The plot and composition of a literary work literary criticism. Composition and plot of a work of art
The integrity of a work of art is achieved by various means. Among these means, composition and plot play an important role.
Composition(from Lat. componere - to compose, connect) - the construction of a work, the ratio of all its elements, creating a holistic picture of life and contributing to the expression of ideological content. In the composition, external elements are distinguished - division into parts, chapters, and internal - grouping and arrangement of images. When creating a work, the writer carefully thinks over the composition, place and interconnection of images and other elements, trying to give the material the greatest ideological and artistic expressiveness. Composition can be simple or complex. So, A. Chekhov's story "Ionych" has a simple composition. It consists of five small chapters (external elements) and an uncomplicated internal image system. In the center of the image is Dmitry Startsev, who is opposed by a group of images of the local inhabitants of the Turkins. The composition of L. Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" looks quite different. It consists of four parts, each part is divided into many chapters, a significant place is occupied by the philosophical reflections of the author. These are the external elements of the composition. The grouping and arrangement of images-characters, of which there are more than 550, is very difficult. The outstanding skill of the writer was manifested in the fact that, with all the complexity of the material, he was arranged in the most expedient and subordinated to the disclosure of the main idea: the people are the decisive force of history.
In scientific literature, the terms are sometimes used architectonics, structure as synonyms of the word composition.
Plot(from the French sujet - subject) - a system of events of a work of art, revealing the characters of the heroes and contributing to the most complete expression of the ideological content. The system of events is a unity that evolves in time, and driving force the plot is conflict. Conflicts are different: social, love, psychological, domestic, military and others. The hero, as a rule, comes into conflict with the social environment, with other people, with himself. There are usually several conflicts in a work. In L. Chekhov's story "Ionych", the hero's conflict with the environment is combined with a love one. A striking example psychological conflict- "Hamlet" by Shakespeare. The most common type of conflict is social. To denote social conflict literary scholars often use the term collision, and love - intrigue.
The plot consists of a number of elements: exposition, set, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue.
Exposition - initial information about the characters that motivate their behavior in the context of the conflict. In the story "Ionych" it is Startsev's arrival, a description of the "most educated" family of the Turkins in the city.
Stitch - an event that initiates the development of action, conflict. In the story "Ionych" Startsev's acquaintance with the Turkins' family.
After the set begins the development of the action, the highest point of which is the culmination. In L. Chekhov's story - Startsev's explanation of love, Katya's refusal.
Interchange- an event that removes the conflict. In the story "Ionych" there is a break in relations between Startsev and the Turkins.
Epilogue - information about the events that followed the denouement. Sometimes. the author himself calls the final part of the story an epilogue. The story of L. Chekhov contains information about the fate of the heroes, which can be attributed to the epilogue.
In the Big fiction there are usually many storylines and each one. developing, intertwined with others. Individual plot elements can be shared. Define classic scheme it can be difficult.
The movement of the plot in a work of art occurs simultaneously in time and space. To designate the relationship of temporal and spatial relations, M. Bakhtin proposed the term chronotope. Artistic time is not a direct reflection of real time, but arises by assembling certain representations of real time. Real time moves irreversibly and only in one direction - from the past to the future, while artistic time can slow down, stop and move in the opposite direction. Returning to the image of the past is called flashback... Artistic time is a complex interweaving of the times of the narrator and heroes, and often a complex layering of times of different historical eras("The Master and Margarita" by M. Bulgakov). It can be closed, closed in itself, and open, included in the flow of historical time. An example of the first "Ionych" L. Chekhov, the second - "Quiet Don" M. Sholokhov.
Parallel to the term plot there is a term plot, which are usually used synonymously. Meanwhile, some theorists consider them inadequate, insisting on their independent significance. The plot, in their opinion, is a system of events in a causal sequence, and a plot is a system of events in the author's presentation. Thus, the plot of I. Goncharov's novel Oblomov begins with a description of the life of an adult hero who lives in St. Petersburg with his servant Zakhar in a house on Gorokhovaya Street. The plot assumes a presentation of the events of Oblomov's life. since childhood (chapter "Oblomov's Dream").
We define the plot as a system, a chain of events. In many cases, the writer, in addition to telling about events, introduces descriptions of nature, everyday paintings, lyrical digressions, reflections, geographic or historical references... They are usually called off-plot elements.
It should be noted that there are different principles of plot organization. Sometimes events develop sequentially, in chronological order, sometimes with retrospective digressions, times overlap. Quite often there is a method of plot framing a plot within a plot. A striking example is Sholokhov's "The Fate of a Man". In it, the author tells about his meeting with the driver at the crossing of the overflowing river. While waiting for the ferry, Sokolov talked about his difficult life, about his stay in German captivity, the loss of his family. In the end, the author said goodbye to this man and thought about his fate. The main, main story by Andrey Sokolov is framed by the author's story. This technique is called framing.
The plot and composition of lyric works are very peculiar. The author depicts in them not events, but thoughts and experiences. The unity and integrity of the lyric work is ensured by the main lyrical motive, the carrier of which is the lyric hero. The composition of the poem is subordinated to the disclosure of thought-feeling. "The lyrical unfolding of the topic," writes the famous literary theorist B. Tomashevsky, "resembles the dialectic of theoretical reasoning, with the difference that in the reasoning we have a logically justified introduction of new motives ... and in the lyrics the introduction of motives is justified by the emotional unfolding of the topic." Typical is, but in his opinion, the three-part construction of lyric poems, when in the first part the theme is given, in the second it develops by means of lateral motives, and the third is an emotional conclusion. As an example, we can cite A. Pushkin's poem "To Chaadaev".
