| Parameter name | Meaning |
| Article topic: | GENRE SYSTEM |
| Rubric (thematic category) | Literature |
Parallel-carry adder (with fast-carry circuitry)
It is very connected with extraliterary circumstances, with the practical needs of ancient Russian society. Each literary genre served a specific area. For example, the chronicle was born out of the state’s need to have its own written history.
In the XI-XVII centuries. several genre systems: folklore, translated literature, business writing, liturgical, secular journalistic literature.
The genres of liturgical literature (Prologue, Book of Hours, Apostle) are related to the sphere of everyday life and are very static.
Church genres - chants, lives. Secular literature - chronicle, war story. Unique genres, for example, hagiography, are not later found in literature in a “pure” form (elements of hagiography are found in “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoevsky, “The Jumper” by Chekhov).
Special: none love lyrics, theater, drama (until the 17th century).
At the root of the distinction of genres is the object of narration: feats of arms - military stories, travel, pilgrimages - walks. Each genre had its own canon. The combined genre is chronicle. Primary - story, legend, life.
For example, the hagiographic canon (life = hagiography):
· Hero is a saint
· Idealization of the hero: he and heavenly angel, and earthly man
· 3 parts: birth, exploits during life, miracles at the saint’s grave
· Ornate, verbally decorated style.
The fate of genres:
Some genres have disappeared. Walking (or walking) gave birth to the travel genre of the 18th century, essays of the 19th century, the everyday story of the 17th century gave life to the novel, oratory was reflected in the poetics of the ode.
THE Tale of Bygone Years as a LITERARY MONUMENT of the 11th-12th centuries.
These are the origins of Russian spirituality. Western European chronicles, the so-called royal or imperial ones, are widely known, where the figure of the king is at the center of the narrative. In the Tale of Bygone Years, the figure of the prince is also in the center - but the emphasis is different - the author is concerned about the fate of the entire Russian land.
The chronicle is the written history of the state. This is a historical document of national importance; the chronicles included Treaty Charters, Wills of princes, and Resolutions of feudal congresses. At the same time, recording the most significant milestones in the historical development of ancient Russian society, the chronicler defended the idea of its POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS INDEPENDENCE, and depicted the history of Rus' as part of the world process.
Unlike the Roman annals and Byzantine chronicles, the chronicle was built by year, and not by cycle (that is, the period of one king or dynasty). The chronicle was of a collective nature.
Posted on ref.rf
The time of origin of the chronicles is controversial in science. Perhaps they existed in the 10th century. The writing of chronicles took on a systematic and purposeful character under Yaroslav the Wise, that is, not earlier than the 30s of the 11th century. The first of the chronicles that have reached us is beginning of XII centuries - ʼʼThe Tale of Bygone Years of the Monk of the Fedosiev Monastery, where the Russian (spelled correctly) land came from... and who began to reign in it first, and where the Russian land began to eat...ʼʼ
The title is not about the genre, it reflects the object, theme, and idea of the work.
“The Tale of Bygone Years” is a collective collection, much was written “hot on the heels”, that is, good historical awareness, accurate topography, chronology.. Although there are later layers, insertions, for example 4, the revenge of Princess Olga, when she imposed a “light” tribute on Iskoroten - by the sparrow and one pigeon - to be returned later by tying burning tow to the birds’ tails. This violated the principles of threefold action - Olga’s threefold revenge (1. Drevlyan ambassadors buried alive, 2. burned in a bathhouse and 3. enemy squad exterminated after a funeral at her husband’s grave).
ʼʼTale..ʼ is historical monument, but also literary. IN. Klyuchesvky: the chronicler is interested in man, his earthly and afterlife, while the historian is interested in the mechanism of development of society. The date of creation of the “Tale ...” is approximately 1113, this is a genre of secular literature, but the scattered chronicles were united by the monk Nestor in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. Why did the monk create a secular work? Possibility of unity with people? Living with people, not living together? (Analyze the question, refer to Vasnetsov’s painting “Nestor the Leithopist”, pay attention to symbolic details - and give an answer).
