Speech characteristics of a character in literature. Development of a literature lesson on the topic “Speech characteristics of a hero” (grade 10)

23.09.2019

It remains for us to say a few words about speech character descriptions, but this question for a practicing teacher does not usually present much difficulty. The only thing that should be warned against is the confusion of concepts when analyzing the speech of the characters. Often, the speech characteristics of a character mean the content of his statements, that is, what What the character says what thoughts and judgments he expresses. In fact, the speech characteristics of the character are something completely different. As Gorky wrote, “It’s not always important what they say, but what they say is always important.” The speech characteristics of the character are created precisely by this “how” - the manner of speech, its stylistic coloring, the nature of the vocabulary, the construction of intonation-syntactic structures, etc.

General properties of artistic speech

What are the most General characteristics are inherent in artistic speech in a particular work? There are six such characteristics - three pairs. Firstly, the speech form of the work can be prosaic or poetic - this is clear and requires no comment. Secondly, it can be distinguished monologism or heteroglossia. Monologism presupposes a single speech style for all the characters in the work, which, as a rule, coincides with the speech style of the narrator. Heterogeneity is the development of different qualities of speech manners, in which the speech world becomes an object artistic image. Monologism as a stylistic principle is associated with an authoritarian point of view on the world, heteroglossia – with attention to various options understanding of reality, since the different quality of speech manners reflects the different quality of thinking about the world. In heteroglossia, it is advisable to distinguish two varieties: one is associated with the reproduction of speech manners of different characters as mutually isolated (“Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov, essays by N. Uspensky, stories by Chekhov, etc.) and the case when the speech manners of different characters and the narrators interact in a certain way, “penetrate” each other (novels by Tolstoy, Turgenev and especially Dostoevsky). The last type of heteroglossia in the works of M.M. Bakhtin received the name polyphony.

Thirdly, and finally, the speech form of a work can be characterized nominative or rhetoric. Nominativity implies an emphasis primarily on accuracy artistic word when using neutral vocabulary, simple syntactic structures, absence of tropes, etc. Rhetoric, on the contrary, is used in large quantities means of lexical expressiveness (high and low vocabulary, archaisms and neologisms, etc.), tropes and syntactic figures: repetitions, antitheses, rhetorical questions and appeals, etc. In nominativity, the focus is first of all on the object of the image; in rhetoric, the word depicting the object is emphasized. In particular, the stylistics of such works as “ Captain's daughter"Pushkin, "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev, "The Lady with the Dog" by Chekhov. Rhetoricism is observed, for example, in Lermontov’s lyrics, Leskov’s stories, Dostoevsky’s novels, etc.

The considered properties are called speech dominants works.

? CONTROL QUESTIONS:

1. What lexical means does the writer use for greater expressiveness of artistic speech?

2. Name the trails you know (with examples from fiction). Use one or two examples to show their artistic function.

3. What is syntactic organization and why does it need to be analyzed?

4. What is the tempo of a work of art? Using one or two examples, show the importance of tempo rhythm for creating a certain emotional picture of a work or its fragment.

5. What is the difference between prose and verse? Name the poetic meters you know in Russian versification.

6. What artistic functions does the character’s speech characteristics have? What techniques are used to individualize the speech of each character?

7. What is storytelling? What is unique about the narrator’s image? What types of storytelling are there? Why is it necessary to analyze the nature of the narrative and the narrator’s speech style in a work of art?

8. What is the difference between monologism and heteroglossia? What types of heteroglossia do you know and how do they differ from each other?

9. What is the difference between nominativity and rhetoric?

Exercises

1. Compare the poems of A.S. Pushkin’s “Village” and “When I wander thoughtfully outside the city...” according to the following scheme:

a) the nature of the vocabulary,

b) greater or lesser use of tropes,

c) syntactic structure of the phrase and its tempo,

d) poetic meter.

2. Determine whether the speech characteristics of the characters are significant for Maxim Maksimych (“Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov), Platon Karataev (“War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy) and Gromov (“Ward No. 6” by A. P. Chekhov). If

a) no, why?

b) yes, then how is this expressed and what character traits of the heroes does it reveal?

3. Analyze the nature of the narrative and the image of the narrator in “The Queen of Spades” by A.S. Pushkin, “Lefty” N.S. Leskov and “Lady with a Dog” by A.P. Chekhov according to the following scheme:

a) the narration is conducted from the first person or from the third,

b) whether the narrator is personified or not,

c) does the work create a special speech pattern narrator,

d) if not, then why, if yes, then how is this expressed,

4. Determine the nature of speech dominants in “A Feast in the Time of Plague” by A.S. Pushkin, “Mtsyri” by M.Yu. Lermontov, “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky according to the following scheme:

a) monologism or heteroglossia,

b) if heteroglossia, then what type,

c) nominative or rhetorical.

Final task

Analyze the organization of artistic speech of two or three of the following works (optional):

AC. Pushkin, Boris Godunov, The Captain's Daughter,

M.Yu. Lermontov. Daemon,

F.M. Dostoevsky. Player,

L.N. Tolstoy. Hadji Murat,

M.A. Bulgakov. dog's heart,

V.M. Shukshin. Until the third roosters.

Composition analysis

General concept of composition

The details of the depicted world and their verbal designations in a literary work are arranged in a certain way, with a special artistic meaning. This arrangement constitutes the third structural side of the artistic form - composition. In the practice of school literary criticism, very little time and attention is devoted to the analysis of composition. In essence, the concept of composition in the vast majority of cases comes down to the concept of plot and its elements. Even the very definition of composition, which is given by schoolchildren in 90% of cases (“composition is the construction of a work”), is, in fact, a metaphor, the meaning of which remains dark and unclear: how can built work verbal, dynamic art is not a house, not a church, not a theater... Therefore, we will begin the chapter on composition with its precise, scientific definition: composition is a composition and a certain location parts, elements and images of the work in some significant time sequences. This sequence is never random and always carries a meaningful and semantic load; it is always, in other words, functional. This can be shown using a simple example: breaking the sequence of parts, for example, in a detective story - when you start reading a book, look straight to the end. In practice, of course, no one does this, because such a violation of the compositional sequence deprives further reading of the meaning and, in any case, deprives the reader of a good half of the pleasure. But this, of course, is an elementary example; in more complex cases, a more careful analysis is required in order to understand the logic and meaning of the compositional structure of a particular artistic whole.

