Composition is the structure, arrangement and relationship of the constituent parts of the text, determined by its content, issues, genre and purpose.
The composition of a text is a way of constructing it, connecting its parts, facts, and images.
The famous Roman scientist Marcus Fabius Quintilian is credited with developing the theory of speech composition. Quintilian identified eight parts in the speaker's speech. The composition of the speech he developed became part of the practice of later rhetoric.
So, eight parts of the composition according to Quintilian.
1. Appeal. Its purpose is to attract the attention of the audience and endear it to the speaker.
2. Naming the topic. The speaker names what he will talk about, primes the audience for the subject, forces them to remember what they know, and prepares them to delve into the subject.
3. Narration consists of a description of the history of the subject (how the question that needs to be resolved arose, and how the matter itself developed).
4. Description. A story about what things are like at the moment.
5. Proof consists of logical arguments justifying the solution to a problem.
6. Refutation. Proof by contradiction. A different point of view on the subject is allowed, which the speaker refutes.
7. Appeal. Appeal to the feelings of listeners. The goal is to evoke an emotional response from the audience. It ranks second to last in speech structure because people are generally more likely to make judgments based on emotion rather than logic.
8. Conclusion. Summary everything that has been said and conclusions on the case under discussion.
- linear composition is a sequential presentation of facts and events and is usually built on a chronological basis (autobiography, report);
- stepped - involves an accentuated transition from one position to another (lecture, report),
- parallel - is based on a comparison of two or more provisions, facts, events (for example, school essays, whose topics are
“Chatsky and Molchalin”, “Onegin and Lensky”, “Larina’s Sisters”
- discrete - involves the omission of certain points in the presentation of events. This complex type of organization is characteristic of literary texts. (For example, such a decision is often at the heart of detective stories);
- ring composition – contains a repetition of the beginning and ending of the text. This type of structure makes it possible to return to what has already been said in the beginning at a new level of understanding the text.
So, for example, the incomplete repetition of the beginning in A. Blok’s poem “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy” makes it possible to comprehend what the poet said as a vital contradiction to the words “And everything will repeat as before” at the end of the text.);
- contrasting - based on a sharp contrast between two parts of the text.
Genre types of composition
Depending on the genre of the text, it can be:
- tough- mandatory for all texts of the genre (certificates, information notes, statements, memos);
- variable- the approximate order of arrangement of parts of the text is known, but the author has the opportunity to vary it (textbook, answer in class, letter);
- non-rigid— presupposing sufficient freedom for the author, despite the fact that he is guided by existing samples genre (story, essay, essay);
In the texts:
- built on the basis of combining elements, a linear, stepped, parallel, concentric composition is used,
- V literary texts its organization is often more complex - it builds the time and space of a work of art in its own way.
Our short presentation on this topic
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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 way 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 driving force the plot is the 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 of psychological conflict is Shakespeare's Hamlet. The most common type of conflict is social. To indicate social conflict Literary scholars often use the term conflict, and love - 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 fiction, as a rule, there are many plot lines and each of them. developing, intertwined with others. Certain plot elements 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, and 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 the characters, and often a complex layering of times of 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 about events, introduces descriptions of nature, household paintings, 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, there is an overlap of times. 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, his time in German captivity, and the loss of his 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, “resembles 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: “ Railway» 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 the details of the external appearance and speech of the characters, their inner world, and surroundings in order to express his thoughts . However, accepting this position, one cannot 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. Not being able 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 towards the depicted reality and create the emotional atmosphere of the narrative. Yes, rereading crowd scenes in the story “Taras Bulba”, one 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, create a humorous tone of the story (especially in the scenes 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 serve mainly as a psychological characteristic 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 - these are different kinds of actions, statements, experiences and thoughts of the heroes. The plot reveals the character's character most directly and effectively. actor. However, it is important to understand that the actions of the characters also reveal the author’s understanding of the typical character and the 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 forces him to reflect on the inconsistency of Onegin, on the inconsistency 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 may have private character(Onegin’s quarrel with Lensky), or may be a moment, part of socio-historical conflicts that arose in historical reality itself (war, revolution, social movement). The writer depicts plot conflicts in to the greatest extent draws 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. The discrepancy between the order of plot events and the order of narration about them in the work makes us talk about this expressive means, like a 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 action serves the development of artistic thought - the introduction of new themes, the deepening of problematic motives, the gradual revelation of characters and author's attitude to 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 “sincerely bequeathed images” of literature, as well as about “wandering plots”, 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 landscape, household furnishings, portrait and speech characteristics 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
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. The ideological meaning of such works is often revealed 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 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.