Medieval monks are ancient Russian intellectuals, and Nestor acts as a historian-researcher, but he also opposes the official history of Rus' as the history of princely deeds - he glorifies folk wisdom, courage and patriotism (The Legend of Belgorod Kisel, the legend of the young man Kozhemyak).
A new edition was made by Father Sylvester in 1116ᴦ. on behalf of Vladimir Monomakh in order to correct the text “to suit himself”. Such “corrections” happened later. And yet, in the Tale... a unified political concept is given and Rus' is included in the world historical process equal rights with other states. This literary monument enshrines the pantheon of Russian saints, and presents the idea of the Russian people being chosen by God, and a call to the princes to stop civil strife (!) and thereby reduce the suffering of people. Holy Scripture is quoted a lot, the goal is to give authority to the word.
The fact that this is indeed no less a literary monument with an aesthetic effect in mind is evidenced by the following data:
· The art of composition (see A. Shaikin “The Tale of Bygone Years... from Kiya to Monomakh”. M., 1989).
· Art details 9 details)
Rhythmic organization of the text
· Psychological traits
How does a chronicler look at the world? According to Christians: from pagan darkness to light, the main values are peacefulness, gentleness, meekness, quietness. Pride and arrogance are sins. Even princes must moderate their pride in order to save their homeland. But there are also many pagan “memories”: the boat in Olga’s riddle is a traditional pagan symbol of death; Oleg's death from a horse and from a snake - among the pagans the snake is a symbol of the earth, which means that the prince was punished not only for distrust of the prediction of the Magi, but also for sins before the earth, etc.
It’s interesting, but already in ʼʼThe Tale…ʼʼ global themes are formalized: fathers-sons, war-peace, crime-punishment. And the author himself believes in goodness and justice, and hopes that the Gorislavichs and the Damned will not destroy the Russian land.
· Independence of Rus'
· The superiority of Christianity over paganism
· Call for unity of action
· Toward the unity of spirit of the Russian people, to enlightenment.
In general, the literary development of the 11th-12th centuries is associated with the development of oratorical prose (the legacy of Byzantine eloquence): “The Word of Law and Grace” of the future Metropolitan Hilarion, “The Teaching” of Vl. Monomakha; and with the development of hagiographic literature.
And of course a miracle ancient Russian literature - ʼʼThe Tale of Igor's Campaignʼʼ.
Museum of this literary monument in Yaroslavl, 5-volume encyclopedia, dictionary and countless scientific works.
The list of “Words...” was found in the late 80s of the 18th century by the famous amateur and collector of antiquities A.I. Musin-Pushkin. 9There is a separate version that Musin-Pushkin is a brilliant hoaxer and he did nothing more than a fake. But if he “made” such a masterpiece, why didn’t he create something else, why did he hide his remarkable talent?, that is, he could hardly be the author) At the end of the 18th century, M. Kheraskov and N. Karamzin made “The Word” public, a number of copies were made, but the only one left after the fire of 1812
2 most difficult cultural issues“Words” are:
· problem of authenticity
· the problem of correlation with another brilliant monument of Russian literature “Zadonshchina”: that is, which of these works appeared earlier and served as a “prototype”. There is a version that Zadonshchina is more early work. This point of view was defended by the French researcher of the 20th century A. Mazon and the Soviet historian A. A. Zimin. The famous academician S.N. Azblev considered the “Slovo” to be a fake.
And yet a lot speaks for the fact that ʼʼSlovoʼʼ is an original monument of literature of the 12th – early 13th centuries. These are: the most accurate historical and “everyday” details; This linguistic analysis in favor of authenticity (the falsifier could not understand the process of the fall of reduced sounds, which was really going on at the time of creation of the text); This is also an amazing imagery, metaphor, which is in fact characteristic of many texts of this period - to utter a word, to measure space with a thought ("Six Days" - a translated monument of the 12th century - "a man measures God's power with a thought."). And regarding “Zadonshchina”: D.S. Likhachev in his book “The Culture of Rus' in the Times of Andrei Rublev and Epiphanius the Wise” suggested that the author of Zadonshchina knew the fact of the existence of “The Word...”
