What is plot in the visual arts. What is plot? Definition and classification

Plot - a detailed image of an event or chain of events, a dominant element figurative world and semantics in general artistic text, the main means (form) of expression thematic content in epic and drama, and sometimes in lyrics. In turn, the plot is the content of the artistic message (narration, dramatic action), which acts as its form.

Plots are divided into concentric and chronicle. In the first, the events and actions of the characters depicted are sealed by a cause-and-effect relationship. If Yevgeny Onegin's uncle had not died, he would not have come to the inherited estate, he would not have met Lensky. If Lensky, in love with Olga (which interested Onegin), had not brought him to the Larins, Eugene and Tatyana would not have met, the main conflict would not have ensued. If Lensky, who is much more tolerant of the landlord neighbors than Onegin, had not inadvertently promised him that at Tatyana's birthday there would only be “his own family,” Evgeny would have nothing to take revenge on by caring for Olga, and Lensky would have nothing challenge a friend to a duel, the conflict of the novel would not have taken place, which ended in a duel and Lensky's death. Had it not been for this, Eugene, tormented by his conscience, would not have gone to travel so quickly, Tatyana would not have visited his house, she would not have suspected, having got acquainted with Onegin's library: “Is he really a parody?”, Which, of course, influenced her consent to marry (“... for poor Tanya / All the lots were equal ...”) and the unfair treatment of Onegin, who fell in love with her, as the former winner of women.

Concentric plots do not exclude a moment of chance. Onegin returned to the light and found there new Tatiana, a brilliant princess, completely unexpected for herself. Sudden, sharp turns in the course of events are called ups and downs. Sometimes the vicissitudes are motivated, sometimes they are not, they simply express the vicissitudes of fate. V " Captain's daughter"The ups and downs are the pardoning of Grinev by Pugachev right under the gallows (it is motivated by the intervention of Savelich, whom the former" counselor "recognized) or the arrest of Grinev, when, it would seem, everything went well for him and Masha thanks to a chance meeting with an acquaintance - Zurin (another ups and downs ). In Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, the ups and downs include the death of Berlioz, the meeting of Ivan Bezdomny in a psychiatric hospital with the master, in the master's story - winning him a hundred thousand bonds, which gave him the opportunity to sit down to a novel about Pilate. fateful meeting with Margarita, the catastrophe with the romance and the betrayal of Aloisy Mogarych, which entailed the separation of the lovers, then the appearance of Azazello in front of Margarita, who gives her the hope of meeting her lover, and much more.

The ups and downs (for example, the disclosure by Nozdrev and Korobochka of the secret of Chichikov as a buyer of "dead souls") are also possible in news stories where the connection of episodes occurs mostly more or less randomly. Arbitrarily, more precisely, according to a specific artistic assignment out-of-plot elements are also placed. Thus, in Dead Souls, a detailed exposition - Chichikov's prehistory with the motivation for his swindle that unites the entire plot - is given in the final, 11th chapter of the first volume. The purpose of rearranging events in time is the same as in "A Hero of Our Time": a certain mysterious atmosphere is created, the reader is intrigued. V.M. Shukshin, having told several stories from the life of his character, nicknamed Chudik, dwelling in particular on his trip to his brother in the Urals, upon completion of the action (Chudik returned from a trip) in the final paragraph gives something like an exposition - represents the hero: “His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was thirty-nine years old. He worked as a projectionist in the village. He loved detectives and dogs. As a child, I dreamed of being a spy. "

