Just like a historian, a writer can recreate the appearance and events of the past, although artistic reproduction of them, of course, differs from scientific reproduction. The author, based on historical data, also includes creative fiction in his works - he depicts what could have been, and not just what actually happened.
The best works representing the historical genre have not only aesthetic value, but also historical and educational value. Fiction can portray a bygone era in its entirety, reveal ideology, social activities, psyche, life in living images. Historical and everyday genres are closely related, since everyday life is part of history. Let us consider the history of the formation of historical genres in literature.
Historical Adventures
Not every work that describes past events seeks to recreate them as they really were. Sometimes this is just material for colorful paintings, a sharp plot, a special flavor - exotic, sublime, etc. This characterizes historical adventures (for example, the works of A. Dumas “Ascanio”, “Erminia”, “Black”, “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “The Corsican Brothers” and others). Their main task is to create an entertaining story.
The emergence of the historical genre
It began to take shape at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. At this time, a historical novel is being created - special genre, which sets itself the goal of directly depicting the life of past eras. It (like the historical drama that appeared later) is fundamentally different from the works dedicated to events previous eras. Fictional historical literature begins to take shape in connection with a significant turning point in historical knowledge, that is, the process of its formation as a science. It is thanks to this that these types of genres appear.
The first authors who worked in new genres
The first writer who began to create works on subjects that interest us is W. Scott. Before this, J. Goethe and F. Schiller, the greats, made their contribution to the development of literature. In the work of the former, historical drama is represented by the works “Egmont” (1788) and “Götz von Berlichingen” (1773). The second created “Wallenstein” (1798-1799), “William Tell” in 1804, as well as “Mary Stuart” in 1801. However, the real milestone was the work of Walter Scott, who is considered the founder of the genre historical novel.
He owns a whole series of works depicting the period of the Crusades ("Richard the Lionheart", "Ivanhoe", "Robert, Count of Paris"), as well as the time of the formation of national monarchies in Europe ("Quentin Durward"), in England ("Woodstock" , “The Puritans”), the collapse of the clan system in Scotland (“Rob Roy”, “Waverley”), etc. For the first time in his works, the reconstruction of the past by the writer’s pen is based on the study of historical sources (while formerly an artist mainly limited to reproducing the general course of events and the most characteristic features of past figures). The work of this writer influenced the further development that the different kinds genres.
Many classic writers turn to historical themes. These include V. Hugo, who wrote various books. Historical novels created by this author - "Cromwell", "Ninety-third", "Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris" and others.
A. de Vigny (“Saint-Mars”), Manzoni, who created “The Betrothed” in 1827, as well as F. Cooper, M. Zagoskin, I. Lazhechnikov and others were interested in this topic.
Features of works created by romantics
The historical genre, represented by the works of the romantics, does not always have historical value. This is hampered by the subjective interpretation of events and the replacement of actual social conflicts the fight between good and evil. Most often, the main characters of novels are only the embodiment of the writer’s ideal (for example, Esmeralda in Hugo’s work), and not specific historical types. The political beliefs of the creator also play a role. Thus, A. de Vigny, who sympathized with the aristocracy, made the representative of the so-called feudal front the program hero of his work.
Realistic direction
But one should not evaluate the merits of these works by the degree of historical accuracy. For example, Hugo's novels have enormous emotional power. However important stage V further development in the literature of the 19th century, the historical genre was associated with the victory of realistic principles in it. Realistic works began to depict social characters, the role of the people in the historical process, and insight into the difficult process of struggle between the various forces involved in it. These aesthetic moments were largely prepared by the school of Walter Scott ("The Jacquerie" by Mérimée, "The Chouans" by Balzac). The historical genre in a realistic refraction in Russia won a victory in the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin ("The Blackamoor of Peter the Great", "Boris Godunov", "The Captain's Daughter").
Deepening psychological analysis
In the 19th century, in the 30s and 40s, deepening in works became new psychological analysis(for example, the image of Waterloo in the work The pinnacle of the historical genre in the 19th century is the epic “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy. In this work, historicism is manifested in the creation of various historical types, a large-scale awareness of the course of history, as well as in the accurate transmission of everyday, social, linguistic, psychological and ideological features of the depicted time.
Historical genre in the mid-19th century
In the middle of the 19th century, after numerous achievements of the realistic school, the most outstanding of which, based on historical material, raised questions about the fate of the nation and folk life, there is a regression in the further development of historical fiction. This is mainly due to the general tendency of bourgeois ideology towards increased reactionism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as an increasingly strong departure from the historicism of social thought. The authors of various historical novels modernize history. For example, A. France, in his work “The Gods Thirst,” written in 1912, dedicated to the period french revolution, conveys the idea that humanity is marking time in its development.