· Prince Igor himself (V. Chivilikhin, novel “Memory”)
· Yarovlavna (Efrosyne)
· Boyarin Pyotr Borislavich (B.A. Rybakov ʼʼRussian chroniclers and author of ʼʼThe Word...ʼʼʼʼ)
It’s good to look at ʼʼThe Word…ʼ and ancient Russian literature in general:
· A. Suleimenov ʼʼAz and Yaʼʼ.
· V.P. Adrianova-Peretz Old Russian literature and folklore
· A.S. Demin On the artistry of Russian literature: Essays on the ancient Russian worldview from “The Tale of Bygone Years” to the works of Avvakum.
· D.S. Likhachev Poetics of Old Russian Literature
· He is also a Man in the literature of ancient Rus'
· He is the Great Legacy: Classic works literature Ancient Rus'.
· I. Shklyarevsky ʼʼReading ʼʼThe Word…ʼʼʼʼ.
GENRE SYSTEM - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "GENRE SYSTEM" 2017, 2018.
Literary genres(French genre - genus, type) are types of works that have developed in the process of development of artistic literature. The problem of the genre itself is general form can be formulated as a problem of classifying works, identifying common - genre - features in them. The main difficulties of classification are associated with the historical change of literature, with the evolution of its genres.
Quantity and character genre characteristics(the volume of a genre) is a variable quantity in the history of literature, which is reflected in the variety of successive genre theories, as well as the prevailing ideas about genres in writing and reading practice. So, for tragedy in realistic drama of the 19th-20th centuries. Many signs of a classic tragedy are not necessary: the “noble” origin of the hero, the “bloody” denouement, compliance with the rules of three unities, Alexandrian verse, etc. In the era of realism, any tragedy is considered dramatic work, revealing tragic conflict and expressing appropriate pathos. Thus, we can talk about a decrease in the genre volume of tragedy from classicism to realism.
Most genres arose in ancient times. Evolving in the literary process, they nevertheless retain some stable substantive and formal features that allow us to talk about a genre tradition. According to M. M. Bakhtin, “genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development” (21, 179). This metaphor emphasizes the enormous role of genres in ensuring literary continuity. The genre designations themselves (tragedy, fable, ballad, etc.), often included in the text of the work, in its title (“The Inspector General. Comedy in five acts”;
"Eugene Onegin. A novel in verse"), are signs literary tradition; they evoke a certain genre expectation in the reader.
When studying genres, one should distinguish between their most stable and transient features. Within the framework of the theoretical and literary course, the main attention is paid to the characteristics of the most stable genre features. However, it is important to remember that in the literary process a genre always appears as an element of a certain genre system, the principles of which depend on the specific historical features of artistic thinking. Therefore, as Yu. N. Tynyanov emphasized, “the study of isolated genres outside the signs of the genre system with which they correspond is impossible” (95, 276).
The evolution of genres and the change of their systems reflect general trends literary process and its pace. Thus, in ancient literatures, the development of authorial self-awareness was slow, determined by the stability of traditions and the general pace of national life. Therefore, the genre systems of ancient literatures, distinguished by their complexity and ramifications, are characterized by greater stability compared to the literature of modern times.
With the emergence literary trends the system of genres became the subject of active theoretical understanding and justification. Thus, the poetics of classicism distinguished between high, middle and low genres, and each of them was assigned a specific hero: for example, of “noble” origin in tragedy and “low” in comedy. Genre was understood as a kind of regulated content-formal unity, as a norm that a writer must follow; mix various genres was not allowed.
Subsequently, the rationalistic system of classicist genres was destroyed by sentimentalists and romantics, who defended the freedom of creativity from any “rules,” including from the “shackles” of the genre. Romanticism put forward, in contrast to classicism, genres that gave greater scope to the expression of subjective experiences. The classic ode, heroic poem, tragedy, satire gave way to elegy, ballad, lyric-epic romantic poem, historical novel; at the same time, the boundaries between genres were deliberately blurred. However, the genres of romanticism, in their own way, were also not free from norms.
activity. True liberation from strict genre regulations became possible only with the development of realism; it was associated with overcoming subjective one-sidedness in creativity itself. In realistic literature, which correlates the development of characters with circumstances in their historical concreteness, following the tradition of genres could be carried out much more freely, which generally led to a decrease in their volumes. In all European literatures of the 19th century V. There is a sharp restructuring of the genre system. Genres began to be perceived as aesthetically equivalent types of works that were open to creative exploration. This approach to genres is typical of our time.
