1. The meaning of the terms "hero", "character"

2. Character and character

3. The structure of a literary hero

4. Character system

1. The meaning of the terms "hero", "character"

The word "hero" has a rich history. Translated from the Greek "heros" means a demi-god, a deified person. In pre-Homeric times (X-IX century BC), heroes in Ancient Greece the children of a god and a mortal woman or a mortal and a goddess were called (Hercules, Dionysus, Achilles, Aeneas, etc.). Heroes were worshiped, poems were composed in honor of them, temples were erected for them. The right to the name of the hero gave the advantage of family, origin. The hero served as an intermediary between the earth and Olympus, he helped people comprehend the will of the gods, sometimes he himself acquired the miraculous functions of a deity.

Such a function, for example, is given to the beautiful Helen in the ancient Greek temple legend-fairy tale about the healing of the daughter of a friend of Ariston, the king of the Spartans. This nameless friend of the king, according to legend, had a very beautiful wife, in infancy, the former is very ugly. The nurse often carried the girl to the temple of Helen and prayed to the goddess to save the girl from deformity (Helen had her own temple in Sparta). And Elena came and helped the girl.

In the era of Homer (VIII century BC) and up to the literature of the 5th century BC. inclusive, the word "hero" is filled with a different meaning. Not only the descendant of the gods turns into a hero. It becomes any mortal who has achieved outstanding success in earthly life; any person who has made a name for himself in the field of war, morality, travel. Such are the heroes of Homer (Menelaus, Patroclus, Penelope, Odysseus), such is Theseus Bacchilid. The authors call these people "heroes" because they became famous for certain feats and thus went beyond the historical and geographical.

Finally, starting from the 5th century BC, not only an outstanding person, but any “husband”, both “noble” and “unfit”, who got into the world of a literary work, turns into a hero. The artisan, messenger, servant and even slave also acts as a hero. Such a reduction, desacralization of the hero's image is scientifically substantiated by Aristotle. In "Poetics" - the chapter "Parts of the tragedy. Heroes of tragedy" - he notes that the hero may no longer be distinguished by "(special) virtue and justice." He becomes a hero simply by getting into a tragedy and experiencing "terrible".

In literary criticism, the meaning of the term "hero" is very ambiguous. Historically, this meaning grows out of the meanings indicated above. However, in theoretical terms, it shows a new, transformed content, which is read at several semantic levels: the artistic reality of the work, literature itself and ontology as a science of being.

In the artistic world of creation, a hero is any person endowed with appearance and inner content. This is not a passive observer, but an actant, a person actually acting in the work (translated from Latin, “actant” means “acting”). The hero in the work necessarily creates something, protects someone. the main task hero at this level is the development and transformation of poetic reality, the construction of artistic meaning. At the general literary level, the hero is the artistic image of a person who summarizes the most character traits reality; living repeatable patterns of being. In this regard, the hero is the bearer of certain ideological principles expresses the intention of the author. It models a special imprint of being, becomes the seal of the era. Classic example- this is Lermontov's Pechorin, "the hero of our time." Finally, at the ontological level, the hero forms special way knowledge of the world. He must bring people the truth, acquaint them with the variety of forms human life. In this regard, the hero is a spiritual guide, leading the reader through all circles of human life and showing the way to the truth, God. Such is Virgil D. Alighieri (“ The Divine Comedy”), Faust I. Goethe, Ivan Flyagin N.S. Leskova ("The Enchanted Wanderer"), etc.

The term "hero" often coexists with the term "character" (sometimes these words are understood as synonyms). The word "character" French descent, but has Latin roots. Translated from Latin“regzopa” is a person, a face, a disguise. "Persona" the ancient Romans called the mask that the actor put on before the performance: tragic or comic. In literary criticism, a character is the subject of a literary action, an utterance in a work. Character Presents social appearance person, his external, sensually perceived person.

However, the hero and the character are not the same thing. The hero is something integral, complete; character - partial, requiring explanation. The hero embodies the eternal idea, is destined for the highest spiritual and practical activity; the character simply denotes the presence of a person; "works" as a statistician. The hero is the masked actor, and the character is only a mask.

2. Character and character

A character easily turns into a hero if he receives an individual, personal dimension or character. According to Aristotle, character refers to the manifestation of the direction of "the will, whatever it may be."

AT modern literary criticism character is the unique personality of the character; his internal appearance; that is, everything that makes a person a person, that distinguishes him from other people. In other words, the character is the same actor who plays behind the mask - the character. At the heart of the character is the inner "I" of a person, his self. Character shows the image of the soul with all its searches and mistakes, hopes and disappointments. It denotes the versatility of human individuality; reveals its moral and spiritual potential.

