What is a genre in literature, list and examples. Short story, short story, tale as epic genres

STORY. The term "R." in its genre meaning is usually applied to any short narrative prose. a literary work with a realistic tint, containing a detailed and complete narrative about any individual... ... Literary encyclopedia

Story- STORY. In Russian literature, the designation of a more or less specific narrative genre by the subtitle “story” was adopted relatively late. N. Gogol and Pushkin prefer the name “story”, where we could say... ... Dictionary of literary terms

See anecdote, book, fairy tale based on stories... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and expressions similar in meaning. under. ed. N. Abramova, M.: Russian Dictionaries, 1999. story, anecdote, book, fairy tale; narration, description, history, epic, story, essay; parable... Synonym dictionary

- [ask], story, husband. 1. Action under Ch. tell tell (ed.). “Tea drinking, conversations, stories of provincial news began.” Leskov. 2. Verbal description, presentation of some events. An eyewitness account. “My story will be sad.”... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

story- a, m. rasscasse f. Scorpionfish. Poppy. 1908. I got half a bucket of red fish from a fisherman I knew, the local story says, sea bug-eyed ruffs, in addition I took a fatty sea eel, and heels of live lobsters. S. Black Real bouillabaisse. // Ch.... ... Historical Dictionary Gallicisms of the Russian language

STORY, a small form of epic prose, correlated with a story as a more developed form of narration. Goes back to folklore genres(fairy tale, parable); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from a novella, and from the 18th century. and essay... ... Modern encyclopedia

A small form of epic prose, correlated with a story as a more developed form of storytelling. Goes back to folklore genres (fairy tales, parables); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from a novella, and from the 18th century. and an essay. Sometimes… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

STORY, huh, husband. 1. A small form of epic prose, a narrative work of small size. Storybook. 2. Verbal presentation of what n. events. R. eyewitness. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

A small form of epic prose, correlated with a story as a more developed form of storytelling. Goes back to folklore genres (fairy tales, parables); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from the novella. Big Dictionary By… … Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

Number times. Jarg. they say Joking. About an implausible message. Smirnov 2002, 184. Stay on the stories. Novg. Iron. Not achieving what you want. NOSE 7, 29. Tell stories. Kar. Lie, tell tall tales. SRGK 5, 467 ... Large dictionary of Russian sayings

STORY- STORY. 1. View monologue speech, verbal presentation of which l. events, a narration of what the speaker has seen, heard or experienced. Wed. lecture, report, speech, performance. 2. One of the verbal teaching methods (general didactic concept),... ... New dictionary methodological terms and concepts (theory and practice of language teaching)

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

The story as an epic genre

The distinctive features of the story are the small number characters, small content, one storyline. The story does not have intertwining events and cannot contain a variety of artistic colors.

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

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

There are stories in which the characteristic features of the novel can be traced, and there are also small works with one storyline, which are still called a novel and not a story, despite the fact that all the signs point to this type of genre.

Novella as an epic genre

Many people believe that a short story is a certain type of story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a type of short prose work. The short story differs from the short story in its plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the rigor of its composition and volume.

A novella most often reveals a pressing problem or issue through one event. As an example of a literary genre, the short story arose during the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the novella began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

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

Novels that depicted fateful events and the play of fate with man appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers such as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.

The story as an epic genre

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

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

And such a topic is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are " Stationmaster"A. Pushkina," Poor Lisa"N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arsenyev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The importance of artistic detail in storytelling

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

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

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STORY- a narrative epic genre with a focus on small volume and unity of the artistic event.

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

The genetic origins of the novella are precisely in a fairy tale, fable, anecdote. What distinguishes it from an anecdote is the possibility of a tragic or sentimental plot rather than a comic one. From the fable - the absence of allegories and edification. From a fairy tale - the absence of a magical element. If magic does take place (mainly in an oriental novel), it is perceived as something amazing.

