks: “This way you will convince us that he is older than Adam.” Unsuspecting Skotinin falls into a trap, readily confirming this: “What do you think? At least a few...” and Starodum interrupts him: “That is, your ancestor was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier than Adam.” Starodum directly refers to the Bible - on the sixth day, God created first animals, then humans. The comparison of caring for pigs with caring for a wife, coming from the same mouth of Skotinin, evokes Milo’s indignant remark: “What a bestial comparison!” Kuteikin, a cunning churchman, invests author's description into the mouth of Mitrofanushka himself, forcing him to read from the book of hours: “I am cattle, not man, a reproach to men.” The representatives of the Skotinin family themselves speak with comical simplicity about their “bestial” nature.

“Prostakova. After all, I am the Skotinins’ father. The deceased father married the deceased mother; she was nicknamed Priplodin. They had eighteen of us children...” Skotinin speaks about his sister in the same terms as about his “cute pigs”: “To be honest, there is only one litter; Yes, look how she squealed..." Prostakova herself likens her love for her son to the affection of a dog for her puppies, and says about herself: “I, brother, won’t bark with you,” “Oh, I’m a dog’s daughter! what have I done!” Another special feature of the play “The Minor” is that each of the characters speaks their own language. This was appreciated by Fonvizin’s contemporaries: “everyone differs in his own character with his sayings.”

The speech of the retired soldier Tsyfirkin is filled with military terms, the speech of Kuteikin is built on Church Slavonic phrases, the speech of Vralman, a Russian German, obsequious with his masters and arrogant with his servants, is filled with aptly captured features of pronunciation.

The vivid typicality of the play's heroes - Prostakov, Mitrofanushka, Skotinin - goes far beyond its boundaries in time and space. And in A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”, and in M. Yu. Lermontov in “Tambov Treasury”, and in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Tashkent Gentlemen” we find references to them, still alive and carrying within themselves the essence of serf-owners, so talentedly revealed by Fonvizin.

Let's look at the features of the comedy created by Fonvizin ("The Minor"). Analysis of this work is the topic of this article. This play is a masterpiece Russian literature 18th century. This work is now included in the Russian fund classical literature. It affects a whole series "eternal problems". And the beauty of the high style still attracts many readers today. The name of this play is associated with the decree issued by Peter I, according to which “minors” (young nobles) are prohibited from entering the service and getting married without education.

History of the play

Back in 1778, the idea of ​​this comedy arose from its author, who was Fonvizin. “The Minor,” the analysis of which interests us, was written in 1782 and presented to the public in the same year. We should briefly highlight the time of creation of the play that interests us.

During the reign of Catherine II, Fonvizin wrote "The Minor". The analysis of the heroes presented below proves that they were heroes of their time. The period in the development of our country is associated with the dominance of ideas. They were borrowed by the Russians from the French enlighteners. The dissemination of these ideas and their great popularity among the educated philistines and nobility was largely facilitated by the empress herself. She is known to have corresponded with Diderot, Voltaire, and d'Alembert. In addition, Catherine II opened libraries and schools, and supported the development of art and culture in Russia through various means.

Continuing to describe the comedy that D.I. Fonvizin created ("The Minor"), analyzing its features, it should be noted that, as a representative of his era, the author, of course, shared the ideas that dominated the noble society at that time. He tried to reflect them in his work, exposing not only the positive aspects to readers and viewers, but also pointing out misconceptions and shortcomings.

"Minor" - an example of classicism

Analysis of the comedy "Minor" by Fonvizin requires considering this play as part of a cultural era and literary tradition. This work is considered one of the best examples of classicism. There is unity of action in the play (there are no secondary plot lines in it, only the struggle for Sophia’s hand and her property is described), place (the characters do not move long distances, all events take place either near the Prostakovs’ house or inside it), and time ( All events take no more than a day). In addition, he used “speaking” surnames, which are traditional for the classic play, Fonvizin (“Minor”). The analysis shows that, following tradition, he divided his characters into positive and negative. The positive ones are Pravdin, Starodum, Milon, Sophia. They are contrasted with Prostakov, Mitrofan, Skotinin by D.I. Fonvizin (play “The Minor”). An analysis of their names shows that they make it clear to the reader which features are prevalent in the image of a particular character. For example, Pravdin is the personification of morality and truth in the work.