When starting to study the issue of DRL genres, it is necessary first of all to focus on identifying the features of the very process of genre formation in medieval literature. Likhachev writes: “The literary genres of Ancient Rus' have very significant differences from the genres of modern times: their existence in to a greater extent than in modern times, due to their use in practical life. They arise not only as varieties of literary creativity, but also as certain phenomena of the ancient Russian way of life, everyday life, which was in the very in a broad sense words".
The genres of DRL are fundamentally different from the literature of modern times in their functional significance and practical purpose. Church genres (lives, sermons, teachings, chants) were used in church and monastic life, chronicles - in diplomatic practice, walks served the practical purposes of pilgrimage, etc.
In relation to DRL genres, the concept of “genre system” is used. This concept was almost simultaneously introduced into scientific circulation by Likhachev, Vinogradov and S. Volman. “Genres,” writes Likhachev, “compose a certain system due to the fact that they are generated by a common set of reasons, and also because they interact, support each other’s existence and at the same time compete with each other.” According to the researcher, “genres are not equal and not homogeneous, but constitute a kind of hierarchical system” in which “primary” and “unifying” genres can be distinguished.”
The system of genres is also determined by the peculiarities of the worldview ancient Russian man. The binary nature of the medieval worldview is manifested in the distinction between two main genre systems: church (spiritual) and worldly (secular). It should be noted that the genre system of the Russian Middle Ages was partially borrowed from the Byzantine one.
Genre system Church literature is more conservative; it did not have actual genres in the modern sense of the term, but there were canons that were approved at church councils. Thus, the Gospel canon was accepted and legitimized in 325 by the decree of the Council of Nicaea.
Naturally, with the supreme dominance of theology in the Middle Ages, the genres of church literature occupied the ancient Russian literature of the 11th-13th centuries. leading place. Over time, this ratio changed, the share of secular literature gradually increased. But from the 11th to 13th centuries, according to Volkov’s calculations, 226 books of Holy Scripture, 221 liturgical books and only 7 books of a secular nature have been preserved.
The system of genres of church literature was associated with the ritual of worship and church life. Within this system, the genres were located in a certain hierarchical sequence: Gospel, Apostle, Apocalypse, Psalter, Old Testament books (existed in Rus' in special collections: Paremiynik, Explanatory Paley, Historical Paley), works of the church fathers (existed in encyclopedic collections: Izbornik Svyatoslav 1073, Izbornik 1076, Zlatostruy, Izmaragd, Triumphant, Chrysostom, Golden Chain, Prologue). Further, in terms of authority, we should highlight the genre of hagiography (Minea of Chetya, collections of special composition; in Russian literature, a specific genre of princely hagiography has also been formed), with which the patericon short story turns out to be closely related. Walking travel occupies a special place in the system of church genres.
In the Russian tradition, the genre of princely life and the genre of walking are on the verge of a transition from the genre system of church to the genre system of secular literature.
In secular literature such a strict hierarchy did not exist. However, it can be said that the dominant position is occupied by the historical chronicle narrative. In the literature of the XI-XIII centuries. A special place in the system of worldly genres should be given to “Instruction to the Children” by Vladimir Monomakh, “Prayer” and “Word” by Daniil Zatochnik, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”. Gradually, the genre system of secular literature was enriched and developed. In the 15th century, it was replenished with translated and original fiction stories. In the 16th century, the genres of not only church, but also secular journalism (treatise, epistle) developed. Especially turbulent processes in the secular system of genres occur in the 17th century - the transition from medieval literature to literature of a new type. It was at this time that the democratic story, the secular novel, the satirical story appeared, and poetry and theater emerged.
Russian classicism: personalities, poetics. Analysis of the work of one author of your choice.
Genre system of Russian classicism. Analysis of one work of your choice.
Classicism- a special type of figurative construction of art. models of the world, reflecting a specific concept of man and the world.
Any thin The method is characterized by general principles of art. selection and thin. generalizations, aesthetic assessment of reality and art. incarnations.