Character can be simple or complex. A simple character is distinguished by integrity and static. He endows the hero with an unshakable set of value orientations; makes it either positive or negative. positive and bad guys usually divide the system of characters in the work into two warring factions. For example: patriots and aggressors in the tragedy of Aeschylus ("Persians"); Russians and foreigners (Englishmen) in N.S. Leskov "Lefty"; "last" and "many" in the story of A.G. Malyshkin "Dair's Fall".

Simple characters are traditionally paired, most often on the basis of opposition (Shvabrin - Grinev in " Captain's daughter» A.S. Pushkin, Javert - Bishop Miriel in "Les Misérables" by V. Hugo). Contrasting sharpens the merits of positive heroes and detracts from the merits of negative heroes. It arises not only on an ethical basis. It is also formed by philosophical oppositions (such is the confrontation between Joseph Knecht and Plinio Designori in G. Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game).

A complex character manifests itself in an incessant search, an inner evolution. It expresses diversity mental life personality. He opens as the brightest, high aspirations the human soul, as well as its darkest, basest impulses. In a complex character, on the one hand, the prerequisites for the degradation of a person are laid (Ionych by A.P. Chekhov); on the other hand, the possibility of his future transformation and salvation. A complex character is very difficult to designate in the dyad "positive" and "negative". As a rule, it stands between these terms or, more precisely, above them. It condenses the paradox, the contradictory nature of life; concentrates all the most mysterious and strange, which is the secret of man. These are the heroes of F.M. Dostoevsky R. Musil, A. Strindberg and others.

3. The structure of a literary hero

Literary hero- a complex, multifaceted person. He can live in several dimensions at once: objective, subjective, divine, demonic, bookish (Master M.A. Bulgakova). However, in his relations with society, nature, other people (everything that is opposite to his personality), the literary hero is always binary. He takes on two forms: inner and outer. It goes in two ways: introverting and extroverting. In the aspect of introversion, the hero is “thinking in advance” (to use the eloquent terminology of C. G. Jung) Prometheus. He lives in a world of feelings, dreams, dreams. In the aspect of extra-version, the literary hero is "acting, and then pondering" Epithemeus. He lives in real world for its active development.

His portrait, profession, age, history (or past) “works” to create the appearance of the hero. The portrait endows the hero with a face and figure; teaches him a complex distinctive features(fatness, thinness in A.P. Chekhov's story "Thick and thin") and bright, recognizable habits (a characteristic wound in the neck of the partisan Levinson from A.I. Fadeev's novel "Rout").

Very often, the portrait becomes a means of psychologization and testifies to certain character traits. As, for example, in famous portrait Pechorin, given through the eyes of the narrator, a certain wandering officer: “He (Pechorin - P.K.) was of medium height; his slender frame and broad shoulders proved strong build capable of enduring all the hardships of a nomadic life<…>. His gait was careless and lazy, but I noticed that he did not swing his arms - a sure sign of a secret character.

Profession, vocation, age, history of the hero pedal the process of socialization. Profession and vocation give the hero the right to socially useful activities. Age determines the potential for certain actions. The story about his past, parents, country and place where he lives, gives the hero a sensually tangible realism, historical concreteness.

The inner image of the hero is made up of his worldview, ethical beliefs, thoughts, attachments, faith, statements and actions. Worldview and ethical beliefs endow the hero with the necessary ontological and value orientations; give meaning to his existence. Attachments and thoughts outline the manifold life of the soul. Faith (or lack thereof) determines the presence of the hero in the spiritual field, his attitude towards God and the Church (in the literature of Christian countries). Actions and statements denote the results of the interaction of the soul and spirit.

Hero of a literary work - actor in work of art, which has distinct traits of character and behavior, a certain attitude towards other actors and life phenomena shown in the work.

A hero is often called any multilaterally depicted character in a work. Such a main or one of the main characters can be a positive artistic image, a positive hero, expressing in his views, actions, experiences the features of an advanced person of his time and causing the reader to strive to become like him, to follow him in life. Positive heroes are many heroes of the works of Russian classics, for example: Chatsky, Tatyana Larina, Mtsyri, Taras Bulba, Insarov and others. Heroes for a number of generations of revolutionaries were the heroes of the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What is to be done?” - Vera Pavlovna and Rakhmetov, the hero of the novel by A. M. Gorky "Mother" - Pavel Vlasov.

The main or one of the main characters can also be a negative image, in the behavior and experiences of which the writer shows people with backward or reactionary views hostile to the people, causing anger and disgust with their attitude to their homeland, to people. Such a negative artistic image helps to understand reality more deeply, shows what the writer condemns and thus what he considers positive in life, causes a desire to fight negative phenomena in it.

Russian classic literature created a number of negative images: Chichikov, Plyushkin, Khlestakov and others in the works of N. V. Gogol, Karenin (“Anna Karenina” by L. N. Tolstoy), Judas Golovlev (“Lord Golovlevs” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), Mayakin , Vassa Zheleznova, Klim Samgin and others in the works of A. M. Gorky.