IN in a broad sense words, composition is the structure of an artistic form, and its first function is to “hold” the elements of the whole, to make the whole out of individual parts; Without a thoughtful and meaningful composition, it is impossible to create a full-fledged work of art. The second function of the composition is to express some artistic meaning by the very arrangement and correlation of the images of the work; We will see how this happens in practice in the future.

Many teachers direct their students to study the outer layer of the composition of a work: dividing it into volumes, parts, chapters, etc. This, as a rule, should not be done, because this outer layer of the composition only in rare cases has an independent artistic significance. The division of a work into chapters is always of an auxiliary nature, serves for ease of reading and is subordinated to the deeper layers of the compositional structure of the work. Here you need to pay attention only to specific, not always found elements of the external composition: prefaces, prologues, epigraphs, interludes, etc. The analysis of epigraphs has special meaning: sometimes they help to reveal main idea works (for example, in Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter”), sometimes, on the contrary, they present the reader with a riddle that needs to be solved during reading (for example, in A. Green’s novel “Running on the Waves”), sometimes they indicate the main problem of the work (“So who are you? - I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good” - epigraph to M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”). The relationship of the epigraph to the chapter with the content of the chapter itself is also curious: for example, in the same “The Captain's Daughter” the first chapter seems to enter into a dialogue with its epigraph. The epigraph ends with the question: “Who is his father?”, and the chapter begins with plums: “My father, Andrei Petrovich Grinev...”.

Compositional techniques

Before we begin to analyze the deeper layers of the composition, we need to become familiar with the basic compositional techniques. There are few of them; There are only four main ones: repetition, reinforcement, contrast and montage.

Repeat – one of the simplest and at the same time most effective composition techniques. It allows you to easily and naturally “round out” the work and give it compositional harmony. The so-called ring composition looks especially impressive when a compositional echo is established between the beginning and end of the work; such a composition often carries a special artistic meaning. A classic example of using a ring composition to express content is Blok’s miniature “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”:

Night, street, lantern, pharmacy,

Pointless and dim light.

Live for at least another quarter of a century,

Everything will be like this. There is no outcome.

If you die, you'll start over again,

And everything will repeat itself as before:

Night, icy ripples of the channel,

Pharmacy, street, lamp.

Here the vicious circle of life, the return to what has already been passed, is, as it were, physically embodied in the composition of the poem, in the compositional identity of beginning and end.

A frequently repeated detail or image becomes the leitmotif of the entire work, such as the image of a thunderstorm in work of the same name Ostrovsky, the image of the resurrection of Lazarus in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, the lines “Yes, there were people in our time, Not like the current tribe” in Lermontov’s “Borodin”. A type of repetition is a refrain in poetic works: for example, repeating the line “But where is last year’s snow?” in F. Villon's ballad “Ladies of Bygone Times”.

A technique close to repetition is gain. This technique is used in cases where simple repetition is not enough to create an artistic effect, when it is necessary to enhance the impression by selecting homogeneous images or details. Thus, based on the principle of amplification, the description is constructed interior decoration Sobakevich's house in " Dead souls"Gogol: every new detail strengthens the previous one: "everything was solid, awkward in of the highest degree and bore some strange resemblance to the owner of the house; in the corner of the living room stood a pot-bellied walnut bureau on the most absurd four legs, a perfect bear. The table, armchairs, chairs - everything was of the heaviest and most restless quality - in a word, every object, every chair seemed to say: “I, too, am Sobakevich!” or “and I also look very much like Sobakevich!”

The same principle of amplification applies to selection artistic images in Chekhov’s story “The Man in a Case”: “He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And he had an umbrella in a case made of gray suede, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen a pencil, his knife was also in a case; and his face, it seemed, was also in a cover, since he kept hiding it in his raised collar. He wore dark glasses, a sweatshirt, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he got on the cab, he ordered the top to be raised.”

The opposite of repetition and reinforcement is opposition. From the name itself it is clear that this compositional technique is based on the antithesis of contrasting images; for example, in Lermontov’s poem “The Death of a Poet”: “And you will not wash away all your black blood of the Poet righteous blood". Here the underlined epithets form a compositionally significant opposition. In a broader sense, opposition is any opposition of images: for example, Onegin and Lensky, Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, images of storm and peace in Lermontov’s poem “Sail”, etc. Contrast is a very strong and expressive artistic device that you should always pay attention to when analyzing a composition.

Contamination, the combination of repetition and contrast techniques, gives a special compositional effect: the so-called mirror composition. As a rule, with a mirror composition, the initial and final images are repeated exactly the opposite. A classic example of a mirror composition is Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”. In it, the denouement seems to repeat the plot, only with a change in position: at the beginning, Tatyana is in love with Onegin, writes him a letter and listens to his cold rebuke, at the end - it’s the other way around: the lover Onegin writes a letter and listens to Tatyana’s rebuke. The technique of mirror composition is one of the strong and winning techniques; its analysis requires sufficient attention.

The last compositional technique - installation, in which two images located side by side in a work give rise to some new, third meaning, which appears precisely from their proximity. So, for example, in Chekhov’s story “Ionych” the description of Vera Iosifovna’s “art salon” is adjacent to the mention that the clanking of knives was heard from the kitchen and the smell of fried onions. Together, these two details create the atmosphere of vulgarity that Chekhov tried to reproduce in the story.