1st part of Love, hope, quiet glory
The deception did not live long for us.
2nd part We wait with vexation of hope
Holy minutes of freedom ...
3rd part Comrade, believe! She will rise
The star of captivating happiness ...
The lyrical development of a theme is of two types: deductive - from the general to the particular and inductive - from the particular to the general. The first - in the above poem by A. Pushkin, the second in the poem by K. Simonov "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of Smolensk ...".
In some lyric works there is a plot: " Railway"I. Nekrasov, ballads, songs. They are called plot lyrics.
The pictorial details serve to reproduce the concrete-sensual details of the world of characters, created by the artist's creative imagination and directly embodying the ideological content of the work. The term "figurative details" is not recognized by all theorists (the terms "thematic" or "subject" details are also used), but everyone agrees that the artist recreates the details external appearance and the speeches of the heroes, their inner peace environment in order to express your thoughts. However, accepting this position, one cannot interpret it too straightforwardly and think that every detail (eye color, gestures, clothing, description of the area, etc.) is directly related to the author's goal setting and has a very definite unambiguous meaning. If this were so, the work would have lost its artistic specificity and would become tendentious and illustrative.
The pictorial details contribute to the fact that the world of characters appears before the reader's inner gaze in all its fullness of life, in sounds, colors, volumes, smells, in spatial and temporal extent. Unable to convey all the details of the picture being drawn, the writer reproduces only a few of them, trying to give impetus to the reader's imagination and make him finish the missing features with his own imagination. Without "seeing", without imagining "living" characters, the reader will not be able to empathize with them, and his aesthetic perception of the work will be defective.
Figurative details allow the artist to plastically, visually recreate the life of the characters, to reveal their characters through individual details. At the same time, they convey the author's evaluative attitude to the depicted reality, create an emotional atmosphere for the story. So, rereading the mass scenes in the story "Taras Bulba", one can be convinced that seemingly scattered remarks and statements of the Cossacks help us to "hear" the polyphonic crowd of Cossacks, and various portrait and everyday details - to visibly present it. At the same time, the heroic warehouse is gradually becoming clear. folk characters, developed in the conditions of wild freemen and poeticized by Gogol. At the same time, many details are comical, cause a smile, and create a humorous tone for the narrative (especially in scenes of peaceful life). The pictorial details here, as in most works, perform pictorial, characterizing and expressive functions.
In drama figurative details are conveyed not verbally, but by other means (there is no description of the external appearance of the heroes, their actions, the situation, because on the stage there are actors and there are scenery). The speech characteristics of the characters acquire special significance.
In the lyrics, pictorial details are subordinated to the task of recreating the experience in its development, movement, and contradiction. They here serve as signs of the event that caused the experience, but mainly perform the role of a psychological characteristic lyrical hero... At the same time, their expressive role is also preserved; the experience is conveyed as sublimely romantic, heroic, tragic, or in lowered, for example, ironic tones.
The plot also belongs to the sphere of visual detailing, but stands out for its dynamic character. In epic k dramatic works these are the actions of the characters and the events depicted. The actions of the characters that make up the plot are varied - these are all sorts of actions, statements, experiences and thoughts of the heroes. The plot most directly and effectively reveals the character of the character, the protagonist. However, it is important to understand that the actions of the characters also reveal the author's understanding of the typical character and the author's assessment. By forcing the hero to act in one way or another, the artist evokes in the reader a certain evaluative attitude not only to the hero, but to the whole type of people he represents. So, forcing his fictional hero to kill a friend in a duel in the name of secular prejudices, Pushkin evokes a feeling of condemnation in the reader and makes him reflect on Onegin's inconsistency, on the inconsistency of his character. This is the expressive role of the plot.
The plot moves due to the emergence, development, resolution of various conflicts between the characters of the work. Conflicts can be of a private nature (Onegin's quarrel with Lensky), or they can be a moment, part of socio-historical conflicts that have arisen in historical reality itself (war, revolution, social movement). By depicting plot conflicts, the writer pays most attention to the problematics of the work. But it would be wrong to identify these concepts on the basis of this (there is a tendency for such an identification in Abramovich's textbook, section 2, ch. 2). The problematic is the leading side of the ideological content, and the plot conflict is an element of the form. It is just as wrong to equate plot with content (as is common in spoken language). Therefore, the terminology of Timofeev, who proposed to call the plot in aggregate with all the other details of the life depicted as "immediate content", did not receive recognition ("Foundations of the Theory of Literature", Part 2, Ch. 1, 2, 3).
The question of the plot in the lyrics is solved in different ways. However, there is no doubt that this term can be applied to the lyrics only with great reservations, denoting the outline of those events that "shine through" through the lyrical experience of the hero and motivate him. Sometimes, however, this term is used to designate the movement of lyrical experience itself.
The composition of pictorial, including plot details, is their arrangement in the text. Using antitheses, repetitions, parallelisms, changing the tempo and chronological sequence of events in the narrative, establishing chronic and causal-temporal connections between events, the artist achieves their relationship that expands and deepens their meaning. In all textbooks, the compositional techniques of narration, the introduction of the narrator, framing, introductory episodes, the main points in the development of the action, and various motivations of plot episodes are quite fully defined. The discrepancy between the order of plot events and the order of narration about them in the work makes us talk about this expressive means like a storyline. It should be borne in mind that a different terminology is also widespread, when the actual compositional method of rearranging events is called a plot (Abramovich, Kozhinov, etc.).
