The correct definition of grotesque. What is grotesque

Whats. in a fantastic, monstrously comic form, based on sharp contrasts and exaggerations.

Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949-1992 .

See what “grotesque” is in other dictionaries:

Caricatured, ugly comic, grotesque, caricatured Dictionary of Russian synonyms. grotesque see caricature Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical guide. M.: Russian language. Z. E. Alexa... Synonym dictionary

GROTESCAL, grotesque, grotesque (book). adj. to grotesque in 1 value. (claim). Grotesque style. || Ugly comic. A grotesque sight. Ushakov's explanatory dictionary. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 … Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

grotesque- GROTESQUE, GROTESQUE oh, oh. grotesque. Rel. to the grotesque technique associated with it. BAS 2. The lower floor of the Sheremetev Palace has a grotesque vestibule, a grotesque chamber, and an entertainment hall. 1773. RM 1928 1 138. Through a large ravine three... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

- (see grotesque) contrasting, violating the boundaries of plausibility, bizarrely comic. New dictionary foreign words. by EdwART, 2009. grotesque [fr. grotesque] – ugly comic; whimsical Large dictionary of foreign words. Publishing house... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Adj. 1. ratio with noun grotesque I, associated with it 2. Characteristic of the grotesque [grotesque I], characteristic of it. Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern Dictionary Russian language Efremova

Grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque, grotesque,... ... Forms words

grotesque- an elegant grotto... Russian spelling dictionary

grotesque - … Spelling dictionary of the Russian language

grotesque- see grotesque... Dictionary of many expressions

grotesque- grotesque... Morphemic-spelling dictionary

Books

• City of Nezhnotrakhov, Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya, Ferflucht Platz, Alexey Kozlov. A grotesque novel about the formation and search for one’s own self in the wonderful city of Nezhnotrakhov, which, upon closer examination, turns out to be terribly similar to Voronezh. Surreal descriptions... eBook
• Life according to concepts. Election of the Tsar, Karamov Sergei. Grotesque realism, a satirical genre created by the author, allowed him to fully describe various social aspects of our life today, reaching at times the pathos of exposure, everything...

Interested in various trends in art, painting, literature, etc. – you may have come across the word “grotesque” in the texts.

We will talk about what this word means and how grotesque differs from other styles and genres in this article.

This artistic term introduced into use by the great Italian painter Raphael Santi. While excavating a place where there once were baths from the time of Emperor Titus, the artist and his students discovered rooms covered with earth, the walls of which were decorated with strange, intricate paintings.

The find amazed everyone, and since then the style of painting, combining reality and fantastic images, the beautiful and the ugly, the funny and the majestic, began to be called grotesque, after the place where the first examples of such art were found ( grotta translated from Italian means dungeon, grotto, cave).

Subsequently, the term “grotesque” gradually spread to other areas of art, and in our time it began to be used completely far from artistic activity people to designate strange, ambiguous, at the same time funny and terrifying phenomena or features of reality.

Grotesque was widely used in various types art since ancient times. Combining incompatible features, he seemed to artists the best way to express all the richness and diversity of the world, in which humanity peacefully coexists with meanness and cruelty, beauty with ugliness, luxury with poverty.

A striking example of the grotesque are the famous gargoyles that decorate Paris Cathedral Notre Dame: demonic figures sit calmly on a building dedicated to God.

In literature, the grotesque is represented in many works, from the comedies of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes to the present day. This genre reached its greatest flourishing during the Renaissance.


Rabelais and his immortal “Gargantua and Pantagruel” and Erasmus of Rotterdam with “In Praise of Folly” have still not lost their popularity. The broad masses were attracted to the grotesque by the spirit of freedom, the opposition of the diversity of the world to ascetic clerical dogmas.

In subsequent periods of history, the grotesque genre was replenished with new works: the sharply satirical “Gulliver’s Travels” by J. Swift, romantic fairy tales T. Hoffman and the philosophical “Faust” by W. Goethe. The nineteenth century enriched literature with grotesque realism, embodied in the works of Charles Dickens, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin and, of course, N. Gogol.

In the twentieth century, most famous masters grotesque, who raised it to the level of piercing tragedy were F. Kafka, M. Bulgakov, B. Brecht, E. Schwartz and many other authors.