All compositional techniques can perform two functions in the composition of a work, slightly different from each other: they can organize either a separate small fragment of text (at the micro level) or the entire text (at the macro level), becoming the latter case principle of composition. Above we looked at how repetition organizes the composition of the entire work; Let's give an example when repetition organizes the structure of a small fragment:

Nor glory bought with blood,

Nor the peace full of proud trust,

Nor the dark old treasured legends

No joyful dreams stir within me.

Lermontov. Motherland

The most common method of organizing the microstructures of a poetic text is sound repetition at the end of poetic lines - rhyme.

The same can be observed, for example, in the use of the technique of amplification: in the above examples from Gogol and Chekhov, he organizes a separate fragment of the text, and, say, in Pushkin’s poem “The Prophet” becomes general principle compositions of the entire artistic whole (by the way, this is very clearly manifested in F.I. Chaliapin’s performance of P. Rimsky-Korsakov’s romance to Pushkin’s poems).

In the same way, montage can become a compositional principle for organizing the entire work - this can be observed, for example, in Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”, Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, etc.

Thus, in the future we will distinguish between repetition, contrast, intensification and montage as a compositional technique itself and as a principle of composition.

These are the basic compositional techniques with the help of which the composition in any work is built. Let us now move on to consider the levels at which compositional effects are realized in a particular work. As already mentioned, composition embraces the entire artistic form of a work and organizes it, thus acting at all levels. The first level we will consider is the level of the figurative system.

Composition of the figurative system

The artistic form of a work consists of individual images. Their sequence and interaction with each other - important point, which must certainly be analyzed, without which it is often impossible to understand either the shades of artistic content or the originality of the form that embodies it. Thus, in Lermontov’s poem “Duma,” the poet’s thoughts about his generation are accompanied by a number of one-order images (the technique of repetition is used), expressing a state of powerlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness: “a smooth path without a goal,” “a feast at someone else’s holiday,” “a skinny fruit, before ripe in time,” “we barely touched the cup of pleasure,” “buried by stinginess and a useless treasure.” This series of images leads to the last, final, most expressive and sums up the entire poem: “And our ashes, with the severity of a judge and a citizen, / The descendant will insult with a contemptuous verse, / With the bitter mockery of a deceived son / Over a squandered father.” Study of the figurative structure and its composition in in this case allows you to penetrate not only the meaning of the poet’s rational reasoning, but also into the emotional world of the poem, to grasp the strength and sharpness of Lermontov’s melancholy and bitterness, the strength of his contempt for his own generation, without excluding himself from it. The principle of the unity of the work, which is realized primarily by compositional means, also becomes clear.

In general, the construction of an image system often brings unity and integrity even to compositional elements of a work that are very heterogeneous in composition; This is one of the functions of composition. Thus, in Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” the roll call of images in the Yershalaim and Moscow chapters is of particular importance (the technique of repetition is again used). These are images (often with symbolic meaning) of the sun, moon, “black yellow-bellied cloud,” thunderstorms and some others. They create a semantic and emotional connection between the events in Moscow and in ancient Yershalaim, work to create the semantic, emotional and aesthetic unity of the work, in their own way emphasizing the idea that, despite the difference of twenty centuries, the speech is both in another case it is about the same thing: o human nature, cowardice and courage, moral responsibility and conscience, good and evil, light and darkness. The compositional unity of the novel's figurative system is here a reflection of Bulgakov's ideas about the unity of the world.

In general, increased attention should be paid to repeating images in the composition of a work: they often not only serve as a unifying moment for the whole, but also carry an increased semantic load, embodying some important idea for the author. Thus, in Tvardovsky’s poem “Terkin in the Next World,” the repeated image of “the guns are going backwards to battle” persistently point the reader to the allegorical meaning of the figurative system of the work, reminding the reader of the need to think about the lines of this story, which the author himself defines as “unusual, perhaps ; strange, maybe sometimes,” revealing the author’s subtext of the fantastic plot and imagery:

The point is not that there is heaven and hell,

Damn it, the devil - it doesn't matter...

The guns go backwards for battle -

This was said a long time ago.

An equally, and perhaps more important, semantic and emotional load is carried by the recurring image of the road in Gogol’s poem “ Dead Souls" Appearing either in Chichikov's travels or in the author's digressions, this image confronts the dead stagnation of Russian everyday life, pointing to movement, to the living forces of Rus', and compositionally prepares one of the key images of the poem - the image of the galloping troika.

Important for the composition of the work are not only repeated, but also images opposed to each other. Thus, in many of Yesenin’s works (“Sorokoust”, “I am the last poet of the village...”, etc.) there is a semantically important compositional contrast between the images of the city and the village, the dead and the living, and the living for Yesenin is embodied in images of nature (always animate by the poet), wood, straw, etc., and the dead - in the images of iron, stone, cast iron - that is, something heavy, inert, unnatural, opposing the normal flow of living life:

Have you seen how he runs across the steppes,

Hiding in the lake mists,

Zhelezny snoring nostrils,

On my paws cast iron train?

And let's go through the big grass,

Like a festival of desperate racing,

Throwing thin legs to the head,

The red-maned gallops foal.

They squeezed my neck village

Stone highway hands.

On the blue field path

Coming soon iron guest.

oat cereal, the dawn shed,

He will collect it by scooping a handful.

(Italics are mine throughout. – A.E.)

In the last example there is another figurative opposition that is important for Yesenin: color. The black color of the “bad guest”, a lifeless color, is contrasted here with the colorful colors of living life: the blue color is directly given, but yellow (“oatmeal”) and pink (“spilled by the dawn”) are also implied. The opposition in the figurative system thus acquires a more intense character.

For Yesenin (as, indeed, for many other poets and writers), color images are generally very important. Thus, in his poem “The Black Man” one cannot ignore two literally flashing black and white background color spots:

There lived a boy in a simple peasant family,

Yellow haired, with blue hair eyes.

