Literary criticism is the science of fiction, its origin, essence and development. Literary studies studies the fiction of various peoples of the world in order to understand the features and patterns of its own content and the forms that express them.
Literary studies dates back to ancient times. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book “Poetics,” was the first to give a theory of genres and types of literature (epic, drama, lyric poetry).
In the 17th century, N. Boileau created his treatise “The Art of Poetry”, based on the earlier work of Horace (“The Science of Poetry”). It isolates knowledge about literature, but it was not yet a science.
In the 18th century, German scientists tried to create educational treatises (Lessing “Laocoon. On the Boundaries of Painting and Poetry”, Gerber “Critical Forests”).
At the beginning of the 19th century in Germany, the Grimm brothers created their theory.
In Russia, the science of literature as an independent discipline, as a specific system of knowledge and a tool for analyzing literary phenomena with its own concepts, theory and methodology was established by the middle of the 19th century.
Modern literary criticism consists of three independent, but closely related basic disciplines:
literary theory
history of literature
literary criticism.
Literary theory explores the nature of verbal creativity, develops and systematizes laws, general concepts of fiction, patterns of development of genders and genres. Literary theory studies the general laws of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, work and reader.
The theory of literature develops in the process of philosophical and aesthetic comprehension of the entire set of facts of the historical and literary process.
^ History of Literature explores the uniqueness of various national literatures, studies the history of the emergence, change, and development of literary trends and trends, literary periods, artistic methods and styles in different eras and among different peoples, as well as the creativity of individual writers as a naturally determined process.
The history of literature examines any literary phenomenon in historical development. Neither a literary work nor a writer’s creativity can be understood without connection with time, with the unified process of literary movement.
The history and theory of literature are closely interconnected. However, their means and techniques are different: literary theory seeks to determine the essence of the developing aesthetic system, gives a general perspective of the artistic process, and the history of literature characterizes specific forms and their specific manifestations.
^ Literary criticism(from the Greek kritike - the art of disassembling, judging) deals with the analysis and interpretation of works of art, evaluating them from the point of view of aesthetic value, identifying and approving the creative principles of a particular literary movement.
Literary criticism is based on the general methodology of the science of literature and is based on the history of literature. Unlike literary history, it illuminates the processes occurring primarily in the literary movement of our time, or interprets the literature of the past from the point of view of modern social and artistic problems. Literary criticism is closely connected both with life, social struggle, and with the philosophical and aesthetic ideas of the era.
Criticism shows the writer the merits and shortcomings of his work. Addressing the reader, the critic not only explains the work to him, but involves him in a living process of joint comprehension of what he has read at a new level of understanding. An important advantage of criticism is the ability to consider a work as an artistic whole and recognize it in the general process of literary development.
In modern literary criticism, various genres are cultivated - article, review, review, essay, literary portrait, polemical remark, bibliographic note.
The source base for the theory and history of literature, literary criticism are auxiliary literary disciplines:
textual criticism
historiography
bibliography
Textual criticism studies the text as such: manuscripts, editions, editions, time of writing. Studying the history of a text at all stages of its existence gives an idea of the sequence of the history of its creation (the “material” embodiment of the creative process - sketches, drafts, notes, variants, etc.). Textual criticism also deals with establishing authorship (attribution).
Historiography is devoted to the study of the specific historical conditions for the appearance of a particular work.
Bibliography– branch of scientific description and systematization of information about published works. This is an auxiliary discipline of any science (scientific literature on a particular subject), based on two principles: thematic and chronological. There is a bibliography for individual periods and stages, for personalities (authors), as well as a bibliography of fiction and literary criticism. Bibliographies can be scientific auxiliary (with explanatory annotations and brief comments) and recommendatory (containing lists of main publications on certain sections and topics).
Modern literary criticism is a very complex and moving system of disciplines, which is characterized by the close interdependence of all its branches. Thus, literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines; criticism is based on data from the history and theory of literature, and the latter takes into account and comprehends the experience of criticism, while criticism itself over time becomes the material of the history of literature, etc.
Modern literary criticism is developing in close connection with history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, linguistics, and psychology.
Test questions for the topic “Literary criticism as a science”
1.
What is the subject of research in literary criticism as a science?
2.
What is the structure of literary criticism (main and auxiliary disciplines of the science of literature)?
3.
What does literary theory study?
4.
What does literary history explore?
5.
What are the functions of literary criticism?
6.
What is the subject of study of auxiliary disciplines of literary criticism?
7.
The relationship between all the main and auxiliary branches of the science of literature.
Lecture 2.
^ SPECIFICITY OF FICTION
The term “literature” refers to any works of human thought that are enshrined in the written word and have social significance. Literature is distinguished between technical, scientific, journalistic, reference, etc. However, in a more strict sense, literature is usually called works of fiction, which in turn is a type of artistic creativity, i.e. art.
Art – a type of spiritual mastery of reality by a social person, with the goal of forming and developing his ability to creatively transform the world around him and himself. Piece of art is the result (product) of artistic creativity . It embodies the artist’s spiritual and meaningful plan in a sensory-material form and is the main custodian and source of information in the field of artistic culture.
Works of art are a necessary accessory to the life of both an individual and human society as a whole.
Ancient forms of world exploration were based on syncretism. Over the course of centuries of human life and activity, various types of art arose. the boundaries of which were not clearly defined for a long time. Gradually, an understanding of the need to distinguish between artistic means and images characteristic of different arts came.
All types of art spiritually enrich and ennoble a person, imparting to him a lot of different knowledge and emotions. Outside of man and his emotions, art does not and cannot exist. The subject of art, and therefore literature, is a person, his internal and external life and everything that is somehow connected with him.
The general properties of art find specific manifestation in its different types, which at different times were divided into fine art(epic and dramatic literature, painting, sculpture and pantomime) and expressive(lyrical genre of literature, music, choreography, architecture); then on spatial and temporal etc. Their modern classification involves the division of classical arts into spatial(architecture), temporary(literature), fine art(painting, graphics, sculpture); expressive(music), presentational(theater, cinema); Lately a lot of art has appeared , possessing synthetic in nature.
^ Artistic image
Art is thinking in artistic images, therefore imagery is a common essential feature of all types of art. An artistic image is a method specific to art of reflecting, reproducing life, its generalization from the position of the artist’s aesthetic ideal in a living, concrete, sensory form.
^ Artistic image is a special way of mastering and transforming reality, inherent only in art. In the artistic image, the objective-cognitive and subjective-creative principles are inextricably fused.
One of the most important specific features of art is artistic convention as a principle of artistic representation, which generally denotes the non-identity of the artistic image with the object of reproduction. The artistic specificity of an image is determined by the fact that it reflects and comprehends existing reality and creates a new, fictional world.
There cannot be a work of art without images. In the visual arts, the image is always perceived visually. But in music, an artistic image is addressed not to vision, but to hearing, and does not necessarily have to evoke any visual associations and does not necessarily have to “depict”. In fiction, the visual representability of an image is also not a general rule (although it occurs very often); Usually an image is called a character or a literary character, but this is a narrowing of the concept of “artistic image.”
^ In fact, any phenomenon creatively recreated in a work of art is an artistic image.
The place of fiction among the arts
In different periods of the cultural development of mankind, literature was given different places among other types of art - from the leading to one of the last. For example, ancient thinkers considered sculpture the most important of the arts. In the 18th century, a tendency arose in European aesthetics to put literature first. Renaissance artists and classicists, like ancient thinkers, were convinced of the advantages of sculpture and painting over literature. The Romantics put poetry and music in first place among all arts. The symbolists considered music the highest form of culture, and they tried in every possible way to bring poetry closer to music.
The originality of literature, its difference from other types of art, is due to the fact that it is a verbal art, since its “primary element” is the word. Using the word as the main “building” material when creating images, literature has great potential in the artistic exploration of the world. Being, in essence, a temporary art, literature, like no other art, is capable of reproducing reality in time and space, and in expression, and in “sound” and “picture” images, limitlessly expanding for the reader the scope of his life impressions (though verbal images, unlike paintings and sculptures, are not visual; they appear in the reader’s imagination only as a result of the associative connection of words and ideas, therefore the intensity of the aesthetic impression depends largely on the reader’s perception).
By reproducing speech activity (using forms such as dialogues and monologues), literature recreates the thinking processes of people and their mental world. Literature provides an image of thoughts, sensations, experiences, beliefs - all aspects of a person’s inner world.
Capturing human consciousness with the help of speech is accessible to the only art form - literature. Literature as the art of words is the sphere where observations of the human psyche were born, formed and achieved great perfection and sophistication.
Literature allows us to understand the laws of personality development, human relationships, and people’s characters. It is capable of reproducing various aspects of reality, recreating events of any scale - from the everyday actions of an individual to historical conflicts important for the fate of entire nations and social movements. This is a universal art form, distinguished, in addition, by its acute problematic nature and a more distinct expression of the author’s position than in other types of art.
Nowadays, the brightest literary artistic images, plots and motifs are often used as the basis for many works of other forms of art - painting, sculpture, theater, ballet, opera, pop, music, cinema, acquiring a new artistic embodiment and continuing their life.
^ Functions of fiction
Fiction has a variety of functions:
Cognitive function: literature helps to understand nature, man, society.
Communicative function: the language of fiction becomes more effective means of communication between people, generations and nations (but it should be borne in mind that literary works are always created in the national language, and therefore there is a need to translate them into other languages).
Aesthetic The function of literature is its ability to influence people's views and shape aesthetic taste. Literature offers the reader an aesthetic ideal, a standard of beauty and an image of the base.
Emotional function: literature influences the reader’s feelings and evokes experiences.
Educational function: the book carries invaluable spiritual knowledge, shapes the individual and social consciousness of a person, promotes the knowledge of good and evil.
^ Literature and Science
There is a close connection between literature and science, since they are designed to understand nature and society. Fiction, like science, has enormous educational power. But science and literature each have their own subject of knowledge, and special means of presentation, and their own goals.
Distinctive character poetic thoughts are that she appears before us in a living concrete image. A scientist operates with a system of evidence and concepts, and an artist recreates a living picture of the world. The science, observing a mass of homogeneous phenomena, establishes their patterns and formulates their in logical terms. Wherein scientist gets distracted from the individual characteristics of the subject, from his concrete sensory form. When abstracting, individual facts seem to lose their objectivity and are absorbed into a general concept.
In art, the process of understanding the world is different. Artist, like a scientist, when observing life, he moves from individual facts to generalization, but expresses his generalizations in concrete sensory images.
The main difference between a scientific definition and an artistic image is that we can only understand a scientific logical definition, while we seem to see, imagine, hear, feel an artistic image refracted through our feelings.
Test questions for the topic “Specifics of fiction”:
1.
Art is a type of spiritual exploration of reality.
2.
Artistic convention as a principle of artistic representation.
3.
What is an artistic image?
4.
Fiction as a form of art. Its place among other forms of art.
5.
The specificity of the verbal image in relation to the images of other arts.
6.
How does a literary image differ from a musical, pictorial, or sculptural image?
7.
What are the distinctive features of literature as a work of art?
8.
What are the subject, purposes and functions of fiction?
9.
Literature and science.
Lectures 3-4-5.
^ LANGUAGE OF FICTION
Each type of art uses only its own means of expression. These means are usually called the language of this art. There is a distinction between the language of fiction, the language of sculpture, the language of music, the language of architecture, etc.
^ The language of fiction, in other words, poetic language, is the form in which a type of verbal art is materialized, objectified, in contrast to other types of art, for example, music or painting, where the means of materialization are sound, paint, and color; choreographic language – specific expressive movements of the human body, etc.
An artistic image in literature is created both through words and composition, and in poetry also through the rhythmic and melodic organization of speech, which together form the language of the work. Therefore, the language of fiction can be considered the totality of all these means, and not just one of them. Without the totality of these means, a work of fiction cannot exist. However, the word is the primary element, the main building material of literature, and plays the main, decisive role in the language of fiction.