The so-called symbolic literature sometimes claiming deep understanding historical process, but in reality creating only subjectivist constructions that have a mystical character. The following examples can be given: the work “Beatrice’s Bedspread” created in 1901 by A. Schnitzler; in 1908, Merezhkovsky created “Paul I” and “Alexander I”.
Historical genre in the East
In some countries of Eastern Europe On the contrary, at this time the historical genre acquired great social significance and significance. This is due to the fact that in this period the liberation struggle. Sometimes historical literature takes on romantic character. For example, in the works of the Polish novelist: “The Flood”, “With Fire and Sword”, “Camo is Coming”, “Pan Volodyevsky”, “The Crusaders”.
In many countries of the East, the national liberation movement was the basis for the formation of the historical novel. In India, for example, its creator is B.C. Chottopadhyay.
Development of the genre after the October Revolution
In after October revolution a new round of development of the historical realistic novel begins. It allowed Western realists to write a number of works that are outstanding examples of historical fiction. Turning to the past was associated with the need to protect traditions and cultural heritage, with speeches against fascists by humanist writers. For example, this is T. Mann's story "Lotte in Weimar", written in 1939, and numerous novels by Feuchtwanger. These works, distinguished by their democratic, humanistic orientation and closely connected with modernity, are characterized at the same time by the author’s painstaking work on various historical sources. But even in them sometimes there is an imprint of concepts characteristic of historical bourgeois science. For example, Feuchtwanger sometimes has an idea of the progress of history as a struggle between inertia and reason; he also underestimates the role of the people, and sometimes subjectivism appears.
Socialist realism
WITH socialist realism connected new stage, which enters historical genre in literature. His philosophy argued that historical existence is the collective creativity of the people, therefore literature at that time had all the conditions for development, based on the principles of historicism. Along this path, she achieved outstanding results. The most important themes were the depiction of significant, turning-point eras. Characteristic of historical literature of that time was the desire for great generalizations and epicness. As an example, we can cite the novel by A. N. Tolstoy, which depicts the image of this ruler, but at the same time tells about the fate of the people of our country during a critical period of development.
The most important topics Soviet literature was the struggle against the monarchy, the fate of advanced culture in Tsarist Russia, as well as the period of preparation for the revolution and a description of it itself. TO historical literature largely belongs to the work “The Life of Klim Samgin” created by M. Gorky, M. A Sholokhov - “ Quiet Don", A.N. Tolstoy - "Walking through torment" and others.
Today, the historical detective story is becoming very popular - a genre represented in the works of Boris Akunin, Umberto Eco, Agatha Christie, Alexander Bushkov and other authors.
Russian literature is enriched by a unique work, known in two versions - “The Word” and “Prayer” by Daniil Zatochnik. “The Lay” (second half of the 12th century) contains the author’s plea, addressed, apparently, to the Novgorod prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich (great-grandson of Vladimir Monomakh) so that the prince would rescue the author from the beggarly state in which he, an educated man, for some reason found himself .
The “Prayer,” compiled on the basis of the “Word” in the second quarter of the 13th century, makes a similar request to Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (father of Alexander Nevsky), who reigned in Pereyaslav of Suzdal, and then received “eldership” over the Russian princes from Batu Khan.
With the help of skillfully selected authoritative quotations and aphorisms, both versions of the monument strive to create perfect image such a prince who would become reliable protection for subjects. The prince revives “all people with his mercy,” he is the protector of orphans and widows, he is an energetic master and commander, he is sharply different from his “tivun” assistants, who ruin the people.
The author of “Prayer” condemns the boyars; he agrees to wear “lychnitsy” (bast shoes) in the princely house rather than walk “in a black boot in the boyar’s courtyard.” Here, the image of the prince largely preserves the ideas about the ideal ruler that Vladimir Monomakh created in his “Instruction” to children.
Unlike literary traditions Kievan Rus, where vassal relations were usually considered in the sphere of military activity and were interpreted as a princely-squad quest for “honor and glory,” Daniil Zatochnik did not even hesitate to tell the prince about himself that he was not brave “in the army.” But he was strong in “words” and “strong in thought,” and therefore opened up to him new way princely service.
Skillfully using the sayings of biblical books, “The Physiologist”, “The Tale of Akira the Wise”, “The Tale of Bygone Years”, “Izbornik” of Svyatoslav (1076), “Bees” and other monuments, the author proved to the prince his education. His witty speech was sprinkled with sayings (“To whom is Pereslavl, and to me is Goreslavl”; “To whom is Bogolyubovo, and to me is fierce grief”).
