Correct compositional construction of the work. Compositional Element in Artwork: Examples

Composition is the arrangement of parts of a literary work in a certain order, a set of forms and methods of artistic expression by the author, depending on his intention. Translated from Latin means "composing", "building". The composition builds all parts of the work into a single complete whole.

It helps the reader to better understand the content of the works, maintains interest in the book and helps to draw the necessary conclusions in the final. Sometimes the composition of a book intrigues the reader and he looks for a continuation of the book or other works of this writer.

Composite elements

Such elements include narration, description, dialogue, monologue, inserted stories and lyrical digressions:

1. Narration- the main element of the composition, the author's story, revealing the content of a work of art. It takes up most of the volume of the entire work. It conveys the dynamics of events, it can be retelled or illustrated with drawings.
2. Description... It is a static element. During the description, events do not occur, it serves as a picture, a background for the events of the work. Description is a portrait, interior, landscape. A landscape is not necessarily a depiction of nature, it can be a city landscape, a lunar landscape, a description of fantastic cities, planets, galaxies, or a description of fictional worlds.
3. Dialogue- a conversation between two people. He helps to reveal the plot, deepen the characters actors... Through the dialogue of the two heroes, the reader learns about the events of the past of the heroes of the works, about their plans, begins to better understand the characters of the heroes.
4. Monologue- the speech of one character. In the comedy of A.S. Griboyedov, through Chatsky's monologues, the author conveys the thoughts of the leading people of his generation and the feelings of the hero himself, who learned about the betrayal of his beloved.
5. Image system... All images of the work that interact in connection with the intention of the author. These are images of people fairy tale characters, mythical, toponymic and subject. There are absurd images invented by the author, for example "The Nose" from the novel of the same name by Gogol. The authors simply came up with many images, and their names became common.
6. Insert stories, story within story. Many authors use this technique to strike up intrigue in a work or at a denouement. There may be several inserted stories in a work, events in which take place at different times. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita uses the novel-in-novel technique.
7. Author's or lyrical digressions... There are many lyrical digressions in Gogol's work "Dead Souls". Because of them, the genre of the work has changed. This is great prose called the poem "Dead Souls". And "Eugene Onegin" is called a novel in verse because of the large number of author's digressions, thanks to which readers are presented with an impressive picture of Russian life at the beginning of the 19th century.
8. Author's characteristic ... In it, the author talks about the character of the hero and does not hide his positive or negative attitude towards him. Gogol in his works often gives ironic characteristics to his characters - so precise and succinct that his characters often become household names.
9. Narrative plot is a chain of events that take place in a work. The plot is the content of the literary text.
10. Fable- all events, circumstances and actions that are described in the text. The main difference from the plot is the chronological sequence.
11. Landscape- description of nature, real and imaginary world, city, planet, galaxies, existing and fictional. The landscape is an artistic technique, thanks to which the character of the heroes is revealed more deeply and an assessment of events is given. You can remember how it changes seascape in Pushkin's "Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish", when the old man comes to the Golden Fish again and again with another request.
12. Portrait- This is a description of not only the appearance of the hero, but also his inner world. Thanks to the author's talent, the portrait is so accurate that all readers equally imagine the appearance of the hero of the book they have read: what Natasha Rostova, Prince Andrei, Sherlock Holmes looks like. Sometimes the author draws the reader's attention to some characteristic feature hero, for example, the mustache of Poirot in the books of Agatha Christie.

Don't Miss: In Literature, Use Cases.

Compositional techniques

Subject composition

The development of the plot has its own stages of development. There is always a conflict in the center of the plot, but the reader does not know about it immediately.

The plot composition depends on the genre of the work. For example, a fable necessarily ends with morality. Dramatic works of classicism had their own laws of composition, for example, they were supposed to have five acts.

The composition of works is distinguished by its unshakable features. folklore... Songs, fairy tales, epics were created according to their own laws of construction.

The composition of the tale begins with a saying: "As on the sea-ocean, but on the island of Buyan ...". The proverb was often composed in poetic form and at times was far from the content of the tale. The storyteller attracted the attention of the audience with a saying and waited to be listened to without distraction. Then he said: “This is a saying, not a fairy tale. The tale will be ahead. "

Then the beginning followed. The most famous of them begins with the words: "Once upon a time" or "In a certain kingdom, in the thirty state ...". Then the storyteller moved on to the fairy tale itself, to its heroes, to wonderful events.