Modern literature in the broadest possible way uses the grotesque both as a genre and as a visual device. It is difficult to list all the writers and poets working in this genre. Today, elements of the grotesque are used in serious literature and in political pamphlets, in romantic stories and in humorous works.

At first glance, grotesque and hyperbole have a lot in common. However, the very essence of these literary devices. If hyperbole is an exaggeration of one really existing feature or detail, then the grotesque uses absolutely fantastic combinations of images, taking us into a distorted world that defies any logical explanation.

The grotesque is a figment of the imagination, an intertwined interaction of the conscious and unconscious in the human psyche.

This fantasticality, irrationality serves to express the most important, fundamental phenomena of life. Grotesque works are often difficult to understand and superficial readers or viewers can be put off by the deliberate absurdity of the plot and the implausibility of the images. But they are based on a coherent system, sometimes not completely clear even to the author himself.


Exciting the imagination, for many generations they have forced us to look for double and triple meanings, each time vividly responding to the events of our time.

It's grotesque a type of conventional fantastic imagery that demonstratively violates the principles of verisimilitude, in which figurative plans and images that are incompatible in reality are combined in a bizarre and illogical manner artistic details. The ornaments were called grotesque, discovered at the end of the 15th century. Raphael during the excavations of the ancient Roman baths of Titus. A distinctive feature of these images is the free combination of pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew from the cups of flowers, plant shoots intertwined with chimeras and bizarre structures. These ornaments are mentioned in his book by B. Cellini (“The Life of Benvenuto Cellini,” 1558-65); I. V. Goethe writes about their features, calling them arabesques. The transfer of the term to the field of literature and the real flowering of this type of imagery occurs in the era of romanticism. F. Schlegel in his “Letter on the Novel” (1800) considers the grotesque as an expression of the spirit of the time, its only, along with “personal confessions,” romantic creation. To the grotesque, as to characteristic feature romantic literature, in contrast to the “dead form” - classical literature, is indicated in the “Preface to the drama “Cromwell” (1827) by V. Hugh, which became the manifesto of French romanticism. Charles Baudelaire addressed the problem of the grotesque in his article “On the nature of laughter and the comic in the plastic arts,” contrasting laughter as “simply comic” with grotesque as “absolutely comic.” The term grotesque became especially popular in the 20th century, initially in connection with innovative phenomena in theater arts(V.E. Meyerhold), subsequently in connection with the dissemination of ideas expressed in M.M. Bakhtin’s book about F. Rabelais (1965).

Grotesque could arise in those genres of literature where the implausibility of fiction was obvious to both the author and the reader (listener). These are the comic genres of antiquity (the comedies of Aristophanes, “The Golden Ass” (2nd century), Apuleius, humorous and satirical works Renaissance, tales of folklore. Since the 18th century, the grotesque has been built mainly on the violation of the accepted system of reproducing reality, with which fantasy comes into a kind of conflict (grotesque stories by N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, “The History of a City,” 1869-70, M.E. .Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque can be humorous when, with the help of fiction, the discrepancy between what is present and what should be is emphasized, or when qualities that evoke an ironic attitude are literally embodied in the fantastic forms of the appearance and behavior of characters. However, it is in satire, mainly aimed at ridiculing social vices, where fantastic images appear in the most generalized form, that some of the meaningful possibilities of the grotesque, in particular, its allegorical nature, are more fully revealed. Grotesque can also be tragic - in works with tragic situations, when fate and spiritual confusion of the individual are placed at the center. This may be a depiction of the suppression of personality by the instincts of biological existence (The Metamorphosis, 1916, F. Kafka), the motive of a collision with a doll mistaken for a person (The Sandman).

The word grotesque comes from French grotesque, Italian grottesco, which means fancy from grotta - grotto.

Grotesque - bizarre, comical. The term is borrowed from painting. This was the name of the wall painting found in the “grottoes”. (From V. Dahl's dictionary)

In painting there is a complex ornament that intricately interweaves human and animal figures into plant and geometric motifs.
In cultural studies - imagery based on a contrasting, bizarre combination of the fantastic and the real, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the ugly - comic in style. (From Ushakov’s dictionary).

...and she is funny, Rus', despite all the tragedy of her life.

M. Gorky

Grotesque - contrasting, violating the boundaries of plausibility, bizarrely comic. (Dictionary of foreign words).