K (from Latin classicus - exemplary) in European literature took shape by the 17th century (Cornel, Moliere, Racine).
The classicists recognized ancient art as the highest example, ideal, and as the norm - works of antiquity (hence the reworking of plots).
The plots are based on principles of life imitation and rationalism. Hence the didactic guidelines of K. The cult of reason (for example, building a conflict: between feeling and duty, you need to choose duty), an appeal to the reader’s mind. The purpose of art was seen as a moral influence on the education of noble feelings. They achieved harmony of content and form, while thinning. the work was organized as an artificial whole, based on rigid logic. This was expressed in the fact that the authors followed strict logic and tried to transform life phenomena in such a way as to, avoiding nuances, identify and capture generic, essential features of reality and character. Therefore, the narrowness of K can be considered a straightforward depiction of characters, a depiction of the conflict not as internal, but as arising from the opposition of characters. Heroes, as a rule, are carriers of one trait: they are unipolar, devoid of contradictions (–> the possibility of naming speaking surnames). There is an idealization of heroes, an absolutization of ideas.
Classicists actively turn to civil social issues, trying to emphasize the objectivity of the narrative, striving for canonicity, simplicity and rigor. Classicists introduce strict structural rules. (in dramaturgy - trinity). Fonvizin's innovation: he managed to show the characters. In pure K there is no principle of determinism. K is the language of formulas.
In K there is a strict hierarchy of styles into high and low. In high places, social life and history are mastered; heroes, generals, monarchs act (epic poem, ode). In the low - daily life ordinary people(comedy, satire, fable). Satire is sometimes classified as a “middle” genre, as is didactic poetry. On the basis of Russian K, it is not entirely correct to say that mixing high and low is not allowed.
The appearance and development of K in Russia is associated with the 30s. 18th century Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov.
Features of Russian K:
active development of low genres associated with a satirical orientation;
predominance of national historical themes (tragedies of Sumarokov, Knyazhnin)
predominant development at the first stage of the ode genre.
RK has declared himself in all literary genres. Epic : epic poems (Kheraskov “Chesme Battle”, Trediakovsky “Feoktia”), fable - short story in poetry/prose with a directly formed moral (Kheraskov, Sumarokov, Dmitriev). Lyrics: ode (Lomonosov, Derzhavin), satire (accusatory genre) (Derzhavin “To Rulers and Judges”), epigram (Derzhavin). Dramaturgy: tragedies (Sumarokov “Dmitry the Pretender”, V. Knyazhnin), comedies (Fonvizin “Brigadier”, “Minor”)
Formation artistic system K in the West coincided with the era of the dominance of metaphysics. And it was precisely the metaphysical way of thinking that determined the features of the artistic thinking of classic writers. The phenomena of nature and social life were depicted separately from each other, without connections, development and movement. This led to the division of “nature” (in a broad sense) in K into sublime and base phenomena, virtuous and vicious, tragic and funny. Hence the strict system of genres based on opposition: tragedy and comedy, ode and satire, poem and fable etc. Each genre was assigned a certain circle of phenomena from which it was impossible to escape: “high” and “low” were never combined in one work.
K gave preference to poetic genres over prose ones, because prose speech is practically oriented speech, in which much depends on the accidental, not foreseen by reason. Prose occupied a limited and subordinate place: considered a means of journalism and scientific speech, it, in fact, fell out of the literary series.
Classicists strove to create monumental works, with problems of great social resonance, to depict heroes who are effective, energetic and capable of resolving complex, tragic conflicts.
The genre division is hierarchical for one more reason. epic poem has the greatest value because turning to the distant past, the poet in this type of creativity could recreate the most abstract situations, which made it possible to give the fiction the most plausible form. In the epic form, compared to the tragedy, there is more opportunity to achieve the perfect ideal - the heroic character. Since the basis of an epic poem is, as a rule, a legendary truth, which has the highest degree of poetic truth, then to achieve verisimilitude, only the internal consistency of the actions of the heroes and the events depicted is sufficient. Region tragedy - historical era, which has a lower degree of truth, because it may contain an unintentional, random event that violates the harmony of poetic fiction and the requirement of verisimilitude. That is why the truth of the tragedy turns out to be less solid than in the epic poem. Comedy turns out to be even lower ep. poems and tragedies, because it is even more difficult to achieve verisimilitude. The simple experience of the public, a good knowledge of modern mores, can reveal the unreasonableness of the plot of a comedy from the standpoint of plausibility.