Techniques of a fairy-tale composition, three-fold repetition of events: the hero fights the Serpent Gorynych three times, the princess sits at the window of the tower three times, and Ivanushka flies to her on horseback and breaks the ring, three times the Tsar tests his daughters-in-law in the fairy tale "The Frog Princess."

The ending of the fairy tale is also traditional, about the heroes of the fairy tale they say: "They live - they live and they make good." Sometimes the ending hints at a treat: "It's a fairy tale for you, but I have a knot of bagels."

Literary composition- this is the arrangement of parts of the work in a certain sequence, it is an integral system of forms of artistic depiction. Means and techniques of composition deepen the meaning of what is depicted, reveal the characteristics of the characters. Each work of art has its own unique composition, but there are its traditional laws that are observed in some genres.

In the days of classicism, there was a system of rules that prescribed the authors certain rules writing texts, and they could not be broken. This is the rule of three unities: time, place, plot. This is a five-act construction of dramatic works. it speaking surnames and a clear division into negative and positive characters. The peculiarities of the composition of the works of classicism are a thing of the past.

Compositional techniques in literature depend on the genre of the work of art and on the talent of the author, who has available types, elements, techniques of composition, knows its features and knows how to use these artistic methods.

Today we will talk about ways to organize the structure of a work of art and analyze such a fundamental concept as composition... Undoubtedly, composition is an extremely important element of a work, mainly because it determines the form or shell in which the content is “wrapped”. And if in ancient times the shell was often not given of great importance, then already from the 19th century, a well-built composition becomes almost mandatory element any good novel, not to mention short prose (novellas and short stories). Understanding the rules for building a composition is for contemporary author something of a must-have program.

In general, it is most convenient to disassemble and assimilate certain types of composition using examples from short prose, solely because of the smaller volume. This is what we are going to do in the course of today's conversation.

Mikhail Weller "Technology of Storytelling"

As I have already noted above, it is easiest to study the typology of composition using the example of small prose, since it uses almost the same principles as in large prose. Well, if so, then I suggest that you trust in this matter to a professional author who has devoted his whole life to working on small prose - Mikhail Weller. Why him? Well, if only because Weller wrote a number of interesting essays on the craft of writing, from which a novice writer can learn a lot of useful and interesting things. Personally, I can recommend two of his collections: “ Word and destiny», « Word and profession", Which have been my reference books for a long time. For those who have not read them yet, I definitely recommend filling this gap as soon as possible.

Today, to analyze the composition, we turn to the famous work of Mikhail Weller “ Storytelling technology". In this essay, the author literally breaks down all the features and subtleties of writing stories and short stories, systematizes his knowledge and experience in this area. Without a doubt, this is one of best works in theory short prose and, no less valuable, it belongs to the pen of our compatriot and contemporary. I think the best source for our today's discussion we just can't find it.

Let's first define what composition is.

- this is a specific construction, the internal structure of a work (architectonics), including selection, grouping and sequence visual techniques organizing an ideological and artistic whole.

This definition is, of course, very abstract and dry. The wording given by Weller is still closer to me. There she is:

- this is the arrangement of the material selected for the work in such an order that the effect of a greater impact on the reader is achieved than with a simple sequential presentation of facts.

The composition pursues a clearly defined goal - to achieve from the text the semantic and emotional impact on the reader that the author intended. If the author wants to confuse the reader, he builds the composition in one way, if he decided to amaze him in the ending - in a completely different way. It is from the goals of the writer himself that all types and forms of composition originate, which we will analyze below.

1. Direct-flow composition

This is the most common, well-known and familiar way of presenting the material: at first it was like this, then something happened, the hero did this, and everything ended up like this. Main feature direct-flow composition is a strict sequence of statements of facts while maintaining a single chain of cause-and-effect relationships. Everything here is consistent, clear and logical.

In general, this type of composition is characterized by the slowness and detail of the narration: the events follow one after the other, and the author has the opportunity to more thoroughly highlight the moments of interest to him. At the same time, such an approach is familiar to the reader: it excludes, on the one hand, any risk of getting confused in the events, and on the other hand, it contributes to the formation of sympathy for the heroes, since the reader sees the gradual development of their character in the course of the story.

In general, personally, I consider the direct-flow composition to be a reliable, but very boring option, which, perhaps, is ideal for a novel or some kind of epic, but the story built with its help is unlikely to shine with originality.

The basic principles of building a straight-through composition:

• The strict sequence of the described events.

