Epic as a type of literature. Epic and epic genres Generic specificity of works

Epic - Greek. “word”, “narration”, “story”.

One of the three types of literature identified by Aristotle. Originated earlier than other genera. It is a story about events unfolding in space and time independent of the objective narrator. The epic tells about the past holistically. Containing a holistic picture of people's life.

Three parts: story, description, reasoning.

Homer has a strictly objective narrative.

Originated in the communal tribal formation heroic An epic is a heroic narrative about an event important to the family, which reflects the harmonious unity of the people and heroic heroes.

“The Iliad” is a military-heroic epic, “The Odyssey” is a fairy-tale epic.

Homeric question.

Homer dates back to the 8th century. BC, the poems were recorded in the 6th century. BC, in the 3rd century. BC. processed in the Library of Alexandria.

2 points of view:

Analytical: it is impossible for one person to create such works, Homer was a rhapsodist - a reciting poet who combined previously created texts;

Unitarian: Homer was an aed - a poet-improviser, a bright personality, on some basis he created poems according to a clear plan.

Modern point of view: it is based on the myths of the Mycenaean period, an important historical event - the Trojan War (XIII-XII centuries BC), myths superimposed on historical events, history reached Homer in a mythologized version. Based on the existing tradition and stylistic techniques of folklore, he selected from the vast epic repertoire and fused into a single whole material to create a large poem.

Features of Homeric style.

1. Objectivity.

2. Antipsychologism.

3. Monumentality.

4. Heroism.

5. Retarding technique.

6. Chronological incompatibility (actions occurring in parallel are depicted sequentially).

7. Humanism.

8. Lyrical, tragic and comic principles in poems with the unity of artistic style.

9. Constant formulas (like epithets, for example).

10. Hexameter.

4. "Iliad"

The action of the Iliad (i.e., the poem about Ilion) is dated to the 10th year of the Trojan War, but neither the cause of the war nor its course are set out in the poem. The story as a whole and the main characters are assumed to be already known to the listener; The content of the poem is only one episode, within which a huge amount of material from legends is concentrated and a large number of Greek and Trojan heroes are introduced. The Iliad consists of 15,700 verses, which were subsequently divided by ancient scholars into 24 songs, according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet. The theme of the poem is announced in the very first verse, where the singer addresses the Muse, the goddess of song: “Wrath, goddess, sing to Achilles, son of Peleus.”
Achilles (Achilles), the son of the Thessalian king Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis, the bravest of the Achaean knights, is the central figure of the Iliad. He is “short-lived”, destined for great glory and quick death. Achilles is depicted as such a mighty hero that the Trojans do not dare leave the walls of the city while he is participating in the war; As soon as he appears, all other heroes become unnecessary. The “anger” of Achilles, his refusal to participate in hostilities, thus serves as an organizing moment for the entire course of the poem, since only Achilles’ inaction allows the picture of the battles to unfold and show all the brilliance of the Greek and Trojan knights.
“The Iliad,” a military-heroic poem, tells about the events of the war caused by the quarrel of the bravest of the participants in the campaign, Achilles, with the leader of the army, Agamemnon, who took his captive Briseis from Achilles. The insulted Achilles refused to participate in the battles and returned to the army only after the death of his best friend Patroclus. Avenging the death of his friend, he entered into a duel with the leader of the Trojan army, Hector, who was responsible for the death of Patroclus, and killed him.

In the Iliad, stories about the actions of people on earth alternate with scenes on Olympus, where the gods, divided into two parties, decide the fate of individual battles. In this case, events occurring simultaneously are presented as occurring sequentially, one after another (the so-called law of chronological incompatibility).

The plot of the action of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles during a quarrel with Agamemnon; the events set forth in the poem are caused by this anger, and the entire plot is, as it were, a sequential presentation of the phases of Achilles’ anger, although there are deviations from the main plot line and inserted episodes. The climax of the plot is the duel between Achilles and Hector; The denouement is the return of his son's body to Priam by Achilles.

The Iliad consists of a series of episodes that unfold sequentially in time and often have a completely independent character (linear composition). The fast pace of the story varies with the slow "epic expanse", the narration - with skillfully composed speeches and dialogues. The plot interest in the whole recedes into the background before the relief decoration of the part - hence the dramatic tension of individual scenes and the carelessness in the motivation of these scenes. The speech is richly colored with epithets, metaphors and “Homeric” comparisons, many of which are traditional.

The main character of the Iliad, Achilles, is proud and terrible in his anger: a personal insult forced him to neglect his duty and refuse to participate in battles; nevertheless, he is inherent in moral concepts that ultimately force him to atone for his guilt before the army; his anger, which forms the core of the plot of the Iliad, is resolved by generosity.

The poem glorifies military valor, but the author does not at all approve of war, which leads to the worst of evils - death. This is evidenced both by individual remarks of the author and his heroes, and by obvious sympathy for Hector and other defenders of Troy, who are the suffering side in this war. The author's sympathies belong to the warriors of both warring countries, but the aggressiveness and predatory aspirations of the Greeks cause his condemnation.

