Genre concept. The novel as a literary genre

In this article, we'll talk about how a novel differs from a story. First, let's define these genres, and then compare them.

and the story

A rather large artistic novel is called a novel. This genre belongs to the epic. There may be several main characters, and their lives are directly connected with historical events. In addition, the novel tells about the whole life of the characters, or about some significant part of it.

A story is a literary work in prose, which usually tells about some important episode in the life of the hero. Acting characters usually a little, and only one of them is the main one. Also, the volume of the story is limited and should not exceed about 100 pages.

Comparison

And yet, how does a novel differ from a story? Let's start with the novel form. So, this genre assumes the image of large-scale events, the versatility of the plot, a very long time frame that includes the entire chronology of the narrative. The novel has one main storyline and several subplots, which are closely intertwined into a compositional whole.

The ideological component is manifested in the behavior of the heroes, the disclosure of their motives. The novel takes place against a historical or everyday descriptive background, touching upon a wide range of psychological, ethical and ideological problems.

The novel has several subspecies: psychological, social, everyday, adventure, detective, etc.

Now let's take a closer look at the story. In works of this genre, the development of events is limited to a specific place and time. The personality of the protagonist and fate is revealed in 1-2 episodes, which are turning points for his life.

There is only one plot in the story, but it can have several unexpected twists that give it versatility and depth. All actions are associated with the main character. In such works there are no pronounced links to history or socio-cultural events.

The problematic of prose is much narrower than in the novel. Usually it is associated with morality, ethics, personal development, manifestation personality traits in extreme and unusual conditions.

The story is subdivided into subgenres: detective, fantastic, historical, adventure, etc. A psychological story is rarely found in literature, but satirical and fabulous ones are very popular.

How a novel differs from a story: conclusions

Let's summarize:

• The novel reflects social and historical events, and in the story they serve only as a background for the narrative.
• The life of the characters in the novel is presented in a socio-psychological or historical context. And in the story, the image of the protagonist can be revealed only in certain circumstances.
• In the novel, there is one main plot and several minor ones, which form a complex structure. The story in this regard is much simpler and not complicated by additional plot lines.
• The novel takes place over a long period of time, and the story takes place in a very limited one.
• The novel problematics includes a large number of issues, and the story touches on only a few of them.
• The heroes of the novel express ideological and social ideas, and in the story the inner world of the character and his personal qualities are important.

Novels and Novels: Examples

We list the works that are:

• Belkin's Tale (Pushkin);
• "Spring Waters" (Turgenev);
• Poor Liza (Karamzin).

Among the novels are the following:

• "Noble Nest" (Turgenev);
• The Idiot (Dostoevsky);
• Anna Karenina (L. Tolstoy).

So, we found out how the novel differs from the story. In short, the difference comes down to the scale of the literary work.

Stress Arrangement: ROMA`Н

ROMAN (from French roman - originally a work in Romance languages) is a large form of the epic genre of modern literature. Its most common features: the image of the person in complex forms the life process, the multilinearity of the plot, covering the fate of a number of characters, polyphony, hence the large volume compared to other genres. It is clear, of course, that these features characterize the main trends in the development of the novel and are manifested in extremely diverse ways.

The very emergence of this genre - or, more precisely, its preconditions - is often attributed to antiquity or the Middle Ages. So, they say about "antique R." ("Daphnis and Chloe", "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Donkey" by Apuleius, "Satyricon" by Petronius, etc.) and "R. knightly" ("Tristan and Isolde", "Lohengrin" by von Eschenbach, "Death of Arthur" by Malory etc.). These prose narratives really have certain features that bring them closer to R. in the modern, proper sense of the word. However, we are still dealing with similar, analogous, rather than homogeneous, phenomena.

Ancient and medieval prose narrative literature does not contain a whole series of those essential properties of content and form, which play a decisive role in R. ") stories, and the stories of medieval knights are considered as, again, a kind of genre of knightly epic in prose. R. in the proper sense begins to form only at the end of the Renaissance. Its origin is inextricably linked with that new artistic element, edges were originally embodied in the Renaissance novella (see), more precisely - in special genre"books of short stories" such as "The Decameron" by Boccaccio.

R. was the epic of private life. If in the preceding epic the central role was played by the images of representatives of the people, society, state (leaders, generals, priests) or the images of heroes who openly embodied the strength and wisdom of an entire human community, then in R. the images of ordinary people come to the fore. , in the actions of which only their individual fate, their personal aspirations are directly expressed. The previous epic was based on large historical (even legendary) events, the main characters were the participants or, more precisely, the direct creators of which. Meanwhile, R. (with the exception of a special form of historical R., as well as R.-epic) is based on events in private life and, moreover, usually on events fictional by the author.