To off-plot elements artistic world works also include a prologue or introduction, the role of which can be extremely large (in “ The Bronze Horseman”The theme of Peter as a great reformer unfolds mainly in the description of St. Petersburg founded by him in the introduction), or may be limited to the task of some lyrical accompaniment of the plot, at least at the same time something was added to it (the ring frame is a description of the hero's grave and her visit by the heroine - plot of the story of VP Astafiev "Shepherds a shepherdess. Modern pastoral", consisting of four parts: "Fight", "Date", "Farewell" and "Assumption"), all sorts of digressions (lyrical in "Eugene Onegin" and " Dead souls”, Journalistic - philosophical and historical - in“ War and Peace ”; Tolstoy's digressions are associated with artistic scenes basically by the position of a passionate and convinced author, in Gogol, with the antithesis of the narrative and lyrical passages of the text, they are artistically connected nevertheless closer than the reasoning and narration of Tolstoy, this antithesis was part of the concept of the "poem", and in Pushkin, the digressions sometimes did not deviate at all , they are driving the plot: “... and here it is / Winter is coming sorceress” - Tatyana will be taken to Moscow for marriageableness along the winter road), an epilogue or a conclusion, i.e. a brief notification of what happened to the characters after what was described in the plot, usually some time later (typical for Turgenev's novels; in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, the role of the epilogue is played by the commentary of the “publisher” to Grinev’s notes; in War and Peace ”The epilogue is large, in two parts: narrative and philosophical-journalistic).

Some theorists denied the need to single out the concept of “plot” along with the concept of “plot”. “Fable” in Latin means “story, narration”. In Russia in the first half of the 19th century. by “story” they understood not only the fact of telling about something, but also the way, manner of this telling (see: Epos). Critics praised prose writers and poets for their art “in the story”. Belinsky wrote: “The form of novels like Onegin was created by Byron; at least the manner of the story, the mixture of prose and poetry in the depicted reality, the retreat, the poet's appeal to himself, and especially this too perceptible presence of the poet's face in the work he created - all this is Byron's business ”. The distinction between plot and plot is connected with different understandings of “story”. The plot in Russian literary studies XIX v. it was the set of events depicted in the work that was called, more precisely, the image of events. In the 1920s. representatives of the formal school in literary criticism V.B. Shklovsky, B.V. Tomashevsky and others, what was previously called a plot, called a plot and attributed it to "material" that does not have artistic value... In the work, “material” is formed and becomes a plot. “The artistically constructed distribution of events in the work is called the plot of the work,” wrote Tomashevsky. “However, in modern literary criticism the meaning of the term “plot” prevails, dating back to the 19th century. ”

The plot is most often understood as manipulation of artistic time, rearrangement of events in time; an example is Lermontov's novel about Pechorin. Strictly speaking, there is no permutation in it. It was just that the reader was first told about the living Pechorin, and then they were given the opportunity to read the diary of the deceased Pechorin. The prehistory of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov in “Fathers and Children” is introduced with reference to the story of Arkady Bazarov, although it is presented by the author. But in "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin tells the background of his "friend" since his childhood, after he gave the inner monologue of this in the first stanza " young rake”, Parting with the life of the capital and galloping into the village to his dying uncle. L.N. Tolstoy in "War and Peace" first showed the release of the party of Russian prisoners partisan detachments Denisov and Dolokhov, and then told the reader about what Pierre Bezukhov had experienced in captivity before that. In such cases, the authors in the full sense of the word turn the artistic time back. Meanwhile, in the plot it, of course, remains unidirectional and uniform, no fairytale miracles occur, the heroes of "War and Peace" do not have such a time machine as the inventor Timofeev in the comedy M.A. Bulgakov's "Ivan Vasilievich". And this is far from the only manipulation that the author can afford. Art time possesses the ability to "shorten", "stretch", "interrupt": one is told briefly, the other is described in detail, the third is not mentioned at all. The Bronze Horseman simply says: “A hundred years have passed ...” Space is also conditional: the author instantly, when he needs it, transfers the action from one place to another (the “unity of place” of the classicists led only to other conventions: all events took place, for example, in one city square). The writer, acting as an omniscient author, conveys the thoughts of some characters, the thoughts of the rest of the characters remain unknown to the reader, and this does not mean that they cannot think and don’t think, simply conveying their thoughts is not part of the task that the artist has set himself. So, in the plot, all the characters live in a single time and space, everyone is supposed to have their own appearance, some thoughts, but what and how to communicate, whether to give, for example, portraits of all characters - the author decides, creating a storyline. The plot forms the plot, expresses it, is its form. Therefore, they can never coincide, as is often said. They are only unidirectional and multidirectional. The plot is the main element of the semantics of the text (the figurative world), and the plot is the basis of the composition of the figurative world in the epic and drama. The plot ends with a denouement, the plot ends. Pechorin died in the middle of the novel. This is the denouement. In the finale, he, again alive, full of strength and energy, performs his best deed, a feat, saving the man whom they were going to shoot without giving him permission to repent, in fact, in front of his mother's eyes. Lermontov wished that a character close to him would be remembered by the reader as a hero.