The classic novella originated during the Renaissance. It was then that such specific features as sharp, dramatic conflict, extraordinary incidents and turns of events, and in the life of the hero - unexpected turns of fate. Goethe wrote: “The novella is nothing more than an unheard-of incident that happened.” These are Boccaccio's short stories from the collection Deccameron. Here, for example, is the plot of the fourth story of the second day: “Landolfo Ruffolo, impoverished, becomes a corsair; taken by the Genoese, wrecked at sea, saved on a box full of jewels, finds shelter with a woman from Corfu and returns home a rich man.”

Each literary era left its mark on the short story genre. Thus, in the era of romanticism, the content of the short story often becomes mystical, the line between real events and their refraction in the consciousness of the hero ( Sandman Hoffmann).

Until the establishment of realism in literature, the short story avoided psychologism and philosophy, inner world the hero was conveyed through his actions and deeds. Any kind of descriptiveness was alien to her; the author did not intrude into the narrative, did not express his assessments.

With the development of realism, the short story, as it was in its classical examples, almost disappears. Realism 19th century unthinkable without descriptiveness and psychologism. The short story is being replaced by other types of short narrative, among which the first place, especially in Russia, comes to the story, which for a long time existed as a type of short story (by A. Marlinsky, Odoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, etc.). In the prospectus Educational book of literature for Russian youth Gogol gave a definition of a story, which includes a story as a particular variety (“a masterfully and vividly told picture event”). What is meant is an ordinary “case” that can happen to any person.

Since the late 1940s in Russian literature, the story has been understood as special genre both in relation to a short story, and in comparison with a “physiological sketch”. The essay is dominated by direct description and research, it is always journalistic. The story, as a rule, is dedicated to a specific fate, talks about a separate event in a person’s life, and is grouped around a specific episode. This is its difference from the story, which is a more detailed form, which usually describes several episodes, a segment of the hero’s life. In Chekhov's story I want to sleep it talks about a girl who, on sleepless nights, is driven to the point of committing a crime: she strangles someone who prevents her from sleeping infant. The reader learns about what happened to this girl before only from her dream; what will happen to her after the crime is committed is generally unknown. All the characters, except for the girl Varka, are outlined very briefly. All the events described prepare the central one - the murder of a baby. The story is short in length.

But the point is not in the number of pages (there are short stories and relatively long stories), and not even in the number of plot events, but in the author’s focus on extreme brevity. So, Chekhov's story Ionych in content it is not even close to a story, but to a novel (almost the entire life of the hero is traced). But all the episodes are presented very briefly, the author’s goal is the same - to show the spiritual degradation of Doctor Startsev. According to Jack London, “a story is... a unity of mood, situation, action.”

Extreme brevity of the narrative requires special attention to the details. Sometimes one or two skillfully found details replace a lengthy characterization of the hero. So, in Turgenev’s story Khor and Kalinich Khor's boots, seemingly made of marble leather, or a bunch of strawberries presented by Kalinich to his friend, reveal the essence of both peasants - Khor's thriftiness and Kalinich's poetry.

“But the selection of details is not the whole difficulty,” wrote the master of the story Nagibin. – A story, by its genre nature, must be absorbed immediately and entirely, as if “in one gulp”; as well as all the “private” figurative material of the story. This places special demands on the details in the story. They should be arranged so that instantly, “with the speed of reading,” they form an image, giving the reader a living, picturesque idea...” So, in Bunin's story Antonov apples practically nothing happens, but skillfully selected details give the reader a “living, picturesque idea” of the passing past.

The small volume of the story also determines its stylistic unity. The narration is usually told from one person. This can be the author, the narrator, or the hero. But in the story, much more often than in “large” genres, the pen is, as it were, passed to the hero, who himself tells his story. Often before us is a tale: the story of a certain fictitious person who has his own, clearly expressed speech manner(stories by Leskov, in the 20th century - by Remizov, Zoshchenko, Bazhov, etc.).

The story, like the short story, bears the features of the literary era in which it was created. Yes, stories

Literary genre is a group literary works, which has common historical development trends and is united by a set of properties in its content and form. Sometimes this term is confused with the concepts of “type” and “form”. Today there is no single clear classification of genres. Literary works are divided according to a certain number of characteristic features.