The language of fiction (poetic language) differs from literary (canonized, normative) language, which does not allow deviations, in that the work of art contains the use of elements of colloquial language, vernacular, dialect expressions, etc.
Considering language as the main means of artistic depiction of life in literature, one should focus on the features poetic language, which differs from other forms of speech activity in that it is subordinated creation of artistic images. A word in the language of a work of art acquires artistic meaning. The imagery of artistic speech is expressed in its emotional richness, extreme accuracy, economy and simultaneous capacity.
The search for the most necessary, the only possible word in a given case is associated with great creative efforts of the writer. Literary speech is not a set of any special poetic words and phrases. Fine and expressive means (epithets, comparisons, metaphors, etc.) are not in themselves, without context, a sign of artistry.
Every word, in addition to the direct, exact meaning denoting the main feature of any object, phenomenon, action, also has a number of other meanings, i.e. it is polysemous (the phenomenon of polysemy of words). Polysemy allows the word to be used in a figurative sense, for example, iron hammer - iron character; storm - storm of anger, storm of passion; fast driving – quick mind, quick glance etc.
^ The use of a word, expression, phrase in a figurative sense is called a trope. Trails are based on internal rapprochement, correlation of two phenomena, one of which explains and clarifies the other. Tropes are often found in colloquial speech, some of them become so familiar that they seem to lose their figurative meaning ( ate a plate, lost his head, a river runs, it rains, table legs). In artistic speech, tropes reveal most clearly and accurately the most significant feature of the depicted object or phenomenon, thereby enhancing the expressiveness of speech.
There are various types of tropes, since the principles of bringing together diverse objects and phenomena are different. ^ The simplest types of trope are simile and epithet.
Comparison- this is a comparison of two objects or phenomena that have a common feature in order to explain one to the other. A comparison consists of two parts, which are most often connected through conjunctions ( as, exactly, as if, like, as if etc.):
You look like a pink sunset, and like snow you are radiant and light;
like fiery snakes; like black lightning.
Quite often the comparison is expressed using the instrumental case: “Inaudibly, the night comes from the east like a gray wolf” (M. Sholokhov); “His beaver collar is silvered with frosty dust” (A.S. Pushkin).
In addition to direct comparisons, there are negative comparisons: “It’s not the wind that’s humming through the feather grass, it’s not the wedding train that’s humming, the relatives howled for Procles, the family is howling for Procles” (Nekrasov). There are often examples when writers resort to so-called comparisons, which reveal a number of characteristics of a phenomenon or group of phenomena: “I remember a wonderful moment / You appeared before me, / Like a fleeting vision, like a genius of pure beauty” (Pushkin).
^ Epithet– a more difficult type of trail – artistic definition emphasizing the most essential feature of an object or phenomenon ( golden head, gray sea, fiery speech). The epithet cannot be confused with a logical definition (oak table) separating one object from another. Depending on the context, the same definition can perform both logical and artistic functions: gray sea - gray head; oak table – oak head, and therefore the epithet is always used only with the word being defined, enhancing its imagery. In addition to adjectives, an epithet can be expressed by a noun (“ gold, gold is the people's heart" - Nekrasov).
Metaphor- one of the main types of trail. The basis of a metaphor is a hidden comparison of one object or phenomenon with another based on the principle of their similarity: “ the east is burning at the dawn of a new», « star of captivating happiness" Unlike comparison, which contains two members (the subject of comparison and the object with which it is compared), in metaphor there is only a second member. The subject of comparison in the metaphor is not named, but is implied. Therefore, any metaphor can be expanded into comparison:
“In parade, unfolding my troops,
I walk along the line front...”
A type of metaphor is personification. Personification– a metaphor in which objects, natural phenomena and concepts are endowed with the characteristics of a living being:
“A golden cloud spent the night on the chest of a giant rock”, “The mountain peaks sleep in the darkness of the night”,
“My darling’s hands are a pair of swans, diving in the gold of my hair.”
Personification is most often found in oral folk art, which was due to the fact that man at an early stage of his development, not understanding the laws of nature, spiritualized it. Later, such personification developed into a stable poetic turn of phrase, helping to reveal the most characteristic feature of the depicted object or phenomenon.
Allegory– this is a figurative allegory, the expression of abstract ideas (concepts) through specific artistic images. In the visual arts, allegory is expressed by certain attributes (for example, the allegory of “justice” - a woman with scales). In literature, allegory is most often used in fables, where the entire image has a figurative meaning. Such works are called allegorical. Allegorical images are conventional, since they always mean something else.
The allegorical nature of fables, fairy tales, and proverbs is characterized by stability; certain and constant qualities are assigned to their characters (for the wolf - greed, anger; for the fox - cunning, dexterity; for the lion - power, strength, etc.). Allegorical fable and fairy tale images are unambiguous, simple, and applicable to one concept.
Metonymy– replacing the direct name of an object or phenomenon with a figurative one. It is based on the convergence of objects that are not similar, unlike a metaphor, but are in a causal (temporal, spatial, material) or other objective connection. For example: “Soon you will find out at school / How the Arkhangelsk man / By his own and God’s will / Became intelligent and great.”
The varieties of metonymy are as diverse as the connections between objects and phenomena of reality. The most common include the following: 1) the name of the author instead of his works: ( bought Pushkin, carried Gogol, didn’t get Rasputin): 2) the name of the weapon instead of the action (“ His pen breathes love"); 3) the name of a place, a country instead of the people and people located and living there (“ No. / My Moscow did not go to him with a guilty head"); 4) the name containing instead of the contents (“ The hiss of foamy glasses"); 5) the name of the material from which the thing is made, instead of the thing itself (“ porcelain and bronze on the table"); 6) the name of one sign, attribute instead of a person, object or phenomenon (“ All flags will visit us»).
A special type of metonymy is synecdoche, in which the meaning from one object or phenomenon is transferred to another according to the principle of a quantitative ratio. Synecdoche is characterized by the use of the singular instead of the plural:
“And you could hear how the Frenchman rejoiced until dawn” (Lermontov),
and, conversely, plural instead of singular:
“...what can Platonov’s own
and the quick-witted Newtons
Russian land gives birth" (Lomonosov).
Sometimes a definite number is used instead of an indefinite number (“ a million Cossack hats poured onto the square"Gogol). In some cases, the specific concept replaces the generic (“proud grandson of the Slavs” Pushkin) or specific (“proud grandson of the Slavs” Pushkin) or specific (“ Well, sit down, darling!" Mayakovsky).
Periphrase- indirect mention of an object by not naming, but describing it (for example, “night luminary” - the moon). A periphrasis is also the replacement of a proper name, the name of an object with a descriptive phrase in which the essential features of the implied person or object are indicated. Lermontov in his poem on “The Death of a Poet” calls Pushkin “ slave of honor", thereby revealing the reasons for his tragic death and expressing his attitude towards him.
In periphrases, the names of objects and people are replaced by indications of their characteristics, for example, “who writes these lines” instead of “I” in the author’s speech, “fall into sleep” instead of “fall asleep,” “king of beasts” instead of “lion.” There are logical periphrases (“the author of “Dead Souls”” instead of Gogol) and figurative periphrases (“the sun of Russian poetry” instead of Pushkin).
A special case of periphrasis is euphemism– a descriptive expression of “low” or “forbidden” concepts (“unclean” instead of “devil”, “get by with a handkerchief” instead of “blow your nose”).
Hyperbola And litotes also serve as means of creating an artistic image. Figurative meaning hyperboles(artistic exaggeration), and litotes(an artistic understatement) is based on the fact that what is said should not be taken literally:
“a yawn tears wider than the Gulf of Mexico” (Mayakovsky)
“You must bow your head below a thin piece of grass” (Nekrasov)
Hyperbola a trope based on a clearly implausible exaggeration of a quality or attribute (for example, in folklore, the images of the heroes Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and others personify the mighty power of the people).
Litotes- a trope opposite to hyperbole and consisting in excessive understatement of a sign or quality.
“Your Spitz, lovely Spitz, is no bigger than a thimble” (Griboyedov)
Gogol and Mayakovsky very often resorted to hyperbole.
Irony(mockery) is the use of words in a figurative meaning, directly opposite to their usual meaning. Irony is based on the contrast of its internal meaning and external form: “... You will fall asleep, surrounded by the care of your dear and beloved family,” Nekrasov about the “owner of luxurious chambers,” revealing in the next line the true meaning of the attitude of his loved ones towards him: “impatiently awaiting your death "
The highest degree of irony, evil, bitter or angry mockery is called sarcasm.
^ Tropes contribute to a significant extent to the artistic expressiveness of poetic language, but do not determine it entirely. More or less use of tropes depends on the nature of the writer’s talent, the genre of the work and its specific features. In lyric poetry, for example, tropes are used much more widely than in epic and drama. Thus, tropes are only one of the means of artistic expressiveness of language, and only in interaction with all other means helps the writer create vivid life pictures and images.
^ Poetic figures– deviations from a neutral way of presentation for the purpose of emotional and aesthetic impact. The artistic expressiveness of a language is achieved not only by the appropriate selection of words, but also by their intonational and syntactic organization. Syntax, like vocabulary, is used by the writer to individualize and typify speech,” being a means of creating character. To be convinced of this, it is enough to compare the speeches of the heroes from the novel “Fathers and Sons” by Turgenev. Special ways of constructing a sentence that enhance the expressiveness of artistic speech are called poetic figures. The most important poetic figures include inversion, antithesis, repetition, rhetorical question, rhetorical appeal and exclamation.
Inversion– (rearrangement) means an unusual order of words in a sentence:
Not the wind blowing from above,
The sheets were touched by the moonlit night. (A.K. Tolstoy)
Antithesis– (contradiction) is a combination of sharply opposing concepts and ideas:
They came together: a wave and a stone,
Poetry and prose, ice and fire
Not so different from each other. (Pushkin)
This combination of concepts that are contrasting in meaning further emphasizes their meaning and makes poetic speech more vivid and figurative. Whole works can sometimes be built on the principle of antithesis, for example, “Reflections at the Front Entrance” (Nekrasov), “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy, “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky.
The combination of two or more adjacent lines of poetry with the same syntactic structure is called parallelism:
The stars shine in the blue sky,
The waves are lashing in the blue sea. (Pushkin).
Parallelism gives rhythm to artistic speech, enhancing its emotional and figurative expressiveness. In its poetic function, parallelism is close to comparison:
And, devoted to new passions,
I couldn't stop loving him:
So an abandoned temple is all a temple,
The defeated idol is all God! (Lermontov)
Parallelism is a form of repetition, as it is often complemented by the repetition of individual words in a line or verse:
He laughs at the clouds, He weeps with joy! (Bitter).
The repetition of initial words in a line or verse that carry the main semantic load is called anaphora, and repetition of the final epiphora:
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons... (Nekrasov).
There the bride and groom are waiting, -
No priest
And here I am.
There they take care of the baby, -
No priest
And here I am. (Tvardovsky).
Parallel elements can be sentences, their parts, phrases, words. For example:
Will I see your bright gaze?
Will I hear a gentle conversation? (Pushkin)
Your mind is as deep as the sea
Your spirit is as high as the mountains. (V.Bryusov)
There are also more complex types of parallelism, combining various figures of speech. An example of parallelism with anaphora and antithesis:
“I am a king, I am a slave, I am a worm, I am a god” (Derzhavin)
Anaphora(or unity of beginning) – repetition of sounds, words or groups of words at the beginning of each parallel row, i.e. in the repetition of the initial parts of two or more relatively independent segments of speech (hemistyses, verses, stanzas or prose passages)
^ Sound anaphora– repetition of the same combinations of sounds:
Gr bridges demolished by oza,
Gr both from the washed-out cemetery (Pushkin)
Anaphora morpheme– Repetition of the same morphemes or parts of words:
^ Cherno ogling the girl
Black maned horse!.. (Lermontov)
Anaphora lexical- repetition of the same words:
Not intentionally the winds were blowing,
Not intentionally there was a thunderstorm. (Yesenin)
Anaphora syntactic– repetition of the same syntactic structures:
Am I wandering? I'm along the noisy streets,
Am I coming in? to a crowded temple,
Am I sitting between crazy youths,
I indulge in my dreams. (Pushkin)
Anaphora strophic– repetition of each stanza from the same word:
Earth!..