Soviet writers have created a gallery of new positive characters, in the image of which the features of a person of a socialist society are reflected.

Such, for example, are Chapaev and Klychkov in the works of D. Furmanov, Levinson and others in A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout", communists and underground members of the Komsomol in his novel "The Young Guard", Davydov ("Virgin Soil Upturned" by M. A. Sholokhov) , Pavel Korchagin and his comrades-in-arms in N. Ostrovsky’s work “How Steel Was Tempered”, Basov (“Derbent Tanker” by Y. Krymov), Vorobyov and Meresyev in B. Polevoy’s “The Tale of a Real Man”, etc. Along with this Soviet writers(A. A. Fadeev, A. N. Tolstoy, M. A. Sholokhov, L. M. Leonov and others) created a number of negative images - White Guards, kulaks, fascists, adventurers, fake people, etc.

It is clear that in literature, as in life, a person appears in the process of growth, in development, in the struggle of contradictions, in the interweaving of positive and negative properties. Therefore, we encounter in the literature the most diverse characters, which we only ultimately attribute to positive and negative images. These concepts express the most sharply demarcated types of images. In almost every given literary work they receive a concrete embodiment in a variety of shapes and shades. It should be emphasized that in Soviet literature, the most important task of which is the image of the advanced fighters for communism, the creation of the image of a positive hero is of primary importance.

It would be more correct to call the hero only the positive hero of the work - the protagonist, whose actions and thoughts can be, from the point of view of the writer, an example of behavior for a person. Unlike the goodies, other people depicted in the works are better called artistic images, actors or, if they do not affect the development of events in the work, characters.

It is built according to certain laws and rules. If in the era of classicism they were quite strict, others allowed writers to feel more free in their creative flight, expressing their ideas in various ways. However, even the most non-standardized trends in literature impose certain requirements on the work. For example, a novel should contain a certain idea, and a lyrical poem should carry an emotional and aesthetic load. An important role in the work is given to the literary hero.

Term meaning

Let's take a look at who he is. In the broad sense of the term, this is the person who is depicted in a novel, story or short story, in a dramatic work. This is a character that lives and acts on the pages of the book and not only. His literary hero was, for example, in ancient Russian epics, i.e. in pre-literate genres and types artistic word. As an example, one can recall Ilya Muromets, Nikita Kozhemyaka, Mikula Selyaninovich. Naturally, they are not images of specific people. That's the peculiarity this term that it denotes a collection, a collection of a number of persons united by some close character traits and qualities. Melted in the author's creative laboratory, they represent a single monolith, unique and recognizable. So if ordinary person they will ask what should be the literary hero of the Russian folk fairy tale, in his descriptions he will rely on the images of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, Koshchei and Ivan Tsarevich. And a social fairy tale, of course, cannot do without Ivanushka the Fool. The same well-established types exist in the folklore of any nation. In the mythology of ancient Greece, these are the gods, Hercules, Prometheus. Scandinavian storytellers have Odin, etc. Consequently, the concept of "literary hero" is international, intercultural, timeless. It exists within any creative process associated with the artistic word.

Hero and character, protagonist

The next question that naturally arises is this: "Is the character of the work, its protagonist always considered a literary hero?" Critics, researchers answer it negatively. In order for this or that image created by the author to turn into a hero, he must meet a number of requirements. First of all, the presence of his own, distinctive qualities and personality traits, thanks to which he will not get lost among his own kind. For example, the famous literary hero Munchausen (the author of Raspe) is a witty inventor who himself believes in his fantasy stories. You can't confuse him with any other characters. Or Goethe's Faust, the personification of the eternal search for truth, the mind, thirsting for new higher knowledge. Usually such literary heroes are also the main characters.

On the issue of classification

Now let's look at the typology of the images that interest us. What are literary heroes? Conventionally, they are divided into positive and negative, main and secondary, lyrical, epic, dramatic. Often they are also carriers of the main idea of ​​the work. The more serious the image, the more significant it is, the larger it is, the more difficult it is to bring some unambiguous assessment under it. So Pugachev in Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" is a villain, a cruel killer, but also people's protector, fair, not devoid of its code of honor and nobility.

Thus, the hero in literature is a holistic, meaningful, complete phenomenon.

Literary hero: what is it?

The word "hero" has a rich history. Translated from the Greek "heros" means a demi-god, a deified person. In pre-Homeric times (X-IX century BC), heroes in Ancient Greece were the children of a god and a mortal woman or a mortal and a goddess (Hercules, Dionysus, Achilles, Aeneas, etc.). Heroes were worshiped, poems were composed in honor of them, temples were erected for them. The right to the name of the hero gave the advantage of family, origin. The hero served as an intermediary between the earth and Olympus, he helped people comprehend the will of the gods, sometimes he himself acquired the miraculous functions of a deity.