Offering himself to the prince as a wise adviser, the humble and poor author laid claim to the high place occupied by the senior squad, like, for example, the boyars - interpreters of the “muddy” dream of Prince Svyatoslav of Kyiv in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” Thus, for the first time in Russian literature, the idea of “mind” appears as a decisive sign of personal dignity and professional activity.
The author of the “Prayer” considered himself a “nobleman” (employee at the prince’s “court”), he wanted the prince to protect him from the boyars with the fear of “his thunderstorm.” The sharpener looked at the prince as the main defender of the fatherland and prayed to God to strengthen his strength in order to repel the conquerors, and this revealed the features of the new patriotic concept of North-Eastern Rus'.
The literary genre of prayers spread mainly in those eras of the Developed Middle Ages, when the principles of monarchical statehood, based not on old feudal-tribal traditions, but on the personal service of subjects, began to strengthen in the public consciousness again.
The new position of the writer, a minor vassal, in relation to his first reader - the autocratic overlord - was not to epically glorify his exploits, as happened before, or, on the contrary, to publicly condemn his mistakes from the standpoint of the common good of the Russian land, but in order to contrast the prince with his largest vassals (boyars) and offer him his devoted service, while catering to his political views and personal tastes.
Appearance in ancient Russian literature The genre of such political words and prayers indicates that it has entered a new period of its development, determined by serious changes in the field of social thought. This genre was well known in the European Middle Ages.
It included the petitionary elegy of the monk Ermold, sent from prison to the French prince, the son of King Louis the Pious (IX century), and “Proverbs” (XIII century), the composition of a certain Italian “sharpener”. More significant were the Byzantine prayers - literary petitions for pardon and release from prison.
Byzantine poets paid much attention to the ironic depiction of troubles family life and the grumpiness of women. The Russian Sharpener cited the same issue traditional word about "evil wives".
Against the background of such typological correspondences in the genre structure, theme and style of prayers of the Middle Ages, the originality of the ancient Russian writer - the first pamphleteer - clearly stands out.
Daniil Zatochnik was far from historical experience and the education of the Byzantine writers of his time, therefore, unlike them, with the naivety of a neophyte, he was filled with the deepest respect for the authorities of ancient wisdom, admiration for the “mind” in general and for his own in particular.
It seemed to him that, having mastered ancient Christian books, he had already put on “the robe of the wise.” Although he was “poor in clothing, he was abundant in mind.” There were significant shifts in the worldview of the ancient Russian writer.
If in the old literary tradition In Byzantium and Bulgaria, it was only fitting for a true Christian ascetic to “fly the mountain with his mind,” if Metropolitan Nikephoros in his Greek letter to Vladimir Monomakh could say to such a high addressee “your mind flies quickly,” and in “The Tale of Igor’s Host” it was fitting to sing about Boyan the Prophet, “flying with his mind under the clouds,” then Daniil Sharpener, without any hesitation, assigned himself the same exalted characteristics; he himself was already able to “soar with his thoughts” like an eagle through the air. He even rhetorically invited his readers to “blow a trumpet,” like a golden trumpet, “into the mind of your mind.”
This rational self-confidence of the writer, clothed in archaic literary forms, was based on such new features of feudal self-awareness that were associated with the emerging prospects for the political role of the humble “service” person at the historical stage of the reviving ancient Russian statehood. Zatochnik’s “Prayer” was a literary harbinger of the noble journalism of the Moscow state.
History of world literature: in 9 volumes / Edited by I.S. Braginsky and others - M., 1983-1984.
fr. genre - genus, type) - a historically established, stable variety of a work of art, for example. – in painting – portrait, landscape, still life, etc.; in music – symphony, cantata, song, etc.; in literature - novel, poem, etc. The concept of genre generalizes the features characteristic of a vast group of works of any era, nation or world art in general.