An important means plot composition become chronological rearrangements of events. 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 of the protagonist’s inner world. 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 takes up a very significant, and sometimes even the largest part. 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 the formation and development of 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.
Afterwards, when you wish to drink, you yourself will become stronger;
For a husband exhausted by work, wine renews his strength;
But you, my son, are weary, struggling for your citizens.
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 “ Divine Comedy"Dante, Rabelais' tales, 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 ancient Russian literature, “is the speech of the author for him. The author is a kind of puppeteer. The doll is deprived of its own life and its own voice. The author speaks for her in his own voice, his own language and his usual style. The author, as it were, restates what the character said or could have said... This achieves a peculiar effect of muteness of the characters, despite all their external verbosity" (in the collection: XVIII century in world literary development. M., 1969. With .313).
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 inner world the character 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.
The integrity of a work of art is achieved through various means. Among these means, composition and plot play an important role.
Composition(from Latin componere - to compose, connect) - the construction of a work, the relationship of all its elements, creating a holistic picture of life and contributing to the expression of 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, a significant place is 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 way 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 of psychological conflict is Shakespeare's Hamlet. The most common type of conflict is social. To denote social conflict, literary scholars often use the term conflict, and 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, the highest point of which is the climax. In 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 fiction, as a rule, there are many plot lines and each of them. developing, intertwined with others. Certain plot elements 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 significance. 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, his time in German captivity, and the loss of his 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 of the lyrical works are very unique. 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, “resembles 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 the details of the external appearance and speech of the characters, their inner world, and surroundings in order to express his thoughts . However, accepting this position, one cannot 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. Not being able 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 towards 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 makeup of folk characters, formed in the conditions of wild freedom and poeticized by Gogol, is gradually becoming clearer. 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 - these are different kinds of actions, statements, experiences and thoughts of the heroes. 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 of the typical character and the 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 forces him to reflect on the inconsistency of Onegin, on the inconsistency 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. The discrepancy between the order of plot events and the order of narration about them in the work makes us talk about such an expressive means as a 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 the influence is due to the similarity or difference of social relations in the respective countries, but proceeded from the immanent, that is, internal, seemingly completely autonomous laws of the development of literature. Therefore, comparativists wrote about “stable motives”, about “sincerely bequeathed images” of literature, as well as about “wandering plots”, 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. The plot of a 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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All topics in this section:
Features of the subject of literature
1. Living integrity. A scientist breaks down an object, 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 between the three types of literature in terms of content, namely, in terms of the aspect of cognition and reproduction of life. Due to this general principles creative typification of life in each genus manifests
Genres of epic works
Myth (from the gr. mythos - word, speech) is one of oldest species folklore, a fantastic story that explains in figurative form the phenomena of the surrounding world. Legend
Genres of lyrical works
A song is a short lyric poem intended to be sung. 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.
METAPHOR
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 is the likening of an inanimate object to a living being. 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 special meaning. I love you, life, which in itself is not new. I love
Rhythm of artistic speech
Tutorials guide the student well complex issues rhythmic orderliness of artistic speech - prosaic and poetic. As in previous sections of the course, it is important to consider the general
Features of poetic speech
1. Particular emotional expressiveness. Poetic speech is inherently effective. 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
IN late XIX century in Russian poetry, the so-called free verse or free verse (from the French Vers - verse, libre - free) was established, 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 " 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 classicism and enlightenment rationalism. Originally Romanticism
THEORETICAL SCHOOLS AND DIRECTIONS
Literary theory is not a collection of disparate ideas, but an organized force. Theory exists in communities of readers and writers as a discursive practice inextricably linked with education.