To master the material of this section, we recommend that you independently analyze the figurative details, plot and their composition in any epic or dramatic work. It is necessary to pay attention to how the development of the action serves the development of artistic thought - the introduction of new topics, the deepening of problem motives, the gradual disclosure of the characters' characters and copyright to them. Each new plot scene or description is prepared, motivated by the entire previous image, but does not repeat it, but develops, complements and deepens. These form components are most directly related to artistic content and depend on it. Therefore, they are as unique as the content of each work.
In view of this, the student needs to get acquainted with those theories that ignore the close connection of the plot-pictorial sphere of the form with the content. This is primarily the so-called comparative theory, which was based on the comparative historical study of the literature of the world, but misinterpreted the results of such a study. Comparativists focused primarily on the influence of literatures on each other. But they did not consider that the influence is due to similarity or difference. public relations in the respective countries, but proceeded from the immanent, that is, internal, supposedly completely autonomous laws of the development of literature. Therefore, comparativists wrote about "stable motives", about the "bequeathed images" of literature, as well as about " stray plots”Without distinguishing between the plot and its scheme. The characteristic of this theory is also in the textbook, ed. G.N. Pospelov and G.L. Abramovich.
QUESTIONS FOR SELF-TRAINING (m. 2)
1. Literary work as an integral unity.
2. The theme of the work of art and its features.
3. The idea of a work of art and its features.
4. Composition of a work of art. External and internal elements.
5. The plot of a literary work. Conflict concept. Elements of the plot. Off-plot elements. Plot and plot.
6. What is the role of the plot in revealing the ideological content of the work?
7. What is plot composition? What is the difference between narration and description? What are off-plot episodes and lyrical digressions?
8. What is the function of the landscape, household furnishings, portrait and speech characteristics character in the work?
9. Features of the plot of lyric works.
10. Spatio-temporal organization of the work. The concept of a chronotope.
LITERATURE
Korman B.O. Study of the text of a work of art. - M., 1972.
Abramovich G.L. Introduction to Literary Studies. Ed. 6. - M., 1975.
Introduction to Literary Studies / Ed. L.V. Chernets /. M., 2000 .-- S. 11 -20,
209-219, 228-239, 245-251.
Galich O. that in. Theopia of Literature. K., 2001. -S. 83-115.
Getmanets M.F. Suchasiny vocabulary of lgeraturological terms1niv. - Kharkiv, 2003.
MODULE THIRD
THE LANGUAGE OF ARTISTIC LITERATURE
There are three levels of literary work:
Subject visualization is life material
Composition - organizing this material
Artistic language - the speech structure of a literary work, at all four levels artistic language: phonics, vocabulary, semantics, syntax.
Each of these layers has its own complex hierarchy.
The apparent complexity of a literary work is created by the writer's hard work at all three levels of the artistic whole.
Let's get acquainted with several definitions of this concept and its various classifications, when the composition of the text is revealed by different signs and indicators.
A literary text is a communicative, structural and semantic unity, which is manifested in its composition. That is, it is the unity of communication - structure - and meaning.
The composition of a literary text is “mutual correlation and location units of depicted and artistic speech means ”. The units depicted here mean: theme, problem, idea, characters, all sides of the depicted external and internal world. Artistic and speech means are the entire figurative system of the language at the level of its 4 layers.
Composition is the construction of a work, which determines its integrity, completeness and unity.
Composition - represents "System connections " all its elements. This system also has an independent meaningfulness, which should be revealed in the process philological analysis text.
Composition, either structure or architectonics is the construction of a work of art.
Composition is an element of the form of a work of art.
Composition contributes to the creation of a work as an artistic whole.
The composition unites all the components and subordinates them to the idea, the concept of the work. Moreover, this connection is so close that it is impossible to remove or rearrange any component from the composition.
Types of compositional organization of the work:
Subject view - that is, plot (epic, lyrics, drama)
Non-plot view - non-fictional (in lyrics, in epic and drama created by creative method modernism and postmodernism)
The plot type of the compositional organization of the work is of two types:
Eventful (in epic and drama)
Descriptive (in lyrics)
Let's consider the first type of plot composition - event composition. It has three forms:
Chronological form - events develop in a straight line of time movement, the natural time sequence is not violated, there may be time intervals between events
The retrospective form is a deviation from the natural chronological sequence, a violation of the linear order of the passage of events in life, interruption with the memories of the heroes or the author, acquainting the reader with the prehistory of events and the life of the characters (Bunin, "Light Breathing")
Free or montage form - a significant violation of the spatio-temporal and cause-and-effect relationships between events; the connection between individual episodes is associative-emotional, not logical-semantic ("A Hero of Our Time", "The Trial" by Kafka and other works of modernism and postmodernism)
Consider the second type of composition - descriptive:
He is present in lyric works, in them there is basically no clearly limited and coherently developed action, the experiences of the lyric hero or character are brought to the fore, and the whole composition obeys the goals of his image, this is a description of thoughts, impressions, feelings, pictures inspired by the experiences of the lyric hero ...
The composition is external and internal.
External composition(architectonics): chapters, parts, sections, paragraphs, books, volumes, their arrangement may be different depending on the methods of plot creation chosen by the author.
External composition- This is the division of the text, characterized by continuity, into discrete units. Composition is therefore a manifestation of significant discontinuity in continuity.