From snow moisture
She's still fresh.
She wanders by herself
And breathes like deja.
Earth!..
She's running, running
Thousands of miles ahead,
Above her the lark trembles
And he sings about her.
Earth!..
Everything is more beautiful and visible
She's lying around.
And there is no better happiness - on her
To live until death... (Tvardovsky)
Epiphora – repetition of the last words:
Dear friend, and in this quiet house
the fever is drinking me away,
Can't find a place for me in this quiet house
Near the peaceful fire (Block)
^ Rhetorical question- this is a question that does not require an answer, addressed to the reader or listener in order to attract their attention to what is being depicted:
What is he looking for in a distant land?
What did he throw in his native land?.. (Lermontov).
^ Rhetorical address, statement and rhetorical exclamation– also serves to enhance the emotional and aesthetic perception of what is depicted:
Moscow, Moscow!.. I love you like a son... (Lermontov).
It's him, I recognize him!
No, I'm not Byron, I'm different
Another unknown chosen one... (Lermontov).
Gradation- a figure of speech consisting of such an arrangement of parts of a statement relating to one subject that each subsequent part turns out to be richer, more expressive or impressive than the previous one. In many cases, the feeling of increasing emotional content and richness is associated not so much with a semantic increase, but with the syntactic features of the phrase structure:
And where is ^ Mazepa? Where the villain?
Where did you run? Judas in fear? (Pushkin)
In sweetly misty care
Not an hour, not a day, not a year will pass... (Baratynsky).
^ Poetic stylistics
Multi-Union(or polysyndeton) is a stylistic figure consisting of a deliberate increase in the number of conjunctions in a sentence, usually to connect homogeneous members. By slowing down speech with forced pauses, polyunion emphasizes the role of each word, creating unity of enumeration and enhancing the expressiveness of speech.
“The ocean walked before my eyes, and swayed, and thundered, and sparkled, and faded, and glowed, and went somewhere into infinity” (V.G. Korolenko)
“I will either burst into tears, or scream, or faint” (Chekhov)
“And the waves crowd and rush
And they come again and hit the shore..." (Lermontov)
“But the grandson, and the great-grandson, and the great-great-grandson
They grow in me while I grow..." (Antokolsky)
Asyndeton(or asyndeton) is a construction of speech in which conjunctions connecting words are omitted. Gives the statement speed and dynamism, helps convey the rapid change of pictures, impressions, and actions.
The booths and women flash past,
Boys, benches, lanterns,
Palaces, gardens, monasteries,
Bukharians, sleighs, vegetable gardens,
Merchants, shacks, men,
Boulevards, towers, Cossacks,
Pharmacies, fashion stores,
Balconies, lions on the gates
And flocks of jackdaws on crosses. (Pushkin)
Night, street, lantern, pharmacy,
Meaningless and dim light... (Block)
Ellipsis- intentional omission of unimportant words in a sentence without distorting its meaning, and often to enhance the meaning and effect:
"Champagne!" (meaning “Bring a bottle of champagne!”).
Day in the dark night in love,
Spring is in love with winter,
Life into death...
And you?... You're into me! (Heine)
The figure of poetic stylistics is oxymoron– a combination of words with the opposite meaning (that is, a combination of incompatible things). An oxymoron is characterized by the deliberate use of contradiction to create a stylistic effect (light ink, cold sun). Oxymoron is often used in the titles of prosaic literary works (“The Living Corpse” is a drama by L.N. Tolstoy, “Hot Snow” is a novel by Yu. Bondarev), and is often found in poetry:
And the day has come. Gets up from his bed
Mazepa, this frail sufferer,
This corpse alive, just yesterday
Moaning weakly over the grave. (Pushkin)
^ Poetic phonetics (phonics)
Poetic phonetics– this is the sound organization of artistic speech, the main element of which is sound repetition as an ornamental technique for highlighting and fastening the most important words in a verse.
The following types of sound repetitions are distinguished:
assonance– repetition of vowel sounds, mainly percussive (“He groans across the fields, along the roads...”, Nekrasov);
alliteration– repetition of consonant sounds, mainly at the beginning of words (“It’s time, the pen asks for rest...”, Pushkin);
onomatopoeia(sound notation) - a system of sound repetitions selected with the expectation of onomatopoeia rustling, whistling, etc. (“The reeds are barely audible, silently rustling...”, Balmont).
^ Poetic vocabulary
(Learn on your own using the Dictionary of Literary Terms)
Emphasizing the originality of a particular way of life, everyday life, writers widely use various lexical layers of language, the so-called passive vocabulary, as well as words that have a limited scope of use: archaisms, historicisms, vernaculars, jargons, vulgarisms, barbarisms, dialectisms, provincialisms, Slavicisms, biblicalisms, professionalisms, neologisms.
The use of such vocabulary, being an expressive technique, at the same time often creates difficulties for the reader. Sometimes the authors themselves, anticipating this, supply the text with notes and special dictionaries, as, for example, N. Gogol did in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The author could immediately write Russian words, but then his work would largely lose its local flavor.
It is important not only to know the characteristics of the various layers of stylistic and lexical originality of artistic speech (dialectisms, professionalisms, jargons, vulgarisms, etc.), figurative words and expressions (tropes), intonation-syntactic means (verbal repetitions, antithesis, inversion, gradation and etc.), but be able to find out their visual-expressive function in the work of art being studied. To do this, it is necessary to consider each means of verbal expression not in isolation, but in the context of the artistic whole.
Test questions on the topic “Language of Fiction”:
1.
What is the main difference between poetic language and other forms of speech activity?
2.
The difference between the language of fiction (poetic language) and normative literary language. language.
3.
Define a trope and list its types.
4.
Define poetic figures and name the most important of them.
5.
Name the main figures of poetic stylistics.
6.
What words make up the stylistic and lexical originality of literary speech?
7.
What is poetic phonetics and what are its types?
Lectures 6.
A literary and artistic work as a work of art is not a natural phenomenon, but a cultural one, which means that it is based on a spiritual principle, which, in order to exist and be perceived, must certainly acquire some material embodiment. Spirituality is content, and its material embodiment is form.
^ Content and form– categories that serve to designate the main aspects of a literary and artistic work. In a work of art, both form and content are equally important. A literary work is a complexly organized whole, therefore there is a need to understand the internal structure of the work, i.e. structural relationship between content and form.
topic, problem idea which are closely interconnected and interdependent.
Thus, they stand out content categories : topic, problem, idea.
Theme is the objective basis of the work, characters and situations that the author portrays. In a work of art, as a rule, there is a main theme and private themes subordinate to it; there may be several main themes. The set of main and special themes of works is called subject matter.
The problem is considered the main question posed in the work. There are problems that can be solved and problems that cannot be solved. Many problems are called problems.
In choosing and developing the theme of a literary work, the writer’s worldview plays a vital role. The figuratively expressed author's thoughts and feelings, attitude towards what is depicted and evaluation, which constitute the main generalizing idea in a work of art, are usually designated in literary criticism by the term "idea». Idea is closely connected by the author's idea of the highest standard of life ("author's position"), of what a person and the world should be like ("ideal").
A system of means and techniques that serve to embody the content and to have an emotional impact on the reader is art form works.
Difference between " plot" And " plot“is defined differently, some literary scholars do not see a fundamental difference between these concepts, while for others, “plot” is the sequence of events as they occur, and “plot” is the sequence in which the author arranges them.
Fable– the factual side of the story, those events, incidents, actions, states in their causal and chronological sequence. The term “plot” refers to what is preserved as the “base”, “core” of the narrative.
Plot- this is a reflection of the dynamics of reality in the form of the action unfolding in the work, in the form of internally related (causal-temporal) actions of characters, events that form a unity, constituting some complete whole. The plot is a form of theme development - an artistically constructed distribution of events.
The driving force behind the development of the plot, as a rule, is conflict(literally “clash”), a conflicting life situation placed by the writer at the center of the work. In a broad sense conflict should be called that system of contradictions that organizes a work of art into a certain unity, that struggle of images, characters, ideas, which unfolds especially widely and fully in epic and dramatic works
Conflict- a more or less acute contradiction or clash between characters and their characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within the character and consciousness of a character or lyrical subject; it is the central moment not only of epic and dramatic action, but also of lyrical experience.
There are different types of conflicts: between individual characters; between character and environment; psychological. The conflict can be external (the hero’s struggle with forces opposing him) and internal (the hero’s struggle with himself in the mind). There are plots based only on internal conflicts (“psychological”, “intellectual”), the basis of the action in them is not events, but the vicissitudes of feelings, thoughts, experiences. One work can contain a combination of different types of conflicts. Sharply expressed contradictions, the opposition of forces acting in a product, are called collision.
Composition (architectonics) is the construction of a literary work, the composition and sequence of arrangement of its individual parts and elements (prologue, exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement, epilogue).
Prologue- the introductory part of a literary work. The prologue reports the events that precede and motivate the main action, or explains the author's artistic intention.
Exposition- part of the work that precedes the beginning of the plot and is directly related to it. The exposition follows the arrangement of characters and circumstances, showing the reasons that “trigger” the plot conflict.
The beginning in the plot - the event that served as the beginning of the conflict in a work of art; an episode that determines the entire subsequent development of the action (in “The Inspector General” by N.V. Gogol, for example, the plot is the mayor’s message about the arrival of the inspector). The plot is present at the beginning of the work, indicating the beginning of the development of artistic action. As a rule, it immediately introduces the main conflict of the work, subsequently determining the entire narrative and plot. Sometimes the plot comes before the exposition (for example, the plot of the novel “Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy: “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house”). The writer’s choice of one type of plot or another is determined by the style and genre system in terms of which he designs his work.
Climax– the point of highest rise, tension in the development of the plot (conflict).
Denouement– conflict resolution; it completes the struggle of contradictions that make up the content of the work. The denouement marks the victory of one side over the other. The effectiveness of the denouement is determined by the significance of the entire preceding struggle and the climactic severity of the episode preceding the denouement.
Epilogue- the final part of the work, which briefly reports on the fate of the heroes after the events depicted in it, and sometimes discusses the moral and philosophical aspects of what is depicted (“Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky).
The composition of a literary work includes extra-plot elements– author's digressions, inserted episodes, various descriptions(portrait, landscape, world of things), etc., serving to create artistic images, the disclosure of which, in fact, is the entire work.
So, for example, episode as a relatively completed and independent part of the work, which depicts a completed event or an important moment in the fate of the character, can become an integral link in the problems of the work or an important part of its general idea.
Scenery in a work of art it is not just a picture of nature, a description of part of the real environment in which the action takes place. The role of landscape in a work is not limited to depicting the scene of action. It serves to create a certain mood; is a way of expressing the author’s position (for example, in the story “Date” by I.S. Turgenev). The landscape can emphasize or convey the mental state of the characters, while the internal state of a person is likened to or contrasted with the life of nature. The landscape can be rural, urban, industrial, marine, historical (pictures of the past), fantastic (the image of the future), etc. Landscape can also perform a social function (for example, the landscape in the 3rd chapter of I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, the city landscape in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”). In lyric poetry, landscape usually has an independent meaning and reflects the perception of nature by the lyrical hero or lyrical subject.
Even small artistic detail in a literary work it often plays an important role and performs diverse functions: it can serve as an important addition to characterize the characters and their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create a general picture of morals, have the meaning of a symbol, etc. Artistic details in a work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, and psychological details.