Grotesque is a joke, a type of artistic imagery that generalizes and sharpens life relationships through a bizarre and contrasting combination of the real and the fantastic, verisimilitude and caricature. By sharply shifting the forms of life itself, it creates a special grotesque world that cannot be understood literally or deciphered unambiguously. (Encyclopedic Dictionary).

A joke is the darling of society and is carried on easily and naturally, but the truth is like an elephant in a china shop: wherever you turn, something flies everywhere. That's why she often appears accompanied by a joke. The joke goes ahead, showing the way to the elephant so that he does not destroy the entire shop, otherwise there will be nothing to talk about. Carefully! This is where you can step... But you can’t step here, this is where all the jokes end!

A grotesque tradition has been carried on from afar; centuries later it has reached our time.

Trouble is, if the shoemaker starts baking pies,
And the boots are made by the cake maker,
And things won't go well.
Yes, and it’s been noted a hundred times,
Why does anyone like to take on someone else's craft?
He is always more stubborn and contentious than others:
He'd rather ruin everything
And I’m glad to quickly become the laughing stock of the world,
What do honest and knowledgeable people
Ask or listen to reasonable advice.

Krylov. "Pike and cat"

In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, truth and joke exist, as it were, separately from each other: truth recedes into the background, into the subtext, and the joke remains a full-fledged mistress in the text. But she is not the owner. She only does what the truth tells her. And she covers up the truth so that it, the truth, can be better seen. To obscure it so as to see better - this is the technique of allegory, allegory. To hide, to stick out, to turn into a grotesque.

The story of how one man fed two generals

Saltykov-Shchedrin saw his task as educating the public. Therefore, fairy tales are simple and accessible, the content is understandable to “children and servants.”

Fairy tales are based on a grotesque situation, but real relationships are always guessed behind it; reality is shown under the guise of a fairy tale. Grotesque images hide the real types of Russia of that time.

One of Shchedrin’s main techniques is grotesque: the generals are wearing nightgowns with orders, the man himself wove a rope “from wild hemp” so that the generals would tie him up. Shchedrin's laughter is distinguished not so much by fun as by anger; it is satirical in nature. It was not for nothing that at the beginning of our conversation we recalled Krylov’s fables. Shchedrin includes morals in some tales, a typical fable device.

Dictionary

Parasite - a person who lives at someone else's expense, a slacker
Registration – office where papers are registered
The number is outdated.- number
Your Excellency - addressing a person who has a certain income