2. Ringing

By and large, this is the same straight-through story with one single, but decisively important nuance - the author's insertions at the beginning and at the end of the text. In this case, we get a kind of matryoshka, a story within a story, where the hero presented to us at the beginning will be the main storyteller. internal history... This move creates a very curious effect: stories are superimposed on the presentation of the plot. personality traits, worldview and views of the character leading the story. Here the author deliberately separates his point of view from the point of view of the narrator and may well disagree with his conclusions. And if in ordinary stories we, as a rule, have two points of view (the hero and the author), then this type of composition brings even greater semantic diversity, adding a third point of view - the point of view of the character-narrator.

The use of ringing makes it possible to give the story a unique charm and flavor, impossible in other circumstances. The fact is that the narrator can speak in any language (colloquial, deliberately vernacular, even absolutely incoherent and illiterate), he can broadcast any views (including those that contradict any generally accepted norms), in any case, the author is removed from his image, the character acts independently, and the reader forms his own attitude towards his personality. Such a separation of roles automatically brings the writer to the widest operational space: after all, he has the right to choose even an inanimate object, even a child, or an alien, as a narrator. The degree of bullying is limited only by the level of fantasy.

In addition, the introduction of a personified narrator creates in the mind of the reader the illusion of greater reliability of what is happening. This is valuable when the author is a public staff with a wide famous biography, and the reader knows very well that the beloved author, for example, has never been in prison. In this case, the writer, introducing the image of the narrator - a seasoned prisoner, simply removes this contradiction in the minds of the public and calmly writes his crime novel.

Ringing - very efficient way organization of the composition, which is often used in combination with other compositional schemes.

Ringing signs:

• The presence of a narrator character;
• Two stories - an internal one, told by a character, and an external one, told by the author himself.

3. Point composition

It is characterized by a close examination of one single episode, a moment in life that seemed to the author to be important and something remarkable. All actions here take place in a limited area of ​​space in a limited period of time. The entire structure of the work is, as it were, compressed to a single point; hence the name.

Despite the seeming simplicity, this type of composition is extremely difficult: the author is required to put together a whole mosaic of the smallest details and details in order to get the result living picture selected event. Comparison with painting in this context seems to me to be quite apt. Working on a point composition is like painting a picture - which, in fact, is also a point in space and time. Therefore, everything will be important for the author here: intonation, gestures, and details of descriptions. A point composition is a moment of life viewed through a magnifying glass.

Point composition is most often found in short stories. Usually these are simple everyday stories, in which a huge stream of experience, emotions and sensations is transmitted through the little things. In general, all that the writer was able to put into this point of the artistic space.

The principles of building a point composition:

• Narrowing of the visual field to a single episode;
• Hypertrophied attention to detail and nuance;
• Show big through small.

4. Wicker composition

Differs mainly in the presence complex system images of a large number of events occurring with different heroes at different points in time. That is, in fact, this model is exactly the opposite of the previous one. Here, the author purposefully gives the reader a lot of events that are happening now, that happened in the past, and sometimes that should happen in the future. Author in a large number uses references to the past, transitions from one character to another. And all in order to weave a huge large-scale picture of our history from this mass of connected episodes.

Often, such an approach is justified by the fact that the writer reveals the causes and relationships of the described events with the help of episodes that took place sometime in the past, or the implicit connection of today's events with some others. All this develops according to the will and idea of ​​the author as a complex puzzle.

This type of composition is more typical of large-scale prose, where there is room for the formation of all its laces and intricacies; in the case of short stories or short stories, the author is unlikely to have the opportunity to build something large-scale.

The main features of this type of composition:

• References to events that took place before the beginning of the story;
• Transitions between characters;
• Creation of scale through many interconnected episodes.

On this I propose to stop this time. A strong flow of information often creates confusion in the head. Try to think it over and be sure to read " Storytelling technology»Mikhail Weller. Continuation - very soon on the pages of the blog "Literary Masterskaya". Subscribe to updates, leave your comments. See you soon!

The integrity of a work of art is achieved by various means. Among these funds important role belongs to the composition and the plot.

Composition(from Latin componere - to compose, connect) - the construction of a work, the ratio of all its elements, creating a holistic picture of life and contributing to expression 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 relationship 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 develops in time, and driving force the plot is conflict. Conflicts are different: social, love, psychological, everyday, 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 affair. 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" in the city of the Turkin family.