Generally in figurative composition works, the most unexpected finds are possible. Thus, in Chekhov's play " The Cherry Orchard“The sound image is extremely important for creating emotional coloring: “the fading, sad sound of a broken string.” Sound, or more precisely, musical images play an important role in the composition of Turgenev’s works. They appear, as a rule, when the structure of the narrative requires an author's digression, a direct statement from the author. In Turgenev’s fundamentally neutral narrative there is no place for such a statement, so the music sounds like a hint of the author’s understanding of life. As we can see, musical images occupy an extremely important place.

It’s interesting to see how a work is built on a single image, which happens quite often in lyric poetry. In such cases, the image usually reveals itself gradually, often as if “playing” with its different facets; the composition of the work in this case comes down to revealing the true and full meaning of the image. For example, in Lermontov’s poem “Clouds,” the first stanza sets an image and begins to liken clouds to a person, his fate:

You rush as if you were exiles like me,

From the sweet north to the south.

The second stanza continues, strengthens this meaning of the image (the amplification technique is used), more and more likening nature to man. It seems that the meaning of the image has been exhausted, but in the third stanza an unexpected poetic move changes everything:

Passions are alien to you and suffering is alien to you;

Eternally cold, eternally free,

We have no homeland, no exile for you.

In nature, the same passions and concepts do not exist as in human life; only man is given the opportunity to suffer exile and have a homeland. Thus, this time using the technique of opposition, Lermontov creates the affect of disappointed expectation: the more the reader believes in the likeness of clouds to man, the more unexpected, and therefore powerful, the last quatrain sounds, finally completing the figurative system.

In a particular work of art, the composition of images can be as varied as desired. The compositional structure of a work, as a rule, is individual, although it is based on four main techniques and their contamination, so it seems difficult to give any general recipes for analyzing the composition of images. However - and this is clear from the examples given - we wanted to focus attention primarily on the composition of such images that are not related to the plot, that is, the event outline of the work. It is images of this kind that most often escape attention, and yet they contain a lot of interesting and important things.

Character system

Let's move on now to more familiar material. When analyzing epic and dramatic works a lot of attention has to be paid to the composition of the system of characters, that is, the characters in the work (we emphasize - the analysis is not of the characters themselves, but of their mutual connections and relationships, that is, composition). For the convenience of approaching this analysis, it is customary to distinguish between main characters (who are at the center of the plot, have independent characters and are directly related to all levels of the content of the work), secondary characters (who are also quite actively involved in the plot, who have their own character, but who are given less authorial attention; in in a number of cases, their function is to help reveal the images of the main characters) and episodic (appearing in one or two episodes of the plot, often without their own character and standing on the periphery of the author’s attention; their main function is to give impetus to the plot action at the right moment or to highlight certain other features of the main and secondary characters). It would seem a very simple and convenient division, but in practice it often causes bewilderment and some confusion. The fact is that the category of a character (main, secondary or episodic) can be determined according to two different parameters. The first is the degree of participation in the plot and, accordingly, the amount of text that this character is given. The second is the degree of importance of a given character for revealing aspects of artistic content. It’s easy to analyze in cases where these parameters coincide: for example, in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” Bazarov is the main character in both parameters, Pavel Petrovich, Nikolai Petrovich, Arkady, Odintsova are secondary characters in all respects, and Sitnikov or Kukshina are episodic. But it often happens that the character’s parameters do not coincide with each other; most often in the case where a minor or episodic person from the point of view of the plot carries a large content load. So, for example, a clearly minor (and if we take into account his necessity for the development of the plot, even episodic) character in the novel “What is to be done?” Rakhmetov turns out to be the most important, the main one from the point of view of the embodiment of the author’s ideal (“the salt of the salt of the earth”), which Chernyshevsky even specifically stipulates when talking with the “insightful reader” that Rakhmetov did not appear on the pages of the novel in order to take part in the plot, but in order to satisfy the main requirement of artistry - proportionality of composition: after all, if the reader is not shown at least a glimpse of the author’s ideal, a “special person,” then he will be mistaken in assessing such heroes of the novel as Kirsanov, Lopukhov, Vera Pavlovna. Another example is from Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter”. It would seem impossible to imagine a more episodic image than Empress Catherine: she seems to exist only to bring a rather complicated story main characters to a happy ending. But for the problems and the idea of the story, this is an image of paramount importance, because without it, the most important idea of the story - the idea of mercy - would not have received a semantic and compositional completion. Just as Pugachev, in his time, despite all the circumstances, had mercy on Grinev, so Catherine has mercy on him, although the circumstances of the case seem to point against him. Just as Grinev meets with Pugachev as person to person, and only later does he turn into an autocrat, so Masha meets with Catherine, not suspecting that this is an empress, also like person to person. And if it weren’t for this image in the system of characters in the story, the composition would not be closed, and therefore, the idea of the human connection of all people, without distinction of classes and positions, would not sound artistically convincing, the idea that “giving alms” is one of the best manifestations human spirit, and the solid foundation of human coexistence is not cruelty and violence, but kindness and mercy.

In some artistic systems we encounter such an organization of the system of characters that the question of dividing them into main, secondary and episodic ones loses all meaningful meaning, although in a number of cases differences between individual characters remain in terms of plot and volume of text. It’s not for nothing that Gogol wrote about his comedy “The Inspector General” that “every hero is here; the flow and progress of the play produces a shock to the whole machine: not a single wheel should remain rusty and not included in the work.” Continuing further by comparing the wheels in the car with the characters in the play, Gogol notes that some heroes can only formally prevail over others: “And in the car, some wheels move more noticeably and more powerfully, they can only be called the main ones.”