External composition: the boundaries of each compositional unit highlighted in the text are clearly defined, defined by the author (chapters, chapters, sections, parts, epilogues, phenomena in the drama, etc.), this organizes and directs the reader's perception. The architectonics of the text serves as a way of "portioning" meaning; with the help of ... compositional units, the author indicates to the reader to unite, or, conversely, to dismember the elements of the text (and hence its content).
External composition: no less significant is the lack of articulation of the text or its expanded fragments: this emphasizes the integrity of the spatial continuum, the fundamental non-discreteness of the organization of the narrative, the undifferentiated, fluidity of the narrator's or character's worldview (for example, in the “stream of consciousness” literature).
Internal composition : this is a composition (construction, arrangement) of images - characters, events, setting of action, landscapes, interiors, etc.
Internal(meaningful) composition is determined by the system of character images, the features of the conflict and the originality of the plot.
Not to be confused: the plot has the elements plot, the composition has tricks(internal composition) and parts(external composition) composition.
The composition includes, in its construction, both all elements of the plot - plot elements, as well as extra-plot elements.
Internal composition techniques:
Prologue (often referred to as the plot)
Epilogue (often referred to as the plot)
Monologue
Character portraits
Interiors
Landscapes
Off-plot elements in the composition
Classification of compositional techniques for the selection of individual elements:
Each compositional unit is characterized by nominating techniques that provide emphasis the most important meanings of the text and activate the reader's attention. It:
geography: various graphic highlights,
repetitions: repetitions of language units of different levels,
strengthening: strong positions of the text or its compositional part - positions of advancement associated with the establishment of a hierarchy of meanings, focusing attention on the most important, strengthening emotionality and aesthetic effect, establishing meaningful connections between adjacent and distant elements belonging to the same and different levels, ensuring the coherence of the text and its memorability. The strong positions of the text traditionally include titles, epigraphs, beginningandthe end works (parts, chapters, chapters). With their help, the author emphasizes the structural elements that are most significant for understanding the work and at the same time determines the main "semantic milestones" of one or another compositional part (the text as a whole).
Widespread in Russian literature of the late XX century. editing and collage techniques, on the one hand, led to an increase in the fragmentariness of the text, on the other, it opened up the possibility of new combinations of “semantic plans”.
Composition in terms of its coherence
In the peculiarities of the architectonics of the text, such its most important feature is manifested as connectivity. Sections (parts) of the text selected as a result of articulation relate to each other, "concatenate" on the basis of common elements. There are two types of connectivity: cohesion and coherence (terms proposed by V. Dressler)
Cohesion (from Lat. - "to be connected"), or local connectivity, - connectivity of a linear type, expressed formally, mainly by linguistic means. It is based on pronominal substitution, lexical repetitions, the presence of conjunctions, the correlation of grammatical forms, etc.
Coherence(from lat. - "Concatenation"), or global connectivity, - connectivity, nonlinear type, combining elements of different levels of the text (for example, the title, epigraph, "text in the text" and the main text, etc.). The most important means of creating coherence are repetitions (primarily of words with common semantic components) and parallelism.
Semantic chains appear in a literary text - rows of words with common semes, the interaction of which gives rise to new semantic connections and relationships, as well as "increments of meaning."
Any literary text is permeated with semantic calls, or repetitions. Words related on this basis can take a different position: be located at the beginning and at the end of the text (circular semantic composition), symmetrically, form a gradation series, etc.
Consideration of the semantic composition is a necessary stage in philological analysis. It is especially important for the analysis of "plotless" texts, texts with weakened cause-and-effect relationships of components, texts saturated with complex images. Identifying semantic chains in them and establishing their connections is the key to interpreting the work.
Off-plot elements
Plug-in episodes
Lyrical digressions
Artistic advance,
Artistic framing,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Heading
Insert episodes- these are parts of the narrative that are not directly related to the course of the plot, events that are only associatively connected and are remembered in connection with the current events of the work ("The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" in " Dead souls»)
Lyrical digressions- are lyrical, philosophical, publicistic, express the thoughts and feelings of the writer directly, in the direct author's word, reflect the author's position, the attitude of the writer to the characters, some elements of the theme, problems, ideas of the work (in Dead Souls - about youth and old age , about Russia as a bird - a troika)
Artistic advance - the image of scenes that are ahead of the further course of events (
Artistic framing - scenes with which a work of art begins and ends, most often it is the same scene, given in development, and creating ring composition("The Fate of a Man" by M. Sholokhov)
Dedication - a short description or a lyrical work that has a specific addressee, to whom the work is addressed and dedicated
Epigraph - an aphorism or quote from another well-known work or folklore, located in front of the entire text or in front of its individual parts (proverb in "The Captain's Daughter")
Heading- the title of the work, which always contains the theme, problem or idea of the work, a very short formulation that has deep expressiveness, imagery or symbolism.
The object of literary analysis in the study of composition I can be different aspects compositions:
1) architectonics, or external composition of the text, - dividing it into certain parts (chapters, sub-chapters, paragraphs, stanzas, etc.), their sequence and relationship;
2) a system of images of characters in a work of art;
3) change of points of view in the structure of the text; so, according to B.A. Uspensky, it is the problem of the point of view that constitutes "The central problem of composition»; consideration in text structure different points vision in relation to the architectonics of the work allows to reveal the dynamics of the development of artistic content;
4) the system of details presented in the text (composition of details); their analysis makes it possible to reveal the ways of deepening the depicted: as I.A. Goncharov, “details that are presented in a distant perspective of a general plan fragmentarily and separately”, in the context of the whole “merge in a general structure ... as if thin invisible threads or, perhaps, magnetic currents were acting”;
5) the correlation with each other and with the rest of the text components of its extra-plot elements (inserted short stories, short stories, lyrical digressions, “scenes on the stage” in the drama).