Such a function, for example, is given to the beautiful Helen in the ancient Greek temple legend-fairy tale about the healing of the daughter of a friend of Ariston, the king of the Spartans. This nameless friend of the king, as the legend tells, had a very beautiful wife, who was very ugly in infancy. The nurse often carried the girl to the temple of Helen and prayed to the goddess to save the girl from deformity (Helen had her own temple in Sparta). And Elena came and helped the girl.

In the era of Homer (VIII century BC) and up to the literature of the 5th century BC. inclusive, the word "hero" is filled with a different meaning. Not only the descendant of the gods turns into a hero. It becomes any mortal who has achieved outstanding success in earthly life; any person who has made a name for himself in the field of war, morality, travel. Such are the heroes of Homer (Menelaus, Patroclus, Penelope, Odysseus), such is Theseus Bacchilid. The authors call these people "heroes" because they became famous for certain feats and thus went beyond the historical and geographical.

Finally, starting from the 5th century BC, not only an outstanding person, but any “husband”, both “noble” and “unfit”, who got into the world of a literary work, turns into a hero. The artisan, messenger, servant and even slave also acts as a hero. Such a reduction, desacralization of the hero's image is scientifically substantiated by Aristotle. In "Poetics" - the chapter "Parts of the tragedy. Heroes of tragedy" - he notes that the hero may no longer be distinguished by "(special) virtue and justice." He becomes a hero simply by getting into a tragedy and experiencing "terrible".

In literary criticism, the meaning of the term "hero" is very ambiguous. Historically, this meaning grows out of the meanings indicated above. However, in theoretical terms, it shows a new, transformed content, which is read at several semantic levels: the artistic reality of the work, literature itself and ontology as a science of being.

In the artistic world of creation, a hero is any person endowed with appearance and inner content. This is not a passive observer, but an actant, a person actually acting in the work (translated from Latin, “actant” means “acting”). The hero in the work necessarily creates something, protects someone. The main task of the hero at this level is the development and transformation of poetic reality, the construction of artistic meaning. At the general literary level, the hero is the artistic image of a person who generalizes in himself the most characteristic features of reality; living repeatable patterns of being. In this regard, the hero is the bearer of certain ideological principles, expresses the author's intention. It models a special imprint of being, becomes the seal of the era. A classic example is Lermontov's Pechorin, "the hero of our time." Finally, at the ontological level, the hero forms a special way of knowing the world. He must bring people the truth, acquaint them with the diversity of forms of human life. In this regard, the hero is a spiritual guide, leading the reader through all circles of human life and showing the way to the truth, God. Such is Virgil D. Alighieri (“The Divine Comedy”), Faust I. Goethe, Ivan Flyagin N.S. Leskova ("The Enchanted Wanderer"), etc.

The term "hero" often coexists with the term "character" (sometimes these words are understood as synonyms). The word "character" is of French origin, but has Latin roots. Translated from Latin, "regzopa" is a person, person, mask. "Persona" the ancient Romans called the mask that the actor put on before the performance: tragic or comic. In literary criticism, a character is the subject of a literary action, an utterance in a work. The character represents the social appearance of a person, his external, sensually perceived person.

However, the hero and the character are not the same thing. The hero is something integral, complete; character - partial, requiring explanation. The hero embodies the eternal idea, is destined for the highest spiritual and practical activity; the character simply denotes the presence of a person; "works" as a statistician. The hero is the masked actor, and the character is only a mask.

Evgeny Petrovich Baryshnikov in his article about the literary hero Baryshnikov E.P. Literary hero) first of all mentions that the concept of "literary hero" in modern literary criticism is identical to the concept of "character", "character". This is the first thing to understand before we proceed directly to the analysis of the text. We will also mention that literary heroes are often conditionally divided into positive and negative. It is in this vein that we need this term. If at the beginning of the formation of literature the term "hero" was used to define a certain character embodying bright idealistic features, now this has been abolished.

It should also be mentioned that fantasy literature has revived some romantic traditions, and at the same time, romanticism, as a trend in literature, invariably included fantastic techniques. You can read more about this in the book by Chernysheva T.A. The nature of fantasy. Let's remember distinctive features romantic hero: opposition to reality, adherence to chaos, as the destroyer of all conventions and barriers that do not allow individuality, personality to be revealed.

“The enviable constancy in the love of romantics for everything fantastic and wonderful has deep roots in their views on life, art, tasks and principles of creativity, in their worldview and philosophical concepts. First of all, the romantics not only separated art and reality as completely various areas, but also sharply opposed them.[…]

From such a view of art, the revolt, so characteristic of romantics, against one of the fundamental principles of aesthetics, logically followed.