The decisive place in the literary system of K was occupied by "high" and "low" genres. They set and solved the same tasks - the establishment of the ideal of a human citizen and patriot, but the methods of its establishment were different: in high genres - direct glorification of the ideal, in low genres - ridicule of unworthy people. "Medium" genres found themselves on the periphery of the literary system of Kazakhstan. Here it should be said about such genres as elegy, message, song. Image-facing inner world of an individual person, wholly appealing to the imagination and individual experience, they did not occupy a leading position in the literature of the period of his heyday. But in the last third of the century, due to changes in the general situation in literature, interest in these genres is growing.
There are two periods in the development of Russian genre theory K. The first period, associated with the names of Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, is the time of the creation of a clear and organized system of genres, taking into account both the achievements of French genre theory and the state of national Russian literature. The second period is associated with the activities of Derzhavin, Kheraskov, Lukin and Plavilshchikov. It was marked by the beginning of the destruction of strict genre-typological characteristics, the formation of genres born at the junction of traditional ones, which created the preconditions for entering another literary era.
Russian writers turned out to be faithful to the basic principle of K - to depict events of distant eras, but, in contrast to European, in particular, French K, they turned mainly to national history. It is there that they find images of people whose activities were animated by love for the fatherland, concern for liberating it from its age-old enemies, and strengthening the power of the Russian state: Vadim Novgorod, Rurik, Svyatoslav, Vladimir Monomakh, Alexander Nevsky, Dimitri Donskoy, Peter I, etc.
The connections of Russian classic writers with the ancient Russian and oral poetic traditions were quite wide and varied. In line with the heroic tradition, the image was created positive hero, who embodied the ideal of civic service to the Motherland. The basis for most Russian tragedies was chronicle material. Folk sources(songs) were used by Kheraskov when writing the heroic poem “Rossiada”. The influence of folk satire and Russian literature of the second half XVII V. affected such genres as poetic satire, comedy, and fable. Based on the combination of folk and book traditions, the famous reforms of Trediakovsky-Lomonosov's verse and Lomonosov's language were carried out. IN low genres writers widely used Russian proverbs and sayings.
The regulation of the genre system was carried out by A. P. Sumarokov(“Two epistles (The first is about the Russian language, and the second is about poetry)”, 1748). He relied on the traditions of Horace’s aesthetic message “To the Pisoes (On the Art of Poetry)” and N. Boileau’s didactic poem “Poetic Art”.
The genre system of literature seemed to Sumarokov to be clearly hierarchically organized: in the theoretical aspect, he put forward a general classicist position on the inadmissibility of mixing high and low styles, but in practice his own high and low genre models were in constant interaction.
Most of all, Sumarokov’s orientation towards national trends in literary development is noticeable in the composition of the genres that he characterizes in his epistles. So, for example, he devoted practically no space to the highest genre of European classicism - the epic poem - and briefly mentioned the very fact of the existence literary epic. The genres that in Russian literature have taken on the charge of satirical exposure and didactics are characterized in exceptional detail and fully - satire as such, the heroic-comic poem (a parody of the epic), fable and comedy, and the description of comedy itself is also very original. If Boileau, describing a comedy, fluently lists the comedic types of characters and focuses mainly on the plot, intrigue, witty and brilliant style, then Sumarokov’s entire description of the genre comes down to characterology: Russian comedy, which has yet to appear in literature, differs from Western European comedy precisely for this reason: French comedy is mainly a comedy of intrigue, Russian is a comedy of character.
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In every historical period genres relate to each other in different ways. They, according to D.S. Likhachev, “they interact, support each other’s existence and at the same time compete with each other”; therefore it is necessary to study not only individual genres and their history, but also “the system of genres of each given era.”