Further, the action of the popular and, more broadly, the historical epic, as a rule, developed in the distant past, in a kind of "epic time", while R. - historical. Finally, the epic was primarily a heroic character, was the embodiment of a high poetic element; R., however, acts as a prosaic genre, as an image of everyday, everyday life in all the versatility of its manifestations. More or less conventionally, the novel can be defined as a genre in principle "average", neutral. And this clearly expresses the historical novelty of the genre, for previously the genres "high" (heroic) or "low" (comic) prevailed, and the genres "medium", neutral, did not receive any broad development. R. was the most complete and complete expression of the art of epic prose. But for all the profound differences from the previous forms of the epic, R. is the true heir of the ancient and medieval epic literature, the true epic of modern times. On a brand new artistic basis in R., as Hegel said, “the richness and variety of interests, states, characters, life relations, and a wide background of the integral world again fully emerge” (Soch., vol. 14, p. 273). This is in no way contradicted by the fact that in the center of the art there is usually the image of a "private" person with his purely personal fate and experiences. In the era of the emergence of R. "... an individual person appears freed from natural ties, etc., which in the previous historical eras made him a part of a certain limited human conglomerate "(K. Marx, To the Critique of Political Economy, 1953, pp. 193-94). On the one hand, this means that the individual no longer acts as primarily a representative of a certain group of people; his own personal destiny and individual consciousness. ”But at the same time, this means that an individual person is now directly connected not with a certain limited collective, but with the life of the whole society or even the whole of humanity. , which becomes possible and, moreover, necessary artistic development public life through the prism of the individual fate of a "private" person.

Of course, this development is accomplished in a much more complex and indirect way than the development of the fate of the people in the image of a majestic folk hero, as was the case in ancient epic... But there is no doubt that the novels of Prevost, Fielding, Stendhal, Lermontov, Dickens, Turgenev, etc., in the personal fates of the main characters reveal the broadest and deepest content of the social life of the era. Moreover, in many R. there is not even a somewhat detailed picture of the life of society as such; the whole image is focused on the private life of the individual. However, since in the new society, built after the Renaissance, a person's private life turned out to be inextricably linked with the whole life of a social whole (even if the person did not act as a politician, leader, ideologist), these are completely "private" actions and experiences of Tom Jones (at Fielding), Werther (at Goethe), Pechorin, Madame Bovary appear as an artistic assimilation of the integral essence of the social world that gave birth to these heroes. Therefore, R. was able to become a true epic of modern times and in its most monumental manifestations, as it were, revived the genre of the epic (see). The first historical form of R., a cut preceded by the novella and epic of the Renaissance, was the rogue R., which was actively developing at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 20th century. 18th century ("Lasarillo from Tormesa", "Francion" Sorel, "Simpli-cissimus" by Grimmelhausen, "Gilles Blas" by Lesage, etc.). From the end of the 17th century. psychological prose develops, which had great value for the formation of R. (books by La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lafayette's story "The Princess of Cleves"). Finally, very important role in the formation of R. played a memoir of the 16th - 17th centuries, in which the private life and personal experiences of people began to be objectively portrayed for the first time (books by Benvenuto Cellini, Montaigne, Sevigny, etc.); so, it was the memoirs (or, more precisely, the sailor's travel notes) that served as the basis and stimulus for the creation of one of the first great R. - "Robinson Crusoe" (1719) by Defoe. R. reaches maturity in the 18th century. One of the earliest genuine examples of the genre is Manon Lescaut (1731) by Antoine Prévost. In this R., as it were, merged into an innovative organic integrity of the traditions of rogue R., psychological prose (in the spirit of Maxime Larochefoucauld) and memoir literature (it is characteristic that this R. originally appeared as a fragment of a multivolume fictional memoir of a certain person).

During the 18th century. R. conquers a dominant position in literature (in the 17th century it still acts as a lateral, secondary sphere of the art of the word). In R. 18 century. two different lines are already developing - social and everyday life (Fielding, Smollett, Louve de Couvray, etc.) and the more powerful line of psychological R. (Richardson, Rousseau, Stern, Goethe, and others).

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, in the era of romanticism, the genre of painting was experiencing a kind of crisis; the subjective-lyrical nature of romantic literature contradicts the epic essence of R. Many writers of this time (Chateaubriand, Senancourt, Schlegel, Novalis, Constant) create R., which more likely resemble lyric poems in prose.

However, at the same time, a special form is flourishing - historical R., which acts as a kind of synthesis of R. in the proper sense and an epic poem of the past (novels by Walter Scott, Vigny, Hugo, Gogol).

On the whole, the period of romanticism had a renewing significance for R. and prepared for its new rise and flourishing. In the second third of the 19th century. the classical era of R. falls (Stendhal, Lermontov, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Turgenev, Flaubert, Maupassant, and others). Russian poetry of the second half of the 19th century, especially the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, plays a special role. In the work of these greatest writers, one of the decisive properties of R. reaches a qualitatively new level - its ability to embody a universal, all-human meaning in the private destinies and personal experiences of the heroes. Deep psychologism, mastering the subtlest movements of the soul, characteristic of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, not only do not contradict, but, on the contrary, determine this property. Tolstoy, noting that in R. Dostoevsky "not only we, people kindred to him, but foreigners recognize themselves, their soul ..." N., About lit-re, M., 1955, p. 264).