Aristotle's principle of imitation of nature. Since reality is the opposite of art, should it be imitated? It needs to be recreated, improved, and only in this form allowed into art! Poetry is intended not to imitate nature, but to improve and enrich it with fiction and fantasy.

The task of improving and enriching nature as a reality fell on the shoulders of a romantic hero, which is why he must be strong, exceptional and unlike anyone else, and at the same time have poetic thinking. But at the same time, poetry is perceived by romantics in a completely unusual way:

The fairy tale is, as it were, the canon of poetry. Everything poetic must be fabulous"

Thus, we see that the literary hero in fantasy is a romantic hero. Of course, given the process of development of literature, it is completely and hopelessly romantic heroes science fiction novels cannot be named, but the main train of thought is clear. Moreover, in modern science fiction, the hero embodies the fairy tale into which reality should turn not with the help of poetry, imagination and personal strength, but with the help of the achievements of science. Science became the factor that made such a transformation theoretically possible.

The hero became not a means, but a guiding tool, personal qualities, mental and spiritual wealth, personality and poetry were replaced by starships, all kinds of converters, emitters and robots. A person no longer needs to change the whole world himself, while changing his personality, but only needs to invent something that will change the world and create a long-awaited fairy tale. That is why fantasy, although it has features of romanticism, is not.

What are the characteristics of a typical fantasy hero? And how does that compare to a robotic hero?

A character easily turns into a hero if he receives an individual, personal dimension or character. According to Aristotle, character refers to the manifestation of the direction of "the will, whatever it may be."

In modern literary criticism, character is the unique individuality of a character; his inner appearance; that is, everything that makes a person a person, that distinguishes him from other people. In other words, the character is the same actor who plays behind the mask - the character. At the heart of the character is the inner "I" of a person, his self. Character shows the image of the soul with all its searches and mistakes, hopes and disappointments. It denotes the versatility of human individuality; reveals its moral and spiritual potential.

Character can be simple or complex. A simple character is distinguished by integrity and static. He endows the hero with an unshakable set of value orientations; makes it either positive or negative. Positive and negative characters usually divide the character system of the work into two warring factions. For example: patriots and aggressors in the tragedy of Aeschylus ("Persians"); Russians and foreigners (Englishmen) in N.S. Leskov "Lefty"; "last" and "many" in the story of A.G. Malyshkin "Dair's Fall".

Simple characters are traditionally paired, most often on the basis of opposition (Shvabrin - Grinev in A.S. Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, Javert - Bishop Miriel in V. Hugo's Les Misérables). Contrasting sharpens the merits of positive heroes and detracts from the merits of negative heroes. It arises not only on an ethical basis. It is also formed by philosophical oppositions (such is the confrontation between Joseph Knecht and Plinio Designori in G. Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game).

A complex character manifests itself in an incessant search, an inner evolution. It expresses the diversity of the spiritual life of the individual. It reveals both the brightest, loftiest aspirations of the human soul, as well as its darkest, basest impulses. In a complex character, on the one hand, the prerequisites for the degradation of a person are laid (Ionych by A.P. Chekhov); on the other hand, the possibility of his future transformation and salvation. A complex character is very difficult to designate in the dyad "positive" and "negative". As a rule, it stands between these terms or, more precisely, above them. It condenses the paradox, the contradictory nature of life; concentrates all the most mysterious and strange, which is the secret of man. These are the heroes of F.M. Dostoevsky R. Musil, A. Strindberg and others.

“A literary character is, in essence, a series of successive appearances of one person within a given text. Throughout one text, the hero can be found in the most different forms: mentioning him in the speeches of other characters, the narration of the author or narrator about the events associated with the character, analysis of his character, depiction of his experiences, thoughts, speeches, appearance, scenes in which he takes part in words, gestures, actions, etc.

We already remember that the hero and the character are one and the same. But what does face mean? Obviously here in question about the term "actor". Thus, we are faced with the fact that we cannot call the term "literary hero" unambiguous. Terms such as "image", "type", "character" merge into one and it is impossible to give anything a clear definition. Thus, in order to continue this study, we will resolve this ambiguity, as we have defined for ourselves above what artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence are.

“... a person depicted in literature is not an abstraction (what a person studied by statistics, sociology, economics, biology can be), but rather a unity. But a unity that is not reducible to a particular, single case (as a person can be, say, in a chronicle narrative), a unity that has an expanding symbolic meaning capable therefore of representing an idea.

Note that here we are talking specifically about a person, to expand the term, let's say - "a thinking being." Thus, without losing the main meaning, we can say that fantastic characters, no matter what planet or plant they come from, they are just as much a unity as a human character. Let's take a look at what an actor is.