Excellent definition
GENRE
French genre - genus, type), type of work, which has its own characteristic features and divided into subtypes. A literary genre develops historically, summarizing the features that distinguish a group of works in a particular era. A literary genus is formed from the combination of several genres. Genre is divided into types (sometimes these terms are used in the opposite way: type - a larger set, for example, a poem, genre - a specific type, for example. lyric poem). Overall theory literary families does not exhaust the entire wealth of genres. Other principles for classifying genres can be identified. The genus unites genres mainly on a formal basis (prose, poetry or form of presentation of text for the stage) and on the basis of the general content text (personal feelings and experiences in the lyrics, events in the epic, dramatic plot in drama). Genres can also be divided according to the principle author's attitude to the subject of the image, the general intonation of the work - comic (comedy, comic poem, humorous story), satirical (pamphlet, epigram, feuilleton), tragic, elegiac, etc. Since antiquity, the division of genres into high, medium and low has been known. The high genres include those that tell in a sublime language about the deeds of gods and heroes (tragedy, ode), the low genres are those that ridicule the low actions of people in rude and common language (comedy, satire), the middle genres occupy an intermediate position - they tell about a person’s life without investing in it. neither heroic nor comic content and using the basic fund of words of the language (drama, story). This theory was developed by classicists (M.V. Lomonosov in Russia, who combined the doctrine of genres with the doctrine of three styles - high, medium and low). High genres use words of high and medium style, middle - middle and low, and in low genres words of high and low styles are combined, while “high” words are used in a reduced meaning. Sometimes this classification also includes mixed genres - tragicomic and parody works that combine elements of high and low genres.
Genres are distinguished based on a set of characteristics. In addition to the general content and belonging to a specific literary family, the volume of the work, its composition and the richness of ideological content are important. So, for example, a novel and a story differ from each other in volume (the volume of a novel is, as a rule, larger) and the number of problems, themes, and ideas covered (there are more of them in a novel). The same difference exists between a novel and an epic, which is an even larger work designed to convey the life and flavor of an entire era. In some cases, it is difficult to draw a line between genres (for example, many researchers consider the novels of I. S. Turgenev to be stories). It is easier to distinguish genres on a formal basis. Such criteria are common in poetry. For example, a sonnet is distinguished solely on the basis of external features - a poem of 14 lines, consisting of two quatrains and two tercets. The criteria for distinguishing rondo, triolet, ghazal, etc. are also formal. It is difficult to introduce such a criterion in prose, due to its freer nature, and therefore prose genres often differ not in form, but in content. For example, the difference between a story and a novella is an unexpected ending, which is mandatory for a novella, at least in modern interpretation this term.
On the other hand, it is important for the genre ideological content. On this basis, within the general genre or type of novel or story, one can distinguish utopian (about non-existent ideal countries and cities, written for didactic purposes), adventure (about the adventures of a hero), detective (about the search for a criminal), psychological (dedicated to revealing the psychology of heroes) etc. novel (or corresponding story).
The genre develops and changes historically. IN different eras arose different theories, devoted to the criteria for separating one genre from another and the norms for creating text of various genres. The most famous theories belong to the era of antiquity and classicism.
Not only the content of each genre changes, but also the composition of genres as a whole. Thus, the solemn ode, which originated in the poetry of Pindar, went to the periphery of literature for some time, then was revived in the 18th century, during the era of classicism, and after that it gradually faded away. Genres can arise in a certain era, in the work of a certain writer - for example, with the novel by P. Abelard “The History of My Disasters” a genre arose literary confession. A one-act drama appeared in the work of playwright M. Maeterlinck. Other genres, such as fable and comedy, which arose in antiquity, continue to exist throughout all periods of literary history, right up to modern times, and are constantly filled with new content.
Different eras in the history of literature differ from each other not only in the composition of genres, but also in their number. For literature of the 20th century. typical a large number of genres and their interpenetration. At the intersection of several genres there is new type literary work. In previous periods, literature tended to emphasize several genres (eg, tragedy, ode, epic poem in classicism; lyric poem, ballad, elegy in romanticism). In this regard, in modern literature There were statements about the disappearance of genres - their boundaries expanded to such an extent. Anti-genres appeared - anti-novel, anti-drama.
Genre originality is considered not only in relation to an era or movement in literature, but also in relation to an individual writer. Specific forms always appear in the work of each writer, and their genre affiliation is usually a subject of debate for researchers. Thus, “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky combines the features of a psychological, social, detective and adventure novel.
Excellent definition
Incomplete definition ↓
novel literary narrative genre
The term “novel,” which arose in the 12th century, has undergone a number of semantic changes over the nine centuries of its existence and covers an extremely diverse range of literary phenomena. Moreover, the forms called novels today appeared much earlier than the concept itself. The first forms of the novel genre go back to antiquity, but neither the Greeks nor the Romans left a special name for this genre. Using later terminology, it is usually called a novel. Bishop Yue at the end of the 17th century, in search of the predecessors of the novel, first applied this term to a number of phenomena of ancient narrative prose. This name is based on the fact that the ancient genre that interests us, having as its content the struggle of isolated individuals for their personal, private goals, represents a very significant thematic and compositional similarity with some types of the later European novel, in the formation of which antique novel played a significant role. The name “novel” arose later, in the Middle Ages, and initially referred only to the language in which the work was written.