Compositional analysis thus takes into account different aspects of the text.
The term "composition" in modern philology turns out to be very ambiguous, which complicates its use.
To analyze the composition of a literary text, you must be able to:
To highlight in its structure repetitions that are significant for the interpretation of the work, which serve as the basis for cohesion and coherence;
Reveal semantic overlaps in parts of the text;
Highlight markers - separators of different compositional parts of the work;
To correlate the features of the division of the text with its content and to determine the role of discrete (separate parts) compositional units in the whole;
Establish a connection between the narrative structure of the text as its “deep compositional structure” (BA Uspensky) with its external composition.
Define all the methods of external and internal composition in F. Tyutchev's poem "Silentium" (namely: parts of the composition, plot type - non-plot, event-related - descriptive, seeing individual elements, the type of their coherence, - NB
Composition (lat. Compositio - composition, combination, creation, construction) is a work plan, the ratio of its parts, the relationship of images, pictures, episodes. A work of art should have as many characters, episodes, scenes as necessary to reveal the content. A. Chekhov advised young writers to write in such a way that the reader, without the author's explanations - from the conversations, actions, actions of the characters, could understand what was happening.
An essential quality of composition is accessibility. A work of art should not contain unnecessary pictures, scenes, episodes. L. Tolstoy compared a work of art with a living organism. "In a real work of art - poetry, drama, painting, song, symphony - you cannot take out one verse, one measure from its place and put it on another, without violating the meaning of this work, just as you cannot not violate the life of an organic being if you take out one organ from its place and insert into another. "" According to K. Fedin, composition is "the logic of the development of a theme." Reading a work of art, we should feel where, at what time the hero lives, where is the center of events, which the main ones and which ones are less important.
A prerequisite for composition is perfection. L. Tolstoy wrote that the main thing in art is not to say anything superfluous. A writer should portray the world using as few words as possible. No wonder A. Chekhov called brevity the sister of talent. The skill of composition of a work of art is the talent of a writer.
There are two types of composition - event-plotted and non-singular, non-sympathetic or descriptive. The event-driven type of composition is characteristic of most epic and dramatic works. The composition of epic and dramatic works has space for hours and causal forms. The event type of composition can have three forms: chronological, retrospective and free (montage).
V. Lesik notes that the essence of the chronological form of event composition "lies in the fact that events ... go one after another in chronological order - the way they happened in life. There may be temporal distances between individual actions or pictures, but there is no violation natural sequence in time: what happened earlier in life, and in the work is presented earlier, and not after subsequent events. Consequently, there is no arbitrary movement of events, there is no violation of the direct movement of time. "
The peculiarity of retrospective composition is that the writer does not adhere to chronological order. The author can tell about the motives, causes of events, actions after their implementation. The sequence in the presentation of events can be interrupted by the memories of the heroes.
The essence of the free (montage) form of event composition is associated with violations of cause-and-effect and spatial relationships between events. The connection between episodes is more often associative-emotional than logical-semantic in nature. The montage composition is typical for the literature of the XX century. This type of composition is used in the novel by Yu. Japanese "Horsemen". Here, storylines are linked at an associative level.
A kind of event-driven composition is event-narrative. Its essence lies in the fact that the author, narrator, narrator, characters tell about the same event. The event-narrative form of the composition is characteristic of lyric-epic works.,
The descriptive type of composition is characteristic of lyric works. "The basis for the construction of a lyric work," notes V. Lesik, "is not a system or a development of events ... but the organization of lyrical components - emotions and impressions, the sequence of presenting thoughts, the order of transition from one impression to another, from one sensory image to another. "." Lyric works describe the impressions, feelings, experiences of the lyric hero.
Yu. Kuznetsov in the "Literary Encyclopedia" singles out a closed plot and an open composition. Fabulously closed is typical for folklore, works of classical and classical literature (three times repetitions, a happy ending in fairy tales, alternating performances of the chorus and episodes in ancient greek tragedy). "The composition is fabulously open," notes Yu. Kuznetsov, "devoid of a clear outline, proportions, flexible considering the genre-style opposition that arises in specific historical conditions. literary process... In particular, in sentimentalism (composition sternivska) and in romanticism, when open works became the negation of closed, classic ... ".
What does the composition depend on, what factors determine its features? The originality of the composition is primarily due to the concept of a work of art. Panas Mirny, having familiarized himself with the life story of the robber Gnidku, set himself the goal of explaining what caused the protest against the landowners. First, he wrote a story called "Chipka", in which he showed the conditions for the formation of the character of the hero. Subsequently, the writer expanded the concept of the work, demanded a complex composition, so the novel "Do the oxen howl when the nursery is full?"
The features of the composition are determined literary direction The classicists demanded three unities from dramatic works (unity of place, time and action). The events in the dramatic work had to take place during the day, grouped around one hero. Romantics portrayed exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances. Nature was often shown at the time of the elements (storms, floods, thunderstorms), they often took place in India, Africa, the Caucasus, and the East.
The composition of the work is determined by the genus, type and genre, the basis of lyric works is the development of thoughts and feelings. Lyric works are small in size, their composition is arbitrary, most often associative. In a lyric work, the following stages of the development of feeling can be distinguished:
a) the initial moment (observation, impressions, thoughts or state that became the impetus for the development of feelings);
b) the development of feelings;
c) culmination (the highest tension in the development of feelings);
In the poem "Swans of Motherhood" by V. Simonenko:
a) the starting point - to have a lullaby singing to his son;
b) the development of feelings - the mother dreams of the fate of her son, how he grows up, goes on a journey, meets friends, a wife;
c) culmination - the mother's opinion about the possible death of her son in a foreign land;
d) resume - they do not choose their homeland, a person is made a person by love for their native land.