^ All elements of form and content are artistically significant(including those that represent the so-called “frame” - title, subtitle, epigraph, preface, dedication, etc.), are in the closest relationship and constitute the artistic whole of a literary work. So, for example, the conflict belongs not only to the plot or figurative world, but also to the content; the epigraph preceding a literary work serves as a means of defining the theme of the story, stating the problem, expressing the main idea, etc. Deliberate violation of the chronological sequence of events present in a literary work - digressions (lyrical, journalistic, philosophical) and other elements – are subordinated to the general idea, express the position of the writer and are the material embodiment of the author's intention.
Test questions on the topic “content and form of a literary work”:
2.
Define the concept idea.
3.
What's happened subject (subject matter) a work of art?
4.
What's happened problem(problematic)?
6.
What is the difference between the concepts plot And plot?
7.
Name the elements compositions literary work .
8.
What is the role conflicts in a work of art. Types conflicts.
9.
Name extra-plot elements.
10.
What is the role of artistic details in a literary work.
11.
What's happened scenery? Role landscape in a literary work.
12.
What is integrity of a work of art?
1.1. Basic and auxiliary literary disciplines
1.2. Literary studies and other scientific disciplines
The word "literature" comes from the Latin littera, which means "letter". The concept of "literature" covers all written and printed works on various topics. There is philosophical, legal, economic, etc. literature. Fiction is one of the types of art that figuratively reproduces the world through the means of language.
The awareness of literature as an art dates back to the 19th century.
Basic and auxiliary literary disciplines
Literary criticism is the science of the art of words. It was formed at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries.
In literary criticism there are three main and a number of auxiliary disciplines. The main ones are: literary history, literary theory, literary criticism. Each of them has its own subject and tasks.
The history of literature (Greek Historia - a story about the past and Lat. Litteratura - alphabetic writing) studies the features of the development of fiction in connections and mutual influences; the role of individual writers and works in the literary process; formation of genera, types, genres, directions, trends. The history of fiction examines the development of literature in relation to the development of society; social, cultural environment, starting from ancient times and ending with the works of the present. There are national, continental and world histories of literature. The fiction of each nation has its own specific characteristics.
Literary theory (Greek Thedria - observations, research) studies the general patterns of development of fiction, its essence, content and form, criteria for evaluating works of art, methodology and techniques for analyzing literature as the art of words, features of genera, types, genres, movements, trends and styles. The theory of literature was established at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries.
Literary criticism (Greek Kritike - judgment) studies new works, the current literary process. its subject is a separate work, the work of a writer, new works of several writers. Literary criticism helps readers understand the features of the content and form of a work of art, its achievements and losses, and contributes to the formation of aesthetic tastes.
The leading genres of literary criticism are literary portraits, literary critical reviews, reviews, reviews, annotations, etc.
Literary theory, literary history and literary criticism are closely related. Without literary theory there is no history, and without history there is no literary theory. The achievements of literary theory are used by literary historians and literary critics. A literary critic is also a literary theorist, a literary historian, and a comparativist (Latin Comparativus - comparative). He studies literature in its relationships and mutual influences, looking for similarities and differences in works of art.
Literary criticism enriches the history of literature with new facts, revealing trends and prospects for the development of literature.
Auxiliary literary disciplines are textual criticism, historiography, bibliography, paleography, hermeneutics, translation studies, and the psychology of creativity.
Textology (Latin Textur - fabric, connection and Greek Logos - word) is a branch of historical and philological science that studies literary texts, compares their variants, clears them of editorial and censorship changes, and restores the author's text. Textual work is important for publishing works and for studying the creative process. Undesirable changes to literary texts have been made since antiquity. There are many of them in the works of writers repressed during the Soviet period. The publishers retouched texts containing a national idea in accordance with communist ideology. In the poem by V. Simonenko “About the land with a red forehead” with the following lines:
Very nice! Your fire is humming,
Poverty writhes and smolders in this.
You scream into my brain like a curse
Both those who come and yours, and your corrupt ones.
Love is terrible! My Sveta muko-!
My communist joy!
Take me into your mother's arms
Take my little angry self!
In the manuscript, the first two lines were sharper:
Very nice! Torn to shreds
In the stench and fog of dung.
The first two lines of the next stanza sounded like this:
Love of light! My black flour!
And my joyless joy
The task of a textual critic is to establish the original of the work, its completeness, completeness, compliance with the will of the author and his intention. A textual critic can determine the name of the author of an untitled work.
Text critics distinguish between author's self-editing and author's self-censorship caused by ideological pressure. Textual studies of the changes and amendments that the writer makes to his works reveal his creative laboratory.
Historiography (Greek Historia - a story about the past and grapho - I write) is an auxiliary discipline of literary criticism that collects and studies materials about the historical development of theory, criticism and the history of literature throughout all eras. it is formed by studies of historical periods (antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment, romanticism, realism, modernism, postmodernism) and disciplines devoted to specific personalities (Homeric studies, Danthestudies, Shevchenko studies, Francostudies, forest studies, co-syurstudies).
Bibliography (Greek Biblion - book and grapho - write, describe) is a scientific and practical discipline that discovers, systematizes, publishes and distributes information about manuscripts, printed works, compiles indexes, lists, which are sometimes accompanied by laconic annotations, helping to select the necessary literature. There are different types of bibliographic indexes: general, personal, thematic. Special bibliographic chronicle journals are published: chronicle of journal articles, chronicle of reviews, chronicle of newspaper articles.
The history of bibliography begins in the 2nd century. BC e., from the works of the Greek poet and critic Callimachus, head of the Library of Alexandria. Callimachus compiled a catalog of it. Domestic bibliography begins in the 11th century. The first Ukrainian bibliographic work is “Svyatoslav's Collection” (1073).
Paleography (Greek Palaios - ancient and grapho - writing) is an auxiliary literary discipline that studies ancient texts, establishes the authorship, place, and time of writing of a work. Before the advent of the printing press, works of art were copied by hand. The scribes sometimes made their own corrections to the text, supplemented or shortened it, and put their names under the works. The names of the authors were gradually forgotten. We still don’t know, for example, the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” Paleography is a historical and philological science that has existed since the 17th century. The following types of paleography are known: epigraphy, which studies inscriptions on metal and stone, papyrology - on papyrus, codicology - handwritten books, cryptography - graphics of secret writing systems. Paleography was started by the French researcher B. Montfaucon (“Greek Paleography”, in 1708). In Ukraine, the first studios of paleography were in the grammar of Laurentius Zizanius (in 1596). Today, geography is developing - the science of modern written texts, which have been modified by censors or editors.
Hermeneutics (Greek Hermeneutikos - I explain, explain) is a science associated with the study, explanation, interpretation of philosophical, historical, religious, philological texts. The name "hermeneutics" comes from the name Hermes. In ancient mythology - the messenger of the gods, the patron of travelers, roads, trade, the guide of the souls of the dead. According to Yu. Kuznetsov, the etymology of the concept is not related to the name of Hermes; the term comes from the ancient Greek word erma, which means a pile of stones or a stone pillar, which the ancient Greeks used to mark a burial place. Hermeneutics is a method of interpreting works of art; it comments on works prepared for publication by textual critics. At first, hermeneutics interpreted the predictions of oracles, sacred texts, and subsequently legal laws and the works of classical poets.
Hermeneutics uses various methods of interpreting literary texts: psychoanalytic, sociological, phenomenological, comparative-historical, existentialism, semiotic, structural, post-structural, mythological, deconstructivist, receptive, gender.
Translation studies is a branch of philology associated with the theory and practice of translation. its task is to comprehend the features of literary translation from one language to another, the components of translation skill. The main problem of translation studies is the problem of the possibility or impossibility of adequate translation. Translation studies including theory, history and criticism of translation. The term “translation studies” was introduced into Ukrainian literary studies by V. Koptilov. Significant contributions to understanding the problems of translation studies were made by O. Kundzich, M. Rylsky, Roksolana Zorivchak, Lada Kolomiets.
The psychology of literary creativity was formed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries at the border of three sciences: psychology, art history and sociology. In the field of view of the psychology of creativity, the conscious and subconscious, intuition, imagination, reincarnation, personification, fantasy, inspiration. A. Potebnya, I. Franko, M. Arnaudov, G. Vyazovsky, Freud, K. Jung studied the psychology of literary creativity. Today - A. Makarov, R. Pikhmanets.
Literary studies and other scientific disciplines
The science of literature is associated with such disciplines as history, linguistics, philosophy, logic, psychology, folklore, ethnography, and art history.
Works of art appear in certain historical conditions; they always reflect the characteristics of the time. A literary critic must know history in order to understand this or that literary phenomenon. Literary scholars study archival materials, memoirs, letters in order to better understand the events, the atmosphere of the era, and the artist’s biography.
Literary criticism interacts with linguistics. Works of fiction are material for linguistic research. Linguists decipher the sign systems of the past. Literary studies, studying the features of the languages in which works are written, cannot do without the help of linguistics. Studying a language makes it possible to better understand the specifics of fiction.
Before the advent of writing, works of art were distributed orally. Works of oral folk art are called “folklore” (English Folk - people, lore - knowledge, teaching). Folklore works appeared even after the emergence of writing. Developing in parallel with fiction, folklore interacts with it and influences it.
On the development of literature and literary criticism to philosophy: rationalism is the philosophical basis of classicism, sensationalism is the philosophical basis of sentimentalism, positivism is the philosophical basis of realism and naturalism. On the literature of the 19th-20th centuries. influenced by existentialism, Freudianism, and intuitionism.
Literary studies has contacts with logic and psychology. The main subject of fiction is man. These sciences make it possible to penetrate deeper into his inner world and understand the processes of artistic creativity.
Literary criticism is related to theology. Works of fiction may have a biblical basis. Biblical motifs in the works “Psalms to David” by T. Shevchenko, “Moses” by I. Franko, “Possessed” by Lesya Ukrainsky, “The Garden of Gethsemane” by Ivan Bagryany, “Cain” by J. Byron.
Literary criticism and its sections. The science of literature is called literary criticism. It covers various areas of the study of literature and at the present stage of scientific development is divided into such independent scientific disciplines as literary theory, literary history and literary criticism.
The theory of literature studies the social nature, specificity, patterns of development and social role of fiction and establishes principles for considering and evaluating literary material.
Familiarity with literary theory is extremely important for every student of literature. At one time, Chekhov showed in one of his stories the teacher of Russian language and literature Nikitin, who during his years at the university never bothered to read one of the classic creations of aesthetic thought - Lessing's "Hamburg Drama". Another character in this story (“Literature Teacher”), a passionate lover of literature and theater, Shebaldin, upon learning of this, “was horrified and waved his hands as if he had burned his fingers.” Why was Shebaldin horrified, why is it that several times in this Chekhov story the talk about “Hamburg Drama” is resumed and Nikitin even dreams about it? Because a teacher of literature, without joining the great achievements of the science of literature, without making them his property, cannot deeply understand either the general properties of fiction, or the nature of literary development, or the features of an individual literary work. How will he teach his students to understand literature?
More specific, but no less important problems are resolved by the history of literature. It explores the process of literary development and, on this basis, determines the place and significance of various literary phenomena. Literary historians study literary works and literary criticism, the work of individual writers and critics, the formation, characteristics and historical fate of artistic methods, literary types and genres.
Since the development of the literature of each people is characterized by national identity, its history is divided into the histories of individual national literatures. This does not mean, however, that one can and should limit oneself to studying each of them separately. Tracing the literary process in a particular country, literary historians, if necessary, correlate with it the processes that took place in other countries - and on this basis reveal the universal significance of the national contribution that has been made or is being made by a certain people to world literature. It becomes global, like world history, only at a certain stage of development in the process of the emergence and strengthening of ties and interactions between peoples. As K. Marx wrote, “World history has not always existed; history as world history is the result.”
The same result in relation to individual national literatures is world literature. It is precisely the result of the connections and interactions of these national literatures, which allows us, when considering each of them in the international context, to “see not only the logic of its internal development, but also the system of its interrelations with the world literary process.”