The same principle in the composition of the character system is maintained by Gogol in the poem “Dead Souls”, but meanwhile, do we notice all the people created by the writer during analysis? In the orbit of our attention, first of all, Chichikov is the “main” character (the word “main” inevitably has to be put in quotation marks, because, as it gradually turns out, he is not more important than all the others). Further, landowners, sometimes officials and, if time permits, one or two images from among Plyushkin’s “souls” come into our field of vision. And this is unusually small compared to the crowd of people who inhabit the space of Gogol’s poem. The number of people in the poem is simply amazing, they are at every step, and before we get to know Chichikov, we have already seen “two Russian men”, without a name or external signs, who do not play any role in the plot, do not characterize Chichikov in any way and in general seem to be of no use. And we will later meet a great many such figures - they appear, flash and disappear, seemingly without a trace: Uncle Minyai and Uncle Mityai, Nozdryov’s “son-in-law” Mizhuev, boys begging Chichikov for alms at the hotel gate, and especially one of them, “big a hunter to stand on his heels,” and staff captain Potseluev, and a certain assessor Drobyazhkin, and Fetinya, “a mistress of fluffing feather beds,” “some lieutenant who came from Ryazan, a big hunter, apparently, for boots, because he has already ordered four couples and constantly tried on the fifth one.”... There is no way to list them all or even a significant part. And the most interesting thing about Gogol’s system of “episodic” characters is that each of them is unforgettably individual, and yet none of them performs any functions usual for this type of character; they do not provide impetus to the plot action and do not help characterize the main characters. In addition, let us pay attention to the detail in the depiction of these characters, which is clearly excessive for a “passing”, peripheral hero. By giving your characters a unique manner of behavior, a special speech face, a characteristic feature of a portrait, etc. Gogol creates a bright and memorable image - let us remember at least the men who talked about Manilovka and Zamanilovka, Ivan Antonovich Kuvshinnoe Rylo, Sobakevich’s wife, the daughter of the old policeman, on whose face “there was threshing peas at night,” Korobochka’s late husband, who loved to I scratched his heels at night, but I couldn’t fall asleep without it...

In the composition of Gogol's poem, episodic characters differ from the main ones only quantitatively, and not qualitatively: in the volume of the image, but not in the degree of the author's interest in them, so that some Sysoy Pafnutievich or a completely nameless owner of a roadside tavern turn out to be no less interesting for the author than Chichikov or Plyushkin. And this already creates a special setting, a special meaningful meaning of the composition: before us are no longer images of individual people, but something broader and more significant - the image of a population, a people, a nation; peace at last.

Almost the same composition of the character system is observed in Chekhov's plays, and here the matter is even more complicated: the main and secondary characters cannot be distinguished even by the degree of participation in the plot and the volume of the image. And here the following composition has a meaningful meaning that is close, but somewhat different from Gogol’s: Chekhov needs to show a certain set of ordinary people, ordinary consciousness, among which there are no outstanding, extraordinary heroes, on whose images one can build a play, but for the most part they are themes no less interesting and significant. To do this, it is necessary to show a multitude of equal characters, without singling out the main and minor ones; This is the only way that something common is revealed in them, namely, the drama of a failed life inherent in everyday consciousness, a life that has passed or is passing in vain, without meaning and even without pleasure.

Quite complex compositional and semantic relationships can arise between the characters of a work. The simplest and most common case is the opposition of two images to each other. According to this principle of contrast, for example, the system of characters in Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies” is built: Mozart - Salieri, Don Juan - the Commander, the Baron - his son, the priest - Walsingham. Somewhat more difficult case when one character is opposed to all others, as, for example, in Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit,” where even quantitative relationships are important: it was not for nothing that Griboedov wrote that in his comedy “there are twenty-five fools for one smart person" Much less often than opposition, the technique of a kind of “doubleness” is used, when characters are compositionally united by similarity; a classic example is Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky in Gogol.

Often the compositional grouping of characters is carried out in accordance with the themes and problems that these characters embody. Thus, in Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” the main compositional grouping of characters follows the thematic principle stated at the beginning of the novel: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Different families in the novel develop this theme in different ways. In the same way, in Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” in addition to the obvious and implemented in the plot contrast between Bazarov and almost all the other characters, another, more hidden and not embodied in the plot, compositional principle is implemented, namely the juxtaposition of two groups of characters by similarity: on the one hand, these are Arkady and Nikolai Petrovich, on the other, Bazarov and his parents. In both cases, these characters embody the same problem - the problem of intergenerational relationships. And Turgenev shows that, no matter what individual people are, the problem remains essentially the same: this is an ardent love for children, for whom, in fact, the older generation lives, this inevitable misunderstanding, the desire of children to prove their “maturity” and superiority, dramatic internal conflicts as a result of this, and yet, in the end, the inevitable spiritual unity of generations.

Speech - business card person. It will reveal your age, level of education, status and even interests. It is not surprising that writers willingly use speech characteristics in their works. This is an excellent addition to literary portrait hero.

What matters is what they say

Maxim Gorky noted that it is often not what the heroes say that is important, but how they do it. The main thing is not judgment, but manner. Therefore, the most accurate definition of the concept of “speech characteristic” is the nature of the character’s vocabulary, the intonation and stylistic coloring of his verbal constructions.

How does this figurative device work? The heroes’ rhetoric characterizes individuality, makes the image expressive and memorable, serves as a means of contrasting with other characters, and reveals the hero’s mental and emotional state.

Requirements for lexical means

Literary techniques for creating speech characteristics are the use of dialect and slang words, professionalisms and clericalisms, and the inclusion of constructions that clog speech. This is also the introduction of sayings, jokes, allegories, and diminutive vocabulary into the characters’ speech. Speech can be fast or slow, differ in the unusual structure of phrases, and the degree of volume.

What is the salt of character?

A sign that distinguishes a hero from other characters can be special, characteristic only for him, words and expressions, as, for example, with Ostap Bender, the hero of the novels by Ilf and Petrov. Other characters are distinguished by specific speech defects, which add piquancy to the image. This is how Colonel Nai-Tours lisps from Bulgakov’s “The White Guard,” the charming Miss Stapleton lisps from Conan Doyle’s story “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and Erast Fandorin stutters slightly in Boris Akunin’s detective novels.