Russian literary critic V. Zhirmunsky distinguishes seven types of composition of lyric works: anaphoristic, amebeinu, epiphoristic, refrain, ring, spiral, joint (epanastrophy, epanadiplosis), pointe.
Anaphoric composition is characteristic of works in which anaphora is used.
You renounced your native language. You
Your land will cease to give birth
A green branch in a pock on a willow tree,
It fades from your touch.
You renounced your native language. Zaros
Your way and disappeared into a nameless potion ...
Don't you have tears at a funeral
You don't have a song at a wedding.
(D. Pavlychko)
V. Zhirmunsky considers anaphora an indispensable component of amoeba composition, but in many works it is absent. Describing this type of composition, I. Kachurovsky notes that its essence is not in the anaphora, "but in the identity of the syntactic structure, replicas or counterreplications of two interlocutors, or in a certain pattern of the roll call of two choirs." German romantic Ludwig Ulyanda:
Have you seen the castle high
A castle over the Sea of Shire?
The clouds float quietly
Pink and gold above it.
Into the waters mirrored, peaceful
He would like to bow
And in the clouds to rise in the evening
Into their radiant ruby.
I saw the castle high,
Castle over the sea world.
Hail the mist deep
And a month stood over him.
(Translated by Michael Orestes)
Amebeina composition is common in tentsons and pastoral troubadours.
An epiphoric composition is characteristic of poetry with an epiphoric ending.
Fractures, kinks and fractures ...
The spine was broken in circles.
Understand, my brother, at last:
Before heart attacks
We had - so, do not touch!
Heart attacks of souls ... heart attacks of souls!
There were ulcers, like infections,
There were images to disgust -
One nasty thing, my brother.
So give it up, go and don't touch it.
We all have, porosum:
Heart attacks of souls ... heart attacks of souls!
In this bed, in this bed
In this screaming to the ceiling
Oh, don't touch us, my brother,
Don't touch the paralytics!
We all have, porosum:
Heart attacks of souls ... heart attacks of souls!
(Yu Shkrobinets)
Refrain composition consists of repeating a group of words or lines.
How quickly everything in life goes by.
And happiness will only flicker like a wing -
And he is no longer here ...
How quickly everything in life goes by
Is this our fault? -
The metronome is to blame.
How quickly everything in life goes by ...
And happiness will only flicker like a wing.
(Ludmila Rzhegak)
I. Kachurovsky considers the term "ring" unsuccessful. "Much better," he notes, "it sounds cyclic composition. Scientific name of this agent is anadiplosive composition. Moreover, in cases where anadiplosis is limited to any one stanza, then this refers not to composition, but to stylistics. "Anadiplosis as a compositional means can be complete or partial, when a part of the stanza is repeated, when the same words are in a changed order When some of them are replaced by synonyms, the following variants are also possible: not the first stanza is repeated, but the second, or the poet gives the first stanza as the final one.
Evening sun, thank you for the day!
Evening sun, thank you for your weariness.
The enlightened forest calmed down
Eden and gold for cornflower in rye.
For your dawn, and for my zenith,
and for my burnt zenith.
For the fact that tomorrow he wants greens,
For the fact that yesterday they managed to oddzvenity.
Heaven in the sky, for children's laughter.
For what I can and for what I must,
Evening sun, thank you all
who have not defiled the soul in any way.
For the fact that tomorrow is waiting for its inspirations.
That somewhere in the world blood has not yet been spilled.
Evening sun, thank you for the day
For this need, words are like prayers.
(P. Kostenko)
The composition of the spiral creates either a "chain" stanza (tercinas), or strophogenres (rondo, rondel, triolet), i.e. acquires strophic and genre characteristics.
I. Kachurovsky considers the name of the seventh type of composition indecent. More acceptable, in his opinion, is the name epanastrophy, epanadiplosis. The poem "Kanev" by E. Pluzhnik is a work where the repetition of rhyme in the collision of two adjacent stanzas has a compositional character. Each dvanadtsyativir-Shova stanza of the poem consists of three quatrains with rhymes that pass from quatrain to quatrain, the last verse of each of these twelve verses rhymes with the first poem as follows:
And fat and time will take over home
Electricity: and the newspaper rustled
Where once was a prophet and poet
Great spirit beyond darkness has dried up
And it will be reborn in millions of masses,
And not only the zoritime from the portrait,
Competition is an immortal symbol and omen,
Apostle of truth, peasant Taras.
And since my ten phrases
In the boring collection of anchorite,
As for the times to come for show
On the shores lies indifferent Summer ...
And the days will become like the lines of a sonnet,
Perfect ...
The essence of the pointe composition is that the poet leaves the interesting and essential part of the work for the last. This could be an unexpected turn of thought or a conclusion from all of the previous text. The means of pointe and composition is used in the sonnet, last poem which should be the quintessence of the piece.
Exploring lyric and lyric-epic works, I. Kachurovsky found three more types of composition: symlocial, radatsyna and main.
I. Kachurovsky calls the composition in the form of a symplokial one.
Tomorrow on earth
Others walk people,
Others love people -
Kind, affectionate and evil.
(V. Simonenko)
A radational composition with such types as a descending climax, a growing climax, a broken climax is quite common in poetry.