Based on this, indisputable, in our opinion, position, I. G. Neupokoeva called “not just to present the known facts of the history of national literatures, but to more clearly identify in them what is most significant from the point of view of the history of world literature: not only the uniqueness of the contribution of each national literature into the treasury of world art, but also the manifestation in the national literary system of general patterns of development, its genetic, contact and typological connections with other literatures."
Literary criticism is a lively response to the most important literary events of the time. Its task is a comprehensive analysis of certain literary phenomena and assessment of their ideological and artistic significance for modern times. The subject of analysis in literary critical works can be either a separate work, or the work of a writer as a whole, or a number of works by different writers. The goals of literary criticism are varied. On the one hand, the critic is called upon to help readers correctly understand and appreciate the works he examines. On the other hand, the duty of the critic is to be a teacher and educator of the writers themselves. A clear indication of the enormous role that literary criticism can and should play is, for example, the activities of the great Russian critics - Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. Their articles inspired and ideologically educated both writers and wide circles of readers.
One can refer to V.I. Lenin’s high assessment (N. Valentinov recalls it) of the educational value of Dobrolyubov’s articles. “Speaking of Chernyshevsky’s influence on me as the main one, I cannot help but mention the additional influence experienced at that time from Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky’s friend and companion. I also took seriously reading his articles in the same Sovremennik. Two his articles - one about Goncharov's novel "Oblomov", the other about Turgenev's novel "On the Eve" - struck like lightning. I, of course, had read "On the Eve" before, but I read the thing early, and I treated it differently. childishly. Dobrolyubov knocked this approach out of me. I re-read this work, like Oblomov, with Dobrolyubov’s interlinear remarks. From the analysis of Oblomov, he made a cry, a call to will, activity, revolutionary struggle, and from. analysis of “On the Eve”, a real revolutionary proclamation, written in such a way that it is not forgotten to this day. This is how it should be written! When “Zarya” was organized, I always told Starover (Potresov) and Zasulich: “We need literary reviews of exactly this kind. Where there! We didn’t have Dobrolyubov, whom Engels called the socialist Lessing.”
Naturally, the role of literary criticism is just as great in our time.
Literary theory, literary history and literary criticism are in direct connection and interaction. The theory of literature is based on the entire set of facts obtained by the history of literature and on the achievements of critical studies of literary monuments.
The history of literature is based on the general principles for considering the literary process developed by literary theory and is largely based on the results of literary criticism. criticism literary artistic
Literary criticism, starting, like the history of literature, from theoretical and literary premises, at the same time strictly takes into account historical and literary data that help it determine the extent of what is new and significant that is introduced into literature by the analyzed work in comparison with previous ones.
Thus, literary criticism enriches the history of literature with new material, clarifies the trends and prospects of literary development.
Literary criticism, like any other science, also has auxiliary disciplines, which include historiography, textual criticism and bibliography.
Historiography collects and studies materials that introduce the historical development of the theory and history of literature and literary criticism. By illuminating the path traversed by each given science and the results achieved by it, historiography makes it possible to fruitfully continue research, relying on all the best that has already been created in this field.
Textual criticism determines the author of an unnamed work of art or scientific work, the degree of completeness of various editions. By restoring the final, so-called canonical, edition of certain works, textual critics provide an invaluable service to readers and researchers.
Bibliography - an index of literary works - helps to navigate a huge number of theoretical-literary, historical-literary and literary-critical books and articles. She registers both existing and emerging works in these sections of literary criticism, compiles general and thematic lists, and provides the necessary annotations.
Analysis and generalization of the practice of literary creativity and literary development are naturally inseparable from an understanding of the entire development of social life, in the process of which various forms of social consciousness arise and take shape. Therefore, it is natural for literary scholars to turn to a number of scientific disciplines closely related to the science of literature: philosophy and aesthetics, history, the science of art and the science of language.
Literary criticism as a science arose at the beginning of the 19th century. Of course, literary works have existed since antiquity. Aristotle was the first who tried to systematize them in his book; he was the first to give a theory of genres and a theory of types of literature (epic, drama, lyric poetry). He also belongs to the theory of catharsis and mimesis. Plato created a story about ideas (idea → material world → art).
In the 17th century, N. Boileau created his treatise “Poetic Art”, based on the earlier work of Horace. It isolated knowledge about literature, but it was not yet a science.
In the 18th century, German scientists tried to create educational treatises (Lessing “Laocoon. On the Boundaries of Painting and Poetry”, Gerber “Critical Forests”).
At the beginning of the 19th century, the era of the dominance of romanticism began in ideology, philosophy, and art. At this time, the Brothers Grimm created their theory.
Literature is an art form; it creates aesthetic values, and therefore is studied from the point of view of various sciences.
Literary studies studies the fiction of various peoples of the world in order to understand the features and patterns of its own content and the forms that express them. The subject of literary criticism is not only fiction, but also all the artistic literature of the world - written and oral.
Modern literary criticism consists of:
literary theory
literary history
literary criticism
Literary theory studies the general laws of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, work and reader. Develops general concepts and terms.
Literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines, as well as history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, and linguistics.
Poetics - studies the composition and structure of a literary work.
The theory of the literary process - studies the patterns of development of genders and genres.
Literary aesthetics – studies literature as an art form.
Literary history studies the development of literature. Divided by time, by direction, by place.
Literary criticism deals with the evaluation and analysis of literary works. Critics evaluate a work in terms of aesthetic value.
From a sociological perspective, the structure of society is always reflected in works, especially ancient ones, so she also studies literature.
Auxiliary literary disciplines:
textual criticism - studies the text as such: manuscripts, editions, editions, time of writing, author, place, translation and comments
paleography - the study of ancient text carriers, manuscripts only
bibliography is an auxiliary discipline of any science, scientific literature on a particular subject
library science is the science of collections, repositories of not only fiction, but also scientific literature, union catalogues.
2. Poetics - a system of artistic means and techniques used to create an artistic world in a separate work or in the work of a writer. The doctrine of the laws and principles of creating a literary work. P. - “the science of the system of means of expression in literature. works In the expanded sense of the word, P. coincides with literary theory, in a narrowed one - with one of the areas of theoretical. P. As a field of literary theory, P. studies the specifics of literature. genres and genres, movements and trends, styles and methods, explores the laws of internal communication and the relationship between different levels of art. whole.P. - the science of art. use of language means. Verbal (i.e. linguistic) text of the production. is the only one. the material form of existence of its content. P.'s goal is to highlight and systematize the elements of the text involved in the formation of aesthetics. impressions of a work. P. usually differ in general (theoretical or systematic - “macropoetics”), particular (or actually descriptive - “micropoetics”) and historical.
General pedagogy is divided into three areas that study, respectively, the sound, verbal, and figurative structure of a text; the goal of general P. is to compile a complete systematization. a repertoire of techniques (aesthetically effective elements) covering all three of these areas. Private P. deals with the description of lit. prod. in all the lists. above aspects, which allows you to create a “model” - an individual aesthetic system. effective properties of the work.
HISTORICAL POETICS
If general descriptive poetics covers a large number of works,
to reveal the fact of historical changeability of individual properties of literary texts,
the fact of their uneven activity (significance) in certain eras and the fact
the death of some properties and the appearance of others and develop in connection with this additional
additional research methods and additional categories of description. By-
ethics focused on the historicity of the properties of literature and the history of these
properties, history, understood not only as appearance and disappearance, but also
as a transformation of properties - such poetics took shape in European literature -
Raturology as a relatively independent variety - as poetics
historical. “Historical poetics studies the development of both individual
artistic techniques (epithets, metaphors, rhymes, etc.) and categories (hu-
pre-real time, space, basic contrasts of characteristics),
and entire systems of such techniques and categories characteristic of a particular era-
NORMATIVE poetics
The earliest type of European poetics, which emerged in ancient times, is normative in nature. In the history of literary criticism, it is usually defined as “classical poetics” (Aristotle, Horace), and its later variety as the poetics of classicism (Boileau). Aristotle's poetics. Let us note two interesting aspects in them. On the one hand, we will talk about the properties and patterns
artistic creativity (understood both as a process and as its results - works) in general. This aspect is well known to us as the subject of modern theories of literature and poetics. On the other hand, it’s about how to compose a literary text and how to achieve the desired result. This aspect is missing in modern literary theories and poetics. Today's poetics address
Vanities are mainly for the reader of literature, not for writers. They are taught to understand and interpret a literary text, but are not interested in how to compose it. For this very reason, poetics, in which the second of the noted aspects is present - addressed to the writer, have received the definition of normative. Normative poetics became especially widespread in the era of classicism, but they did not always take the form of textbooks (treatises). Normative poetics have one more, less noticeable, property. They were often used for evaluations of emerging works, and any deviations from their instructions were especially condemned.
№3 Literature as an art form, its specificity and functions:
The ancients identified five types of art; the classification is based on a material medium. Music is the art of sounds, painting is the art of colors, sculpture is stone, architecture is plastic forms, literature is the word.
However, already Lesin, in the article “Laocoon or on the boundaries of painting,” issued the first scientific classification: the division into spatial and temporal arts.
From Lesin's point of view, literature is a temporary art.
Expressive and fine arts are also distinguished (sign principle). Expressive expresses emotions, conveys mood, figurative - embodies an idea.
Expressive art is music, architecture, abstract painting, lyrics.
Fine - painting, sculpture, drama and epic.
According to this classification, literature is an expressive art.
After the emergence of complex arts (theater, cinema), which are a symbiosis, syncretic arts begin to distinguish simple and complex arts.
Thus literature is simple.
Classifying arts according to the number of functions (into monofunctional - performing an aesthetic function and bifunctional - performing aesthetic and pragmatic functions), literature is classified as monofunctional.
As a result, literature is a temporary, expressive-visual, simple and monofunctional art.
Literary functions:
Transformative
Educational
Social-aesthetic (impact on society)
Cognitive
Language-creative.
Classification B.O. Cormana:
-3rd person
-1 person (plural). “We” is a generalized carrier of consciousness. In such texts the form is observation or reflection.
In the modern classification, these 2 forms are combined and speak of a lyrical narrator.
3. The lyrical hero is the subject of speech through whom the biographical and emotional-psychological traits of the author are expressed.
The lyrical hero is a monologue form of the author's expression in the text.
4. Role hero - the indirect expression of the author in the text through the sociocultural type of the past or present. Role-playing hero is a dialogical form.
6. Interpersonal subject - the form realizes different points of view on the world..
5. Artistic time and space. The concept of chronotope The concept of space-time organization. Types of artistic time and space. The concept of chronotope (M.M. Bakhtin). Functions. Types of chronotopes:
The spatiotemporal organization of a literary work is the chronotope.
Under the chronotope of M.M. Bakhtin understands the “essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations.”
In literary works, images of time and space are distinguished separately:
Daily allowance
Calendar
Biographical
Historical
Space
Space:
Closed
Open
Remote
Detailed (subject-rich)
Really visible
Presented
Space
In addition, both time and space distinguish between the concrete and the abstract. If time is abstract, then space is abstract, and vice versa.
According to Bakhtin, the chronotope is primarily an attribute of the novel. It has plot significance. The chronotope is the structural support of the genre.
Types of private chronotopes according to Bakhtin:
The chronotope of the road is based on the motif of a chance meeting. The appearance of this motif in the text can cause a plot. Open space.
The chronotope of a private salon is a non-random meeting. Closed space.
Chronotope of the castle (it is not found in Russian literature). The dominance of the historical, tribal past. Limited space.
The chronotope of the estate (not Bakhtin) is a concentric, unprincipled closed space.
The chronotope of a provincial town is eventless time, a closed, self-sufficient space, living its own life. Time is cyclical, but not sacred.
Chronotype of threshold (crisis consciousness, turning point). There is no biography as such, only moments.
Large chronotope:
Folklore (idyllic). Based on the law of inversion.
Trends in modern chronotope:
Mythologization and symbolization
Doubling
Recalling a character's memory
Increasing the meaning of editing
Time itself becomes the hero of the story
Time and space are integral coordinates of the world.