New criticism
The phenomenon called “new criticism” arose in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s (the works of I.A. Richards and William Empson appeared in England at the same time). "New Cree
Phenomenology
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" is applied to a wide range of theoretical discourses that contain criticism of the concepts of objective knowledge and the 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), or can serve as
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
The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the works, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, depending on the intentions of the author.
Depending on the relationship between plot and plot in a particular work, they speak of different types and techniques plot composition. The most simple case is one where events are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called direct or plot sequence.
The composition of the plot also includes 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 thoughts gradually and steadily. In novels and stories, poems and dramas, 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.
It should be noted that the time span in works can be quite wide, and the pace of the narrative can be uneven. There are differences between a concise author's presentation that speeds up the run plot time and “dramatized” episodes, compositional the time of which goes hand in hand with the plot time.
In some cases, writers depict parallel theaters of action (that is, they draw two running parallel to each other storylines). Thus, the juxtaposition of the chapters of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, dedicated to the death of old Bolkonsky and cheerful name days in the Rostov house, externally motivated by the simultaneity of these events, carries a certain content load. This technique tunes readers into the mood of Tolstoy’s thoughts and the inseparability of life and death.
Writers do not always tell events in direct sequence. Sometimes they seem to intrigue readers, keeping them in the dark about the true essence of events for some time. This compositional technique is called by default. This technique is very effective because it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in tension until the very end, and at the end surprise you with the surprise of the plot twist. Thanks to these properties, the technique of silence is almost always used in picaresque works and works of the detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Realist writers also sometimes keep the reader in the dark about what happened. So, for example, the story of A.S. is built on default. Pushkin "Blizzard". Only at the very end of the story does the reader learn that Marya Gavrilovna was married to a stranger, who, as it turns out, was Burmin. In the novel “War and Peace,” the author for a long time makes the reader, along with the Bolkonsky family, think that Prince Andrei died during the Battle of Austerlitz, and only when the hero appears in Bald Mountains does it become clear that this is not so.
An important means of plot composition are chronological rearrangements events. Often these rearrangements are dictated by the desire of the authors to switch the attention of readers from the external side of what happened (what will happen to the characters next?) to its internal, deep background. So, in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" the composition of the plot serves to gradually penetrate into the secrets of the protagonist's inner world. First, readers learn about Pechorin from the story of Maxim Maksimych (“Bela”), then from the narrator, 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, right up to “The Fatalist”.
Another technique for violating chronologies or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection, when, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, to the time preceding the plot and beginning of this work. This kind of “retrospective” (turning back to what happened before) plot composition presupposes the presence in the works of detailed backstories of the characters, 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. So, in “Fathers and Sons” I.S. Turgenev, as the plot progresses, readers are faced with two significant retrospections - the background stories of the lives of Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. Starting the novel with their youth was not Turgenev’s intention, and it would have cluttered the composition of the novel, and giving an idea of the past of these heroes seemed nevertheless necessary to the author - that’s why he used the technique of retrospection.
The plot sequence can be disrupted in such a way that events at different times are given intermixed; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the action to various previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past. This plot composition is often motivated by the memories of the characters. It's called free composition and is used to one degree or another by different writers quite often. However, it happens that free composition becomes the main and determining principle of plot construction; in this case, it is customary to talk about the free composition itself (“Shot” by A.S. Pushkin).
Internal, emotional-semantic, that is, compositional, connections between plot episodes sometimes turn out to be functionally even more important than the actual plot, causal-temporal connections. The composition of such works can be called active, or, to use the term of filmmakers, “ assembly room" An active, montage composition allows writers to embody deep, not directly observable connections between life phenomena, events, facts (an example is M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”). The role and purpose of this kind of composition can be described in the words of A.A. Blok from the preface to the poem “Retribution”: “I am used to comparing facts from all areas of life accessible to my vision at a given time, and I am sure that all of them together always create a single musical pressure” (Complete collected op. in the 8th vol. T.3 – M., 1960, p.297).