Comedy “Minor”: speech characteristics of the characters

Denis Fonvizin’s play “The Minor” is the first Russian comedy of the classicism era. In 1782, it was triumphantly performed on the stage of the Karl Knieper Theater in St. Petersburg, then it was published and went through 4 editions during the author’s lifetime.

The comedy was created in the best traditions of classicism and had the goal of correcting the vices of society. The play clearly divided all the characters into positive and negative. She obeyed the trinity of place, action and time. Distinctive feature there were “talking” names and surnames of the characters in “Minor” and the speech characteristics of the heroes.

The lively spoken language of comedy revealed the innovation of Fonvizin, who was a prominent participant in the process of formation of the all-Russian literary language in the second half of the 18th century.

Author's credo

The vocabulary of the positive heroes of the drama of Fonvizin's time was full of book turns and cumbersome syntactic constructions. Denis Ivanovich made significant changes to this tradition. Remaining bookish, speech best heroes his comedies - Starodum, Sophia, Milon, Pravdin - burn with a thirst for truth, honor, justice, and intolerance for vice. Thus, the speech characteristics of the characters reveal the moral ideal of the author, who is opposed to the conservatism of the ruling circles.

The rhetoric of Starodum, this alter ego of Fonvizin himself, is aphoristic and figurative. His remarks soon became quotable: “Have a heart, have a soul, and you will be a man at all times,” “A golden fool is always a fool,” and others.

Starodum's conversation depends on, for example, in a conversation with Prostakova and Skotinin, he ironically uses colloquial expressions.

Why we laugh: features of the speech of negative people

It should be noted that the speech of the negative characters of “The Minor” is attractive in its own way: there is a lot of ease in it, folk sayings, colorful phraseological units.

Remarkable in the comedy “Minor” speech by the author dramatic work Only the characters' lines are available to create a complete impression of the arrogance and ignorance of Mitrofanushka's mother. devoid of expression, emphasizes the intellectual and spiritual poverty of the heroine. She says “where”, “maybe”, “if only”, “not cheeky”, “look” mixed with swear words: “beast”, “cattle”, “face”, “scum”, “snout”, “thief’s mug”, “dog’s daughter”, etc. Thus, Prostakova’s speech characteristics demonstrate the rudeness, depravity, and cruelty of the character.

Along with colloquial sayings and dialectisms, the landowner also uses book expressions: “amorous writing”, “a fair amount of fiction”. This technique is not just comical, it allows one to achieve amazing verisimilitude in the image of Prostakova, whose speech characteristics indicate that the author is quite familiar with the vocabulary of provincial nobles.

The statements of Mitrofanushka and Skotinin are full of jokes, proverbs and puns. However, this technique does not make them likable characters. Rough and vulgar expressions mixed with folk vocabulary serve one purpose - to ridicule and condemn negative characters.

Vocabulary from the barn

Skotinin’s speech characteristics are distinguished by a “zoological” connotation: “piglets”, “pigs”, “shed” are his favorite words. He pronounces them with tenderness and pride, often personifying himself with the inhabitants of the barnyard. It is no coincidence that N.V. Gogol said about Skotinin that pigs are the same to him as Art Gallery for art lovers. In the vocabulary of the feudal landowner, colloquial phrases (tomorrow, which, eka happiness) are paradoxically mixed with bureaucratic words from the world of state institutions: “petitioner”, “left by a corporal”. Skotinin does not stand on ceremony either with his servants or with his own nephew: “I’ll break him like hell.”

Evil fruits

Compared to his relatives, Mitrofan looks like a “professor” because teachers teach him. However, they are also half-educated, and the abilities of the underage leave much to be desired. The table of speech characteristics in the photo gives us some idea about the teachers of the underage.

A lump and a lazy person, Mitrofanushka expresses himself in a simple and rude manner: “I’ve been walking around like crazy...all night such rubbish has been in my eyes.” The noble son's remarks are comical due to his stupidity and illiteracy. He says of the noun “door” that it is an “adjective” because it is “attached to its place” for the sixth week. In the finale, the heartless son does not respond to his mother’s call, dismissing her: “get off it!” The author created the image of Mitrofanushka as an illustration of how harmful the example of evil and unenlightened parents is for the younger generation; the character’s actions and his speech characteristics emphasize this.

As the heroes of "The Thunderstorm" say

The drama “The Thunderstorm” by A. N. Ostrovsky appeared almost a hundred years later, when the enlightened nobles were inspired by the upcoming reforms. The rebellious sound of the incredibly intense conflict of the play is determined, among other means of expression, by the speech characteristics. The storm in the relationships and in the souls of the characters is wonderfully demonstrated by the dialogues of the opposing heroes.

Replicas from the dark kingdom

The musty and despotic world of the patriarchal city of Kalinov appears before the reader in the speech of Kabanikha and Dikiy. The latter is called a “scolder” in the city, who else needs to be looked for. His remarks are aggressive and downright rude. The character's intolerant, arrogant character is manifested in the fact that he pronounces foreign words in his own manner.

Kabanikha’s conversation is filled with Domostroev vocabulary. She often uses the imperative mood and does not disdain swear words. Along with the rudeness and mockery in her speech, there is a desire to seem kind and even unhappy to people, to evoke sympathy and acceptance. This is how verbal constructions help the author create a hypocritical character.

Speech is like a song

The central character of the drama, Katerina, speaks the language of folk poetry; her remarks intersperse colloquial words with the vocabulary of church literature. Katerina’s speech is extremely figurative and emotional, it contains many diminutive constructions. She reveals a deep and extraordinary character. This is especially evident in dialogues with people of the same generation as Katerina. Calculating and cynical Varvara talks in short phrases, ruled by down-to-earth worldly wisdom and practicality mixed with lies. Cultured and courteous Boris, ready to endure the tyranny of his uncle Dikiy, is “sick” with the habit of self-flagellation. His internal monologues expose a kind, but cowardly man. This is facilitated by the technique of inversion in the speech of the hero, who always depends on circumstances and does not know how to manage his own life.