Stitch - an event that initiates the development of action, conflict. In the story "Ionych" Startsev's acquaintance with the Turkins' family.

After the set, the development of the action begins, highest point which is the culmination In L. Chekhov's story - Startsev's declaration 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. L. Chekhov's story contains information about the fate of the heroes, which can be attributed to the epilogue.

In the Big fiction usually a lot plot lines and each of them. 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 through the montage of 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 from 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 pictures, lyrical digressions, reflections, geographical 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, there is an overlap of times. 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 talks 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 is in the cited 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 specific sensory details of the characters' world, 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 of the appearance and speech of the heroes, their inner world, the environment in order to express his thought ... 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 help the world of characters appear 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 force him to complete the missing features with the help of 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 narrative. 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 by verbal, but by other means (there is no description of the external appearance of the characters, their actions, the situation, because there are actors on the stage and there are scenery). The speech characteristics of the characters acquire special significance.

In the lyrics, the 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 and 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 towards 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 relationships 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 forces us to talk about such an expressive means as the plot. 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 problematic motives, the gradual disclosure of the characters of the 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 components of the form are most directly related to the 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 literatures of the world, but misinterpreted the results of such a study. Comparativists focused primarily on the influence of literatures on one another. 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 "ancient bequeathed images" of literature, as well as about "wandering 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

Today we are talking on the topic: "Traditional elements of composition." But first, you should remember what "composition" is. For the first time we meet with this term in school. But everything flows, everything changes, gradually even the strongest knowledge is erased. Therefore, we read, stir up the old, and fill in the missing gaps.

Composition in literature

What is composition? First of all, we turn to explanatory dictionary and find out that literally translated from Latin this term means "composing, composing." Needless to say, without "composition", that is, without "composition", no piece of art is possible (examples follow) and no text as a whole. Hence it follows that composition in literature is a certain order of arrangement of parts of a work of art. In addition, these are certain forms and methods of artistic depiction that are directly related to the content of the text.

The main elements of the composition

When we open a book, the first thing we hope for and what we look forward to is a beautiful, entertaining story that will surprise or keep us in suspense, and then not let go for a long time, forcing us to mentally return to what we read again and again. In this sense, a writer is a real artist who, first of all, shows, not tells. He avoids direct text like: "And now I will tell." On the contrary, his presence is invisible, unobtrusive. But what do you need to know and be able to do for such skill?

Compositional elements - this is the palette in which the artist is a master of the word, mixes his colors to create a bright, colorful plot in the future. These include: monologue, dialogue, description, narration, system of images, author's digression, inserted genres, plot, plot. Further - about each of them in more detail.

Monologue speech

Depending on how many people or characters in a work of art participate in speech - one, two or more - monologue, dialogue and polylogue are distinguished. The latter is a kind of dialogue, so we will not dwell on it. Let's consider only the first two.

A monologue is an element of composition, which consists in the use by the author of the speech of one character, which does not suggest an answer or does not receive it. As a rule, it is addressed to listeners in dramatic work or to yourself.

Depending on the function, such types of monologue are distinguished in the text as: technical - description by the hero of the events that have occurred or are currently taking place; lyric - the transfer by the hero of his strong emotional experiences; acceptance monologue - the inner reflections of a character who is faced with a difficult choice.

The following types are distinguished according to the form: author's word - an appeal of the author to the readers, most often through this or that character; stream of consciousness - the free flow of the hero's thoughts as they are, without obvious logic and not adhering to the rules of literary construction of speech; dialectics of reasoning - the presentation by the hero of all the pros and cons; dialogue in loneliness - a mental appeal of the character to another character; apart - in drama, a few words aside, which characterize the real state of the hero; stanzas are also lyrical reflections of the character in drama.

Dialogue speech

Dialogue is another element of composition, a conversation between two or more characters. Usually, dialogical speech is an ideal means of conveying the collision of two opposing points of view. She also helps to create an image, reveal personality, character.

Here I would like to say about the so-called dialogue of questions, which involves a conversation consisting exclusively of questions, and the response of one of the characters is both a question and an answer to the previous remark at the same time. (examples follow) Khanmagomedov Aydin Asadullayevich "Goryanka" is a vivid confirmation of this.

Description

What is a man? This is a special character, and individuality, and unique. appearance, and the environment in which he was born, raised and exists in this moment life, and his house, and the things with which he surrounds himself, and people, far and near, and the nature around him ... The list can be continued indefinitely. Therefore, creating an image in a literary work, a writer must look at his hero from all possible sides and describe, without missing a single detail, even more - create new "shades" that cannot even be imagined. In the literature, the following types are distinguished artistic descriptions: portrait, interior, landscape.