In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra plot elements, which are often no less, or even more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of the work is dynamic side his compositions, then extra-plot elements - static.
Extra-plot These are elements that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the heroes remain in their previous positions. Distinguish three main varieties extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes (otherwise they are also called inserted short stories or inserted plots).
Description- this is an image of the external world (landscape, portrait, world of things) or a stable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, are also not related to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of extra-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work.
Author's digressions- these are more or less detailed author’s statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; Moreover, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationships between them. Author's digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they do appear there (“Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin, “ Dead souls"N.V. Gogol, "The Master and Margarita" by M.A. Bulgakov and others), they play, as a rule, the most important role and serve to directly express the writer’s position.
Inserted episodes- these are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters appear, the action is transferred to another time and place, etc. Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot, as, for example, in “ Dead souls ah" N.V. Gogol.
In some cases, psychological portrayals can also be considered extra-plot elements if the hero’s state of mind or reflections are not the consequence or cause of plot events and are excluded from the plot chain (for example, most of Pechorin’s internal monologues in “A Hero of Our Time”). However, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms of psychological depiction are somehow included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.
When analyzing the overall composition of a work, you should first of all determine the relationship between the plot and extra-plot elements, determining which of them is more important, and based on this, continue the analysis in the appropriate direction. Thus, when analyzing “Dead Souls” N.V. Gogol, extra-plot elements should be given primary attention.
At the same time, it should be taken into account that there are also cases when both the plot and extra-plot elements are equally important in a work - for example, in “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin. In this case, the interaction of plot and extra-plot text fragments takes on special significance: as a rule, extra-plot elements are placed between plot events not in an arbitrary, but in a strictly logical order. So, the retreat of A.S. Pushkin’s “We all look at Napoleons...” could appear only after readers had sufficiently learned Onegin’s character from his actions and only in connection with his friendship with Lensky; The digression about Moscow is not only formally timed to coincide with Tatiana’s arrival in the old capital, but also correlates in a complex way with the events of the plot: the image of “native Moscow” from her historical roots contrasted with Onegin’s lack of rootedness in Russian life, etc. In general, extra-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.
Summarizing all that has been said, it is necessary to point out that in the most general form two types of composition can be distinguished - they can be conventionally called simple And complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining the parts of the work into a single whole, and this combining is always carried out in the simplest and most natural way. In the area of plotting, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the area of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire text, in the area of substantive details - a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important, supporting, symbolic details, etc.
With a complex composition, a special artistic meaning is embodied in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements. For example, a consistent change of narrators and a violation of the chronological sequence in “A Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov focus attention on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin’s character and allow one to “get closer” to it, gradually unraveling the character. In Chekhov’s story “Ionych”, immediately after the description of the Turkins’ “salon”, where Vera Iosifovna is reading her novel, and Kotik is hitting the piano keys with all his might, it is no coincidence that there is a mention of the knocking of knives and the smell of fried onions - this compositional comparison of details contains special meaning, the author's irony is expressed. An example of a complex composition of speech elements can be identified in “A History of One Kind” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin: “It seemed that the cup of disasters had been drunk to the bottom. But no: there’s still a whole tub at the ready.” Here the first and second sentences collide compositionally, creating a contrast between the solemn, high style (and corresponding intonation) of the metaphorical phrase “the cup of disasters has been drunk to the bottom” and colloquial vocabulary and intonation (“no”, “tub”). As a result, the comic effect necessary for the author arises.
Simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a particular work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be, to a certain extent, purely quantitative: we can talk about greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of fables by I.A. Krylova is simple in all respects, and “Ladies with a Dog” by A.P. Chekhov or “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov is complex in all respects. But here, for example, is this story by A.P. Chekhov's "House with a Mezzanine" is quite simple in terms of plot and narrative composition and complex in the field of composition of speech and details. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become stylistic dominants of the work and, thus, determine its artistic originality.