The chronotope determines the artistic unity of a literary work in its relation to reality
Organizes the space of the work and leads readers into it
Can relate different space and time
Can build a chain of associations in the reader’s mind and, on this basis, connect works with ideas about the world and expand these ideas.
No. 6. Form and content. The problem of F. and S. is one of the leading issues in the history of aesthetic teachings, the struggle between materialism and idealism, and the struggle between realistic and idealistic movements in art. The problem of F. and S. is organically connected with the main question of aesthetics - the question of the relationship of artistic creativity or, more broadly speaking, artistic consciousness to objective reality.
Aesthetics Hegel, built on the basis of his idealistic dialectics, places the problem of F. and S. in the focus of its attention. In contrast to Kant's formalism, Hegel teaches about art as a meaningful form, namely, as one of the forms of manifestation of the absolute spirit (along with religion and philosophy). The content of art, according to Hegel, is unthinkable in isolation from its form, and vice versa: form (appearance, expression, revelation) is inseparable from the entire richness of the content of the absolute spirit, which in art receives its sensual and contemplative design. The opposites of F. and S., external and internal in art interpenetrate each other, therefore Hegel calls the relationship between them essential. The absolute idea is realized as beauty precisely thanks to the dialectical interpenetration of the categories F. and S. In the dialectic of beauty, Hegel establishes three stages: beauty in general, beauty in nature and beauty in art; harmonious perfection as the unity of F. and S., according to Hegel, is possible only at the level of beauty in art, while beauty in nature plays the role of only preparation for the highest level. In the history of art, Hegel distinguishes three successive stages, at each of which the relationship between symbolism and symbolism is revealed in different ways. Symbolic art has not yet achieved the unity of symbolism and symbolism: here the form still remains external to the content. Classical art is distinguished by the unity of form and content, their harmonious interpenetration. Romantic art reveals a predominance of content over form. Hegel examines in detail the relationship between F. and S. in various types of art. At the same time, the types of art in Hegel correspond to the phases of development: architecture - symbolic, sculpture - classical, painting, music and poetry - romantic. The subjectivity of music is overcome, according to Hegel, in poetry, which stands at the pinnacle of art precisely because it most perfectly expresses the spiritual essence as its content in (verbal) form.
Question No. 7. Imagery- the main fundamental property. An image is a living picture that we must perceive through the senses (sensual, not intellectual
perception). An image is created in literature thanks to the word, therefore the word is the figurative material of literature.
Through its means (words) literature conveys other arts. Therefore, literature occupies a central position among other arts.
The image is always specific, detailed, individualized, but still it is some kind of generalization. An image always reflects some part of reality.
Artistic image – one of the main categories of aesthetics, which characterizes the way of displaying and transforming reality inherent only in art. An image is also called any phenomenon creatively recreated by the author in a work of art. Literary type - (type of hero) - a set of characters similar in their social status or occupation, worldview and spiritual appearance. Such characters can be presented in various works of the same or several writers. Literary types are a reflection of the trends in the spiritual development of society, worldview, philosophical, moral and aesthetic views of the writers themselves. Character is the recurring, stable internal properties of a person: worldview, moral principles, life values, habits - everything that allows us to characterize him as a person. People's characters are manifested in their actions and behavior, in relationships with other people. Character and type. This is what life has to do with
of a person. Type primarily expresses the generic mass principle. In character, the emphasis is, on the contrary, on individuality. The type expresses one quality or property; it is psychologically single-stranded. Character is dialectical, contradictory, psychologically complex, multifaceted. The type is always static, devoid of mobility and does not change. Character is dynamic, it changes. Character is capable of self-development. For example, Tatyana Larina and Anna Karenina, who behave completely differently than the author intended. Type exists outside of time. The character is considered against the background of the historical era, they interact together. But the character always contains a typical representative. Typical and typical are different things. Character has a core that characterizes an era, a generation. Example: “Fathers and Sons” - Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich. Therefore, very often books quickly become irrelevant.
Fairy tales and folklore commonly use types. Sometimes, however, there is a rebirth of a hero. But this is not yet character. Often heroes are carriers of one particular quality. Therefore, speaking surnames are often found in plays. Classicism is built on carriers of the same quality, for example, Fonvizin. For realism it is always important to understand the reasons - there are almost always characters there. The exception is Dead Souls, where one basically good trait in the characters is brought to the point of absurdity. Conventional images include: hyperbolic idealization, grotesque, allegory and symbol. Hyperbolic idealization is found in epics, where the real and the fantastic are combined, there are no realistic motivations for actions. The form of the grotesque: a shift in proportions - Nevsky Prospekt, a violation of scale, the inanimate displaces the living. The grotesque is often used for satire or to indicate tragic principles. Grotesque is a symbol of disharmony. The grotesque style is characterized by an abundance of alogisms and a combination of different voices. Allegory and symbol - two levels: depicted and implied. The allegory is unambiguous - there are instructions and decoding. The symbol is multi-valued, inexhaustible. In a symbol, both what is depicted and what is implied are equally important. There is no indication in the symbol
Types of imagery: Allegory – a type of imagery, the basis of which is allegory: the imprinting of a speculative idea in an objective image. The role of allegory can be played by both abstract concepts (virtue, conscience, truth, etc.), and typical phenomena, characters, mythological characters, even individuals. Symbol – a universal aesthetic category. A symbol is an image endowed with organicity and inexhaustible ambiguity, an image that goes beyond its own limits, indicates the presence of a certain meaning, inseparably fused with it, but not identical to it. The symbol is characterized by semantic depth and semantic perspective. Grotesque – a type of artistic imagery based on fantasy, laughter, hyperbole, a bizarre combination and contrast of the fantastic and the real, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, verisimilitude and caricature. Grotesque creates a special grotesque world - an anomalous, unnatural, strange, illogical world.
№ 8. The picture of the depicted world, the image of the hero of a work of literature in a unique individuality, consists of individual artistic details . Artistic detail – this is a pictorial or expressive artistic detail: an element of landscape, portrait, speech, psychologism, plot.
Being an element of an artistic whole, a detail in itself is the smallest image, a micro-image. At the same time, the detail is almost always part of a larger image. An individual detail, when assigned to a character, can become his permanent attribute, a sign by which this character is identified; such, for example, are Helen’s shining shoulders, the radiant eyes of Princess Marya in “War and Peace”, Oblomov’s robe “made of real Persian fabric”, Pechorin’s eyes, which “did not laugh when he laughed”...
№ 9 Lifelikeness - “direct”, immediate reflection of reality: creating the illusion of complete similarity (identity) of life and its artistic reflection. Artistic convention is an integral feature of any work, associated with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as non-identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art conditionally reproduces life, but the measure of this U. x. may be different. Depending on the ratio of plausibility and fiction, a distinction is made between primary and secondary fiction. For primary fiction. a greater degree of verisimilitude is characteristic when the fictionality of the depicted is not declared or emphasized by the author. Secondary U. x. - this is a demonstrative violation by the artist of verisimilitude in the depiction of objects or phenomena, a conscious appeal to fantasy, the use of the grotesque, symbols, etc., in order to give certain life phenomena a special sharpness and prominence.
Convention - the non-identity of the world is thin. works to the real world.
There is a primary convention and a secondary convention (accented). Secondary convention is complete isolation from reality. Its extreme forms are grotesque and fantasy. There is also an intermediate convention (transition to the grotesque, etc.): Raskolnikov’s dream about how an old woman appears laughing at him.
The more the author introduces his own invention, the higher the degree of convention. Literature as a phenomenon arises when the author is aware of convention, when, for example, he stops believing in mythological creatures and understands that this is fiction, a convention. In the meantime, he believes in what he came up with, this is a myth (understanding of the world, the laws by which man lives). As soon as the need arises to connect this with sensory knowledge, aesthetics, literature arises.
№ 10. Theme, problem and idea of the work. Theme is the main range of those life issues on which the writer focused his attention in his work. Sometimes the theme is even identified with the idea of the work. Themes refer to the most essential components of artistic structure, aspects of form, and supporting techniques. In literature, these are the meanings of keywords, what is recorded by them. Another meaning of the term “theme” is essential for understanding the cognitive aspect of art: it goes back to the theoretical experiments of the last century and is associated not with structural elements, but directly with the essence of the work as a whole. The theme as the foundation of an artistic creation is everything that has become the subject of the author’s interest, comprehension and evaluation.
The problematic is the area of comprehension and understanding by the writer of the reflected reality. The problematic can be called the central part of artistic content, because it, as a rule, contains what we turn to the work for - the author’s unique view of the world. In contrast to the theme, the problematic is the subjective side of artistic content, therefore, the author’s individuality, the original author’s view of the world is maximally manifested in it. Another component of the ideological world of a work is the artistic idea - the main generalizing thought or system of such thoughts. Sometimes an idea or one of the ideas is directly formulated by the author himself in the text of the work. The most common case is when the idea is not formulated in the text of the work, but seems to permeate its entire structure. In this case, the idea requires analytical work for its identification, sometimes very painstaking and complex and not always ending in an unambiguous result. For a correct understanding of the artistic idea and its meaning in the ideological world of the work, the analysis of this aspect of the artistic content must be carried out in close connection with the analysis of other components of the ideological world of the work. One of the most common practical difficulties that arise when analyzing the content is the failure to distinguish or identify themes, problems and ideas. The topic is not yet problematic and evaluative; the topic is a kind of statement: “the author reflected such and such characters in such and such situations.” The problematic level is the level of discussion of a particular value system, the establishment of significant connections between the phenomena of reality, this is the side of the artistic content where the reader is invited by the author to an active conversation. Finally, the area of ideas is the area of decisions and conclusions; an idea always denies or affirms something.
№ 11. Definition of pathos in artistic production and its varieties. The last element included in the ideological world of the work is pathos, which can be defined as the leading emotional tone of the work, its emotional mood. A synonym for the term “pathos” is the expression “emotional-value orientation.” To analyze pathos in a work of art means to establish its typological variety, the type of emotional-value orientation, attitude towards the world and man in the world. Epic-dramatic pathos represents a deep and undoubted acceptance of the world as a whole and oneself in it, which is the essence of the epic worldview. Epico-dramatic pathos is the maximum trust in the objective world in all its real versatility and inconsistency. Let us note that this type of pathos is rarely represented in literature, and even less often it appears in its pure form. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey can be cited as works based generally on epic-dramatic pathos. The objective basis of the pathos of heroism is the struggle of individuals or groups for the implementation and defense of ideals, which are necessarily perceived as sublime. Another condition for the manifestation of the heroic in reality is the free will and initiative of man: forced actions, as Hegel pointed out, cannot be heroic. With heroism as pathos based on the sublime, other types of pathos that have a sublime character come into contact - first of all, tragedy and romance. Romance is related to heroism by the desire for a sublime ideal.
But if heroism is a sphere of active action, then romance is a region of emotional experience and aspiration that does not turn into action. The pathos of tragedy is the awareness of a loss, and an irreparable loss, of some important life values - human life, social, national or personal freedom, the possibility of personal happiness, cultural values, etc. Literary scholars and aestheticians have long considered the insoluble nature of a particular life conflict to be the objective basis of tragedy. In sentimentality - another type of pathos - we, as in romance, observe the predominance of the subjective over the objective. The pathos of sentimentality often played a dominant role in the works of Richardson, Rousseau, and Karamzin. Moving on to consider the following typological varieties of pathos - humor and satire - we note that they are based on the general basis of the comic. In addition to the subjective, irony as pathos also has objective specificity. Unlike all other types of pathos, it is not aimed at objects and phenomena of reality as such, but at their ideological or emotional understanding in one or another philosophical, ethical, or artistic system.