Towards lyric works instead of the word “ending” the word “ending” is used.

If in human life the reasons and consequences of what is happening are not always clear and understandable, then in a literary work all the actions of the heroes are logically interconnected.

Any event is a consequence of the previous one, and all scenes that are not related to the action are cut off as unnecessary. The sequence of events depicted by the writers is objective world a literary work, or a plot that allows you to get acquainted with the life of the heroes in its spatial and temporal changes.

What is plot?

The plot is the basis of any literary work. It is he who reveals to the reader the chain of events described, the characters of the characters, their relationship with each other. If we compare the plot with the construction of a house, then it can be presented in the form of a frame, which, as events unfold, overgrows with scenes-bricks, and by the end of the work acquires a roof-denouement.

Many literary works are built according to a single chronological scheme, in which all events take place one after another. These usually include adventure novels, sagas, memoirs. There are also those where the scenes are not interconnected temporarily, but by a cause-and-effect relationship, that is, each new action of the heroes is the cause of the previous one. The concentric scheme is usually found in detectives, thrillers, or dramas.


Being a complex whole, the plot consists of many elements, each of which carries certain functions. For example, the exposition includes information about the characters even before the events begin to develop, and tells about what happened after everything described in the work.

Not every book contains all the plot elements, but in any of them there are at least three key points, called the outset, climax and denouement.

What is a tie?

A set is understood as a certain event that occurs at the beginning of the work. She gives impetus to action and plays a significant role in revealing the characters of the heroes. In adventure novels, the plot is most often a scene that pushes the characters to perform feats; in detective stories, it is a description of a crime that will later be disclosed by detectives.

If you look at a specific example, you can refer to the novel by Dumas "The Three Musketeers". The plot in it is the scene where d'Artagnan, upon his arrival in Paris, meets with Cardinal Richelieu and realizes that he has a serious and powerful enemy.


It is this meeting that becomes the beginning of a sequential chain of events on which the author's work is built.

Climax - what is it?

The climax is one of the most interesting and significant events in the book, point highest voltage, in which the hero either gives up or gains new strength for further struggle. This plot element is found in all literary works starting from small stories and ending with multivolume novels.

Its presence in the plot is considered inevitable, since otherwise the reader may lose interest in what has been written.

In small literary forms usually only one is present climax episode... For example, in the fairy tale about Cinderella, an intriguing moment can be considered a scene where angry stepmother learned about my stepdaughter's trip to the ball. Large works can have one or many climaxes, especially if several storylines run through the story.

If we talk about "The Three Musketeers", then the culmination here is the tragic resolution of the story with the pendants, when Constance dies. But in the novel "The Master and Margarita" there are several climaxes, in particular, Margarita's trip to the ball and the meeting of Pontius Pilate with Yeshua.

What is a junction?

The denouement refers to the event in which the conflict between the heroes of the work is resolved. In it, the character can achieve his goal or be left with nothing and die.


Sometimes it happens that there is no denouement in the work - in this way the author leaves room for the readers to think.

Returning to Dumas, the denouement can be called the scene of D'Artagnan's last meeting with the cardinal, in which Richelieu presented the brave hero with a patent for the rank of lieutenant of the Musketeers.

The plot is an indispensable component of any work. Whether it's a movie, book, play, or even a picture. Moreover, without him, these works simply could not exist. So what is plot?

There are many definitions. The most accurate sounds like this: a plot is a compositionally built order of events occurring in a work. It is he who determines the sequence of telling the story for the viewer / reader. In literature, the concept of a plot is closely related to the concept of a plot, but they should not be confused. The plot is a tool that the author rather than the viewer needs. events. In books and often in films, the plot presents us with actions that are far from chronological order... But, despite this, the narrative is perceived as coherent and harmonious.

Exposition. Preface to action. As a rule, the exposition is a descriptive fragment that introduces us to the work.