The novel by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky had a huge impact on further development genre in the world literature. Major novelists of the 20th century - T. Mann, France, Rolland, Hamsun, Martin du Gard, Galsworthy, Laxness, Faulkner, Hemingway, Tagore, Akutagawa - were direct students and followers of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. T. Mann said that Tolstoy's novels "lead us into the temptation to overturn the relationship between novel and epic, as affirmed by school aesthetics, and not consider the novel as a product of the disintegration of the epic, but the epic as a primitive prototype of the novel." (Collected works, vol. 10, M., 1961, p. 279).

The traditions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were innovatively continued by Gorky, who became the founder of socialist realism. In the highest examples of this genre, life, being appears as a creative act of the people, and therefore the writing of socialist realism especially organically embodies the epic essence of the genre, gravitates towards the epic in the exact sense of the word. This is clearly evident in such major phenomena of Soviet art as "The Life of Klim Samgin" and " Quiet Don"But this does not at all mean that R. of socialist realism renounces the multifaceted nature of the genre.

In the first post-October years, the idea was popular, according to a cut in the new, revolutionary R., the main or even the only content should be the image of the masses. However, in the implementation of this idea, R. was under the threat of disintegration, he turned into a chain of incoherent episodes (for example, in the works of B. Pilnyak). In the lit-re of the 20th century. the frequent desire to confine oneself to the image of the inner world of the individual is expressed in attempts to recreate the so-called. "stream of consciousness" (Proust, Joyce, modern school"new R." in France). But, devoid of an objectively effective basis, R., in essence, loses its epic nature and ceases to be R. in the true sense of the word.

R. can really develop only on the basis of the harmonious unity of the objective and subjective, external and internal in man. This unity is characteristic of the major novels of recent times - the novels of Sholokhov, Laxness, Graham Greene, Faulkner, and others.

Lit .: Griftsov B.A., Theory of the novel, M., 1927; Chicherin A. V., The emergence of an epic novel, M., 1958; Fox R., Novel and people, M., 1960; Dneprov V., Roman - a new kind of poetry, in his book: Problems of Realism, L., 1961; Kozhinov V., The origin of the novel, M., 1963; The present and the future of the novel (Materials of the discussion), "In. Literature", 1964, No. 6, 10; Bakhtin M., Word in the novel, "Questions. Literature", 1965, No. 8; History of the Russian novel, vol. 1 - 2, M. - L., 1962 - 64; History of the Russian Soviet novel, Vol. 1 - 2, M. - L., 1965; D ek with P., Seven centuries of the novel. Sat. Art., per. from French, M., 1962.

V. Nozhinov.

Sources:

1. Dictionary literary terms... Ed. From 48 comp.: L. I. Timofeev and S. V. Turaev. M., "Education", 1974. 509 p.

Accurate and absolutely complete classification It is almost impossible to give such a genre as a novel, since basically such works are always in conflict with the accepted literary conventions. In this literary genre, at all stages of its development, elements are always closely intertwined. modern drama, journalism, and cinema. The only constant element of the novel is the way of storytelling in the form of reportage. Thanks to this, the main types of the novel can still be distinguished and described.

Initially, in the 12-13th centuries, the word roman meant any written text in Old French, and only in the second half of the 17th century. partially acquired its modern semantic content.

Social novel

The basis of such works is different options the behavior adopted in a particular society, and the actions of the heroes that contradict or correspond to these values. The social novel has 2 varieties: cultural-historical and moral-descriptive.

A moralistic novel is a chamber social story that focuses on the standards and moral nuances of social behavior. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a prime example of this kind of work.

A cultural history novel usually describes the history of a family against the background of the cultural and moral standards of its time. Unlike the moralistic, this type of novel touches on history, subjects individuals to deep study and offers its own social psychology. Tolstoy's War and Peace is a classic example of a cultural-historical novel. It is noteworthy that this form of the novel is very often imitated by the so-called blockbusters. For example, the work of M. Mitchell “ gone With the Wind", At first glance, has all the features of a cultural-historical novel. But the abundance of melodramatic episodes, stereotypical characters and superficial social Psychology suggests that this novel is just an imitation of a serious work.

Psychological novel

In this view, all the attention of the reader is focused on the inner world of a person. Work in the genre psychological romance is full of internal monologues, the stream of consciousness of the protagonist, analytical comments and symbolism. " Great expectations"Dickens," Notes from the Underground "by Dostoevsky - bright representatives psychological form novel.

Novel of ideas

A novel of ideas or a "philosophical" novel uses its heroes as carriers of various intellectual theories. In works of this type, a lot of space is always devoted to various kinds of ideas and opinions about everything in the world, from the moral values ​​of society to the cosmos. An example of such a novel is the work of the famous philosopher Plato "Dialogues", in which the heroes are the mouthpiece of Plato himself.