Portrait

It is one of the most important compositional elements in literature. He describes not only the appearance of the hero, but also his inner world- the so-called psychological portrait. The variety and place of a portrait in a work of art. The book can begin with it, or, conversely, it can end with it (A. P. Chekhov, "Ionych"). maybe immediately after the character has done something (Lermontov, "A Hero of Our Time"). In addition, the author can draw a character in one fell swoop, monolithic (Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment", Prince Andrey in "War and Peace"), and another time and scatter features in the text ("War and Peace", Natasha Rostova). Basically, the writer himself takes up the brush, but sometimes he gives this right to one of the characters, for example, Maxim Maksimych in the novel "A Hero of Our Time", so that he describes Pechorin as accurately as possible. The portrait can be painted ironically, satirically (Napoleon in "War and Peace") and "ceremonially". Sometimes only the face, a certain detail, or the entire body - a figure, manners, gestures, clothes (Oblomov) - falls under the author's "magnifying glass".

Interior description

The interior is an element of the composition of the novel, allowing the author to create a description of the hero's dwelling. It is no less valuable than the portrait, since the description of the type of room, the setting, the atmosphere prevailing in the house - all this plays an invaluable role in conveying the characteristics of the character, in understanding the full depth of the created image. The interior reveals both a close connection with which is the part through which the whole is cognized, and the singular through which the multiple is seen. So, for example, Dostoevsky in the novel "The Idiot" in gloomy house Rogozhin "hung" Holbein's painting "Dead Christ" in order to once again draw attention to the irreconcilable struggle true faith with passions, with disbelief in Rogozhin's soul.

Landscape - a description of nature

As Fedor Tyutchev wrote, nature is not what we imagine, it is not soulless. On the contrary, there is much hidden in it: soul, freedom, love, and language. The same can be said for a landscape in a literary work. The author, with the help of such an element of composition as a landscape, depicts not only nature, locality, city, architecture, but thereby also reveals the state of the character, and opposes the naturalness of nature to conventional human beliefs, acts as a kind of symbol.

Remember the description of the oak tree during Prince Andrey's trip to the Rostovs' house in the novel War and Peace. What was he (the oak) at the very beginning of the journey - an old, gloomy, "contemptuous freak" among birches smiling at the world and spring. But at the second meeting, he unexpectedly blossomed, renewed, despite the hundred-year-old tough bark. He still obeyed spring and life. The oak tree in this episode is not only a landscape, a description of the reviving nature after a long winter, but also a symbol of the changes that have occurred in the prince's soul, a new stage in his life, which has managed to "break" the already almost rooted desire to be an outcast of life until the end of his days ...

Narration

Unlike the description, which is static, nothing happens in it, nothing changes and in general it answers the question "what?" ? ". Figuratively speaking, the narrative as an element of the composition of a work of art can be presented in the form of a slide show - a quick change of pictures illustrating a plot.

Image system

As each person has his own network of lines on the pads of his fingers, forming a unique pattern, so each work has its own unique system of images. This can include the image of the author, if there is one, the image of the narrator, the main characters, heroes-antipodes, minor characters, and so on. Their relationship is built depending on the ideas and goals of the author.

Author's digression

Or a lyrical digression is the so-called off-plot element of the composition, with the help of which the author's personality seems to break into the plot, thereby interrupting the direct course of the plot narration. What is it for? First of all, to establish a special emotional contact between the author and the reader. Here the writer no longer acts as a storyteller, but opens his soul, raises deeply personal questions, discusses moral, aesthetic, philosophical themes, shares memories from his own life. Thus, the reader is able to catch his breath before the stream of the following events, stop and delve deeper into the idea of ​​the work, reflect on the questions posed to him.

Plug-in genres

This is another important compositional element, which is not only a necessary part of the plot, but also serves a more voluminous, deeper disclosure of the hero's personality, helps to understand the reason for his one or another life choice, his inner world, and so on. Any genre of literature can be plug-in. For example, stories are the so-called story in a story (the novel "A Hero of Our Time"), poems, stories, poems, songs, fables, letters, parables, diaries, sayings, proverbs and many others. They can be either your own composition or someone else's.