The most common language of medieval Western European writing was, as is known, literary language ancient Romans - Latin. In the XII-XIII centuries. AD, along with plays, tales, stories written in Latin and existing mainly among the privileged classes of society, the nobility and clergy, stories and stories began to appear written in Romance languages and distributed among democratic strata of society who do not know the Latin language, among trading bourgeoisie, artisans, villans (the so-called third estate). These works, unlike the Latin ones, began to be called: conte roman - a Romanesque story, a story. Then the adjective acquired an independent meaning. This is how a special name arose for narrative works, which later became established in the language and over time lost its original meaning. A novel began to be called a work in any language, but not just any one, but only one that is large in size, distinguished by certain features of theme, compositional structure, plot development, etc.
We can conclude that if this term, closest to its modern meaning, appeared in the era of the bourgeoisie - the 17th and 18th centuries, then the origin of the theory of the novel can logically be attributed to the same time. And although already in the 16th - 17th centuries. certain “theories” of the novel appear (Antonio Minturno “Poetic Art”, 1563; Pierre Nicole “Letter on the Heresy of Writing”, 1665), only together with classical German philosophy did the first attempts appear to create a general aesthetic theory of the novel, to include it in the system of artistic forms. “At the same time, the statements of great novelists about their own writing practice acquire greater breadth and depth of generalization (Walter Scott, Goethe, Balzac). The principles of the bourgeois theory of the novel in its classical form were formulated precisely during this period. But more extensive literature on the theory of the novel appeared only in the second half of the 19th century. Now the novel has finally established its dominance as a typical form of expression of bourgeois consciousness in literature.”
From a historical and literary point of view, it is impossible to talk about the emergence of the novel as a genre, since essentially “novel” is “an inclusive term, overloaded with philosophical and ideological connotations and indicating a whole complex of relatively autonomous phenomena that are not always genetically related to each other.” The “emergence of the novel” in this sense occupies entire eras, starting from antiquity and ending with the 17th or even 18th century.
The emergence and justification of this term was undoubtedly influenced by the history of the development of the genre as a whole. An equally important role in the theory of the novel is played by its formation in various countries.
LITERARY-HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL
The historical development of the novel in different European countries reveals quite large differences caused by the unevenness of socio-economic development and the individual uniqueness of the history of each country. But along with this, the history of the European novel also contains some common, recurring features that should be emphasized. In all major European literatures, although each time in its own way, the novel goes through certain logical stages. In the history of the European novel of the Middle Ages and Modern times, priority belongs to the French novel. The representative of the French Renaissance in the field of the novel was Rabelais (the first half of the 16th century), who revealed in his “Gargantua and Pantagruel” the entire breadth of bourgeois freethinking and denial of the old society. "The novel begins in fiction bourgeoisie in the era of the gradual disintegration of the feudal system and the rise of the commercial bourgeoisie. According to its artistic principle, this is a naturalistic novel, according to the thematic and compositional principle it is an adventurous one, in the center of which “a hero who experiences all sorts of adventures, amuses readers with his clever tricks, a hero-adventurer, a rogue”; he experiences random and external adventures (a love affair, a meeting with robbers, a successful career, a clever money scam, etc.), without being interested in either deep social and everyday characteristics or complex psychological motivations. These adventures are interspersed with everyday scenes, expressing a penchant for crude jokes, a sense of humor, hostility towards the ruling classes, and an ironic attitude towards their morals and manifestations. At the same time, the authors failed to capture life in its deep social perspective, limiting themselves to external characteristics, showing a tendency to detail, to savoring everyday details. Its typical examples are “Lazarillo from Tormes” (XVI century) and “Gilles Blas” French writer Lesage (first half of the 18th century). From among the petty and middle bourgeoisie by the middle of the 18th century. an advanced petty-bourgeois intelligentsia is growing up, beginning an ideological struggle against the old order and using artistic creativity for this. On this basis, a psychological petty-bourgeois novel arises, in which the central place is no longer occupied by the adventure, but by the deep contradictions and contrasts in the minds of the heroes fighting for their happiness, for their moral ideals. The clearest example This may be called "The New Heloise" by Rousseau (1761). In the same era as Rousseau, Voltaire appeared with his philosophical and journalistic novel “Candide”. In Germany at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. There is a whole group of romantic writers who have created very vivid examples of psychological novels in different literary styles. Such are Novalis (“Heinrich von Ofterdingen”), Friedrich Schlegel (“Lucinda”), Tieck (“William Lovel”) and finally the famous Hoffmann. “Along with this, we find a psychological novel in the style of the patriarchal noble aristocracy, perishing along with the entire old regime and realizing its death in the plane of the deepest moral and ideological conflicts.” Such is Chateaubriand with his “Rene” and “Atala”. Other layers of the feudal nobility were characterized by a cult of graceful sensuality and boundless, sometimes unbridled epicureanism. From here they come out and noble novels Rococo with its cult of sensuality. For example, Couvray’s novel “The Love Affairs of the Chevalier de Fauble.”