Adventure novel

Quest romance, romance with intrigue, knightly romance, spy romance also belong to this type of romance. As a rule, such works are full of intricate plot, courageous and strong heroes, love and passion. The main purpose of adventure novels is the entertainment of the reader, comparable, for example, to cinema.

The longest novel, People of Goodwill, by Louis Henri Jean Farigoule, aka Jules Romain (France), was published in 27 volumes in 1932-1946. The novel has 4,959 pages and approximately 2,070,000 words (not including a 100-page index).

Experimental novel

The main feature of experimental novels is that they are quite difficult. Unlike classic types novel, in these works is torn logic of cause and effect. An experimental novel may, for example, be absent as such, knowing who the protagonist is is also optional, all attention here is paid to the style, structure and form of reproduction.

Related article

Sources:

• NOVEL ( literary genre)

Charles Dickens is an English writer, essayist and novelist, one of the largest prose writers of the 19th century, a recognized classic of world literature. All of Dickens's novels are written in the style of high realism and are permeated with criticism of the injustice of hypocrisy and the vices of society.

To the main literary works Dickens' includes 20 novels, 1 collection of stories, 3 collections selected stories and a large number of essays.

Dickens's most famous novels

"Posthumous of the Pickwick Club" - the very first novel of the writer, after the publication of which Dikkenasa expected a dizzying success. The work tells about a comic epic, the main character of which is, eccentric, highly moral, impeccably honest, selflessly brave and infinitely naive optimist Mr. Pickwick - the creator of the club of the same name. The novel in its satirical presentation of the life of English society and grotesque protagonist is very similar to "Don Quixote" by Cervantes.

Dickens spontaneously fell into a trance quite often, was subject to visions and from time to time experienced states of déjà vu.

The Adventures of Oliver Twist is the second novel that tells the life story of a little orphan boy forced to wander the London slums. On his way, he meets the baseness and nobility of people from various walks of English society. The pages of the work depict rather believable pictures of the life of the British society XIX century. In this novel, the writer acts as a humanist, affirming the power of a good beginning in a person. The boy Oliver's sincere desire for an honest life overcomes a cruel fate, and everything ends well.

Dickens's next novel was The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, which continued the theme of a destroyed childhood. Like Oliver Twist, this tale has happy end... The novel was published in small parts from March to 1839.
Even before it was published last issue Nicholas Nickleby, the writer begins work on a new project called The Antiquities Shop, which was also published in small portions every week from April 1840 to February 1841. The novel was very popular in Great Britain and America.

Immediately after the publication of the Antiquities Shop, a new work by the writer, entitled Barneby Raj, begins to appear in the same format. This novel was a well-worn piece of Dickens, he promised it to his very first publisher in 1836, but was carried away " By the Pickwick Club"And postponed the case for later.

After that, the publication of the books included in the collection began. selected works under common name"Christmas stories", which were devoted to the topic and everything connected with it. This collection includes such works of the writer as: "Christmas", "Bells", "Cricket Behind the Hearth", "Battle of Life", "Persecuted Man". All the works included in this collection are written in the style of social preaching, but in a light artistic form.

After his trip to America, Dickens had a parody of the American way of life called Martin Chuzzlewit. Many overseas critics and readers did not like the writer's caustic satire, they met this work with hostility and condemned the writer, considering the publication of the novel an extreme tactlessness.

The next novel by the writer "Dombey and Son" became one of the best in the work of Dickens. In this work, all facets of Dickens' talent are very well spelled out. A wealth of colors, an endless series of eccentric characters, life situations and situations, a constant graceful, indignation bordering on revolutionary pathos: all this is filled with the novel "Dombey and Son".

Another largest piece Dickens, which no longer contained an amount of humor and was largely autobiographical, was the novel David Copperfield, which came out after the publication of Dombey and Son. The work has a serious and elaborate theme of protesting against the new soulless capitalist society and praising moral values ​​and family.

Despite the fact that in his will the writer asked not to erect monuments to him, in 2012 it was decided to erect a monument on the main square of Portsmouth. The monument will be unveiled on June 9, 2013, by Martin Jeggins.

Late works

After "David Copperfield" in Dickens's novels there is more melancholy and hopelessness, humor fades into the background, values ​​that were undeniable in the past are increasingly questioned. The writer's later works include the novels: Bleak House, Hard times"," Little Dorrit "," A Tale of Two "," Great Expectations ", the last completed novel" Our Mutual Friend "and the unfinished detective work" The Mystery of Edwin Drood ".

Sources:

• The best books by Charles Dickens

Novel - literary genre, usually prosaic, which assumes a detailed story about the life and development of personality Main character(heroes) in a crisis / non-standard period of his life.

A novel is a biography or a part of a biography. The novel is an epic of private life, it models reality, but does not claim that events are really happening events.

The novel must be viewed historically.

The oldest form of all that has come down to us is a novel-adventure. They have a certain plot core. It consists mainly of overcoming external obstacles, is devoid of the signs of time, there is no psychologism, there are no changes in the characters. This plot is in many ways close to the fairy tale plot. But there are detailed descriptions of exotic countries. The difference from the epic is a hero, a private person. Such novels were entertaining.