Theatrical production of an excerpt from a fairy tale

Once upon a time there were two generals, and since both were frivolous, soon, pike command, according to my desire, we found ourselves on desert island.
Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything.
The registry was abolished as unnecessary and the generals were released. Only suddenly they found themselves on a desert island. At first they didn’t understand anything and started talking as if nothing had happened.
(Generals in nightgowns with orders around their necks)
1: Strange, Your Excellency, I had a dream today, I see as if I was living on a desert island.
(both jump up)
2: God! Where are we?
(They started feeling each other, started crying, started looking at each other)
1: Now let's have a nice cup of coffee!
(Crying)
2: What are we going to do, though?
1: Here's what, your Excellency, go east, and I'll go west, and by evening we'll meet again at this place, maybe we'll find something.
(Looking for east and west)
1: That's it, Your Excellency, you go to the right, and I'll go to the left.
(One general went to the right, the other to the left, tries to get an apple from a tree, falls, catches a fish with his hands, falls again)
1: God! Some food!
(Crying)
2: Well, Your Excellency, have you thought of anything?
1: Yes, I found an old issue of Moskovskie Vedomosti.
2: Who would have thought, V.P., that human food in its original form flies, swims and grows on trees!
1: Yes, I must admit, I still thought that the rolls would be born in the same form as they were expected for coffee in the morning!
2: Therefore, if anyone wants to eat a partridge, he must first catch it, kill it, pluck it and fry it. But how to do all this? Now I think I could eat my own boot.
1: Gloves are also good when they are worn for a long time.
(The generals looked at each other angrily, growled, screamed, groaned, pieces of clothing flew, one bit off the order from the other and ate it)
Both: The power of the cross is with us! We'll eat each other like that! We need to distract ourselves by talking!
2: Why do you think the sun rises first and then sets, and not vice versa?
1: You are a strange person, V.P., do you get up first, go to the department, write there, and then go to bed?
(They stopped talking and started reading)
1: Yesterday the venerable chief of our ancient capital had a ceremonial dinner. The table was set for one hundred people with all the luxury. There was golden sterlet, pheasant, and strawberries, so rare in our north in February.
2: Ugh! Really, V.P., can’t you find another item?
1: They write from Tula: on the occasion of the capture of a sturgeon in the Upa River, there was a festival at the local club. The hero of the occasion was brought in on a huge platter, lined with cucumbers and holding a piece of greenery in his mouth.
(He tore out the newspaper, began to read it himself, hung his head, and suddenly screamed)
2: What if we could find a man? He would now serve us some buns, catch hazel grouse, fish! He's probably hidden somewhere, shirking work!
(They jumped up and rushed to look. The man is sleeping under a tree)
1: Sleep, couch potato!
(the man jumped up and gave them a scolding, but the generals grabbed him tightly)
A man climbed a tree, picked apples for the generals, and took one sour one for himself. He dug in the ground, got some potatoes, made a snare from his own hair and caught a hazel grouse. He lit a fire and prepared so much food that the generals came up with the thought: “Shouldn’t we give the parasite a piece?”
Man: Are you satisfied, Generals? Would you allow me to rest now?
1: Rest, my friend, but first remove the rope.
The man collected wild hemp, soaked it in water, and by evening the rope was ready. With this rope, the generals tied the man to a tree so that he would not run away, and they themselves went to bed. A day passed, then another. The man became so adept that he even began to cook soup in a handful. Our generals became cheerful, loose, and well-fed.
Whether it's long or short, the generals are bored. They began to remember the cooks they had left in St. Petersburg and quietly cry.
And the man began to play tricks on how to please his generals for the fact that they favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant work. And he built a ship - not a ship, but such a vessel that it was possible to sail across the ocean-sea all the way to Podyacheskaya.
Here, finally, is Mother Neva and Podyacheskaya Street. The cooks clasped their hands when they saw how well-fed, white and cheerful their generals were.
The generals did not forget about the peasant; They sent him a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!

Grotesque, as Saltykov-Shchedrin's favorite means of satire, is expressed in the fact that animals exist as people.
This is mathematics: we write a joke, but the truth is in our minds. It’s difficult to understand, or maybe it’s not worth understanding? After all, according to Goncharov, “Russian people do not always
loves to understand what he reads.”

Russia has always given birth to talents, but has not allowed them to bear fruit.

“...on the goats, two whistling Cossacks with whips sat on both sides of the driver and watered him without mercy so that he would gallop. And if any Cossack dozes off, Platov himself will poke him from the stroller with his foot, and they will rush even angrier..."

To control a simple horse is a whole lot of control!

That’s why we’re in a hurry, we won’t catch up with ourselves! But most importantly! They tried to shoe the flea, but, as it turned out, this should not have been done. Because the savvy flea stopped dancing. Savvy - top class, but something doesn’t work out.

Lefty explained to the British: we are not advanced in science, but we are devoted to our fatherland.

About himself, of course, he was modest, but the fate of science in Russia was decided by those who did not go too far in the sciences. Either they are not good at genetics, or they are not good at cybernetics, exalting themselves only because they are devoted to their fatherland.

A.S. Pushkin “On Dondukov - Korsakov”:

At the Academy of Sciences
Prince Dunduk is in session.
They say it's not appropriate
Dunduk is so honored;
Why is he sitting?
Because there is something to sit down!

And the fatherland favored them - much more than their talents. “They were transporting Lefty so uncovered, but when they began to transfer him from one cab to another, they would drop everything, and when they started picking him up, they would tear his ears...”

The fatherland is forgetful: it always forgets who to pardon, who to execute, who to curse, to whom to erect a monument.