Capacious speech touches for portraits of heroes

Tikhon's speech is common and completely devoid of poetry; he is a weak-willed and spiritless character. Emphatically polite to his mother, Tikhon is free in conversations with others.

One of the iconic characters in the play is Feklusha. Colloquial elements interspersed with Church Slavonicisms of her speech reflect the falsehood that prevails in relation to moral values and faith in God among the inhabitants of Kalinov.

The balanced and competent speech of Kuligin, a self-taught mechanic, demonstrates an honest, good character, filled with dreams of a better future for the city. The inventor's vocabulary is distinguished by correctly constructed constructions; if he uses colloquial words, it is very organic and in moderation. Kuligin’s statements are not alien to poetic turns when he admires the perfection of the world around him. This positive hero drama, whose beliefs and creative impulse do not find support.

They will survive the centuries

The ability to skillfully create a linguistic portrait of a character is the privilege of talented writers. The heroes of their books create a new reality and are remembered by readers for a long time.

“The speech is both vital and natural in Hamlet, and not vital and not natural in Chatsky.”

A. I. Yuzhin.

The actor's voice is the last stage before the audience perceives the text. Barthes called the voice "the intimate signature of the actor." The pitch, timbre, and color of the voice allow you to immediately identify the character. And at the same time, they directly, through direct and sensory influence, influence the viewer’s perception of it.

When Artaud describes his “theater of cruelty,” he is really only describing the process of text in the theater: “The sounding is constant: sounds, noises, screams are sought first of all for their vibrational quality, and only then for what they represent... Words taken in the sense of a truly magical spell - for the sake of their form, their sensual emanations, and not only for the sake of their meaning."

It allows you to individualize the character, since each person's speech is individual. Thus, the actor’s vocal characteristics, the characteristics of his speech, merge with the characteristics of the character’s speech. The actor's voice is transmitted to the character and merges with him.

The character’s speech reflects the psychological, intellectual, emotional, and social parameters of the individual. Speech also carries an important informative function. Therefore, when analyzing a character’s personality, one should not lose sight of his speech characteristics.

Scheme of the character's speech characteristics.

Manner of speaking.

Favorite figures of speech.

Lexicon.

Accent (articulatory features).

11. External characteristics of the role.

“The purpose of our art is not only to create the “life of the human spirit” of a role, but also to externally convey it in artistic form.”

K. S. Stanislavsky.

A specific component of the actor's art is pantomime, i.e. the art of movements of the human body (pantomime), as well as hands (gestures) and faces (facial expressions). All this together is often called gestures in the broad sense of the word (in the narrow sense, a gesture is the movement of human hands). In a number of cases, a person’s physical movements act as conventional signs, similar to words (gestural “yes” and “no”, a finger at the lips - a sign of silence, the language of the deaf and dumb). These are a kind of gestural concepts. Many of them go back to rituals (bow, handshake).

In its directly expressive function, gesture is very deeply rooted in human life. Gesticulation is primary in relation to speech activity; it has deep biological roots and reveals the most organically rooted human states. “From a person’s conversations, one can conclude what he wants to appear to be, but one must try to guess what he really is from his facial expressions that accompany his words, or from his gestures, that is, from his involuntary movements,” noted Schiller.

Gesture as a message is much poorer than speech, but it surpasses it in some expressive capabilities, especially where it concerns the emotional sphere.

The characteristic way of holding oneself, using one's body and taking positions in relation to the "other" is called guest(from Latin gestus - gesture).

A gest should be separated from a purely individual gesture (scratching, sneezing, etc.). " We call the sphere defined by the positions that various characters occupy in relation to each other the sphere of gesture. Posture, speech and facial expressions are determined by one or another socially significant gesture. Characters can scold, praise, teach each other, etc."- wrote Bertolt Brecht, who coined this term.

Guest consists of simple movement one person in relation to another, from the manner of behaving in a social or corporate sense. Any stage action presupposes a certain position, a certain way of action of the protagonists among themselves and within society - this is a social gest.

The main gest of the play is the main type of relationship that regulates social behavior (servility, equality, violence, cunning, etc.). Gest is between action and character. As an action, it shows a character involved in society; as a character, it constitutes a set of character traits characteristic of a given character.

It is felt both in the physical actions of the actor and in the verbal expression. Text and music can be considered sign language when they present a rhythm that matches the meaning of what they are saying. For example: the uneven, syncopated gest of Brecht's son, reflecting the image of a contradictory and inharmonious world.

There are both gestural and facial dialogues (there are quite a few of them, for example, in the novels of Leo Tolstoy) and gestural and facial monologues. At the same time, the latter constitute the predominant sphere of visible behavior. Gesture, unlike speech, is primarily monological. Monologues revealed to the eye (as opposed to speech) are impulsive and instantaneous. Marcel Marceau was right when he said that where verbal theater requires two hours, pantomime is limited to two minutes.

Unlike the European theater, synthetic forms have always prevailed in the theatrical cultures of the East, in which movement dominated, along with music, and the verbal series, as a rule, was dependent and occupied a secondary place.

In European theater, the word has traditionally dominated. However... “The very essence of true art is based on silent scenes. From them one can best judge how well the actor managed to get used to the chosen character... The best measure of an actor’s ability is his ability to listen,” said the great English actor G. Irving.

“Verbal expression, the so-called richness of intonation, the art of declamation belong to the theater of the 19th century... A modern Ostrovsky would no longer be able to listen to a performance from behind the scenes and determine only by the sounds of a human voice whether it is true, whether it is going well... Modern theater- theater of action. The word is only one of the expressive means of the theater." These words of G. Tovstonogov trace the main change that occurred during the 20th century in the word-gesture tandem.