In antiquity, another type of novel also arises - a parody novel (a parody of an adventure novel). Example: Apuleius "Golden Donkey". Travel to Greece. Small scale hazards. Travels in the form of a donkey, the novel is very frank, through the eyes of a donkey, the author can show a low life, which an adventure novel was never interested in. The prospect for satire opens up.

In the Middle Ages, a chivalric romance (courtly romance) appears. Created in the 12-13th centuries. Centered around everything noble. It's like a return to a fairy tale. Absorbs mythology. (On the search for the Holy Grail). The knights who act in these novels resemble fairytale heroes. Fabulous motives are transformed here. A huge impact courtesy lyrics (about service beautiful lady). "Tristan and Isolde" - moments of transition from a fairy tale to a novel.

Don Quixote is the most important stage in the development of the novel. Originally a parody of a knightly romance. It marked the transition from a knightly romance to a novel itself. The novel extensively describes the violent prose of life. This is what Cervantes is introducing. Cervantes is born new topic- a lonely eccentric in a cruel world. This low reality becomes central to the rogue novel.

Rogue romance

Heroes of rogue novels became crooks, adventurers, rogues... Usually the sympathies of the readers were on their side. Respectable inhabitants became their victims, officials, criminal elements, as well as the same rogues as they are.

The roguish novel develops into a social and everyday one. Such a novel appears in the 17th and 18th centuries. Gradually develops into a psychological one. MM. Bakhtin: "A novel is a discrepancy between a hero and his fate." "A man is greater than his destiny or less than his humanity." The genre of the novel is becoming universal. The most common form of the novel is a biographical novel.

Possible narrative options in the novel:

from the birth of the hero to his death (" Perfumer» P. Suskinda, "Doctor Zhivago" Pasternak), Oblomov;

from the birth of the hero until the exit of his / her life from the crisis state of life (“ The life of David Copperfield», Charles Dickens or " The burden of human passions», William Somerset Maugham);

from the point of entry of the protagonist into a crisis state of life to the denouement (" Crime and Punishment», Fedor Dostoevsky). Fathers and Sons

Forms of the novel:

cultural-historical novel (Turgenev, Goncharov)

a typical hero of his era. Such a novel is constructed as an ideological dialogue. The novel actually turns into research.

ideological (ideological novel) Dostoevsky. The author does not accept the ideas of the heroes, he allows the heroes to express themselves to the end and shows the consequences. " Polyphonic novel"(Bakhtin)

naturalistic novel

a naturalistic novel is a study of nature, people, and the environment. Its authors are no longer attracted by the intricate intrigue, cleverly conceived and developed by certain rules plot.

prosthetic novel

able to absorb everything

The novel will die only with literature. It's a versatile genre.

The novel, recognized as the leading genre of literature of the last two or three centuries, attracts close attention of literary scholars and critics. It also becomes the subject of the writers themselves.

At the same time, this genre remains a mystery to this day. Various, sometimes opposite opinions are expressed about the historical fate of the novel and its future. “His, - wrote T. Mann in 1936, - prosaic qualities, conscientiousness and criticism, as well as the wealth of his means, his ability to freely and efficiently dispose of display and research, music and knowledge, myth and science, his human breadth, his objectivity and irony make the novel what it is in our time: a monumental and dominant type of fiction. "

O.E. Mandelstam, on the contrary, spoke about the decline of the novel and its exhaustion (article "The End of the Novel", 1922). In the psychologization of the novel and the weakening of the outwardly eventful beginning in it (which took place already in the 19th century), the poet saw a symptom of decline and the eve of the death of the genre, which has now become, in his words, "old-fashioned."

In the modern concepts of the novel, one way or another, the statements about it made in the last century are taken into account. If in the aesthetics of classicism the novel was treated as a low genre (“The hero, in whom everything is petty, is only suitable for the novel”; “Inconsistencies with the novel are inseparable”), then in the era of romanticism it rose to the shield as a reproduction of “everyday reality” and at the same time “ mirror of the world and<…>of his century ”, the fruit of“ a fully mature spirit ”; as a "romantic book", where, in contrast to the traditional epic, there is a place for a relaxed expression of the moods of the author and heroes, and humor and playful lightness. “Every novel must harbor the spirit of the universal,” wrote Jean-Paul.

Thinkers of the turn of the 18th-19th centuries have their theories of the novel. justified by experience contemporary writers, first of all - I.V. Goethe as the author of books about Wilhelm Meister.

The comparison of the novel with the traditional epic, outlined by aesthetics and criticism of romanticism, was developed by Hegel: “Here<…>again (as in the epic - V.Kh.) the richness and versatility of interests, states, characters, living conditions, a wide background of the integral world, as well as an epic depiction of events appears in its entirety.

