Novella as a genre of literature. Genres of prose literature

The story is a great literary form of written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story stood out as an independent genre in written literature.

Storytelling as an epic genre

The distinguishing features of the story are the small number of actors, little content, one storyline. The story does not have interweaving in events and the variegation of artistic colors cannot be found in it.

Thus, a story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and a short duration of the events depicted. This kind of epic genre dates back to folklore genres oral retelling, to allegories and parables.

In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet determined, but over time, the story began to be distinguished from the essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the "large forms" story and the "small forms" story, but this distinction is often arbitrary.

There are stories that trace specific traits novel, and there are also small works with one storyline, which are still called a novel, and not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.

Novel as an epic genre

Many people think that a short story is a certain kind of story. But still, the definition of the novel sounds like a kind of small prose... The story differs from the story in the plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of the composition and in volume.

A novel most often reveals an acute problem or question through one event. As a sample literary genre, the novella originated in the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the story began to depict paradoxical and unusual occurrences.

The heyday of the novel as a genre is considered the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman, Gogol wrote short stories, center line which was to destroy the impression of the familiar everyday life.

Novels, which depicted fateful events and the play of rock with a person, appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Such writers as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the genre of the novel in their work.

The story as an epic genre

Such prose genre, as a story, is an intermediate place between the story and the novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about any real, historical events("The Tale of Bygone Years", "The Tale of the Kalka Battle"), but later it became a separate genre to reproduce the natural course of life.

The peculiarity of the story is that in the center of its plot there is always main character and his life is the disclosure of his personality and the path of his destiny. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which the harsh reality is revealed.

A similar topic extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are " Stationmaster"A. Pushkin," Poor Lisa"N. Karamzin," The Life of Arseniev "by I. Bunin," Steppe "by A. Chekhov.

The value of artistic detail in storytelling

For the full disclosure of the writer's intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning literary work the artistic detail is very important. It can be a detail of an interior, landscape or portrait, the key point here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.

This serves as a way to highlight some psychological trait the main character or the mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that important role artistic detail is that it alone can replace many narrative details. Thus, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude to the situation or to the person.

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The genre features of short stories distinguish it from the entire existing system of genres. Scientists note the coincidence of the surge of short stories, its release on foreground in an era of dynamic shocks, changes, in situations spiritual crisis, in the period of breaking socio-cultural stereotypes. Due to its special mobility, brevity and acuteness, it is the short story that is capable of accumulating barely emerging tendencies, declaring a new concept of personality.

The sources of the novel are primarily Latin exempla, as well as fablio, fables, folk tales... In thirteenth-century Occitan language, the word nova appears to denote a story based on some reworked traditional material. Hence - the Italian novella (in the most popular collection of the late XIII century "Novellino", also known as "One Hundred Ancient Novels"), which since the XV century has spread throughout Europe.

The short story is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, sharp, even paradoxical plot, neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, unexpected denouement. The plot construction of the novel is similar to the dramatic one, but it is usually simpler. The novel emphasizes the significance of the junction, which contains an unexpected twist.

The novel genre established itself after the appearance of the book Giovanni Boccaccio"Decameron" (1353), the plot of which consisted in the fact that several people, fleeing from the plague outside the city, told each other stories. Boccaccio in his book created a classic type of Italian novella, which was developed by his many followers in Italy itself and in other countries. In France, under the influence of the translation of the Decameron around 1462, a collection of "One Hundred New Novels" appeared (however, the material owed more to the facets of Poggio Bracciolini), and Margaret of Navarskaya, following the model of the Decameron, wrote the book "Heptameron" (1559).

In the era of romanticism, under the influence of Hoffmann, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, a novel with elements of mysticism, fantasy, and fabulousness spread. Later, in the works of Prosper Mérimée and Guy de Maupassant, this term began to be used to refer to realistic stories.

In the second half XIX - XX centuries the traditions of the novel continued such different writers as Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gilbert Chesterton, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Karel Czapek, Jorge Luis Borges, etc.

Often a short story is identified with a story and even a story. In the 19th century, these genres were difficult to distinguish. The story is similar to the short story in volume, but differs in structure: the highlighting of the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and the gravitation towards expanded psychological characteristics.

The story differs in that in it the plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero's life, and often several heroes. The story is calmer and more unhurried.