The tie. The beginning of the action, where the conflicts of the work are outlined, the characters of the characters appear. it required element, after all, what is a plot without a tie?

Development. The main effective twists and turns of the plot.

The climax. The highest intensity of the action, the peak of the plot. Usually, after the climax, there are cardinal changes in the lives of the characters.

Interchange. As a rule, the characters find something for themselves, and their future life is clearly represented.

The final. Otherwise, it can be called an afterword. Here the author puts everything in its place and sums up the work. Interestingly, in recent times there is a clear tendency to leave the ending open, so that the viewer / reader himself thinks out further destiny characters.

Sometimes, plot elements can be swapped. So, there are films and books with both direct and delayed exposure. With the first, everything is clear - first the viewer gets to know the characters and the scene, after which a conflict ensues. In the second case, we learn about the conditions after the setting. There are works without exposition at all, where the reader has to get acquainted with the characters in the course of the action itself.

Currently, there are adherents of some avant-garde trends who create works without a plot at all. Such "experiences" are difficult for viewers to perceive and represent frivolous parodies of art. But there are also schemes for constructing a composition, completely overturning our idea of ​​what a plot is. They will be discussed below.

To supplement the answer to the question of what the plot is, it must be said that this is what keeps the viewer's attention throughout the work. Coming up with a plot, the author of the book first of all thinks about how to interest the reader. Moreover, to interest not a couple of pages, but so that he could not tear himself away from the work. Therefore, in our time, more and more new schemes for plotting are appearing - stories are told backwards, the finals completely turn the whole story around, and so on. Perhaps in the future there will no longer be any standard schemes. And the answer to the question "What is plot?" will be much more complicated and confusing than it is now. In the meantime, this is just a scheme and method of building the story.

PLOT - a detailed image of an event or a chain of events, a dominant element of the figurative world and, in general, the semantics of a literary text, the main means (form) of expressing thematic content in epic and drama, and sometimes in lyrics. In turn, the plot is the content of the artistic message (narration, dramatic action), which acts as its form.

Plots are divided into concentric and chronicle. In the first, the events and actions of the characters depicted are sealed by a cause-and-effect relationship. If Yevgeny Onegin's uncle had not died, he would not have come to the inherited estate, he would not have met Lensky. If Lensky, in love with Olga (which interested Onegin), had not brought him to the Larins, Eugene and Tatyana would not have met, the main conflict would not have ensued. If Lensky, who is much more tolerant of the landlord neighbors than Onegin, had not inadvertently promised him that at Tatyana's birthday there would only be “his own family,” Evgeny would have nothing to take revenge on by caring for Olga, and Lensky would have nothing challenge a friend to a duel, the conflict of the novel would not have taken place, which ended in a duel and Lensky's death. Had it not been for this, Eugene, tormented by his conscience, would not have gone to travel so quickly, Tatyana would not have visited his house, she would not have suspected, having got acquainted with Onegin's library: “Is he really a parody?”, Which, of course, influenced her consent to marry (“... for poor Tanya / All the lots were equal ...”) and the unfair treatment of Onegin, who fell in love with her, as the former winner of women.

Concentric plots do not exclude a moment of chance. Onegin returned to the world and found there a new Tatiana, a brilliant princess, completely unexpected for himself. Sudden, sharp turns in the course of events are called ups and downs. Sometimes the vicissitudes are motivated, sometimes they are not, they simply express the vicissitudes of fate. In "The Captain's Daughter", the twists and turns are the pardon of Grinev by Pugachev right under the gallows (it is motivated by the intervention of Savelyich, whom the former "counselor" recognized) or the arrest of Grinev, when, it would seem, everything went well for him and Masha thanks to a chance meeting with an acquaintance - Zurin (one more twists and turns). In Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, the ups and downs include the death of Berlioz, the meeting of Ivan Bezdomny in a psychiatric hospital with the master, in the master's story - winning him a hundred thousand bonds, which gave him the opportunity to sit down to a novel about Pilate, a fateful meeting with Margarita, a catastrophe with the novel and the betrayal of Aloisy Mogarych, which entailed the separation of the lovers, then - the appearance before Margarita Azazello, who gives her hope to meet her lover, and much more.