On the other hand, the novel lacks the "initially poetic state of the world" inherent in the epic; it contains "prosaically ordered reality" and "the conflict between the poetry of the heart and the prose of everyday relations opposed to it." This conflict, Hegel notes, "is resolved tragically or comically" and is often exhausted by the fact that the heroes come to terms with the "ordinary order of the world", recognizing in it "a genuine and substantial beginning."

Similar thoughts were expressed by VG Belinsky, who called the novel an epic of private life: the subject of this genre is “the fate of a private person”, ordinary, “everyday life”. In the second half of the 1840s, the critic argued that the novel and a related story "were now at the head of all other kinds of poetry."

In many ways it has something in common with Hegel and Belinsky (at the same time supplementing them), M.M. Bakhtin in works about the novel, written mainly in the 1930s and awaiting publication in the 1970s.

Based on the judgments of the writers of the 18th century. G. Fielding and K.M. Wielanda, a scientist in his article "The Epic and the Novel (On the Methodology of Researching the Novel)" (1941), argued that the hero of the novel is shown "not as ready and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, brought up by life"; this person “should not be“ heroic ”neither in the epic nor in the tragic sense of the word, the romantic hero combines both positive and negative traits both low and tall, funny and serious. " At the same time, the novel captures the "living contact" of a person "with an unprepared, becoming modernity (unfinished present)."

And he "more deeply, substantially, sensitively and quickly" than any other genre, "reflects the formation of reality itself." The main thing is that the novel (according to Bakhtin) is capable of discovering in a person not only properties determined in behavior, but also unrealized opportunities, a certain personal potential: “One of the main internal themes of the novel is precisely the theme of the hero’s inadequacy of his fate and his position,” a person here can to be "either more than your destiny, or less than your humanity."

The above judgments of Hegel, Belinsky and Bakhtin can legitimately be considered axioms of the theory of the novel, mastering the life of a person (primarily private, individual biographical) in dynamics, formation, evolution and in situations of complex, as a rule, conflicting relations between the hero and the environment.

In the novel, artistic comprehension is invariably present and almost dominates - as a kind of "super theme" (we will use in famous words A.S. Pushkin) “the self-constancy of man”, which constitutes (let us allow ourselves to supplement the poet) both “the guarantee of his greatness”, and the source of grievous falls, life's dead ends and catastrophes. The ground for the formation and consolidation of the novel, in other words, arises where there is interest in a person who has at least relative independence from the institutions of the social environment with its imperatives, rituals, rituals, which is not characterized by “herd” involvement in society.

The novels widely capture the situations of the hero's alienation from the environment, accentuate his lack of root in reality, homelessness, everyday wandering and spiritual wandering. Such are the "Golden Donkey" of Apuleius, chivalric romances the Middle Ages, "The Story of Gilles Blaz from Santillana" by A.R. Lesage. Let us also recall Julien Sorel ("Red and Black" by Stendhal), Eugene Onegin ("A stranger to everything, not connected by anything," complains Pushkin's hero to his fate in a letter to Tatyana), Herzen's Beltov, Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov from F.M. Dostoevsky. Novel heroes of this kind (and they are innumerable) "rely only on themselves."

The alienation of a person from society and the world order was interpreted by M.M. Bakhtin as necessarily dominant in the novel. The scientist argued that here not only the hero, but also the author himself appears unrooted in the world, remote from the principles of stability and stability, alien to legend. The novel, in his opinion, captures "the disintegration of the epic (and tragic) integrity of man" and carries out "a laughing familiarization of the world and man." “The novel,” wrote Bakhtin, “has a new, specific problematic character; it is characterized by eternal rethinking - reappraisal. " In this genre, reality "becomes a world where there is no first word (ideal beginning), and the last has not yet been said." Thus, the novel is viewed as an expression of the skeptical and relativistic world outlook, which is thought of as a crisis and at the same time having a perspective. The novel, Bakhtin argues, prepares a new, more complex human integrity "at a higher level<…>development ".

There are many similarities to Bakhtin's theory of the novel in the judgments of the famous Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic D. Lukacs, who called this genre the epic of the deheated world, and the psychology of the novel hero - demonic. He considered the subject of the novel to be the history of the human soul, which manifests itself and cognizes itself in all kinds of adventures (adventures), and irony, which he defined as the negative mysticism of epochs that broke with God, was its predominant tonality.

Considering the novel as a mirror of growing up, the maturity of society and the antipode of the epic that captures the "normal childhood" of mankind, D. Lukacs spoke about the recreation of this genre of the human soul, lost in an empty and imaginary reality.

However, the novel does not completely immerse itself in the atmosphere of demonism and irony, the disintegration of human integrity, the alienation of people from the world, but it also opposes it. The hero's reliance on himself in the classical novels of the 19th century. (both Western European and Russian) appeared most often in ambiguous coverage: on the one hand, as a "self-standing" worthy of a person, sublime, attractive, enchanting, on the other, as a source of delusions and life defeats. "How wrong I was, how I was punished!" - Onegin exclaims sadly, summing up his solitary free path... Pechorin complains that he did not guess his own "high purpose" and did not find a worthy application for the "immense powers" of his soul. In the finale of the novel, Ivan Karamazov, tormented by his conscience, falls ill with delirium tremens. “And may God help the homeless wanderers,” - said about the fate of Rudin at the end of Turgenev's novel.