The genre of the short story in Russian literature, in our opinion, has a number of specific features, but it still goes through the path of its formation. On the one hand, some researchers seek to expand the temporal space, attributing the appearance of the novel to the XV-XVI and XVII centuries, on the other hand, they spread genre signs short stories on works that have never belonged to this genre. In fact, these are two sides of one phenomenon, and it should be considered in the unity of these principles.

It is common knowledge that the novel genre is genetically related to the classical Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance. Given the common development of European literatures, with asynchrony, which is determined not by ethnic, but by socio-historical factors, one should expect the emergence of the Russian Renaissance, and, as a consequence, the emergence of a novel on Russian literary soil. But, as noted by DS Likhachev, due to a number of socio-historical reasons “the Russian Pre-Renaissance did not pass into the Renaissance” [Likhachev, DS, 1987: Vol. 1, p. 156]. Thus, the 15th century was not marked by the emergence of the Russian Renaissance and the emergence of the novel genre in Russian literature.

Renaissance ideas can be found in the literature first half of XVI century, but these ideas were reflected only in journalism. The development of fiction during this period slowed down, because the centralized state demanded help from writers in support of political, church, social and economic reforms, it took away all the spiritual forces that were aimed at creating the lives of Russian saints, political legends, and generalizing works. In the manuscripts of this time disappears entertainment theme... A certain spiritual background was needed, psychological condition society to create the genre of the novel. Literary life Russia of the 16th century, despite all the changes that took place in it (strengthening of the author's principle, individualization of literature, interest in the inner world of a person), was rigidly determined by socio-historical factors and did not contribute to the emergence of the novel genre. Works of the novelistic genre did not penetrate Russian literary soil as a result of borrowing. All this proves that the 16th century was not marked by the appearance of a novel.

Literature of the 17th century, the literature of "transitional time", was characterized by such phenomena as the emancipation of culture and its social stratification, the emergence of new types and genres of literature, the identification of fiction as a type fiction, the birth of a new literary direction- Baroque, strengthening of Western influences on the development of Russian literature, enrichment of literature with new themes, heroes, plots.

Highlighting fiction as independent type fiction, the emergence of fictional plots, an orientation towards Western European literature to one degree or another could contribute to the emergence of the novel genre in Russian literature. A number of researchers consider the "Tale of Karp Sutulov", "The Tale of Frol Skobeev" and other works to be the most striking examples of the original Russian novella of the 17th century.

Among researchers, references to the works of O. A. Derzhavina are popular, as evidence of the penetration of the translated novel into the Russian literary soil of the 17th century. But the observations made by O. A. Derzhavina testify, rather, to the opposite: in a whole series of translations from the classical Boccaccio novella, only the plot remains (and there are most of such novellas in the collection), the novella turns into a kind of simplified, designed for oral transmission of the other being of the novella ...

But the novels were not simply translated. They underwent transformation both at the level of content and form. The translated classical novella was represented only by separate, significantly revised samples - plot schemes, and most of the translated works, which are attributed to the genre of the novella, are not such.

Only in literature early XIX century, the short story took shape as a genre. This circumstance was facilitated by a number of factors: the shift in the boundaries of the Russian Renaissance, the influence Western European literature, translation activity and creative practice of Russian writers.

Note that the first sample of the translated novel was "Griselda" by K.N. Batyushkov. Moreover, in a letter to N.I. To Gnedich on July 10, 1817, the writer noted that "he did not translate very slavishly and not very freely, he" wanted to guess the manner of Boccaccio. " Thanks to K.N. For Batyushkov, the Russian reader was able to get acquainted with a genuine example of short stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, and not a free arrangement by an anonymous author of the 17th century.

The introduction of a novelistic structure into Russian national soil with a centuries-old narrative tradition led to the creation of what researchers have called the "Russian short story." And here it is appropriate to say about the double transformation of the novel. The classic novel of the Renaissance, dating back to a common joke, has changed under the pen of romantic writers. The reason for this is also in the aesthetic views of the romantics with their installation on the unrecorded, blurred, fragmented genre forms, and in the change in the subject of the image. The romantic novella, in turn, underwent another transformation in Russian literature, turning into a story full of descriptions and reasoning. In a complex literary process the first third of XIX century, when romantics (A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, A. Pogorelsky, V. Odoevsky, E. Baratynsky) still wrote short stories in which “one unheard-of incident was diluted with reasoning, descriptions and outpourings, as a result of which the plot in the romantic novella lost its self-sufficient meaning, the story turned into a story, A.S. Pushkin managed to find a place for his "Belkin's Tales".