Plot and plot

These two concepts are often either confused with each other, or mistakenly believed that they are one and the same. But they should be distinguished. The plot is, one might say, the skeleton, the basis of the book, in which all the parts are interconnected and follow one after the other in the order that is necessary for the full realization of the author's intention, the disclosure of the idea. In other words, the events in the plot can take place at different time periods. The plot is that basis, but in a more concise form, and plus - the sequence of events in their strictly chronological order. For example, birth, maturity, old age, death - this is a plot, then the plot is maturity, memories from childhood, adolescence, youth, lyrical digressions, old age and death.

Subject composition

The plot, just like the literary work itself, has its own stages of development. In the center of any plot there is always a conflict around which the main events develop.

The book begins with an exposition or a prologue, that is, with an "explanation", a description of the situation, the starting point from which everything began. What follows is the plot, one might say, the foresight of future events. At this stage, the reader begins to realize that a future conflict is just around the corner. As a rule, it is in this part that the main characters meet, who are destined to go through the coming trials together, side by side.

We continue to list the elements plot composition... The next stage is the development of the action. This is usually the heaviest piece of text. Here the reader already becomes an invisible participant in the events, he is familiar with everyone, he feels what is the essence of what is happening, but is still intrigued. Gradually, the centrifugal force sucks him in, slowly, unexpectedly for himself, he finds himself in the very center of the whirlpool. The culmination comes - the very peak, when a real storm of feelings and a sea of ​​emotions falls on both the main characters and the reader himself. And then, when it is already clear that the worst is over and you can breathe, the denouement is quietly knocking on the door. She chews everything, explains every detail, puts all things on the shelves - each in its place, and the tension slowly subsides. The epilogue draws the final line and briefly outlines the further life of the main and secondary characters. However, not all plots have the same structure. The traditional elements of a fairytale composition are completely different.

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it. Which? The elements of the composition of the fairy tale are fundamentally different from their "brothers", although when reading, light and unconstrained, you do not notice this. This is the talent of a writer or even a whole nation. As Alexander Sergeevich instructed, reading fairy tales is simply necessary, especially common folk, because they contain all the properties of the Russian language.

So what are they - traditional elements fabulous composition? The first words are a saying that sets you in a fabulous mood and promises a lot of miracles. For example: "This fairy tale will tell from morning itself until lunchtime, having eaten soft bread ..." When the listeners relax, sit down more comfortably and are ready to listen further, it is time for the beginning - the beginning. The main characters, the place and time of the action are presented, and another line is drawn, dividing the world into two parts - the real and the magical.

Next comes the fairy tale itself, in which repetitions are often found to enhance the impression and gradually approach the denouement. In addition, poems, songs, onomatopoeia of animals, dialogues are also integral elements of the composition of a fairy tale. The fairy tale also has its own ending, which seems to sum up all the miracles, but at the same time hints at the infinity of the magical world: "They live, live and make good."

Repeat- one of the simplest and at the same time the most effective composition techniques. It allows you to easily and naturally "round off" the work, to give it compositional harmony. The so-called ring composition looks especially effective when a compositional roll-call is established between the beginning and the end of the piece; such a composition often carries a special artistic meaning. A classic example using the ring composition to express the content serve as a miniature of the Block "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...":

Night, street, lantern, pharmacy, Senseless and dim light. Live for at least a quarter of a century, Everything will be like this. There is no escape.

If you die, you start over again,
And everything will repeat itself as of old:
Night, icy ripples of the canal
Pharmacy, street, lamp.

Here the vicious circle of life, a return to what has already been passed, is physically embodied in the composition of the poem, in the compositional identity of the beginning and the end.

A close-to-repeat technique is gain . This technique is used in cases where simple repetition is not enough to create an artistic effect, when you need to enhance the impression by selecting uniform images or details. Thus, according to the principle of strengthening, the description of the interior decoration of Sobakevich's house in Gogol's Dead Souls is constructed: every new detail reinforces the previous one: “everything was solid, awkward to the highest degree and had some strange resemblance to the owner of the house; in the corner of the living room stood a pot-bellied walnut bureau on four braided legs, a perfect bear. The table, armchairs, chairs - everything was of the heaviest and most restless quality - in a word, every object, every chair seemed to say: "I, too, Sobakevich!" or "and I am also very similar to Sobakevich!"