Porridge from an ax

One-man theater

The old soldier was going on leave. I'm tired from the journey and want to eat. He reached the village and knocked on the last hut.
– Let the dear man rest.
The old woman opened the door.
- Come in, servant.
- Do you, hostess, have anything to snack on?
The old woman had plenty of everything, but she was stingy with feeding the soldier and pretended to be an orphan.
- Oh, a kind person, I haven’t eaten anything myself today.
“Well, no, no,” the soldier says.
Then he noticed an ax without an ax under the bench.
“If there is nothing else, you can cook porridge with an ax.”
The hostess clasped her hands:
- How do you make porridge from an ax?
- Well, give me the boiler.
The old woman brought a cauldron. The soldier washed the ax, put it in the cauldron, poured water and put it on the fire. The old woman looks at the soldier, does not take her eyes off. The soldier took out a spoon and stirred the brew. I tried it.
- Well, how? - asks the old woman.
“It will be ready soon,” the soldier replies, “it’s a pity there’s no salt.”
- I have salt, salt it.
The soldier added salt and tried it again.
- If only I could get a handful of cereal here.
The old woman brought a bag of cereal from the closet.
- Here, fill it up properly.
The soldier cooked and cooked, stirred, then tried it.
The old woman looks at her and can’t look away.
“Oh, and the porridge is good,” the soldier praises, “I wish there was a little butter here - it would be completely filling!”
The old woman also found oil.
They flavored the kushi.
- Take a spoon, mistress.
They began to eat the porridge and praise it.
“I didn’t think that you could cook such a good porridge from an ax,” the old woman marvels.
And there is a soldier and he chuckles.

Only good people can laugh, but they don’t always laugh kindly. This is how satire arises, thanks to the elegant weapon of the grotesque. Laughter is a weapon in the fight against evil.

The phrase was born a long time ago: Good must come with fists. But the weapon of good is not fists. His laughter rings like a weapon. Laughter is the only weapon of good. In the most serious situation, laughter will suddenly slip in its malicious question: “Why?” Why shoe a flea - is it really just to rub the British in the face? Why did the man try for the generals on the island, and even allow himself to be tied up?

That courage again! There is no way to do satire without it. It should be bold - a joke that hides behind itself and at the same time reveals to readers the truth.

The truth must be bold and poignant. Arkady Averchenko began his literary career with “Bayonet” and “Sword” - these were the names of the magazines that he edited, or rather, wrote, developing the style of the future famous humorist. He sharpened a bayonet and a sword for the main work of his life. He created a magazine in himself and himself in the magazine. And he gave him the name: “Satyricon.”

Chapter from "Satyricon"(Rus) – literary reading

Laughter is immortal. And the more immortal, the more difficult and deadly the times, the more unfavorable they are for laughter. And they were very unfavorable. Because part of the joke is part of the truth. And they forbade laughter, and persecuted, and persecuted. Like the truth. And they sent me into exile and imprisoned me in a fortress, like the truth.

Times are like people: they love to laugh at other times, but do not tolerate laughter at themselves. The times of Shchedrin willingly laughed at the times of Gogol, the times of Chekhov - at the times of Shchedrin. And he even stated that he needed the Shchedrins, not the Chekhovs, not the Averchenkos, but the Shchedrins.

And it had them. Because Gogol, Chekhov, and Shchedrin laugh at the times to come. No matter what time comes, the satirists of the past laugh at them. That's why laughter is immortal.

From "Eugene Onegin":

Nicely cheeky epigram
Enrage a mistaken enemy;
It's nice to see how stubborn he is
Bowing my eager horns,
Involuntarily looks in the mirror
And he is ashamed to recognize himself;
It’s more pleasant if he, friends,
Howl foolishly: it’s me!

Ivan Andreevich Krylov was right when in his fable he said for all time:
There are many such examples in the world:
No one likes to recognize themselves in satire.

(Fable "The Mirror and the Monkey")

And here is a video from Schwartz's immortal fairy tale "An Ordinary Miracle".

Life is like a masquerade: vices walk around in the masks of virtues - so the truth has to put on the mask itself in order to debunk them...

Chekhov admired the courage of Shchedrin's fairy tales. Satire has always been valued for its boldness. Sometimes this merit alone was used to forgive a lack of talent and skill. Satire will always need courage - so as not to beat the downtrodden, but to criticize those who stand, and not just stand, but stand in power. Like Pushkin:

There is no grace for you,
With happiness you have a discord:
And you are beautiful inappropriately,
And you are smart beyond reason.

When the satirist Democritus was asked how he understood truth, he answered briefly:
- I am laughing.

Literature.

1. Fairy tale "Porridge from an axe."
2. Fairy tale “If you don’t like it, don’t listen.”
3. N. Leskov"Lefty."
4. A. Pushkin. Epigrams.
5. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin“The story of how one man fed two generals.”
6. A. Averchenko"Satyricon".