A new genre of comedy, its features

"Minor" at the time of its creation became important step forward in the development of literature in our country, in particular drama. Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin created a new socio-political. It harmoniously combines a number of realistic scenes depicted with sarcasm, irony, and laughter from the lives of some ordinary representatives high society(nobility) with sermons about morality, virtue, the need for education human qualities, which were characteristic of the Enlightenment. Instructive monologues do not burden the perception of the play. They complement this work, as a result of which it becomes deeper.

First action

The play, the author of which is Fonvizin (“Minor”), is divided into 5 acts. Analysis of a work involves a description of the organization of the text. In the first act we meet the Prostakovs, Pravdin, Sophia, Mitrofan, Skotinin. The characters' personalities emerge immediately, and the reader understands that Skotinin and the Prostakovs - and Sophia and Pravdin - are positive. In the first act there is an exposition and plot of this work. In the exhibition we get to know the characters, we learn that Sophia lives in the care of the Prostakovs, who is going to be married off to Skotinin. Reading the letter from Starodum is the beginning of the play. Sophia now turns out to be a rich heiress. Any day now her uncle is returning to take the girl to his place.

The development of events in the play created by Fonvizin (“Minor”)

We will continue the analysis of the work with a description of how events developed. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th acts are their development. We meet Starodum and Milon. Prostakova and Skotinin are trying to please Starodum, but their flattery, falsity, lack of education and enormous thirst for profit only repels them. They look stupid and funny. The funniest scene of this work is the questioning of Mitrofan, during which the stupidity of not only this young man, but also his mother is revealed.

Climax and denouement

Act 5 - climax and denouement. It should be noted that researchers have different opinions about what moment should be considered the climax. There are 3 most popular versions. According to the first, this is the kidnapping of Sophia Prostakova, according to the second, Pravdin’s reading of a letter, which says that Prostakova’s estate is coming under his care, and, finally, the third version is Prostakova’s rage after she realizes her own powerlessness and tries to “get back "on his servants. Each of these versions is valid, since it considers different points view of the work that interests us. The first, for example, highlights storyline, dedicated to Sophia’s marriage. An analysis of the episode of Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor,” connected with marriage, indeed allows us to consider it key in the work. The second version examines the play from a socio-political point of view, highlighting the moment when justice prevails on the estate. The third focuses on the historical one, according to which Prostakova is the personification of the weakened principles and ideals of the old nobility that have become a thing of the past, who, however, do not yet believe in their own defeat. This nobility, according to the author, is based on lack of enlightenment, lack of education, as well as low moral principles. During the denouement, everyone leaves Prostakova. She had nothing left. Pointing to it, Starodum says that this is " worthy fruits""evil."

Negative characters

As we have already noted, the main characters are clearly divided into negative and positive. Mitrofan, Skotinin and Prostakovs - negative heroes. Prostakova is a woman seeking profit, uneducated, rude, and domineering. She knows how to flatter to gain benefits. However, Prostakova loves her son. Prostakov appears as the “shadow” of his wife. This is a weak-willed character. His word means little. Skotinin is the brother of Mrs. Prostakova. This is an equally uneducated and stupid person, quite cruel, like his sister, greedy for money. For him, a walk to the pigs in the barnyard is best activity. Mitrofan is a typical son of his mother. This is a spoiled young man of 16 who inherited a love of pigs from his uncle.

Issues and heredity

In the play, it should be noted that Fonvizin (“The Minor”) devotes an important place to the issue of family ties and heredity. Analyzing this question, let's say, for example, that Prostakova is only married to her husband (a “simple” man who does not want much). However, she is actually Skotinina, akin to her brother. Her son absorbed the qualities of both of his parents - “animal” qualities and stupidity from his mother and weak-willedness from his father.

Similar family ties can be traced between Sophia and Starodum. Both of them are honest, virtuous, educated. The girl listens to her uncle attentively, respects him, and “absorbs” science. Pairs of opposites create negative and goodies. Children - spoiled stupid Mitrofan and meek, intelligent Sophia. Parents love their children, but they approach their upbringing in different ways - Starodub talks about truth, honor, morality, and Prostakova only pampers Mitrofan and says that he will not need education. A pair of suitors - Milon, who sees an ideal and his friend in Sophia, who loves her, and Skotinin, who calculates the fortune that he will receive after marrying this girl. At the same time, he is not interested in Sophia as a person. Skotinin does not even try to provide his bride with comfortable housing. Prostakov and Pravdin are in fact the “voice of truth”, a kind of “auditors”. But in the person of the official we find active strength, help and real action, while Prostakov is a passive character. The only thing this hero could say was to reproach Mitrofan at the end of the play.