It took exactly the genius of Pushkin to transform the story into a short story, that is, to free it from all unnecessary things, write “accurately and concisely” and create true examples of the Russian short story.

We are only interested in one particular aspect - the genre specificity of Belkin's Tales. The plot connects them with the classical short story, separates them by the introduction of an epic tendency by Pushkin, which is hardly compatible with the classical short story. But the epic tendency did not have such a destructive effect on the structure of A.S. Pushkin, which she had on the short stories of his contemporaries.

In fact, the development of the Russian novella based on Belkin's Tales stops. Further development small prose followed the path of departure from the novellistic tradition. So, representatives of “ natural school"Preferred a physiological outline. Undoubtedly, the physiological sketch could interact with other genre forms, in particular, novelistic ones. In the process of such interaction, an inter-genre form appeared, which V.M. Markovich calls it a "natural" novella (an essay-novella). This type of short story under the pen of N.V. Gogol ("The Overcoat") turned into a complex genre form, which absorbed "the traditions of an oral anecdote, features of a romantic story-tale, medieval hagiography, bylichka, legend and ballad", which gave the novel a "novelistic multidimensionality of meaning." This is the last quality of Gogol's novella, notes V.M. Markovich, was lost by other representatives of the "natural" school.

With the development of the Russian novel - the second half of the 19th century - the genre of the novel moved to a number of peripheral genres of Russian prose; a convenient and free story becomes a small prosaic form.

A new appeal to the genre of the novel is associated with the literature of the turn of the century. It was during the period " silver age»Samples of neo-romantic, symbolist and acmeist novelism were created. Here it is necessary to highlight the work of such authors as F. Sologub ("Hide and Seek", "Hoop", "Two Gothic", "Perina", "Ivan Ivanovich"), Z. Gippius ("Boar" and "On the ropes"), V Bryusov ("Minuet", "Eluli, son of Eluli"), N. Gumilyov ("Forest Devil", "The Last Court Poet") and others.

Conscious orientation - up to graceful stylization - to the best examples of Western European and Russian short stories, heightened interest in the sensual, erotic side human life, poetic understanding and mastery of the novelistic structure - this is an incomplete list of the components of the Silver Age short stories. It was the "bright, but somewhat prodigal" era of the "Silver Age" that brought the novel genre back to Russian literature. Thus, the questions about the fate of the short story as a whole and the fate of the short story in Russian literature at the turn of the century and the first decades of the twentieth century remain unclear.

Considering all the features of a short story, it is sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between a short story, a story, and a sketch (short sketch, outline). Everyone knows what at least the story is exactly: either narrative prose, defined as “shorter than a story,” or, in the words of the first deep researcher small form Edgar Alan Poe, "no longer than what you can read in one sitting."

In addition to this definition, according to Western teachers, only two things can be distinguished that characterize short story... First, the story is about something that happened to someone. Secondly, a well-composed story demonstrates the harmony of all principles more fully than any other literary form, with the exception, perhaps, of poetry, that is, it is all-embracing and "ideal". “And that’s enough,” says Canadian educator Rust Hills, “the first statement distinguishes a short story from a sketch, and the second from a novel.”

So, a story differs from a sketch in that it tells about something that happened to someone. The sketch is just a short and static description. human character, place, time, etc. In sketches describing a person, his life path, - the hero, so to speak, is constant. That is, for example, if it contains a description of a period of time, and we are shown the sequence of the hero's actions - from morning to evening, it is assumed that this hero remains unchanged every morning, every day and every evening. And in this case, if there is any action in such a sketch, then it is intended only to determine the character of the hero, and not in order to develop it: the hero does not receive anything new, does not learn from those situations that sent to him, does not change one iota. Any incident described in the sketch is regarded only as an example of the hero's behavior, and not as something that changed his life and prompted him to take any decisive actions and deeds, as it happens in the story. It is assumed that after some time, the hero placed within the same circumstances will react and behave in exactly the same way, regardless of how many times it is repeated. The story is dynamic, not static: the same things simply cannot happen again. The character of the hero must change and change, albeit not even cardinally.