History of genre formation

First systematization literary genres was presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. Thanks to this work, it began to appear that literary genre is a natural stable system that requires the author to fully comply with the principles and canons a certain genre. Over time, this led to the formation of a number of poetics that strictly prescribed to authors exactly how they should write a tragedy, ode or comedy. Long years these requirements remained unshakable.

Decisive changes in the system of literary genres began only end of the XVIII century.

At the same time literary works aimed at artistic exploration, in their attempts to distance themselves as much as possible from genre divisions, gradually came to the emergence of new phenomena unique to literature.

What literary genres exist

To understand how to determine the genre of a work, you need to familiarize yourself with existing classifications and the characteristic features of each of them.

Below is an approximate table for determining the type of existing literary genres

Division of genres by content

Classification literary trends based on content includes comedy, tragedy and drama.

Comedy is a type of literature, which provides a humorous approach. Varieties of comic direction are:

There are also comedy of characters and sitcoms. In the first case, the source of humorous content is internal features characters, their vices or shortcomings. In the second case, comedy is manifested in current circumstances and situations.

Tragedy - dramatic genre with an obligatory catastrophic outcome, the opposite of the comedy genre. Typically, tragedy reflects the deepest conflicts and contradictions. The plot is as tense as possible. In some cases, tragedies are written in poetic form.

Drama is a special kind fiction , where the events taking place are conveyed not through their direct description, but through monologues or dialogues of the characters. Drama like literary phenomenon existed among many peoples even at the level of works of folklore. Originally in Greek, this term meant a sad event that affects one specific person. Subsequently, drama began to represent a wider range of works.

The most famous prose genres

The category of prose genres includes literary works of various lengths, written in prose.

Novel

A novel is a prose literary genre that involves a detailed narrative about the fate of the heroes and certain critical periods of their lives. The name of this genre dates back to the 12th century, when knightly stories arose “in the folk Romance language” as the opposite of Latin historiography. The short story began to be considered a plot type of novel. IN late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th century such concepts as detective novel appeared in literature, women's novel, a fantasy novel.

Novella

Novella - a variety prose genre. Her birth was caused by the famous collection "Decameron" Giovanni Boccaccio . Subsequently, several collections based on the model of the Decameron were published.

The era of romanticism introduced elements of mysticism and phantasmagorism into the short story genre - examples include the works of Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, the works of Prosper Merimee bore the features of realistic stories.

Novella as short story with a sharp plot became characteristic genre For American literature.

Characteristics the novellas are:

1. Maximum brevity of presentation.
2. The poignancy and even paradoxical nature of the plot.
3. Neutrality of style.
4. Lack of descriptiveness and psychologism in the presentation.
5. An unexpected ending, always containing an extraordinary turn of events.

Tale

A story is prose of a relatively small volume. The plot of the story, as a rule, is in the nature of reproducing natural life events. Usually the story reveals the fate and personality of the hero against the backdrop of current events. A classic example is “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.

Story

A short story is a small form of prose work, which originates from folklore genres - parables and fairy tales. Some literary experts as a type of genre review essays, essays and short stories. Usually the story is characterized by a small volume, one plot line and a small number of characters. Stories are characteristic of literary works of the 20th century.

Play

It's called a play dramatic work, which is created for the purpose of subsequent theatrical production.

The structure of the play usually includes phrases from the characters and the author's remarks describing the environment or the actions of the characters. At the beginning of the play there is always a list of characters With brief description their appearance, age, character, etc.

The whole play is divided into large parts - acts or actions. Each action, in turn, is divided into smaller elements - scenes, episodes, pictures.

The plays of J.B. have won great fame in world art. Moliere (“Tartuffe”, “The Imaginary Invalid”) B. Shaw (“Wait and see”), B. Brecht (“The Good Man from Szechwan”, “The Threepenny Opera”).

Description and examples of individual genres

Let's look at the most common and significant examples of literary genres for world culture.