The ups and downs (for example, the disclosure of the secret of Chichikov by Nozdrev and Korobochka as a buyer of “dead souls”) are also possible in chronicle plots, where the connection of episodes occurs mostly more or less accidentally. Arbitrarily, more precisely, according to a specific artistic task, extra-plot elements are also placed. Thus, in Dead Souls, a detailed exposition - Chichikov's prehistory with the motivation for his swindle that unites the entire plot - is given in the final, 11th chapter of the first volume. The purpose of rearranging events in time is the same as in "A Hero of Our Time": a certain mysterious atmosphere is created, the reader is intrigued. V.M. Shukshin, having told several stories from the life of his character, nicknamed Chudik, dwelling in particular on his trip to his brother in the Urals, upon completion of the action (Chudik returned from a trip) in the final paragraph gives something like an exposition - represents the hero: “His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was thirty-nine years old. He worked as a projectionist in the village. He loved detectives and dogs. As a child, I dreamed of being a spy. "

The non-plot elements of the artistic world of the work also include a prologue or an introduction, the role of which can be extremely large (in The Bronze Horseman, the theme of Peter as a great transformer is developed mainly in the description of St. Petersburg founded by him in the introduction), or may be limited to the task of some lyrical accompaniment of the plot, at least at the same time something was added to it (the ring framing - a description of the hero's grave and her visit by the heroine - the plot of the story by V.P. , "Farewell" and "Assumption"), all sorts of digressions (lyrical in "Eugene Onegin" and "Dead Souls", journalistic - philosophical and historical - in "War and Peace"; convinced author, in Gogol, with the antithesis of the narrative and lyrical passages of the text, they are artistically connected nevertheless closer than reasoning and narratives According to Tolstoy, this antithesis was part of the concept of the "poem", while Pushkin's retreats are sometimes not retreats at all, they move the plot: "... and here she is / Winter is coming along the sorceress" - Tatiana will be taken to Moscow for marriage on the winter road), epilogue or conclusion, i.e. a brief notification of what happened to the characters after what was described in the plot, usually some time later (typical for Turgenev's novels; in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, the role of the epilogue is played by the commentary of the “publisher” to Grinev’s notes; in War and Peace ”The epilogue is large, in two parts: narrative and philosophical-journalistic).

Some theorists denied the need to single out the concept of “plot” along with the concept of “plot”. “Fable” in Latin means “story, narration”. In Russia in the first half of the 19th century. by “story” they understood not only the fact of telling about something, but also the way, manner of this telling (see: Epos). Critics praised prose writers and poets for their art “in the story”. Belinsky wrote: “The form of novels like Onegin was created by Byron; at least the manner of the story, the mixture of prose and poetry in the depicted reality, the retreat, the poet's appeal to himself, and especially this too perceptible presence of the poet's face in the work he created - all this is Byron's business ”. The distinction between plot and plot is connected with different understandings of “story”. The plot in Russian literary criticism of the XIX century. it was the set of events depicted in the work that was called, more precisely, the image of events. In the 1920s. representatives of the formal school in literary criticism V.B. Shklovsky, B.V. Tomashevsky and others, what was previously called a plot, called a plot and attributed it to “material” that has no artistic value. In the work, “material” is formed and becomes a plot. “The artistically constructed distribution of events in the work is called the plot of the work,” wrote Tomashevsky. "Nevertheless, in modern literary criticism, the meaning of the term" plot "prevails, dating back to the 19th century."