“... the work covered the study of a rich field of attributes of characters (i.e. characters, as such […] The names (and with them the attributes) of characters change, their actions or functions do not change. Hence the conclusion that a fairy tale often ascribes the same actions for different characters.This gives us the opportunity to study the fairy tale by the functions of the characters"

That is, the character is a certain function in the text, the position of the character in relation to other characters, the artistic world, the author and the reader.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that the literary hero is a system that consists, as we see from the position of the hero, what we call the actor and from the character, i.e., personality, a particular case of the manifestation of the actor. To clarify the term “image”, let us turn to G. A. Gukovsky, who gave the most exhaustive and complete definition on this subject.

“In school practice, the custom has been established by the term “image” to designate not only predominantly, but exclusively the image-character of the character of the protagonist of a literary work. This word usage is so ingrained that it tends to pass into the teaching of literature at universities, and for some associate professors of pedagogical institutes and universities it has already become a rule. Meanwhile, such an application of the term and the concept of "image" is unscientific, and it distorts the correct understanding of art in general and literature in particular. The science of art teaches us that in a work of art the image is not only the external and internal (psychological) appearance of the character, that in it all the elements are constructed in a semantic sense as images, that in general art is a figurative reflection and interpretation of reality.

[…]in the work fiction we discover complex system images, in which one of the most important, but by no means the only important role play the characters

When we talk about "images" in the traditional and non-scientific sense, we often forget that after all, every image is necessarily an image of something, that an image by itself and for itself does not exist, because a representation that does not express anything of a general idea - it is not yet an image, it is not yet art, it is not yet an ideology at all.”

How does the term "literary hero" correlate with the term "image"? Based on the foregoing, we can assume that the image is something that arises in the reader, in his head, but not only. Each writer has his own image of each character, but based on the text, each creates his own image. It turns out that the image is the result of the subjective perception of a literary hero, arising precisely in the imagination of the reader, as a perceiving subject.

In connection with this subjectivity, as well as the fact that each author perceives the hero in his own way, just like the reader, M. M. Bakhtin identified several patterns that characterize the relationship between the author and the hero.

“First case: the hero takes possession of the author. The emotional-volitional object orientation of the hero, his cognitive and ethical position in the world are so authoritative for the author that he cannot but see object world only through the eyes of the hero and cannot but experience only from within the events of his life; the author cannot find a convincing and stable value point of support outside the hero. Of course, in order for the artistic whole, even if incomplete, to take place, some final moments are needed, and therefore, you need to somehow become outside the hero (usually the hero is not alone, and these relationships take place only for the main character ), otherwise it will turn out to be either a philosophical treatise, or a self-report-confession, or, finally, this cognitive-ethical tension will find a way out in purely vital, ethical deeds-actions. But these points outside the hero, which the author nonetheless takes, are of an accidental, unprincipled and uncertain character; these unsteady points of outsideness usually change throughout the work, being occupied only in relation to an individual present moment in the development of the hero, then the hero again knocks the author out of the position temporarily occupied by him, and he is forced to grope for another; often these random points of support are given to the author by other characters, with the help of which, getting used to their emotional-volitional attitude towards the autobiographical hero, he tries to free himself from him, that is, from himself. The closing moments are disjointed and unconvincing.”

That is, if the author is dealing with familiar hero, the personality of the hero can become emotionally overwhelming over the author, moreover, the author is not a literary one, who is in the text, but the author is a biographical, real and living person. But at the same time, we see this only when the hero is completely unconvincing, his helplessness. It is not in vain that Bakhtin speaks of the unconvincing final moments. Without them, the image in the reader's head is incomplete, and the author differs from the reader in that he is able to think out his character as he pleases without harming the plot and the finished work in general. Such an author, creating art world, thus, creates an idol or a hero in its original sense of the word from the hero, but at the same time does not work so that others see the image that he sees. The text is incomplete, semantic voids are formed in it. In some cases, this does not prevent the work from becoming a classic and entering the Golden Fund of Literature, but such an anomaly makes it difficult to read and perceive.

If we talk about artificial intelligence and its lifelikeness, then with all the desire it is impossible to do this with a hero who is not a living being in the full sense of the word. This is largely due to the fact that, with proper lifelikeness, such a character does not reveal emotions, and this complicates the relationship between the author and the hero. It is impossible emotionally and mentally to be imbued with a being that does not experience emotions and thinks in other categories. We will talk about this in more detail in the third chapter, when we come across A. Azimov's cycle "Positronic Robots" and S. Lukyanenko's work "False Mirrors", which tell about artificial intelligence.

The second case of anomalies in the relationship between the hero and the author sounds like this:

“Second case: the author takes possession of the hero, brings in his final moments, the relation of the author to the hero becomes partly the relation of the hero to himself. The hero begins to define himself, the author's reflex is embedded in the soul or in the mouth of the hero.