The short story differs from the story not only in length, but also in many others, although both genres involve changes in the character of the characters with the only difference that the short story has such a space and time that contribute to a larger set of events and various effects... Edgar Alan Poe viewed the story as a kind of conductor of one “strong and unique effect”: “If the author's aspiration is not expressed in finding and creating this effect on the audience, then it has already failed. Throughout the structure of the story, this intention, explicit or implicit, should be evident. " This famous saying by Po, of course, should be taken into account, but on the other hand, we cannot assert with complete certainty that in any well-worked history this degree of total unity of everything must be present - what we have defined as “the harmony of all beginnings ”- but in any case, in a good novel, this is not required at all.

A good storyteller does not have to constantly develop and replenish the list of secondary characters and use extra-plot lines, while a good novelist tends to change his point of view, describe the same events from different angles, constantly pushing the reader into important details. The narrator, on the other hand, tries to adhere to one single point of view, in order to fully focus on the problems of his story.

A good storyteller will never miss anything of the technical means of storytelling (plot, point of view, main theme, language style, expressiveness, symbolism) that the novelist can do. In the story, everything is extremely closely connected with each other. main topic in a successful story is inextricably linked to the actions of the characters, but it cannot be guessed in all other aspects of the story, even in the language used. In terms of the importance of language and the ratio of sound and meaning, the story is comparable to poetry. For example, the poetic metaphor of light and death in Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lit Place" echoes Shakespeare's sonnets by the richness of the language and the symbolism of the conflict between good and evil. In general, it should be noted that the language in the story is of paramount importance. Language creates a style of writing, is responsible for the author's tone, is used to create a certain atmosphere and mood, heralds some plot twists and, of course, depends on the point of view from which the story is written.

A good story must necessarily contain a harmonious transition from the general to the particular, imperceptible at first glance, as well as the inalienable connection of all parts, each sentence with the previous one, which is rarely seen in a novel.

“Everything, everything must work and interact. The previous should exaggerate the subsequent and be inseparable from it. - Emphasizes Rust Hills. "All this saves the reader's time and isolates the point." javascript: void (1);

Based on materials from the literary workshop Anastasia Ponomareva

Grade 7 report.

Storytelling epic genre with a focus on small volume and on the unity of the artistic event.

The genre has two historically developed varieties: the story (in a narrower sense) and the short story. “The difference between a short story and a story does not seem to me to be fundamental,” wrote the researcher of the European short story E. Melitinsky. B. Tomashevsky believed that a story is a Russian term for a short story. The majority (though not all) of other literary critics adhere to the same opinion. Small epic form in European literatures, at least until the 19th century, it is customary to call it a short story. What is a short story? Theoretical definition the novella “does not exist, most likely because ... the novella appears in reality in the form of quite diverse options due to cultural and historical differences ... It is quite obvious that brevity itself is an essential feature of the novella. Brevity separates the short story from the great epic genres, in particular from the novel and the story, but unites it with a fairy tale, bylichka, fable, anecdote "(E. Meletinsky).

The genetic origins of the short story are precisely in a fairy tale, fable, anecdote. It is distinguished from the anecdote by the possibility of not a comic, but a tragic or sentimental plot. From the fable - the absence of allegories and edification. From a fairy tale - the absence of a magic element. If magic does take place (mainly in an oriental novella), then it is perceived as something amazing.

The classic novella originated during the Renaissance. It was then that such her specific features as a sharp, dramatic conflict, extraordinary incidents and turns of events, and in the life of the hero - unexpected turns of fate. Goethe wrote: “The novella is nothing more than an“ unheard of incident. ”These are Boccaccio's novellas from the collection“ Decameron. ”For example, the plot of the fourth novella of the second day:“ Landolfo Ruffolo, impoverished, becomes a corsair; taken by the Genoese, wrecked in the sea, escapes on a box full of jewels, finds shelter with a woman from Corfa and returns home a rich man. ”Each literary era left its mark on the genre of the novel. their refraction in the mind of the hero ("The Sand Man" by Hoffmann).