The selection of artistic images in Chekhov's story "The Man in a Case" works according to the same principle of amplification: “He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella, and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And his umbrella was in a case of gray suede, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil, he also had the knife in a case; and the face, too, seemed to be in a cover, as he kept hiding it in a raised collar all the time. He wore dark glasses, a sweatshirt, put cotton on his ears, and when he got on a cab, he ordered to lift the top. "

29 The opposite of repetition and reinforcement is juxtaposition . From the very name it is clear that this compositional technique is based on the antithesis of contrasting images; for example, in Lermontov's poem "The Death of a Poet": "And you will not wash away all your black by the Poet's blood righteous blood". Here, the underlined epithets form a compositionally significant opposition. In a broader sense, any opposition of images is called opposition: for example, Onegin and Lensky, Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, images of storm and peace in Lermontov's poem "Sail", etc. Opposition - very strong and expressive artistic device, which you should always pay attention to when analyzing a composition.

Contamination, combining the techniques of repetition and opposition, gives a special compositional effect; the so-called mirror composition. As a rule, with a mirror composition, the initial and end images are repeated exactly the opposite. A classic example of a mirror composition is Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin. In it, in the denouement, the plot is repeated, only with a change of position: at the beginning Tatiana is in love with Onegin, writes him a letter and listens to his cold rebuke, in the end - the opposite is true: Onegin, in love, writes a letter and listens to Tatiana's rebuke. Reception of a mirror composition is one of the strong and winning techniques; its analysis needs to be given sufficient attention.

The last compositional technique - mounting, in which two images, located side by side in the work, give rise to some new, third meaning, which appears precisely from their neighborhood. So, for example, in Chekhov's story "Ionych", the description of Vera Iosifovna's "art salon" is adjacent to the mention of the clinking of knives and the smell of fried onions coming from the kitchen. Together, these two details create that atmosphere of vulgarity, which Chekhov tried to reproduce in the story.

All compositional techniques can perform two functions in the composition of a work, somewhat different from each other: they can organize either a separate small fragment of the text (at the micro level), or the entire text (at the macro level), becoming in the latter case the principle of composition.

These are the main compositional techniques with the help of which a composition is built in any work.

6 Topic 8. Image in fiction.

Artistic image- any phenomenon creatively recreated by the author in a work of art. It is the result of the artist's understanding of a phenomenon, a process. At the same time, the artistic image not only reflects, but, above all, generalizes reality, reveals the eternal in the single, transient. The specificity of an artistic image is determined not only by the fact that it comprehends reality, but also by the fact that it creates a new, fictional world. The artist seeks to select such phenomena and portray them in such a way in order to express his idea of ​​life, his understanding of its tendencies and laws.

So, " artistic image is a specific and at the same time generalized picture human life created with the help of fiction and having aesthetic value ”(LI Timofeev). An image is often understood as an element or part of an artistic whole, as a rule, a fragment that seems to have an independent life and content (for example, character in literature, symbolic images like M. Yu. Lermontov's "sail").

An artistic image becomes artistic not because it is written off from nature and looks like real thing or a phenomenon, but because with the help of the author's fantasy it transforms reality. The artistic image not only and not so much copies reality, but seeks to convey the most important and essential. So, one of the heroes of Dostoevsky's novel "Teenager" said that photographs very rarely can give a correct idea of ​​a person, because not always a human face expresses the main character traits. Therefore, for example, Napoleon, photographed at a certain moment, might seem stupid. The artist, on the other hand, must find the main and characteristic in the person. In Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, the amateur Vronsky and the artist Mikhailov painted a portrait of Anna. It seems that Vronsky knows Anna better, understands her more and more deeply. But Mikhailov's portrait was distinguished not only by its resemblance, but also by that special beauty that only Mikhailov could detect and which Vronsky did not notice. "You had to know and love her as I loved in order to find that sweetest emotional expression of hers," Vronsky thought, although he only recognized from this portrait "this is her sweetest emotional expression." On different stages the development of mankind, the artistic image takes various forms. This happens for two reasons: the very subject of the image - the person - changes, and the forms of its reflection in art also change. There are peculiarities in the reflection of the world (and therefore in the creation of artistic images), by realist artists, sentimentalists, romantics, realists, modernists, etc. As art develops, the relationship between reality and fiction, reality and ideal, general and individual, changes. rational and emotional, etc. In the images of the literature of classicism, for example, the struggle between feeling and duty is highlighted, and goodies invariably make a choice in favor of the latter, sacrificing personal happiness in the name of state interests. On the other hand, romantic artists exalt a rebellious hero, a loner who rejected society or was rejected by it. Realists strove for a rational understanding of the world, identifying cause-and-effect relationships between objects and phenomena. And the modernists announced that it is possible to know the world and man only with the help of irrational means (intuition, inspiration, inspiration, etc.). At the center of realistic works is a person and his relationship with the world around him, while romantics, and then modernists, are primarily interested in the inner world of their heroes.