The plot is most often understood as manipulation of artistic time, rearrangement of events in time; an example is Lermontov's novel about Pechorin. Strictly speaking, there is no permutation in it. It was just that the reader was first told about the living Pechorin, and then they were given the opportunity to read the diary of the deceased Pechorin. The prehistory of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov in “Fathers and Children” is introduced with reference to the story of Arkady Bazarov, although it is presented by the author. But in "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin tells the background of his "friend" since his childhood, after in the first stanza he gave the inner monologue of this "young rake", parting with the life of the capital and galloping to the village to his dying uncle. L.N. In War and Peace, Tolstoy first showed the release of a party of Russian prisoners by the partisan detachments of Denisov and Dolokhov, and then told the reader about what Pierre Bezukhov had experienced in captivity before that. In such cases, the authors in the full sense of the word turn the artistic time back. Meanwhile, in the plot it, of course, remains unidirectional and uniform, no fairytale miracles occur, the heroes of "War and Peace" do not have such a time machine as the inventor Timofeev in the comedy M.A. Bulgakov's "Ivan Vasilievich". And this is far from the only manipulation that the author can afford. Artistic time has the ability to "shorten", "stretch", "interrupt": one is told briefly, the other is described in detail, the third is not mentioned at all. The Bronze Horseman simply says: “A hundred years have passed ...” Space is also conditional: the author instantly, when he needs it, transfers the action from one place to another (the “unity of place” of the classicists led only to other conventions: all events took place, for example, in one city square). The writer, acting as an omniscient author, conveys the thoughts of some characters, the thoughts of the rest of the characters remain unknown to the reader, and this does not mean that they cannot think and don’t think, simply conveying their thoughts is not part of the task that the artist has set himself. So, in the plot, all the characters live in a single time and space, everyone is supposed to have their own appearance, some thoughts, but what and how to communicate, whether to give, for example, portraits of all characters - the author decides, creating a storyline. The plot forms the plot, expresses it, is its form. Therefore, they can never coincide, as is often said. They are only unidirectional and multidirectional. The plot is the main element of the semantics of the text (the figurative world), and the plot is the basis of the composition of the figurative world in the epic and drama. The plot ends with a denouement, the plot ends. Pechorin died in the middle of the novel. This is the denouement. In the finale, he, again alive, full of strength and energy, performs his best deed, a feat, saving the man whom they were going to shoot without giving him permission to repent, in fact, in front of his mother's eyes. Lermontov wished that a character close to him would be remembered by the reader as a hero.

In relation to lyric works, instead of the word “finale”, the word “ending” is used.

The concept of "plot" has a lot of meanings, depending on the area of ​​use. The word itself comes from the French "sujet", which literally translates as "subject". If we consider the question of what a plot is from the point of view of a drama, epic, script, poem or film, then this concept will denote an action that takes place in a certain sequence in dramatic, lyrical and narrative works. The first to use this concept in relation to literature were such famous classicists of the seventeenth century as Boileau and Corneille. They meant certain incidents that took place in the lives of the heroes of the work.

The difference between the plot and the plot

Some people misinterpret the concept of "plot", confusing it with the word "plot".

By plot, it is customary to mean all kinds of stories, fables and myths. The word "plot" came to us from Latin, which means "to tell." Because this term got its distribution much earlier than French term, these two concepts began to be compared, which ultimately led to confusion and instability of the concepts.

To understand what a plot is in literature, you need to understand some subtleties. For example, modern literature interprets these two concepts as synonyms, however, if we consider them in depth, from a philological point of view, then we can see some differences. So, the plot will be the direct sequence of events of the work, in other words, short retelling in chronological order. The plot is an artistically constructed development of events, the chronology in it can be violated, the plot includes all lyrical descriptions, digressions, etc., which the plot is devoid of. There is also an opinion that it is customary to call the course of events directly the plot, and the plot itself is called artistic conflict which is gradually developing. Despite this, the plot is structured to reveal main idea works, his idea and conflict.

Other interpretations of the plot

What is the plot of the work? It is customary to call the unique and peculiar side of the form of the work, which corresponds to its content, directly by the plot. At the same time, it is necessary to thoroughly study the structure of the plot, its episodes and the narrative relationship of dialogues with conflicts.

Historical development term will help to understand what the plot of a fairy tale is, since even at an early stage in the development of the epic, the plot itself was built in a chronological sequence of episodes that told about fairy tales with the participation of knights, as well as fascinating novels. Later forms of the epic received a slightly different plot structure, since here the conflict of the work itself passed directly through all the episodes and had a certain denouement. It is the analysis of the plot of the work that will make it possible to correctly analyze its plot.

The fine arts interprets the concept of "plot" as an event that is depicted in the work itself. In this case, it is necessary to distinguish between the terms "theme" and "plot" of the work, since one theme can have several different plots, disclosed in detail in the work itself.