The word "grotesque" comes from a French term meaning "comic", "funny", "intricate", "bizarre". This is the oldest technique in literature, which, like hyperbole, is based on exaggeration, sharpening the qualities of people, as well as the properties of natural phenomena, objects, and facts of social life. But in the grotesque, exaggeration has a special character: it is fantastic, in which the depicted is completely taken not only beyond the limits of the so-called life-like, but also acceptable, probable from the standpoint of plausibility. in which the grotesque arises (we will present examples to you later) is a fantastic deformation of existing reality.

Origin of the term

The term itself appeared in the 15th century to designate a type artistic imagery, very unusual. In one of the grottoes Ancient Rome During the excavations, an interesting and original ornament was discovered, in which fantastically different human, animal and plant forms were intertwined.

Where is grotesque used?

Along with hyperbole, the grotesque is widely used in fairy tales, legends and myths. Examples of it in these genres are very numerous. One of the most striking in the fairy tale is the image

Writers, when creating characters based on the grotesque, use both artistic convention exaggeration. Moreover, it can be realistically substantiated (for example, in Khlestakov’s description of St. Petersburg life, which is the result of this hero’s passion for lying). In Lermontov's works this technique is used to romantically depict events and heroes. It is based on the possible, but the exceptional. The boundaries between the real and the fantastic are blurred, but they do not disappear.

The basis of the grotesque

The impossible, the unthinkable, but necessary for the author to achieve some artistic effect forms the basis of the grotesque. This is, therefore, a fantastic hyperbole, since ordinary exaggeration is closer to reality, while the grotesque is closer to a nightmare, where fantastic visions that excite the imagination defy logical explanation and can become a terrifying “reality” for people. The emergence of grotesque imagery is associated with the most complex mechanisms that the human psyche has. The unconscious and the conscious interact in it. It is not without reason that the images based on exaggeration that so impress us in the works created by Russian writers often appear in the dreams of the characters. The grotesque is used very often here. Examples from literature can be given as follows: these are the dreams of Tatyana Larina and Raskolnikov.

Fantastic elements of Larina and Raskolnikov's dreams

Tatyana Larina's dream (work "Eugene Onegin", fifth chapter) is filled with images of monsters that are grotesque. With horror, this heroine notices in a wretched hut a fantastic dance, the depiction of which uses the grotesque. Examples: “a skull on a goose neck”, “a crayfish riding a spider”, “a mill dancing in a crouch”.

Also fantastic, the image of a laughing old woman is created, which can also be classified as grotesque. The psychological equivalent of truth is the delusional visions of the hero: his battle with evil, which was embodied in the image of a “evil old woman,” ultimately turned out to be just an absurd struggle, similar to the one carried out with Don Quixote. Only evil laughs wildly at Raskolnikov. The more furiously he desires to kill him, the more he grows closer to him.

Connection with realistic images, situations, events

Created by various authors based on the grotesque, they seem to us absolutely absurd, implausible from the standpoint of common sense. Their emotionally expressive, striking effect is often enhanced by the fact that such imagery interacts with realistic, quite ordinary, plausible events and situations.

Realistic elements in the dreams of Larina and Raskolnikov

Elements of reality in both of these works are grotesque, and not only in them: examples from literature presented by the work of other authors also prove the presence of two elements in it (fantastic and realistic). For example, in Tatyana’s nightmare, the characters turn out to be, along with terrible monsters, the easily recognizable Lensky and Onegin.

In the dream of the hero Raskolnikov, the motivation for the grotesque image and situation from the episode in which the laughing old woman is depicted is quite real. This is just a dream-memory of the main character about the murder he committed. There is nothing fantastic about the ax and the criminal himself.

The use of the grotesque by satirical writers

The combination of ordinary social and everyday situations with grotesque imagery is widely used by various satirical writers. Thus, the images of the mayors of the city of Foolov, one of whom has an “organ” instead of brains, and the other has a stuffed head on his shoulders, were created in “The History of a City” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

This story is also filled with some grotesque, incredible situations (wars against those who refused to use mustard; “wars for enlightenment,” etc.). All of them are brought to the point of absurdity by the author, but for Russia they depict quite ordinary conflicts and contradictions between the people and the tyrant government.

We talked briefly about Examples from fiction others can be cited. They are quite numerous. Thus, a very popular phenomenon is the grotesque. Examples in the Russian language can be supplemented with works by foreign authors, since this language is used very actively in their works.