A hero of this type can develop in two directions: first, the hero is not autobiographical, and the reflex of the author, introduced into him, really completes him; if in the first case we analyzed the form suffered, then here the realistic persuasiveness of the life emotional-volitional attitude of the hero in the event suffers. Such is the hero of pseudo-classicism, who in his life attitude from within himself maintains the purely artistic final unity given to him by the author, in each of his manifestations, in deed, in mimicry, in feeling, in word, remains true to his aesthetic principle. In such pseudo-classics as Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Ozerov, the heroes themselves often quite naively express the moral and ethical idea that completes them, which they embody from the author's point of view. Secondly, the hero is autobiographical; having mastered the final reflex of the author, his total formative reaction, the hero makes it a moment of self-experience and overcomes it; such a hero is unfinished, he inwardly outgrows each total definition as inadequate to him, he experiences the completed wholeness as a limitation and opposes to it some kind of inner mystery that cannot be expressed.”

In modern fantasy literature such an anomaly occurs most often in the environment popular literature, or rather, in numerous cycles of adventure fantasy, which is distinguished by such a simple plot: the hero, very similar to the author in appearance and character, finds himself in another world that differs from ours in the presence of magic or technology. Such a plot gives many loopholes for the author to express his position on any occasion, to place himself, albeit not real, in some kind of adventure space and so on. That is, such a hero does not carry any semantic load. If a literary hero in the world, whose author is at the point of being outside, carries not only his own character and structure as a whole, but also a certain symbol, the personification of some idea, although not as comprehensive as in the case of the first anomaly.

MM. Bakhtin singles out the third case of an anomaly in the relationship between the author and the hero, and after that we will move on to those features that were discovered during the analysis of the works of A. Azimov "Positron Robots" and S. Lukyanenko "False Mirrors".

“Finally, the third case: the hero is his own author, comprehends his own life aesthetically, as if playing a role; such a hero, unlike the infinite hero of romanticism and the unredeemed hero of Dostoyevsky, is self-satisfied and confidently completed.

Characterized by us in the most in general terms The relationship of the author to the hero is complicated and varied by those cognitive-aesthetic definitions of the whole hero, which, as we saw earlier, are inextricably merged with his purely artistic design. Thus, the hero's emotional-volitional object orientation can be cognitively, ethically, religiously authoritative for the author - glorification; this attitude can be exposed as unjustly claiming significance - satire, irony, and so on. Each final moment, transgredient to the self-consciousness of the hero, can be used in all these directions (satirical, heroic, humorous, etc.).”

This anomaly cannot be applied to artificial intelligence, no matter how independent it may be, and why exactly, you will read below. In the meantime, it should be said here that this is a common misconception among writers, as if the hero himself decides to choose his own path. This does not happen if the author, being in the position of being outside, really sees the character and his whole world through and through, knowing every movement in the world he wrote himself.

But do not forget that the hero is not the most important thing in the work. In a literary work, the main thing is the structure as a whole, and in this structure it is not one character who is more important, whoever he may be, but the system of characters.

The literary hero is a brightly individual and at the same time distinctly collective person, that is, generated by the social environment, interpersonal relationships. He is rarely presented in isolation, in a "one-man theatre". The hero flourishes in a certain social sphere, among their own kind or in a society of people, if we are talking about artificial intelligence. He is included in the "list of characters", in the system of characters that occurs most often in works of major genres (novels). The hero can be surrounded, on the one hand, by relatives, friends, comrades-in-arms, on the other, by enemies, ill-wishers, and on the third, by other thinking beings outside him.

The character system is a strict hierarchical structure. Heroes tend to be differentiated based on their artistic value(values). They are separated by the degree of author's attention (or the frequency of the image), the ontological purpose and the functions they perform. Traditionally, there are main, secondary and episodic characters.

Heroes, as a rule, actively master and transform artistic reality: predetermine events, perform actions, conduct dialogues. The main characters are characterized by a well-remembered appearance, a clear value orientation. Sometimes they express the main, generalizing idea of ​​creation; become the "mouthpiece" of the author, especially if the first anomaly, described by Bakhtin in the article "The Author and the Hero in aesthetic activity. The problem of the attitude of the author to the hero

The number of characters in the center of a literary narrative can be different. I.A. Bunin in "The Life of Arseniev" we see only one main character. In the Old Russian "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia" in the center there are two characters. In the novel by J. London "The Hearts of Three" there are already three main characters.

Secondary characters are next to the main characters, but somewhat behind them, in the background artistic image. The heroes of the second row, as a rule, are the parents, relatives, friends, acquaintances, colleagues of the heroes of the first row. Characters and portraits minor characters rarely detailed; rather - appear dotted. These heroes help the main ones to “open up”, ensure the development of the action.