At the same time, genres are assessed in a certain way by the reading public, critics, creators of “poetics” and manifestos, writers and scientists. They are interpreted as worthy or, on the contrary, not worthy of the attention of artistically enlightened people; both high and low; as truly modern or outdated, exhausted; as main or marginal (peripheral).
These assessments and interpretations create hierarchies of genres that change over time. Some of the genres, a kind of favorites, happy chosen ones, receive the highest possible assessment from some authoritative authorities - an assessment that becomes generally recognized or at least acquires literary and social weight.
Genres of this kind, based on the terminology of the formal school, are called canonized. (Note that this word has a different meaning than the term “canonical,” which characterizes the genre structure.)
In the words of V. B. Shklovsky, a certain part of the literary era “represents its canonized crest,” while other links exist “dumbly,” on the periphery, without becoming authoritative and without attracting attention to themselves.
Canonized (again, following Shklovsky) is also called (see pp. 125-126, 135) that part of the literature of the past that is recognized as the best, pinnacle, exemplary, i.e. classics. The origins of this terminological tradition are the idea of sacred texts that have received official church sanction (canonized) as indisputably true.
The canonization of literary genres was carried out by normative poets from Aristotle and Horace to Boileau, Lomonosov and Sumarokov. Aristotle's treatise gave the highest status to tragedy and epic. The aesthetics of classicism also canonized “ high comedy”, sharply separating it from folk farcical comedy as a low and inferior genre.
The hierarchy of genres also took place in the consciousness of the so-called mass reader (see pp. 120-123). Thus, Russian peasants at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. gave unconditional preference to “divine books” and those works of secular literature that resonated with them.
The lives of saints (most often reaching the people in the form of books written illiterately, in “barbaric language”) were listened to and read “with reverence, with enthusiastic love, with wide with open eyes and with the same wide-open soul.”
Works of an entertaining nature, called “fairy tales,” were regarded as a low genre. They were very widespread, but they evoked a disdainful attitude and were awarded unflattering epithets (“fables”, “little tales”, “nonsense”, etc.).
The canonization of genres also takes place in the “upper” layer of literature. Thus, during the period of romanticism, marked by a radical restructuring of genres, a fragment, a fairy tale, and also a novel (in the spirit and manner of “Wilhelm Meister” by J.V. Goethe) were elevated to the pinnacle of literature.
Literary life XIX V. (especially in Russia) is marked by the canonization of socio-psychological novels and stories prone to life-likeness, psychologism, and everyday authenticity.
In the 20th century experiments were undertaken (successful to varying degrees) in the canonization of mystery drama (the concept of symbolism), parody (formal school), epic novel (aesthetics of socialist realism of the 1930-1940s), as well as novels by F.M. Dostoevsky as polyphonic (1960-1970s); in Western European literary life- a “stream of consciousness” novel and absurdist dramaturgy with a tragicomic sound. The authority of the mythological principle in the composition of novel prose is now very high.
If in the era of normative aesthetics were canonized high genres, then in times close to us those rise hierarchically genre beginnings, which were previously outside the scope of “strict” literature.
As noted by V.B. Shklovsky, there is a canonization of new themes and genres that had hitherto been secondary, marginal, and low: “The bloc canonizes themes and tempos.” gypsy romance", and Chekhov introduces "The Alarm Clock" into Russian literature. Dostoevsky raises to literary norm techniques of the pulp novel."
At the same time, traditional high genres evoke an aloof critical attitude towards themselves and are thought of as exhausted. “What is curious about the change of genres is the constant displacement high genres low,” noted B.V. Tomashevsky, stating in literary modernity the process of “canonization of low genres.”
According to the scientist, followers of high genres usually become epigones. M.M. spoke in the same spirit a little later. Bakhtin. Traditional high genres, according to him, are prone to “stilted heroization”; they are characterized by conventionality, “constant poetry,” “monotoneness and abstractness.”
In the 20th century, as can be seen, predominantly new (or fundamentally updated) genres rise hierarchically, as opposed to those that were authoritative in the previous era. At the same time, the places of leaders are occupied by genre formations that have free, open structures: the subject of canonization, paradoxically, turns out to be non-canonical genres, preference is given to everything in literature that is not part of ready-made, established, stable forms.
V.E. Khalizev Theory of literature. 1999