Although the creators of artistic images are artists (poets, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, etc.), in a sense, their co-creators are also those who perceive these images, that is, readers, viewers, listeners, etc. Thus, the ideal reader not only passively perceives the artistic image, but also fills it with his own thoughts, feelings and emotions. Different people and different eras reveal its various sides. In this sense, the artistic image is inexhaustible, like life itself.

An artistic image is an art-specific way of reflecting, reproducing life, its generalization from the standpoint of the artist's aesthetic ideal in a living, concrete-sensual form. Imagery is a common essential feature of all types of art. In aesthetics, the word "image" is used in two senses: 1) as a character; 2) as a characteristic of the way of reflecting life, which is inherent this kind art.

Sometimes the concept of "image" is used in literature both in a broad and in a narrower sense. In a broad sense, the image is called the entire complete picture painted by the writer in the work, for example, we say that Gogol in "Dead Souls" created the image of feudal Russia of the same time, in this case we consider the entire work as a whole as one image, we give the concept " image "collective meaning.

In the narrow sense of the word, every single picture (figurative) word and expression is also called an image in literature; so, for example, IS Nikitin's verse "And the forest stands for itself, smiling" in the poem "Morning" or Pushkin's poems "A bee flies from a wax cell to pay tribute to the field" are images in this narrow sense.

In literature, we distinguish character images in which the artist depicts various human characters and social types (Khlestakov, Oblomov, Rakhmetov, etc.), images landscapes- the image of pictures of nature, images-things- an image of the entire subject-everyday environment in which a person's life takes place (room, street, city, etc.). In many literary works we also have an image of a person's lyrical states - lyrical motives, which also have a figurative character; the writer depicts moods and experiences in pictures, as they appear in life.

Images in art are the main vehicle artistic thinking, a special form of expression of ideological and thematic content. Each image reveals a particular idea. There can be no work of art without images.

The artistic image combines two, at first glance, completely opposite qualities to each other: single and general, individual and typical, concrete and abstract. The possibility of such a combination follows from life itself. The singular and the general in life always coexist in an inextricable bond: the general properties of a person are manifested only in a single - in each individual person, and vice versa, - each person carries some common human properties. A scientist, speaking about the general properties of any object or phenomenon, is distracted from its individual characteristics. The artist, on the contrary, shows general properties in a specific phenomenon, by depicting individual characteristics. This complex fusion of the general and the singular is the originality, distinctive feature artistic (figurative) thinking. This is the main reason for the all-round influence of the artistic image on the mind, and on the heart, and on the will of man.

In the creation of an artistic image, the role of fiction, the writer's creative imagination, imagination is great. The artistic image has a concrete-sensual character not because the artist writes off this or that object or phenomenon from nature, but because, processing, summing up all his life impressions, he, with the help of his imagination, invents creative imagination, creates the very character of a person ( social type), a picture of nature so that everyone can see, hear, feel, and so that all these pictures reflect the most essential, basic properties of the corresponding life phenomena.

The picture of the world depicted consists of separate
artistic details. The smallest artistic detail

a pictorial or expressive artistic detail, an element of a landscape or portrait, a separate thing, an act, a psychological movement, etc. Artistic details can be divided into several groups. Details stand out first external and psychological. External details - the objective being of people, their appearance and living environment. External details, in turn, are subdivided into portrait, landscape and material. Psychological details draw us a person's inner world, these are separate mental movements: thoughts, feelings, experiences, desires, etc.

External and psychological details are not separated by an impenetrable boundary. So, an external detail becomes psychological if it conveys, expresses certain mental movements (in this case, we are talking about psychological portrait) or is included in the course of the hero's thoughts and feelings (for example, a real ax and the image of this ax in Raskolnikov's mental life).

By the nature of the artistic impact they differ details-details and details-symbols. Details act in mass, describing an object or phenomenon from all conceivable sides, a symbolic detail is single, tries to grasp the essence of the phenomenon at once, highlighting the main thing in it. In this regard, the modern literary critic E. Dobin suggests separating details and details, believing that detail is artistically superior to detail. However, A.B. Yesin, both the principle of using artistic details are equivalent, each of them is good in its place.