English novel in the first half of the 18th century. puts forward such major representatives as J. Swift with his famous satirical novel “Gulliver’s Travels” and D. Defoe, author of the no less famous “Robinson Crusoe”, as well as a number of other novelists expressing the social worldview of the bourgeoisie.
In the era of the emergence and development of industrial capitalism, the adventurous, naturalistic novel is gradually losing its significance.” It is being replaced by the social novel, which arises and develops in the literature of those strata of capitalist society that turn out to be the most advanced, and in the conditions of a given country. In a number of countries (France, Germany, Russia), during the period of replacement of the adventurous novel with the social and everyday one, i.e., during the period of replacement of the feudal system with the capitalist one, the psychological novel with a romantic or sentimental orientation temporarily acquires great importance, reflecting the social imbalance of the transition period (Jean- Paul, Chateaubriand, etc.). The heyday of the social-everyday novel coincides with the period of growth and prosperity of industrial-capitalist society (Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Zola, etc.). A novel is created according to an artistic principle - realistic. In the middle of the 19th century. The English realistic novel is making significant progress. The pinnacle of the realistic novel are the novels of Dickens - “David Copperfield”, “Oliver Twist” and “Nicholas Nickleby”, as well as Thackeray with his “Vanity Fair”, which provides a more embittered and powerful criticism of the noble-bourgeois society. “The realistic novel of the 19th century is distinguished by its extremely acute formulation of moral problems, which now occupy a central place in artistic culture. This is due to the experience of a break with traditional ideas and the task of finding new moral guidelines for the individual in a situation of isolation, to develop moral regulators that do not ignore, but morally streamline the interests of the real practical activity of an isolated individual.”
A special line is represented by the novel of “mysteries and horrors” (the so-called “Gothic novel”), the plots of which, as a rule, are chosen in the sphere of the supernatural and the heroes of which are endowed with features of gloomy demonism. The largest representatives of the Gothic novel are A. Radcliffe and C. Maturin.
The gradual transition of capitalist society into the era of imperialism with its growing social conflicts leads to the degradation of bourgeois ideology. The cognitive level of bourgeois novelists is declining. In this regard, in the history of the novel there is a return to naturalism, to psychologism (Joyce, Proust). In the process of its development, the novel, however, not only repeats a certain logical line, but also retains some genre features. The novel is historically repeated in different literary styles, and in different styles it expresses different artistic principles. And for all that, the novel still remains a novel: a huge number of the most diverse works of this genre have something in common, some repeating features of content and form, which turn out to be signs of the genre, which receives its classical expression in the bourgeois novel. “No matter how different the characteristics of historical class consciousness, those social sentiments, those specific artistic ideas that are reflected in the novel, the novel expresses a certain type of self-awareness, certain ideological demands and interests. The bourgeois novel lives and develops as long as the individualistic self-consciousness of the capitalist era is alive, as long as interest in individual destiny, in personal life, in the struggle of individuality for their personal needs, for the right to life continues to exist.” These features of the novel’s content also lead to the formal characteristics of this genre. Thematically, a bourgeois novel depicts private, personal, everyday life and, against the background of it, the clash and struggle of personal interests. The composition of the novel is characterized by a more or less complex, straight or broken line of a single personal intrigue, a single causal-temporal chain of events, a single course of the narrative, to which all and every descriptive moments are subordinated. In all other respects, the novel is "historically infinitely varied."
Any genre, on the one hand, is always individual, on the other, it is always based on literary tradition. The genre category is a historical category: each era is characterized not only by genre system in general, but also genre modifications or varieties in particular in relation to a particular genre. Today, literary scholars distinguish varieties of the genre on the basis of a set of stable properties (for example, the general nature of the theme, properties of imagery, type of composition, etc.).
Based on the above, the typology of the modern novel can be roughly represented as follows:
Themes vary between autobiographical, documentary, political, social; philosophical, intellectual; erotic, female, family and everyday life; historical; adventurous, fantastic; satirical; sentimental, etc.