Such is the mother poor Lisa in the story of the same name by N.M. Karamzin. Such is Kazbich M.Yu. Lermontov from the story "Bela".

Episodic heroes are on the periphery of the world of the work. They do not quite have characters and act as passive executors of the author's will. Their functions are purely official. They appear in only one selected episode, which is why they are called episodic. Such are the servants and messengers in ancient literature, janitors, drivers, casual acquaintances in literature XIX century. Artificial intelligence, as will be shown below, differs from such characters in that in some cases artificial intelligence creates the illusion of a full-fledged character, as happens in Isaac Asimov's Positronic Robots series of stories, opening up to the world created by Asimov in such series as The Academy , in the cycle of stories “I, Robot”, etc.. This can be compared with a hero possessed by someone who, in the denouement, finds out that he was controlled and all actions committed throughout the entire plot are only the result of an order that he accepted and could not resist. In this case, the main character will not be the one who did the deeds, but the one who forced them to do these deeds. The reader perceives the hero as the same person as himself, and thus, if someone else performs the actions, then all attention was actually turned to him.

Character

A character is a kind of artistic image, the subject of an action. This term in a certain context can be replaced by the concepts of "actor" or "literary hero", but in a strict theoretical sense, these are different terms. This interchangeability is explained by the fact that, translated from Latin (persona- mask) the word "character" means an actor playing a role in a mask expressing certain type character, therefore, literally a character. Therefore, the term "character" should be attributed to the formal components of the text. It is permissible to use this term in the analysis of the system of images-characters, the features of the composition. A literary character is a carrier of a constructive role in a work, autonomous and personified in the representation of the imagination (it can be a person, but also an animal, plant, landscape, utensils, fantastic creature, concept), involved in the action (hero) or only episodically indicated (for example, personality important for the characterization of the environment). Taking into account the role of literary characters in the integrity of the work, they can be divided into main (first plan), secondary (second plan) and episodic, and in terms of their participation in the development of events - into incoming (active) and passive.

The concept of "character" is applicable to epic and dramatic works, to a lesser extent to lyrical ones, although lyric theorists as a kind of literature allow the use of this term. For example, G. Pospelov calls one of the types of lyrics character: "Characters ... are personalities depicted in epic and dramatic works. They always embody certain characteristics of social life and therefore have certain individual traits, receive proper names and create by their actions, taking place in some conditions of place and time, the plots of such works. lyrical works the hero does not form the plot, unlike the epic and dramatic ones, the personality does not act directly in the work, but it is presented as an artistic image.

L. Ya. Ginzburg noted that the concepts of "lyrical subject" and "lyrical hero" should not be confused as special forms of embodiment of the poet's personality.

Hero

The term "literary hero" means holistic image a person - in the aggregate of his appearance, way of thinking, behavior and spiritual world; the term “character”, which is close in meaning, if taken in a narrow, and not in a broad sense, denotes an internal psychological section of a personality, its natural properties, nature.

Heroes of works can be not only people, but also animals, fantastic images and even objects. In any case, all of them are artistic images that reflect reality in the refracted consciousness of the author.

The hero is one of central characters in a literary work, active in incidents, the main ones for the development of the action, focusing the reader's attention on himself.

Main character - literary character, the most involved in the action, his fate is in the center of attention of the author and the reader.

A literary hero is an image of a person in literature. Definitely, with a literary hero, the concepts of "actor" and "character" are often used. Sometimes they are distinguished: literary heroes are called actors (characters) drawn in a more multifaceted way and more weighty for the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe work. Sometimes the concept of "literary hero" refers only to actors close to author's ideal person (so-called positive hero) or embodying the heroic principle (for example, the heroes of epics, epics, tragedies). It should be noted, however, that in literary criticism these concepts, along with the concepts of "character", "type" and "image", are interchangeable.

From the point of view of the figurative structure, the literary hero combines the character as the inner content of the character, and his behavior, actions as something external. The character allows us to consider the actions of the depicted person as natural, ascending to some vital reason; it is the content and law (motivation) of behavior.

Character in the usual sense is the same as a literary hero. In literary criticism, the term "character" is used in a narrower, but not always the same sense. Most often, a character is understood as a protagonist. But here, too, two interpretations differ: a person represented and characterized in action, and not in descriptions: then the concept of "character" most of all corresponds to the heroes of dramaturgy, images-roles. Any actor, subject of action in general. In such an interpretation, the protagonist is opposed only to the "pure" subject of experience, acting in the lyrics, which is why the term "character" is not applicable to the so-called lyrical hero: you can not say "lyrical character".

A character is sometimes understood only as secondary person. In this understanding, the term "character" corresponds to the narrowed meaning of the term "hero" - the central person or one of the main persons of the work. On this basis, the expression " episodic character" (and not "episodic hero").