At the same time, many of the heroes of the novel strive to overcome their solitude and alienation, they long for a connection with the world to be established in their lives (A. Blok). Let us recall once again the eighth chapter of Eugene Onegin, where the hero imagines Tatiana sitting at the window of a rural house; as well as Turgenev's Lavretsky, Goncharovsky Raysky, Tolstoy's Andrei Volkonsky, or even Ivan Karamazov, who at his best moments rushed to Alyosha. Such novel situations were characterized by G.K. Kosikov: "The" heart "of the hero and the" heart "of the world are drawn to each other, and the problem of the novel is<…>in the fact that they have never been able to unite, and the hero's fault for this sometimes turns out to be no less than the world's fault. "

Another thing is also important: in novels, a significant role is played by heroes, whose independence has nothing to do with the solitude of consciousness, alienation from the environment, relying only on themselves. Among the characters in the novel, we find those who, using the words of M.M. Prishvin about himself, it is legitimate to call "figures of communication and communication." Such is Natasha Rostova, “overflowing with life,” who, in the words of S.G. Bocharova, invariably "renews, frees" people, "defines them<…>behavior". This heroine L.N. Tolstoy naively and at the same time convincingly demands “immediately, now open, direct, humanly simple relationship between people". Such are Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov in Dostoevsky.

In a number of novels (especially persistently in the works of Charles Dickens and the Russian literature XIX c.) the spiritual contacts of a person with a reality close to him and, in particular, family and clan relations are presented in an uplifting and poetic manner (“ Captain's daughter"A.S. Pushkin; "Cathedrals" and "A weary family" by NS Leskov; "Noble nest" by I.S. Turgenev; "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" by L.N. Tolstoy). The heroes of such works (remember the Rostovs or Konstantin Levin) perceive and think the surrounding reality not so much alien and hostile to themselves as friendly and akin. It is inherent in them that M.M. Prishvin called "kindred attention to the world."

The theme of the House (in the lofty sense of the word - as an irreducible existential principle and indisputable value) persistently (most often in tensely dramatic tones) resounds in the novels of our century: J. Galsworthy ("The Forsyte Saga" and subsequent works), R. Martin du Gard ("The Thibault Family"), W. Faulkner ("Noise and Fury"), MA Bulgakov ("The White Guard"), MA Sholokhova ("Quiet Don"), B.L. Pasternak ("Doctor Zhivago"), V., G. Rasputin ("Live and Remember", "Deadline").

The novels of epochs close to us, as you can see, are largely focused on idyllic values ​​(although they are not inclined to put forward the situation of harmony of a person and reality close to him). Even Jean-Paul (having in mind, probably, such works as "Julia, or New Eloise" by J.J. Rousseau and "Weckfield Priest" by O. Goldsmith) noted that idyll is "a genre akin to the novel." And according to M.M. Bakhtina, “the meaning of the idyll for the development of the novel<…>was huge. "

The novel absorbs the experience not only of the idyll, but also of a number of other genres; in this sense it is like a sponge. This genre is able to include in its sphere the features of an epic, capturing not only the private life of people, but also events of a national-historical scale ("The Parma Cloister" by Stendhal, "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, "Gone with the Wind" by M. Mitchell) ... Novels are able to embody the meanings characteristic of a parable. According to O.A. Sedakova, “in the depths of the“ Russian novel ”there is usually something like a parable”.

The involvement of the novel in the traditions of hagiography is undoubted. The life principle is very clearly expressed in the work of Dostoevsky. Leskovsky's "Soboryans" can rightfully be described as a novel-life. Novels often take on the features of satirical moral description, such as, for example, the works of O. de Balzac, W.M. Thackeray, "Resurrection" by L.N. Tolstoy. As M.M. Bakhtin, far from being alien to the novel (especially the adventurous-roguish one) and the familiar-laughter, carnival element, originally rooted in the comedy-farcical genres. Viach. Ivanov, not without reason, characterized the works of F.M. Dostoevsky as "tragedy novels". "The Master and Margarita" by M.A. Bulgakov is a kind of myth-novel, and R. Musil's Man Without Properties is an essay novel. T. Mann called his tetralogy "Joseph and His Brothers" a "mythological novel" in his report on it, and its first part ("Jacob's Past") - a "fantastic essay". The work of T. Mann, according to the German scientist, marks the most serious transformation of the novel: its immersion into mythological depths.

The novel, as you can see, has a twofold content: firstly, specific to him ("self-stability" and the evolution of the hero, manifested in his private life), and secondly, which came to him from other genres. The conclusion is legitimate; genre essence the novel is synthetic. This genre is capable of combining, with unconstrained freedom and unprecedented breadth, the substantive principles of many genres, both comic and serious. Apparently, there is no genre beginning from which the novel would remain fatally alienated.