According to structural characteristics: a novel in verse, a travel novel, a pamphlet novel, a parable novel, a feuilleton novel, etc.
Often the definition correlates a novel with an era in which one or another type of novel dominated: ancient, chivalric, enlightenment, Victorian, Gothic, modernist, etc.
In addition, the epic novel stands out - a work in which the center of artistic attention is the fate of the people, and not the individual (L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”, M.A. Sholokhov “Quiet Don”).
A special type is the polyphonic novel (according to M. M. Bakhtin), which involves such a construction when the main idea of the work is formed by the simultaneous sound of “many voices”, since none of the characters or the author has a monopoly on the truth and is not its carrier.
To summarize all of the above, we note once again that despite the long history of this term and the even older genre form, in modern literary criticism there is no unambiguous view of the problems associated with the concept of “novel”. It is known that it appeared in the Middle Ages, the first examples of novels were more than five centuries ago; in the history of the development of Western European literature, the novel had many forms and modifications.
Finishing the conversation about the novel as a whole, we cannot help but draw attention to the fact that, like any genre, it must have some features. Here we will remain in solidarity with the adherent of “dialogism” in literature – M.M. Bakhtin, who identifies three main features of the genre model of the novel, which fundamentally distinguish it from other genres:
“1) the stylistic three-dimensionality of the novel, associated with the multilingual consciousness realized in it; 2) a radical change in the time coordinates of the literary image in the novel; 3) a new zone for constructing a literary image in a novel, namely the zone of maximum contact with the present (modernity) in its incompleteness.”
DEFINITIONUTOPIA
Utopia is an idea of an ideal society, uncritical confidence in the possibility of direct implementation of traditional, mythological, possibly modernized, ideological expectations and ideals. For example, U. are the desire to bring to life the ideals of building a large society by analogy with a rural community, the concept of socialism, the implementation of which cannot take place in the corresponding period of time, either due to the complete impossibility of acceptance of the corresponding ideas by broad layers of the population as real values of their own activities, or as a result of the fact that the adoption of these values leads to a dysfunctional system, violate the prohibitions of sociocultural law. W. Mora, Campanella, etc. give pictures of highly regulated societies, industries, personal life in cities and houses. They represent modernized traditional ideals that correspond neither to the past due to elements of modernization, nor to the future due to the burden of traditionalism. U. is an element of a certain stage in the development of any solution, since everything begins with the reproduction of some previously established need, which may turn out to be U. in a changed situation. The effectiveness of a decision depends on a person’s ability to critically rethink all its premises and elements on the basis of changed conditions, the emergence of new means, the maturation of new goals, i.e. it is necessary to overcome the element U in the decision. Any ideas, projects, their implementation must pass the test for the presumption of utopia . An attempt to realize control, that is, first of all, to translate it into social relations, to obtain a result from it can be considered as the result of a miracle of inversion; if realized, it is replaced by a reverse inversion. For example, socialism as a society that immediately saves people from death, from labor, embodies universal equality, ultimately ends in the growth of a discomforting state, a reverse inversion. The death of the boy means that there is no communism in “Chevengur” (Platonov A., Chevengur).
"Fantasy" - view fantastic literature, or literature about the extraordinary, based on a plot assumption of an irrational nature. This assumption has no logical motivation in the text, suggesting the existence of facts and phenomena that, unlike science fiction, cannot be rationally explained."
“In the most general case, fantasy is a work where the fantastic element is incompatible with the scientific picture of the world.”
"Fantasy is a description of worlds like ours, worlds with magic working in them, worlds with a clear boundary between Darkness and Light. These worlds can be some kind of variation of the Earth in the distant past, the distant future, an alternative present, as well as parallel worlds, existing without connection with the Earth."
A number of researchers are inclined to define fantasy as a type literary fairy tale. "By external parameters Fantasy is a type of fantastic fairy tale." Writer E. Gevorkyan calls fantasy a "fairy-tale phantasmagoria of imaginary worlds."
“Fairy tale. This genre differs from science fiction in the absence of moral teaching and attempts at messianism. From the traditional fairy tale - in the absence of division into good and bad,” says Nik Perumov’s article.
J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay “On Fairy Tales,” discusses the role of fantasy in the creation of wonderful secondary worlds. Tolkien extols fantasy, like the Romantics early XIX V. But, unlike them, the writer considers fantasy not an irrational, but a rational activity. In his opinion, the author of a work of fiction must consciously strive to establish an orientation towards reality. It is necessary to give the fictional internal “logic of the real,” starting with the fact that the author himself must believe in the existence of Fairy (in tune with fantasy), “a secondary world based on the mythological imagination.” Another trend is defining fantasy through myth. This is quite natural, since fantastic literature always has a mythological basis.