Poem

A poem is a large piece of poetry that has a lyrical plot or describes a sequence of events. Historically, the poem was “born” from the epic

In turn, a poem can have many genre varieties:

1. Didactic.
2. Heroic.
3. Burlesque,
4. Satirical.
5. Ironic.
6. Romantic.
7. Lyrical-dramatic.

Initially, the leading themes for the creation of poems were world historical or important religious events and themes. An example of such a poem would be Virgil's Aeneid., “The Divine Comedy” by Dante, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, “ Lost heaven"J. Milton, Voltaire's Henriad, etc.

At the same time, it developed romantic poem- “The Knight in Leopard’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto. This type of poem to a certain extent echoes the tradition of medieval chivalric romances.

Over time, moral, philosophical and social themes began to take center stage (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov).

IN XIX-XX centuries the poem begins more and more become realistic(“Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky).

Epic

An epic is usually understood as a set of works that are combined common era, nationality, subject.

The emergence of each epic is conditioned by certain historical circumstances. As a rule, an epic claims to be an objective and authentic account of events.

Visions

This unique narrative genre, when the story is told from a person's point of view ostensibly experiencing a dream, lethargy, or hallucination.

1. Already in the era of antiquity, under the guise of real visions, fictitious events began to be described in the form of visions. The authors of the first visions were Cicero, Plutarch, Plato.
2. In the Middle Ages, the genre began to gain momentum in popularity, reaching its heights with Dante in his " Divine Comedy", which in its form represents a detailed vision.
3. For some time, visions were an integral part of church literature in most European countries. The editors of such visions were always representatives of the clergy, thus gaining the opportunity to express their personal views, supposedly on behalf of higher powers.
4. Over time, new acute social satirical content was put into the form of visions (“Visions of Peter the Plowman” by Langland).

In more modern literature the genre of visions began to be used to introduce elements of fantasy.

small form epic kind literature; small in volume prose work. Unlike an essay, a story has a plot and conflict and is less documentary, i.e. it contains fiction. A short story differs from a short story in its dynamic construction and, as a rule, an unexpected outcome of the plot. Depending on the content, there are two types of stories: novelistic and essay types. The basis of a short story is a certain incident that reveals the development of the character of the main character. Such stories record either a moment that changed the hero’s worldview, or several events that led to this moment: “Belkin’s Tales” by A. S. Pushkin, “The Bride” and “Ionych” by A. P. Chekhov, “the tramp” stories of M. Gorky. A story of this type goes back to the literature of the Renaissance, where many stories of the novelistic type were combined into a larger work: this is how “Don Quixote” by M. Cervantes, “Gilles Blas” by A. R. Lesage, “Till Eulenspiegel” by C. de Coster are constructed. A story of an essay type captures a certain state of the world or society; its task is to show not a key point, but an ordinary, normal life any group of people or one person, choosing for this the most typical moment: “Notes of a Hunter” by I. S. Turgenev, “Antonov Apples” by I. A. Bunin, “Cavalry” by I. E. Babel. Such stories are often included in more major work, unfolding a morally descriptive picture, often with satirical pathos; for example, in J. Swift, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. A story can combine both trends: the author uses a novelistic form for morally descriptive content; for example, “Mumu” ​​by I. S. Turgenev, “Death of an Official” by A. P. Chekhov, etc.

Among the stories, detective and fantasy stories stand out. Detective stories describe a criminal incident; their plot is based on the search for a criminal. Writers often create cycles of detective stories united by a central character: for example, Sherlock Holmes by A.C. Doyle or Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple by A. Christie. Fantasy stories place the action in fictional world(the future or another planet), showing the life of the heroes among technical innovations in conditions of almost unlimited possibilities, for example. fantasy stories R. Bradbury.

In Russian literature, the short story is one of the most common genres of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 20th century the so-called genre arose a “women’s” story (V.S. Tokarev, D. Rubin), which is an episode from the life of the hero, revealing his psychology, and through it, the psychology of everyone modern people. In content it gravitates towards a novel, but in volume and form it remains a story.