Today, the main thing in an actor’s work is the creation of an original intonation and gesture pattern for the role. Therefore, the attitudes are one-sided, on the one hand, to the external unrecognizability of the actor, in which the central “problems” become a costume, wig, makeup, etc., and, on the other, to personal self-expression, the so-called “confession.”

"There are, apparently, two directly opposite ways in the profession of an actor. The first is to show the beauty of Juliet with the help of your hands, your legs, your eyes, your heart. The second is to show the beauty of your hands, your legs, your eyes, with the help of Juliet. your heart is selling yourself, this is prostitution in art... Gradually, this self-showing will completely corrode the actor’s talent, even if he had it.” (S. Obraztsov).

Mikhail Chekhov said that when working on a role, two processes are important: the actor, firstly, adapts “the image of the role to himself,” and secondly, “himself to the image of the role.” Both processes find their expression primarily not in words, but in physical action.

“The more brilliant the actor, the less he... pays attention to the work he is playing, and the highest moment of theatrical tension often turns out to be a silent scene, which the author did not foresee even in the stage directions.” (A. Blok).

Therefore, along with speech characteristics, it is necessary to determine the gestural and external specifics of the role, that part of it that significantly influences the behavior, actions, and character of the character. It is essential that Lear is an old man, Othello is a black man, Lenin, like Napoleon, has the habit of putting his hands behind the cuffs of his jacket, and Panikovsky is limping.

One of the methods that allows you to most accurately express external characteristics role is biomechanics.

Biomechanics is a branch of biophysics that studies the properties of an organism. Sun. Meyerhold used this term to describe a system of physical training for an actor, the main goal of which is the immediate fulfillment by the actor of tasks received from the outside (from the director) to realize the external image of the role.

“Since the task of an actor’s performance is the implementation of a specific task, he is required to save expressive means, which guarantees the accuracy of movements that contribute to the speedy implementation of the task.” (Vs. Meyerhold).

Biomechanical exercises prepare the actor to encode gestures in certain positions-poses that maximally concentrate the illusion of movement, the expressiveness of body movements, the gestus of which is achieved in accordance with the passage of three stages of the game cycle (intention, implementation, reaction-evaluation).

Biomechanics is based on the fact that a gesture can have both a reflexive and a conscious basis.

In a person’s inclination towards sparing gestures or towards their abundance, in the selection of gestures he uses, to some extent his upbringing, habits, temperament, mental state in life are revealed. this moment and ultimately his character.

Gesture is inseparable from thought, as intention is from implementation, idea from illustration. "The starting point of these plastic forms will be their stimulation and discovery of the original human reactions. The end result is a living form with its own logic." (E. Grotovsky).

A gesture is a hieroglyphic image that can be deciphered. “Any movement is a hieroglyph with its own, special meaning. The theater should use only those movements that can be instantly deciphered: everything else is unnecessary,” noted Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Deciphering a hieroglyph gesture is not particularly difficult, given the features of the typology of the gesture. Gestures are:

1. Innate gestures.

2. Aesthetic gestures, worked out to create a work of art.

3. Conventional gestures that express a message that is understandable to both the sender and the recipient.

In addition, gestures are divided into imitative and original.

Imitating gesture- this is a gesture of an actor embodying a character in a realistic (naturalistic) manner by recreating his behavior, his innate and conditioned gestures.

Original gesture occurs when the actor refuses to imitate. Then it represents a hieroglyph that requires decoding. "The actor must no longer use his body to illustrate the movement of the soul; he must perform this movement with the help of his body." (E. Grotovsky).

The gesture also has its own plastic code, which can be deciphered according to several parameters:

· - gesture tension\relaxation;

· - physical and temporal concentration of several gestures;

· -perception of the final goal and orientation of the plastic sequence;

· -aesthetic process of stylization, enlargement, purification, defamiliarization of gesture;

· - establishing a connection between a gesture and a word (accompaniment, addition, substitution).

The meaning of SPEECH CHARACTERISTICS in the Dictionary of Linguistic Terms

SPEECH CHARACTERISTICS

(speech portrait). Selection of special ones for everyone actor literary work words and expressions as a means of artistic depiction of characters. In some cases, words and syntactic structures of bookish speech are used for this purpose, in others, colloquial vocabulary and raw syntax, etc., are used as means of speech characterization, etc., as well as favorite “words” and figures of speech, the predilection for which characterizes literary character from one side or another (general cultural, social, professional, etc.). Wed , for example, A. P. Chekhov’s abundant use of introductory constructions, along with other speech means, to characterize the uncultured Epikhodov in the play “The Cherry Orchard”: “You see, excuse the expression, what a circumstance, by the way” (act one); “As a matter of fact, without touching on other subjects, I must express myself, among other things, that fate treats me without regret, like a storm treats a small ship. If, let’s say, I’m mistaken, then why did I wake up this morning, for example, I look, and there’s a scary-sized spider on my chest...” (act two); “Sure, maybe you're right. But, of course, if you look at it from the point of view, then you, if I may put it this way, excuse the frankness, have completely brought me into a state of mind” (act three); “A long-term firs, in my opinion final opinion, is not suitable for repair, he needs to go to his forefathers” (act four). The speech portrait of a character from Chekhov’s humorous miniature “The Doctor’s Novel” is built on the extensive use of professional vocabulary. The character on whose behalf the story is told, a doctor by profession, characterizes his wife this way: “Her habitus (appearance) is not bad. The coloring of the skin and mucous membranes is normal. The subcutaneous cellular layer is developed satisfactorily. The chest is normal, there are no wheezes, vesicular breathing. Heart sounds are clear. In the sphere of psychic phenomena, only one deviation is noticeable; She's talkative and loud"

Dictionary of linguistic terms. 2012