“This genre arose on the basis of the authors’ rethinking of the traditional mythological and folklore heritage. And in the best examples of this genre one can find a number of parallels between the author’s fiction and the mythological and ritual ideas that formed its basis.”
“The world of fantasy is ancient myths, legends, tales passed through modern consciousness and revived by the will of the author.” The most clear definition of fantasy is offered by the reference book “Russian Fantasy of the 20th Century in Names and Persons”: “Fantasy is a kind of fusion of fairy tales, science fiction and adventure novels into a single (“parallel”, “secondary”) artistic reality with a tendency to recreate, rethink the mythical archetype and form a new world within its borders.
Fiction presupposes the content of an element of the extraordinary, i.e. a narrative about what does not happen, did not exist and cannot exist. The main meaning of the terms fantasy and fantastic is a special way of displaying reality in forms that are unusual for it. Features of science fiction: 1) the premise of the extraordinary, i.e. a plot-shaping assumption about the reality of extraordinary events; 2) motivation for the extraordinary; 3) a form of expression of the extraordinary.
Fantasy is secondary to imagination, it is a product of imagination, it changes the appearance of reality, reflected in consciousness. In this case, we are also talking about a subjective beginning, a kind of substitution. The modern understanding of fantasy is also based on the teachings of K.G. Jung, and then fantasy is the self-image of the unconscious; fantasy is most active when the intensity of the conscious decreases, as a result the barrier of the unconscious is broken.
Fantasy is a concept used to designate a category of works of art that depict phenomena that are distinctly different from the phenomena of reality. The imagery of fantastic literature is characterized by high degree convention, which can manifest itself in a violation of logic, accepted patterns, natural proportions and forms of what is depicted. The basis of any work of fiction is the opposition “real - fantastic”. The main feature of the poetics of the fantastic is the so-called “doubling” of reality, achieved either through the creation of another reality, completely different from the actual reality, or through the formation of “two worlds”, which consists in the parallel coexistence of the real and unreal worlds. There are such types of fiction as explicit and implicit.
The origins of the fantastic lie in the mythopoetic consciousness of humanity. The era of the heyday of the fantastic is traditionally considered to be romanticism and neo-romanticism. Fantasy gives rise to a special character in works of art that are directly opposed to realism. Fiction does not recreate reality in its laws and foundations, but freely violates them; it forms its unity and integrity not by analogy with how it happens in the real world. By its nature, the pattern of the fantastic world is completely different from the pattern of reality. Science fiction creatively reproduces not reality, but dreams and daydreams in all the uniqueness of their qualities. This is the essential basis of fantasy or its pure form.
There are three types of fantasy works. Works of fiction of the first type - completely detached from reality - are pure dreams, in which no direct consideration of the real reasons or reasons for them is given. Fantastic works of the second type, in which a secret basis is given for everyday phenomena, are dreams when we directly perceive real reasons for wonderful images and events or, in general, their connection with reality, i.e. when in the dream itself we contemplate not only fantastic pictures, but also the real causative agents of them or, in general, elements of the real world directly related to them - and the real turns out to be subordinate to the fantastic. Finally, fantastic works of the third type, in which we directly contemplate not the real causative agents or companions of mysterious phenomena, but precisely their real consequences. These are those sleepy states when, in the first moments of awakening, while still in the power of sleepy visions, we see them introduced one way or another into the real world - descended into waking life. All three types of fiction are equally common in works of art, but they are not equivalent.
The fantasy genre is a type of fantastic literature. In terms of volume of publications and popularity among the average reader, fantasy has left all other areas of science fiction far behind. Among all literary movements It is fantasy that is developing most rapidly, exploring new territories and attracting more and more readers.
Fantasy as a technique has been known to art since time immemorial. Actually, to one degree or another it is inherent in any type of art. In literature it passed very well long haul: from primitive myth to fairy tale, from fairy tales and legends - to the literature of the Middle Ages, and then romanticism. Finally, in modern literature the turn of science fiction and fantasy has come. These genres developed in parallel, sometimes touching in some way.
The question of the relationship between science fiction and fantasy has not yet been resolved. On the one hand, both are united in the same concept of “science fiction” and are perceived as its modifications. On the other hand, fantasy is clearly opposed to the literature that is conventionally designated by the term “science fiction.”