5. Homer’s “Odyssey” as a fairy-tale-heroic epic.

The Odyssey is a Greek epic poem, along with the Iliad, attributed to Homer. The theme of the “Odyssey” is the wanderings of the cunning Odysseus, king of Ithaca, returning from the Trojan campaign; in separate references there are episodes of the saga, the time of which coincided with the period between the action of the Iliad and the action of the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is built on very archaic material. The plot of a husband returning unrecognized to his homeland after long wanderings and ending up at his wife’s wedding is one of the widespread folklore plots, as is the plot of “a son going in search of his father.” Almost all episodes of Odysseus's wanderings have numerous fairy-tale parallels. The very form of the story in the first person, used for the stories about the wanderings of Odysseus, is traditional in this genre and is known from Egyptian literature of the beginning of the 2nd millennium. The storytelling technique in the Odyssey is generally close to that of the Iliad, but the younger epic is distinguished by greater skill in combining diverse material. Individual episodes are less isolated in nature and form integral groups. In terms of composition (ring and mirror), the Odyssey is more complex than the Iliad. The plot of the Iliad is presented in a linear sequence, in the Odyssey this sequence is shifted: the narrative begins in the middle of the action, and the listener learns about the previous events only later, from Odysseus’s own story about his wanderings, i.e. one of the artistic means is retrospection .

Events are not depicted as scattered as in the Iliad. Odysseus's wanderings last 10 years. The first 3 years of swimming - songs 9-12. They are given in the form of a story by Odysseus at the feast of King Alcinous. The beginning of the Odyssey is the end of Odysseus' stay with Calypso. The gods decide to return Odysseus to his homeland. Songs 1-4 – Telemachus’ search for Odysseus. Songs 5-8: after sailing from Calypso and a terrible storm, staying among the people of the Phaeacians with King Alcinous. Song 9 – the story of the Cyclops Polyphemus. 10 – Odysseus gets to Kirke, and she sends him to Hades. 11 – events in Hades. (center of the poem)12 – Odysseus ends up with the nymph Calypso and is kept there for 7 years. Starting from song 13 there is a sequential depiction of events. First, the Phaeacians take Odysseus to Ithaca, where he settles with his swineherd Eumaeus, because... in his own house Penelope's suitors. Penelope is delaying the marriage. In songs 17-20, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, penetrates from Eumaeus’s hut into his house for reconnaissance, and in songs 21-24 he kills all the suitors with the help of servants, returns to Penelope, and pacifies the uprising in Ithaca.

Odysseus is not just a diplomat and practitioner, and certainly not just a cunning hypocrite. The practical and business inclination of his nature acquires its true significance only in connection with his selfless love for his native hearth and his waiting wife, as well as his constantly difficult fate, forcing him to continuously suffer and shed tears far from his homeland. Odysseus is primarily a sufferer. His constant epithet in the Odyssey is “long-suffering.” Athena speaks to Zeus with great feeling about his constant suffering. Poseidon is constantly angry with him, and he knows it very well. If not Poseidon, then Zeus and Helios break his ship and leave him alone in the middle of the sea. His nanny wonders why the gods are constantly indignant at him, given his constant piety and submission to the will of the gods.

Odysseus loves his homeland, but never gives up the pleasures of life.

Epic- a type of literature (along with lyrics and drama), a narrative about events supposed in the past (as if they had happened and are remembered by the narrator). The epic embraces existence in its plastic volume, spatio-temporal extension and event intensity (plot content). According to Aristotle's Poetics, epic, unlike lyric poetry and drama, is impartial and objective at the time of narration.

The emergence of the epic is gradual in nature, but is conditioned by historical circumstances. Some scholars express the point of view that the heroic epic did not arise in cultures such as Chinese and Hebrew. However, other scholars believe that the Chinese still have an epic.

The birth of the epic is usually accompanied by the composition of panegyrics and laments, close to the heroic worldview. The great deeds immortalized in them often turn out to be the material that heroic poets base their narratives on. Panegyrics and laments, as a rule, are composed in the same style and size as the heroic epic: in Russian and Turkic literature, both types have almost the same manner of expression and lexical composition. Lamentations and panegyrics are preserved as part of epic poems as decoration.

Epic genres

Large - epic, novel, epic poem (poem-epic)
Middle - a story,
Small - story, short story, essay.

Epic also includes folklore genres: fairy tale, epic, historical song.

Epic- generic designation for large epic and similar works:

An extensive narrative in verse or prose about outstanding national historical events.
A complex, long history of something, including a number of major events.

The emergence of the epic was preceded by the circulation of epic songs of a semi-lyrical, semi-narrative nature, caused by the military exploits of the clan, tribe and dedicated to the heroes around whom they were grouped. These songs formed into large poetic units - epics - captured by the integrity of personal design and construction, but only nominally associated with one or another author. This is how the Homeric poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, as well as the French “chansons de geste” arose.

Novel- a literary genre, usually prose, which involves a detailed narrative about the life and development of the personality of the main character (heroes) during a crisis, non-standard period of his life.