Issues raised by the author

Analyzing, it becomes clear that each of the above-described pairs of characters reflects a separate problem that is revealed in the work. This is a problem of education (which is complemented by the example of half-educated teachers like Kuteikin, as well as impostors such as Vralman), upbringing, fathers and children, family life, relationships between spouses, relations of nobles to servants. Each of these problems is examined through the prism of educational ideas. Fonvizin, sharpening his attention to the shortcomings of the era by using comic techniques, the emphasis is on the need to change outdated, traditional foundations that have become irrelevant. They drag people into the swamp of stupidity and evil, and liken people to animals.

As our analysis of Fonvizin’s play “The Minor” showed, main idea and the theme of the work is the need to educate the nobility in accordance with educational ideals, the foundations of which are still relevant today.

“Nedorosl” is the first socio-political comedy on the Russian stage.

The artistic originality of "The Minor" is determined by the fact that the play combines the features of classicism and realism. Formally, Fonvizin remained within the framework of classicism: observance of the unity of place, time and action, the conventional division of characters into positive and negative, schematism in the depiction of positive ones, “speaking names”, features of reasoning in the image of Starodum, and so on. But, at the same time, he took a certain step towards realism. This is manifested in the accuracy of the reproduction of the provincial noble type, social relations in the fortress village, the fidelity of the recreation of the typical features of negative characters, and the life-like authenticity of the images. For the first time in the history of Russian drama, the love affair was relegated to the background and acquired secondary importance.

Fonvizin's comedy is a new phenomenon, because it is written on the material of Russian reality. The author innovatively approached the problem of the character of the hero, the first of the Russian playwrights sought to psychologize him, to individualize the speech of the characters (here it is worth adding examples from the text!).

In his work, Fonvizin introduces biographies of heroes, takes a comprehensive approach to solving the problem of education, denoting the trinity of this problem: family, teachers, environment, that is, the problem of education is posed here as a social problem. All this allows us to conclude that “The Minor” is a work of educational realism.

K.V. Pisarev: “Fonvizin sought to generalize and typify reality. In the negative images of comedy, he succeeded brilliantly.<...>The positive characters of "The Minor" clearly lack artistic and life-like persuasiveness.<...>The images he created were not clothed with living human flesh and, indeed, are a kind of mouthpiece for the “voice”, “concepts” and “way of thinking” of both Fonvizin himself and the best representatives of his time.”

Critics doubted Fonvizin’s art of constructing dramatic action and spoke about the presence of “extra” scenes in it that do not fit into the action, which must certainly be unified:

P. A. Vyazemsky: “All other [except Prostakova] persons are secondary; some of them are completely extraneous, others are only adjacent to the action. Of the forty phenomena, including several rather long ones, there is hardly a third in the entire drama, and even then short ones, that are part of the action itself.”
A. N. Veselovsky: “the ineptitude of the structure of the play, which forever remained the weak side of Fonvizin’s writing, despite the school of European models”; “A widely developed desire to speak not in images, but in rhetoric<...>gives rise to stagnation, freezing, and the viewer then recognizes Milo’s view of true fearlessness in war and in peaceful life, then the sovereigns hear the unvarnished truth from virtuous people, or Starodum’s thoughts on the education of women...”

The word, the initial constructive material of the drama, emphatically appears in “Minor” in dual functions: in one case, the pictorial, plastic-depictive function of the word (negative characters) is emphasized, creating a model of the world of physical flesh, in the other - its self-valuable and independent ideal-conceptual nature (positive characters), for which a human character is needed only as an intermediary, translating an ethereal thought into the matter of a spoken word. Thus, the specificity of his dramaturgical word, which is initially and fundamentally two-valued and ambiguous, moves to the center of the aesthetics and poetics of “Minor.”

punning nature of the word

A technique for destroying a phraseological unit that pits the traditionally conventional figurative against the direct literal meaning of a word or phrase.