№ 12. The concept of plot and plot. Plot Components . The word “plot” denotes a chain of events recreated in a literary work, i.e. the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in changing positions and circumstances. The events depicted by writers form the basis of the objective world of the work. The plot is the organizing principle of the dramatic, epic and lyric-epic genres. The events that make up the plot are related in different ways to the facts of reality that precede the appearance of the work. Components of a plot: motive (connected motives, free motives, repeating or leitmotifs), exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement. In epic and lyrical these components can be arranged in any order, but in dramatic they follow strictly in order. With all the variety of plots, their varieties can be classified into 2 main types: chronicle, i.e. events follow one after another; and concentric, i.e. events are connected not by a chronotopic connection, but by a cause-and-effect associative one, i.e. every previous event is the cause of the subsequent one. Plot is a set of events in their mutual internal connection. The plots in different works can be very similar to each other, but the plot is always uniquely individual. The plot is always richer than the plot, because the plot represents only factual information, and the plot implements subtextual information. The plot focuses only on the external events of the hero’s life. The plot, in addition to external events, includes the psychological state of the hero, his thoughts, subconscious impulses, i.e. any smallest changes in the hero himself and the surrounding environment. Plot components can be considered events or motive.
№ 13 The concept of conflict as the engine of the plot. Types of conflicts . Ways to implement conflict in various kinds of literary works:
The plot is based on conflict. The most important function of the plot is to reveal the contradictions in life, i.e. conflicts.
Conflict - contradiction, clash, struggle, inconsistency.
Stages of conflict development - main plot elements:
Exposition-commencement-action development-climax-denouement
Conflict classification:
Solvable (limited by the scope of the work)
Unsolvable (eternal, universal contradictions)
Types of conflicts:
Human and nature
Man and society
Man and culture
Ways to implement conflict in various kinds of literary works:
In drama, the conflict is more often fully embodied and exhausted in the course of the events depicted. It arises against the background of a conflict-free situation, escalates and resolves before the reader’s eyes (Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm”).
In epic and dramatic works, events unfold against a constant background of conflict. Contradictions exist before events begin, during their course and after their completion. These can be both solvable and unresolvable conflicts (Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard").
№ 14. Composition Composition is the composition, a certain correlation and arrangement of parts, that is, units of depicted and artistic and expressive means in a certain significant time sequence. Compositional unity and completeness of a work of art, the consistency of all its parts with each other and with the general intention of the writer is a very important condition for achieving artistry . Working on a composition involves: constructing images of characters, as well as other images of the work and their grouping; plotting (if it is an epic or drama production), choosing the form of narration (in the form of a diary, from the author, from the hero, oral narration), the overall composition, that is, bringing all the components into a single whole.
Composition techniques:
The degree of repetition of any elements in the text determines the nature of the text.
Repetition is an integral property of the motive. With the help of repetition, a “ring” composition is organized.
Repeat in time types:
There is linear time, there is cyclic time. In cyclic repetition it has a positive, sacred meaning; it forms religious consciousness. In linear time, repetition has a negative meaning. Our civilization maintains linear time.
Gain:
Reinforcement is a technique that accompanies repetition. Descriptions are often built on a number of homogeneous elements.
Opposition:
When repetition and opposition are combined, a mirror composition arises (the beginning mirrors the end or situations within the text reflect each other)
Literature is impossible without montage; it has always existed, but the concept itself is only applicable in cinematography. In literature there are 2 concepts of “montage”: the concatenation of 2 images, due to which a third meaning appears; comparison and contrast, not subject to the logic of cause and effect, reflecting the author’s associative train of thought.
In all cases of joining plot and non-plot elements (description, author's digressions), montage is used. If editing seems to be the leading technique, then such a composition is editing. If a technique functions throughout the entire text, then such a technique is called a compositional principle.
Types of compositions:
Composition of images
Speech organization
Main components
Optional - ZFK (title + epigraphs).
№ 15. MOTIVE, in the broad sense of the word, is the main psychological or figurative grain that underlies every work of art (this is what they say, for example, about the “love motives” of Tyutchev’s lyrics, the “star motives” of Fet’s poetry, etc.).
at more advanced stages of literary development, a poetic work is formed by the fusion of a very large number of individual motives. In this case, the main motive coincides with the theme. So. for example, the theme of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is the motif of historical fate, which does not interfere with the parallel development in the novel of a number of other side motifs, often only remotely associated with the theme (for example, the motif of the truth of collective consciousness - Pierre and Karataev; the everyday motif - the ruin of the rich noble family of the Counts of Rostov: numerous love motives: Nikolai Rostov and Sophie, he and Princess Maria, Pierre Bezukhov and Ellen, Prince Andrei and Natasha, etc., etc., mystical and so characteristic in the future in Tolstoy’s work the motif of regenerating death is the dying insights of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, etc., etc.). The entire set of motifs that make up a given work of art forms what is called plot
a term transferred to literary studies from music, where it denotes a group of several notes, rhythmically shaped. By analogy with this, in literary criticism the term “M.” begins to be used to denote the minimum component of a work of art - indecomposable next content element(Scherer). In this sense, the concept of M. plays a particularly large, perhaps central role in the comparative study of plots of predominantly oral literature
Answers to the exam in literary criticism
Literary criticism as a science.
Literary criticism–
the science of fiction
philological discipline
Literary criticism- one of the two philological sciences - the science of literature. Another philological science, the science of language, is linguistics, or linguistics.
Subject of study- not only fiction, but all the artistic literature of the world - written and oral.
LITERARY STUDIES as a science arose at the beginning of the 19th century.
Subject of literary criticism is not only fiction, but also all the artistic literature of the world - written and oral.
Literary studies faces two main questions. Firstly, why does every nation, in every era, along with other types of social consciousness, also have artistic literature (literature), what is its significance for the life of this people and all humanity, what is its essence, its characteristics, the reason for its emergence? Secondly, why is the artistic literature (literature) of each people different in each era, as well as within the era itself, what is the essence of these differences, why does it change and develop historically, what is the reason for this and not another development?
Modern literary criticism consists of THREE MAIN SECTIONS:
literary theory;
history of literature;
literary criticism.
THEORY OF LITERATURE studies the general laws of the literary process, literature as a form of social consciousness, literary works as a whole, the specifics of the relationship between the author, work and reader. Develops general concepts and terms. Literary theory interacts with other literary disciplines, as well as history, philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, and linguistics. Poetics is a part of literary theory that studies the composition and structure of a literary work. The theory of the literary process is a part of the theory of literature that studies the patterns of development of genders and genres. Literary aesthetics – studies literature as an art form.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE provides a historical approach to works of art. A literary historian studies every work as an indivisible, integral unity, as an individual and valuable phenomenon in its own right among other individual phenomena. Analyzing individual parts and aspects of a work, he strives only to understand and interpret the whole. This study is complemented and united by historical coverage of what is being studied, i.e. establishing connections between literary phenomena and their significance in the evolution of literature. Thus, the historian studies the grouping of literary schools and styles, their succession, the importance of tradition in literature, and the degree of originality of individual writers and their works. Describing the general course of development of literature, the historian interprets this difference, discovering the reasons for this evolution, which lie both within literature itself and in the relationship of literature to other phenomena of human culture, in the environment of which literature develops and with which it is in constant relationship. Literary history is a branch of general cultural history.
LITERARY CRITICISM deals with the interpretation and evaluation of works of literature from the point of view of modernity (as well as pressing problems of social and spiritual life, therefore it is often of a journalistic, political and topical nature), from the point of view of aesthetic value; expresses the self-awareness of society and literature in their evolution; identifies and approves the creative principles of literary trends; has an active influence on the literary process, as well as directly on the formation of public consciousness; relies on the theory and history of literature, philosophy, aesthetics.
AUXILIARY LITERARY DISCIPLINES:
textual criticism– studies the text as such: manuscripts, editions, editions, time of writing, author, place, translation and comments;
paleography– study of ancient text carriers, manuscripts only;
bibliography– an auxiliary discipline of any science, scientific literature on a particular subject;
library science– the science of funds, repositories of not only fiction, but also scientific literature, union catalogues.
Literary theory has 2 main content blocks:
methodology
Methodology.
In the development of literary theory, two opposing trends are observed:
passion for the theories of comparativeism and formalism (the very concept of “content of a work” is discarded, it is argued that literature consists only of form, that only form needs to be studied. Life is the “material” necessary for the writer for formal constructions - compositional and verbal. A work of art is a system creative techniques that have aesthetic significance).
strengthening and deepening the materialist worldview in literature.
Literary criticism faces two main questions:
why does every nation in every era, along with other types of social consciousness, also have artistic literature (literature, what is its significance for the life of this people and all humanity, what is its essence, its features, the reason for its emergence.
why the literature of each people is different in each era, as well as within the era itself, what is the essence of these differences, why does it change and develop historically, what is the reason for this and not other development.
Literary criticism can answer these questions only if it establishes some connections between the literature of individual peoples and their lives as a whole.
Method of literary criticism- a certain understanding of the connections that exist between the development of literature and the general development of the life of peoples and all humanity.
Methodology– theory of the method, doctrine about it.
Poetics.
Poetics is the study of the organization of the artistic whole, the science of the means and methods of expressing artistic content. Happens historical: development of the components of literature (genera, genres, tropes and figures). And it also happens theoretical: examines the most general laws of content.
The ancient concept of art as an imitation of nature. Plato and Aristotle on the essence of art
Mimetic nature of man - imitation (Plato, Aristotle)
Plato belonged to the idealistic tradition. The primacy of the idea, the secondary nature of matter. "Imitation of imitation."
World of ideas
World of Items
Imitation of the world of objects
Art is not allowed to penetrate into the sphere of ideas. The sensual and emotional nature of art. It is capable of thinking very indirectly, and therefore is unpredictable. It is fashionable to use music to educate both heroes and cowards. The treatise “The State” crowns the poets, but sends them outside the city walls. There should be no risk areas.
Aristotle also used the concept of “mimesis”. The material world is primary, and the ideal world is secondary. “Poetics” is art from the point of view of cognitive capabilities. The concept of recognition and catharsis. Recognition of the known (typical - the universal is manifested in the content, but the form is always different) and recognition of the unknown (state of catharsis - recognition based on the material of a tragic loss, possibly unknown in reality. Is productive).
Classical theory of the tragic: a tragic situation involves absolutely valuable characters or value systems. The scale of the hero is very important; it determines the possibility of experiencing a cathartic state.
Aristotle compares poetry and history. The historian writes about what happened, and the poet deals with what could have been. Anthology of reality. Reality is only one version of the possible. In history, vice is not always punished, but in art it is almost always punished.
3 types of literature:
Epic - imitation of an event
Drama - imitation of action
Lyrics - imitation of feeling
German idealistic aesthetics. Basic concepts of the creative and aesthetic concepts of Kant, Schelling, Hegel.
In the era of Classicism mimesis - imitation of examples of the graceful era. The doctrine of three unities. Aesthetics - the sensual - the science of beauty, of beauty, it becomes a branch of philosophy.
"Aesthetics" by Kant. Kant is the founder of a new picture of the world, which moves away from the previous isomorphism. 2 worlds: nature and human culture. Human beings are endowed with two properties: the ability to freedom and goal-setting.
The beautiful has no purpose, it lacks a pragmatic principle.
The Age of Romanticism – Schelling– unity of form and content. Natural philosophical aesthetics. The task of art is to imitate nature in its ability to create. Influence on Russian literature. Supporters of pure art.
Hegel. The most severe departure from the mimetic nature of art. Art is the sphere of ideal. The ideal is the manifestation of the universal in the individual. Art BRINGS to life the idea of an ideal. Typification is the embodiment of the universal in the individual. Hegel identified 3 types of literature, but not according to the mimetic principle, but according to the “subject-object” dialectic:
Epic – predominance of the object, passivity of the artist
Lyrics - the predominance of the subject
Drama is a synthesis of objective and subjective: situation, events, conflict - the objective is carried out through the subject.
Realism - the need to study the world - a complex of humanities. Art is a surrogate for life. The art world is divided into two groups: progressive and conservative.
Academic schools in literary criticism: mythological, cultural-historical, comparative-historical, psychological.
Academic schools arise as a result of the Kantian revolution.