V.Misik used the composition radically in his poem "Modernity".
Yes, perhaps, even in the days of Boyan
It's spring time
And the rains of youth dripped,
And the clouds were approaching from Tarashche,
And the hawks beyond the horizon are uglibals,
And the cymbals sounded loudly,
And in Prolis the cymbals are blue
Stared into the heavenly strange clarity.
Everything is as it was then. And where is it, modernity?
She is in the main thing: in you.
The main composition is typical for wreaths of sonnets and folk poetry. V epic works tells about the life of people for a certain time. In novels, stories, events and heroes are revealed in detail, comprehensively.
In such works, there may be several storylines. In small works (stories, short stories), there are few plot lines, there are few actors, situations and circumstances are portrayed laconically.
Dramatic works are written in the form of dialogue, they are based on action, they are small in size, because most of them are intended for stage performance. In dramatic works there are directions that perform a service function - they give an idea of the scene of the action, characters, advice to artists, but are not included in the artistic fabric of the work.
The composition of a work of art also depends on the characteristics of the artist's talent. Panas Mirny used complex subjects, historical digressions. In the works of I. Nechuy-Levitsky, events develop in chronological order, the writer paints in detail portraits of heroes and nature. Let's remember "Kaydashev's family". In the works of I.S. Turgenev, events develop slowly, Dostoevsky uses unexpected plot moves, accumulates tragic episodes.
The composition of the works is influenced by the traditions of folklore. The basis of the fables of Aesop, Phaedra, La Fontaine, Krylov, Glebov "The Wolf and the Lamb" is the same folk story, and after the plot - morality. In Aesop's fable, it sounds like this: "The story proves that even a just defense is not valid for those who undertake to do a lie." Phaedrus ends the fable with the words: "This tale is written about people who, by deceiving the innocent, seek to destroy." The fable "The Wolf and the Lamb" by L. Glebov begins, on the contrary, morally:
The world has been going on for a long time,
The lower before the higher one bends,
And more than a smaller one, and even beats
Plot (from French sujet) - the chain of events depicted in a literary work, that is, the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in changing positions and circumstances.
Events recreated by writers constitute (along with characters) the basis objective world works and thus an integral "link" of its form. The plot is the organizing beginning of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It can also be significant in the lyrical kind of literature.
Subject elements: The main ones include the exposition, the setting, the development of the action, the twists and turns, the climax, the denouement. Optional: prologue, epilogue, prehistory, ending.
We will call a plot the system of events and actions contained in the work, its event chain, and precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. The last remark is important, since quite often the events are not told in chronological order, and the reader can find out later about what happened earlier. If we take only the main ones, key episodes plot, absolutely necessary for his understanding, and arrange them in chronological order, then we get plot - plot scheme or, as they sometimes say, "straightened plot" . Plots in various works can be very similar to each other, while the plot is always uniquely individual.
There are two types of plots. In the first type, the development of the action takes place intensely and as quickly as possible, the events of the plot contain the main meaning and interest for the reader, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge content load. This type of plot is found, for example, in "Belkin's Tales" by Pushkin, "On the Eve" by Turgenev, "The Gambler" by Dostoevsky, etc. Let us call this type of plot dynamic.
In another type of plot - let's call it, as opposed to the first, adynamic - the development of the action is slowed down and does not strive for a denouement, the events of the plot do not contain special interest, the elements of the plot are expressed indistinctly or are completely absent (the conflict is embodied and moves not with the help of plot, but with the help of other compositional means), the denouement is either completely absent, or is purely formal, in the general composition of the work there are many extra-plot elements (see about them a little below), which often shift the center of gravity of the reader's attention to themselves.
We observe this type of plot, for example, in Gogol's "Dead Souls", "Men" and other works by Chekhov, etc. There is a fairly simple way to check which plot you are dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be re-read from any place; for works with a dynamic plot, reading and re-reading only from beginning to end is characteristic. Dynamic plots, as a rule, are built on local conflicts, adynamic ones - on substantial ones. This pattern does not have the character of a rigid one hundred percent dependence, but still, in most cases, this relationship between the type of conflict and the type of plot takes place.
Concentric plot - one event is brought to the fore (one event situation). Typical for small epic forms, dramatic genres, literature of antiquity and classicism. ("Telegram" by K. Paustovsky, "Notes of a Hunter" by I. Turgenev) Chronic plot - events do not have causal relationships between themselves and are correlated with each other only in time ("Don Quixote" by Cervantes, "Odyssey" by Homer, Don- Juan "Byron).
Plot and composition... The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the general composition of the work, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, depending on the intentions of the author. There is also an internal composition of the plot, which we now turn to consider.
Depending on the relationship between the plot and the plot in a particular work, they talk about different types and plot composition techniques. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or fable sequence. A more complicated technique is in which we learn about an event that happened before the others at the very end of the work - this technique is called silence. This technique is very effective, since it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in suspense until the very end, and at the end to amaze him with the unexpectedness of the plot twist.
Thanks to these properties, the default technique is almost always used in works. detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Another technique for breaking chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection, when, in the course of the development of the plot, the author makes retreats into the past, as a rule, at the time preceding the beginning and beginning of the given work. Finally, the plot sequence can be broken in such a way that events of different times are mixed; the narrative all the time returns from the moment of the performed action to different previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past.
This composition of the plot is often motivated by the memories of the heroes. It is called free composition and in one way or another is used different writers quite often: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. However, it happens that free composition becomes the main and defining principle of plotting, in this case, as a rule, we are talking about free composition itself.