Until the adoption of realism in the literature, the short story avoided psychologism and philosophy, inner world the hero was transmitted through his actions and deeds. She was alien to any kind of descriptiveness, the author did not intrude into the narrative, did not express his assessments. With the development of realism, the novel, as it was in its classic designs almost disappears. Realism of the XIX century is unthinkable without descriptiveness, psychologism. The novella is supplanted by other types of short storytelling, among which the first place, especially in Russia, is the story that existed for a long time as a kind of short story (in A. Marlinsky, Odoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, etc.). In the prospectus of the "Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth" Gogol gave a definition of the story, which includes the story as a particular variety ("a skillfully and vividly told picture case"). And this means an ordinary "case" that can happen to every person.

Since the late 1940s, in Russian literature, the story is understood as special genre and in relation to a short story, and in comparison with the "physiological sketch." The essay is dominated by direct description, research, it is always journalistic. The story, as a rule, is devoted to a specific fate, speaks of a separate event in a person's life, grouped around a specific episode. This is its difference from the story, as a more detailed form, which usually describes several episodes, a segment of the hero's life. Chekhov's story "I Want to Sleep" tells about a girl who sleepless nights brought to a crime: she strangles the one that prevents her from falling asleep infant... The reader learns about what happened to this girl before only from her dream, about what will happen to her after the crime has been committed is generally unknown. All the characters, except for the girl Varka, are very fluently outlined. All the events described prepare the central one - the murder of the baby. The story is short in length. But the point is not in the number of pages (there are short stories and relatively long stories) or even in the number of plot events, but in the author's attitude to the utmost brevity. So, Chekhov's story "Ionych" is close in content not even to a story, but to a novel (almost the entire life of the hero is traced). But all the episodes are presented very briefly, the author's goal is the same - to show the spiritual degradation of Doctor Startsev. According to Jack London, "a story is ... a unity of mood, situation, action."

The utmost brevity of the narrative requires special attention to detail. Sometimes one or two masterfully found details replace the lengthy characterization of the hero. So, in Turgenev's story "Khor and Kapinych" Khor's boots, which seemed to be made of marble skin, or a bunch of strawberries presented by Kalinich to his friend, reveal the essence of both peasants - Khor's economy and Kapinich's poetry.

“But the selection of details is not the whole difficulty,” wrote the master of the story, Nagibin. - The story, by its genre nature, should be assimilated at once and in its entirety, as if “in one gulp”; also all the "private" figurative material of the story. This places special demands on the details in the story. They should be arranged in such a way that instantly, "with the speed of reading", add up into an image, give rise to a living, picturesque representation in the reader ... ". Thus, practically nothing happens in Bunin's story "Antonov Apples", but skillfully selected details give the reader a "vivid, picturesque idea" of the past.

The small volume of the story also determines its stylistic unity. The narration is usually conducted from one person. It can be an author, a storyteller, or a hero. But in the story, much more often than in the "large" genres, the pen is, as it were, transferred to the hero, who tells his own story. Often we have before us - a tale: the story of a certain fictional person with his own, pronounced speech manner (the stories of Leskov, in the XX century - Remizov, Zoshchenko, Bazhov, etc.).

The story, like the short story, carries the features of that literary era in which it is created. So, Maupassant's stories have absorbed the experience of psychological prose, and therefore, if they can be called short stories (in literary criticism it is sometimes accepted to call them that way), then short stories that are fundamentally different from the classical short story. Chekhov's stories have a subtext practically unknown to literature. mid XIX century. At the beginning of the 20th century, modernist trends also capture the story (stories by Sologub, Bely, Remizov, partly L. Andreev, etc.)

V European literature In the 20th century, the story was enriched with artistic discoveries of all prose (“stream of consciousness”, strengthening of psychoanalysis elements, temporary “interruptions”, etc.). These are the stories of Kafka, Camus, F. Moriak, A. Moravia and others.

In the 1920s-1930s, heroic-romanticism came to the fore in Russia (V. Ivanov, Babel, Pilnyak, Sholokhov, etc.) and satirical stories(Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov, etc.). The story remains a productive genre today. All its varieties are successfully developing: everyday story, psychological, philosophical, satirical, fantastic ( science fiction and fantasy), close to the novel and almost plotless.

Questions about the report:

1) What is a story?

2) What is a short story?

3) How did the genre of the story develop in literature?

4) How did the novel genre develop in world literature?

5) How does a story differ from a short story?