The Romantic era in Germany gave birth to mythological school: Schelling, Schlegel, Brothers Grimm. Submission to the folk spirit is the idea of national mythology. We dealt with genesis: we need to take material from the past.
Literary schools developed according to the law of the pendulum - the functional principle comes to replace it - cultural-historical school(France). Hippolyte Taine: the nature of art is determined by race, environment, moment. The work is a product of this “bouquet”. Literature is good at synthesis, but the desire for rationality alone will ruin it (in the field of fiction). Here literature ceases to be elegant and takes on a supporting role. It only captures an underestimation of the aesthetic nature of art. Literature = literature. Complete lack of interest in a particular work. The biographical method emerges. A separate work and the stages of creativity as a whole through biography + there is an aesthetic principle. A work is not only epistolary evidence. Art is the sphere of truth (according to Solovyov) - access to the philosophical level, reflection. Study of attributes. Entirely focused on studying the real dependence of literature on the conditions and circumstances of national-historical life. The most prominent representative in Russia is A.N. Pypin, author of numerous works on the history of Russian literature and folklore. Representatives of this trend were sincerely convinced that literature, like other forms of art, arises and develops under the influence of various conditions, relationships, circumstances that exist in the life of one or another people in one or another historical era. They called them factors of literary development, sought to study them carefully, tried to find as many of them as possible in order to be able to explain the features of any genre. But they could not figure out where these factors come from.
Comparativism - comparative historical literary criticism. Everything new is well forgotten old - the principle of coincidences. Literary studies is entering the universal stage. But what to compare with? In Russia A.V. Veselovsky “Historical poetics” dedicated to folklore. The plot is what comes to mind. And the unwinding of the plot is a plot. Certain motives (evil stepmother, transformation into a monster). Coded material plots. The set of motives are wandering plots. Founder - T. Benfey. The essence of comparativeism lies not in comparative study, but in a special understanding of the development of literature - in the theory of borrowing.
According to this theory, the historical development of literature of different nations comes down to the fact that folk singers and storytellers, and later writers of different countries, borrow from each other the motifs from which works are composed. From their point of view, the history of literature is a continuous transition (migration) of the same once-emerging motifs from work to work, from one national literature to another.
Psychological school– mechanism of perception of the work (Potebnya). A meeting of two consciousnesses: the author and the reader.
Psychoanalytic interpretation of art, Russian formalism and structuralism.
The first school in Russia - Russian formalism– formed her rejection of the tradition of academic literary criticism: the pursuit of abstract things, an attempt to analyze the artistic image (Schelling “The Symbolic Nature of the Image and Its Inexhaustibility”). Academic literary criticism has a colossal sin: it has not come closer to answering the question: What is literature? How is it different from non-literature?
Circle of Philologists (1916): Shklovsky, Ekhenbaum, Tynyanov, Yakobson, Zhermudsky. The manifesting moment - 1914 - Shklovsky’s book “The Resurrection of the Word” and “Art as a Technique” (1917).
The priority of form is the only given that can fix the specifics of literature.
Attention in the nature of the word (material is a unit of the artistic whole)
Interest in the process of making art, cultivating the poetic (Ekhenbaum “How was Gogol’s Overcoat Made?”)
Late formalism. Tynyanov. Defamiliarization is conceived as a combustible technique that is capable of organizing and promoting the process of the emergence of something new in art.
Structuralism. Jacobson is the founder of American structuralism. The era of positivism in science. The humanities and natural sciences tried to come as close to each other as possible. The birth of semiotics. The desire to think about a work in terms of internal structure, which is important and organizingly significant. They did not abandon content, but introduced the concept of “content of form.” The principle of binary: oppositional moments, lines of tension between which create special fields. Variant and invariant. Description of any structure. The moment of destruction is in structuralism itself. Roland Barthes School. Unstructured actions destroyed this structure - a cognitive crisis.
Poststructuralism. The structure of the world ceases to be the organizer of the world. Decentralization, variability of the world. Refusal of big ideas (progress). Relativistic picture of the world. The totality of the principle of relativity. There is no single center: it is where the subject acts. The concept of “text”, which originated in the depths of structuralism. Only the formal data (composition, size, division of the text) does not change depending on the will of the reader. Intertext– a product of poststructuralism (Barthes and Christian). He is not interested in the word as a material, but in allusions and hidden quotes. Deconstruction is the fundamental decomposition of the world of a work in order to capture spontaneous semantic meanings not fixed by the author himself.
The figurative nature of art. Properties of an artistic image.
Art is one of the types of social consciousness and spiritual culture of humanity. Like their other types, in particular science, it serves as a means of understanding life. What are the features of art that distinguish it from science and other types of social consciousness, in other words, what are its specific properties? First of all, this is a difference in the means in which art and science express their content. It is immediately noticeable that science uses abstract concepts for this, and art uses images. This distinctive property of works of art was first noticed over two thousand years ago by ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, who called art “imitation of nature.” Without using the word “image,” they essentially understood that art recreates, reproduces life in images.
What are images in contrast to reasoning, evidence, conclusions (syllogisms), which are created with the help of abstract concepts? What is the difference between images and concepts?
Both are means of reflecting reality in the minds of people, means of knowing it. But concepts and images reflect life in different ways in its two main aspects, which exist in all its phenomena.
The high degree of clarity and activity of expression of the general, generic in the individuality of this or that phenomenon makes this phenomenon a type of its kind, a typical phenomenon (Gr. typos - imprint, imprint).
For art historians, an “image” is not just a reflection of a separate phenomenon of life in the human mind, but a reproduction of a phenomenon already reflected and realized by the artist with the help of certain material means and signs - with the help of speech, facial expressions and gestures, outlines and colors, a system of sounds and etc.
Images always reproduce life in its individual phenomena and in the unity and interpenetration of their common and individual features that exists in the phenomena of reality itself.
A.A. Potebnya in his work “Thought and Language” considered the image as reproduced representation - as a kind of sensory perceived reality. It is this meaning of the word “image” that is vital for the theory of art, which distinguishes between scientific-illustrative, factual (informing about facts that actually took place) and artistic images. The latter (and this is their specificity) are created with the explicit participation of the imagination: they do not simply reproduce isolated facts, but condense and concentrate aspects of life that are significant for the author in the name of its evaluative comprehension. The artist’s imagination is, therefore, not only a psychological stimulus for his work, but also a certain reality present in the work. In the latter there is a fictitious objectivity that does not fully correspond to itself in reality. Nowadays, the words “sign” and “sign” have taken root in literary studies. They have noticeably replaced the usual vocabulary (“image”, “imagery”). Structuralism and the poststructuralism that replaced it are oriented towards semiotics.
The artistic image captures or expresses the most essential features of art as a whole. The purpose of the image in art– reflect objective reality in a specific form. Any image is objective in its source - the reflected object and subjective in the form of its existence.
Artistic image– this is the unity of reflection and creativity, as well as perception, in which the specific role of the subject of artistic activity and perception is expressed. The artistic image is a universal category of artistic creativity, a means and form of mastering life through art. It also plays the role of a boundary line that “joins” the real world and the world of art. It is thanks to the image that the artistic consciousness is filled with thoughts, feelings, and experiences of real life and existence.
The definition of “figurative” is applicable both to individual expressive techniques, metaphors, comparisons, epithets, and to holistic, enlarged artistic formations - character, artistic character, artistic conflict. In addition, there is a tradition of highlighting the figurative structure of entire artistic movements, styles, and methods. We are talking about images of medieval art, Renaissance, classicism. The only common feature of all these images is that they are artistic images.
Just as art is born from reality, from practical activity, so the artistic image is rooted in imagery, imaginative thinking. An artistic image embodied in a work, as a rule, has its own creator, the artist. The quality of artistry will be possessed by that imaginative thinking that meets the criteria historically developed by aesthetics and artistic practice, such as a high degree of generalization, unity of content and form, originality, etc. Images of art, while maintaining a connection with the sphere of sensuality, contain all the depth and originality of meaningful artistry . This was noted by Hegel, who wrote that sensual images and sounds appear in art not only for their own sake and their immediate manifestation, but in order to satisfy the highest spiritual interests in this form, since they have the ability to awaken and touch all the depths of consciousness and evoke their response in the spirit (Hegel “Aesthetics”). It followed that An artistic image is nothing more than the expression of an abstract idea in a concrete sensory form.
Artistic creativity is the process of creating new aesthetic values. The artist’s thinking is metaphorical and purely individual. Artistic cognition is an associative process in which not the natural laws of the development of a phenomenon are revealed, but its connections with a person, its meaning for a person. The artistic image merges with the work that embodies it and some of its levels exist only in the material of art (in word, sound, paint, etc.).
An artistic image as a form of thinking in art is an allegorical, metaphorical thought that reveals one phenomenon through another.
Metaphorical- this is an element of the artistic system, which is based on identifying the similarities between the phenomena of reality. The image reveals one object through another, comparing two different independent phenomena. This is the essence of artistic thought: it is not imposed from the outside by the objects of the world, but organically follows from their comparison, from their interaction. For example, in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky's heroes are revealed through the reflections and shadows that they cast on each other, on the world around them, and which it, in turn, casts on them. In Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” the character of Andrei Bolkonsky is revealed through his love for Natasha, and through his relationship with his father, and through the sky of Austerlitz, and through thousands of things and people that are “connected” with every person. An artistic image always connects what is at first glance incompatible and, thanks to this, reveals some hitherto unknown aspects and relationships of real phenomena.
Artist's Mind associatively. For him, like for Chekhov's Trigorin, a cloud looks like a piano, and the shine of the neck of a broken bottle and the shadow of a mill wheel give birth to a moonlit night.
In a certain sense, the artistic image is built on paradoxical and the seemingly absurd formula: “There is an elderberry in the garden, and a guy in Kyiv,” through the “conjugation” of phenomena far removed from each other.
Self-movement of an artistic image. An artistic image has its own logic, it develops according to its own internal laws, and they cannot be violated. The artist gives direction to the “flight” of the artistic image, puts it into orbit, but from that moment on he cannot change anything without committing violence against artistic truth. The artistic image lives its own life, organizes, and crushes the artistic space under itself in the flow of the artistic process. The vital material that underlies the work leads one along, and on this path the artist sometimes comes to a conclusion that is completely different from the one he originally aimed for. Heroes and heroines of works of fiction behave towards their authors as children behave towards their parents. They owe their lives to the authors, their character is largely formed under the influence of the “parents”-authors, the heroes (especially at the beginning of the work) “obey”, expressing a certain respect, but as soon as their character takes shape and strengthens, is finally formed, they begin act independently, according to your own internal logic.
Figurative thought - ambiguous. An artistic image is as deep, rich and multifaceted in its meaning and significance as life itself. A great artistic image is always multifaceted; it reveals an abyss of meaning that becomes visible after many centuries. Each era finds new sides and facets in the classical image, giving it its own content, its own interpretation.
Understatement, of course, is one of the aspects of the ambiguity of the artistic image. A.P. Chekhov said that the art of writing is the art of crossing out. And E. Hemingway compared a work of art to an iceberg. Only a small part of it is visible on the surface; the main and essential part is hidden under water. This is what makes the reader active, and the very process of perceiving a work turns it into co-creation. The artist forces the reader, viewer, listener to think out and complete the drawing. However, this is not arbitrary speculation. The perceiver is given an initial impulse for reflection, he is given a certain emotional state and a program for processing the information received, but he retains both free will and space for creative imagination. The understatement of the artistic image, stimulating the reader’s thoughts, is manifested with particular force in the principle of non finita (lack of ending, incompleteness of the work). How often, especially in the art of the 20th century, a work breaks off mid-sentence, does not tell us about the fate of the heroes, does not resolve the plot lines!
Control questions... By introduction to literary criticism.-Minsk, 1973. 8. Krupchanova L.M. Introduction to literary criticism ... By working with test tasks By course and homework, recommendations By preparation for exams, recommendations By ... How are resolved in science questions...