Off-plot elements. In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra-plot elements, which are often no less, if not more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then the non-plot elements are static; off-plot elements are those that do not advance the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the heroes remain in the same positions.
There are three main types of off-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes (otherwise they are also called plug-in novellas or plug-in plots). Description - it is a literary depiction of the external world (landscape, portrait, world of things, etc.) or a stable way of life, that is, those events and actions that take place regularly, from day to day and, therefore, also have no relation to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of off-plot elements, they are present in almost every epic work.
Copyright deviations - these are more or less detailed author's statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; however, these statements do not characterize individual characters or relationships between them. The author's deviations are an optional element in the composition of the work, but when they do appear there ("Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin, " Dead Souls"Gogol," The Master and Margarita "Bulgakov, etc.), they usually play crucial role and are subject to mandatory analysis. Finally, plug-in episodes - these are relatively complete fragments of the action, in which other characters act, the action is transferred to a different time and place, etc. Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol's Dead Souls.
In some cases, a psychological image can also be attributed to out-of-plot elements, if state of mind or the reflections of the hero are not a consequence or cause of plot events, are excluded from the plot chain. However, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms psychological image one way or another, they are included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.
In general, non-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.
Anchor points of the composition... The composition of any literary work is built in such a way that from beginning to end the reader's tension does not weaken, but intensifies. In a work that is small in volume, the composition most often represents a linear development in an ascending order, striving towards the finale, the ending, in which the point of highest tension is located. In works of a larger volume, the composition alternates between ups and downs of voltage at overall development ascending. We will call the points of greatest reading tension the pivot points of the composition.
The simplest case: the pivot points of the composition coincide with the elements of the plot, primarily with the climax and denouement. We meet with this when the dynamic plot is not just the basis of the composition of the work, but in fact exhausts its originality. In this case, the composition practically does not contain extra-plot elements, it uses minimally compositional techniques... An excellent example of such a construction is an anecdote story, such as the above-mentioned story by Chekhov, “The Death of an Official”.
In the event that the plot traces different turns of the hero's external fate with a relative or absolute static character of his character, it is useful to look for pivot points in the so-called vicissitudes - sharp turns in the hero's fate. It was this construction of control points that was typical, for example, for ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later used and used in adventure literature.
Almost always, one of the reference points falls on the ending of the piece (but not necessarily on the denouement, which may not coincide with the ending!). In small, mostly lyrical works, this, as has already been said, is often the only reference point, and all the previous only leads to it, increases the tension, providing its “explosion” in the ending.
In large works of fiction, the ending also usually contains one of the anchor points. It is no coincidence that many writers said that they were working on the last phrase especially carefully, and Chekhov pointed out to novice writers that it should sound "musical".
Sometimes - although not so often - one of the reference points of the composition is, on the contrary, at the very beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy's novel Resurrection.
Anchor points of a composition can sometimes be located at the beginning and end (more often) of parts, chapters, acts, etc. Types of composition. In the very general view two types of composition can be distinguished - let's call them conditionally simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to the unification of parts of the work into a single whole, and this unification is always carried out in the simplest and naturally... In the area of plot formation, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the area of narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the area subject details- a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important, supporting, symbolic details, etc.
With a complex composition in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements, a special artistic meaning is embodied. So, for example, the sequential change of narrators and the violation of the chronological sequence in Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" focus on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin's character and allow one to "get close" to her, gradually unraveling the character.
Simple and complex types compositions are sometimes difficult to identify in a specific work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be to a certain extent purely quantitative: we can talk about the greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of, say, Krylov's fables or Gogol's story The Carriage is simple in all respects, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov or Chekhov's Ladies with the Dog is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition rather difficult, but at the same time very important, since the simple and complex types of composition can become style dominants works and, thus, determine its artistic identity.
The prologue is the introductory part of the work. She either precedes storyline or the main motives of the work, or represents events preceding those described on the pages.The exposition is somewhat akin to a prologue, however, if the prologue does not have a special influence on the development of the plot of the work, then it directly introduces the reader into the atmosphere. It gives a description of the time and place of action, central characters and their relationship. The exposure can be located both at the beginning (direct exposure) and in the middle of the work (delayed exposure).
With a logically clear structure, the exposition is followed by an outset - an event that starts the action and provokes the development of a conflict. Sometimes the set precedes the exposition (for example, Leo Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"). In detective novels, which are distinguished by the so-called analytical plot construction, the cause of events (that is, the plot) is usually revealed to the reader after the consequence generated by it.
The plot is traditionally followed by the development of the action, consisting of a series of episodes in which the characters seek to resolve the conflict, but it only gets worse.
Gradually the development of the action comes to its own highest point, which is called the climax. The climax is a clash of characters or a turning point in their fate. After the climax, the action moves uncontrollably towards the denouement.
A denouement is the end of an action, or at least a conflict. As a rule, the denouement occurs at the end of the work, but sometimes it appears at the beginning (for example, IA Bunin "Light Breathing").
The piece often ends with an epilogue. This is the final part, which usually tells about the events that followed after the completion of the main plot, and about the further destinies of the characters. These are the epilogues in the novels of I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy.
Lyrical digressions
Also, the composition may contain extra-plot elements, for example, lyrical digressions. In them, he himself appears before the reader, expressing his own judgments on various issues that are not always directly related to the action. Of particular interest are lyrical digressions in "Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin and in "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol.All of the above make it possible to add artistic integrity, consistency and fascination to the work.