The novel, as a genre prone to synthetics, is sharply different from others that preceded it, which were “specialized” and acted on certain local “areas” of artistic comprehension of the world. He (like no other) proved to be able to bring literature closer to life in its diversity and complexity, contradictions and wealth. Novel freedom to explore the world has no boundaries. And writers from different countries and eras enjoy this freedom in a variety of ways.

The multifaceted nature of the novel creates serious difficulties for literary theoreticians. Almost everyone who tries to characterize the novel as such, in its universal and necessary properties, is tempted to a kind of synecdoche: the replacement of the whole by its part. So, O.E. Mandelstam judged the nature of this genre from the "career novels" of the 19th century, whose heroes were carried away by Napoleon's unprecedented success.

In the novels, which accentuated not the volitional aspiration of a self-asserting person, but the complexity of his psychology and internal action, the poet saw a symptom of the decline of the genre and even its end. T. Mann, in his judgments about the novel as full of soft and benevolent irony, relied on his own artistic experience and, to a large extent, on the novels of Goethe's upbringing.

Bakhtin's theory has a different orientation, but also local (primarily towards Dostoevsky's experience). At the same time, the writer's novels are interpreted by scientists in a very peculiar way. Dostoevsky's heroes, according to Bakhtin, are primarily carriers of ideas (ideology); their voices are equal, as is the author's voice in relation to each of them. This is seen as polyphony, which is the highest point of novelistic creativity and an expression of the writer’s non-dogmatic thinking, his understanding that a single and complete truth “is fundamentally incompatible within the limits of one consciousness”.

Dostoevsky's novels are viewed by Bakhtin as an inheritance of the ancient "menippean satire." Menippea is a genre "free from tradition", committed to "unbridled fantasy", recreating "the adventures of an idea or truth in the world: on earth, and in the underworld, and on Olympus." She, says Bakhtin, is a genre of "last questions", carrying out "moral and psychological experimentation", and recreates "split personality", "unusual dreams, passions bordering on insanity.

Other, not involved in polyphony, the variety of the novel, where the writers' interest in people rooted in the reality close to them prevails, and the author's "voice" dominates the voices of the heroes, Bakhtin estimated less highly and even spoke about them ironically: he wrote about "monological" one-sidedness and the narrowness of the "manor-house-room-apartment-family romances", as if they had forgotten about the presence of a person "on the threshold" of eternal and unsolvable questions. At the same time, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov.

In the long history of the novel, two of its types are clearly visible, more or less corresponding to the two stages of literary development. These are, firstly, highly eventful works based on external action, the heroes of which strive to achieve some local goals. Such are the adventurous novels, in particular the roguish, chivalrous, "career romances", as well as adventure and detective novels. Their plots are numerous links of event nodes (intrigues, adventures, etc.), as is the case, for example, in Byron's Don Juan or in A. Dumas.

Secondly, these are novels that have prevailed in literature for the last two or three centuries, when one of central concerns public thought, artistic creation and culture as a whole has become the spiritual self-permanence of man. Internal action successfully competes with external action: eventfulness is noticeably weakened, and the consciousness of the hero in its versatility and complexity, with its endless dynamics and psychological nuances, comes to the fore.

The characters of such novels are portrayed not only as striving towards some particular goals, but also comprehending their place in the world, understanding and realizing their value orientation. It is in this type of novels that the specificity of the genre in question manifests itself as fully as possible. Close to man reality (" daily life") Is assimilated here not as a deliberately" low prose ", but as a part of genuine humanity, the trends of the given time, universal principles of existence, most importantly - as an arena of the most serious conflicts. Russian novelists of the 19th century they knew well and persistently showed that "tremendous events are less test for human relations) than everyday life with minor displeasure."

One of the most important features of the novel and a related story (especially in the 19th-20th centuries) is the close attention of the authors to the microenvironment surrounding the heroes, the influence of which they experience and on which they influence in one way or another. Outside of recreating the microenvironment, it is very difficult for a novelist to show the inner world of a person. At the origins of the now established novel form is the dilogy of I.V. Goethe about Wilhelm Meister (these works T. Mann called "in-depth inner life, sublimated adventure novels "), as well as" Confession "by J.J. Rousseau, "Adolphe" B. Konstan, "Eugene Onegin", in which the "poetry of reality" inherent in the works of Alexander Pushkin is conveyed. Since that time, novels focused on a person's connections with a reality close to him and, as a rule, giving preference to inner action, have become a kind of center of literature. They influenced all other genres in the most serious way, even transformed them.

According to M.M. Bakhtin, there was a romanization of verbal art: when a novel comes into "big literature", other genres are drastically modified, "more or less" romanized ". At the same time, the structural properties of genres are also transformed: their formal organization becomes less strict, more relaxed and free. We will turn to this (formal-structural) side of genres.

V.E. Khalizev Theory of Literature. 1999 year