The name “Roman” arose in the middle of the 12th century along with the genre of chivalric romance (Old French. romanz from late lat. romanice "in the (popular) Romance language"), as opposed to historiography in Latin. Contrary to popular belief, from the very beginning this name did not refer to any work in the vernacular (heroic songs or troubadour lyrics were never called novels), but to one that could be contrasted with a Latin model, even if very distant: historiography, fable ( "The Romance of Renard"), vision ("The Romance of the Rose").

From a historical and literary point of view, it is impossible to talk about the emergence of the novel as a genre, since essentially “ novel" is an inclusive term, loaded with philosophical and ideological connotations and indicating a whole complex of relatively autonomous phenomena that are not always genetically related to each other. The “emergence of the novel” in this sense occupies entire eras, starting from antiquity and ending with the 17th or even 18th century. The processes of convergence, that is, the assimilation and absorption of narrative classes and types from neighboring literary series, were of great importance.

Epic poem- one of the oldest types of epic works, which since antiquity has focused its attention on the depiction of heroic events, taken mainly from the distant past. These events were usually significant, epoch-making, influencing the course of national and general history. Examples of the genre: “The Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer, “The Song of Roland” in France, “The Song of the Nibelungs” in Germany, “The Furious Roland” by Ariosto, “Jerusalem Liberated” by Tasso, etc. The genre of the heroic poem aroused particular interest from writers and theorists of classicism. For his sublimity, citizenship, and heroism, he was recognized as the crown of poetry. In the theoretical development of the epic genre, writers of classicism relied on the traditions of antiquity. Following Aristotle, the choice of an epic hero was determined not only by his moral qualities; first of all, he had to be a historical figure. The events in which the hero is involved must have national, universal significance. Moralism also manifested itself: a hero should be an example, a model of human behavior.

Tale- a prose genre that does not have a stable volume and occupies an intermediate place between the novel, on the one hand, and the story or short story, on the other, gravitating towards a chronicle plot that reproduces the natural course of life. In foreign literary criticism, the specifically Russian concept of “story” is correlated with “short novel” (English. short novel or novella).

In Russia in the first third of the 19th century, the term “story” corresponded to what is now called “story”. The concept of a story or novella was not known at that time, and the term “story” meant everything that did not reach the volume of a novel. A story was also called a short story about an incident, sometimes anecdotal (“The Stroller” by Gogol, “The Shot” by Pushkin).

In Ancient Rus', “story” meant any narrative, especially prosaic, as opposed to poetic. The ancient meaning of the term - “news of some event” - indicates that this genre absorbed oral stories, events that the narrator personally saw or heard about.

An important source of Old Russian “stories” are chronicles (“The Tale of Bygone Years”, etc.). In ancient Russian literature, a “story” was any narrative about any actual events (“The Tale of Batu’s invasion of Ryazan”, “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka”, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom”, etc.), whose reliability and current significance did not raise doubts among contemporaries.

Story or novella- the main genre of short narrative prose. The author of stories is usually called a short story writer, and the totality of stories is called short stories.

A short story or short story is a shorter form of fiction than a story or novel. Goes back to the folklore genres of oral retelling in the form of legends or instructive allegories and parables. Compared to more developed narrative forms, stories do not have many faces and one plot line (rarely several) with the characteristic presence of a single problem.

The stories of one author are characterized by cyclization. In the traditional writer-reader relationship model, the story is typically published in a periodical; works accumulated over a certain period are then published as a separate book as storybook.

The short story is born from the collapse of the short story tale and the anecdotal tale.

A short story tale is a down-to-earth version of a fairy tale. In new There are no miracles in the fairy tale, but in plot they are very similar. The new fairy tale solves the problem of testing in a different way (for example, the princess asks riddles). The antihero in everyday and short story tales acquires the features of a real person. A witch is an old woman, etc. Nov.sk. The origin is motivated by everyday circumstances; she does not remember the initiation rite. In this tale the hero is much more active. He must solve everything with his own mind, and most importantly, with cunning (unlike epic). Sometimes wisdom comes close to trickery (trickster hero - deceiver, trickster).

The principle of paradox, an unexpected turn, remains an obligatory feature of the forms that appear in new ones. fairy tales. In the fairy tale, plots are already appearing that are essentially novelistic. Magic powers are replaced by the category of mind and fate.

The joke has been around for a very long time. The anecdote is characterized by paradox, brevity, and a certain twist in the ending. Anecdotal tales are close to jokes both in theme and in poetics. These are tales of fools. Heroes violate the laws of logic. Sometimes this can be motivated by something (deafness, blindness, etc.). Fools do not understand the purpose of things, identify people by clothing, take everything literally, and violate the temporal order. The result is terrible damage, but the emphasis is on the nature of the hero. The hero turns out to be to blame for everything. In these tales there is a category of success and failure - a hint of the category of fate. Stories from mythology and trickery are introduced. In an anecdotal tale, a number of thematic groups can be distinguished: jokes about fools, cunning people (cheaters), evil and unfaithful or obstinate wives, and priests.

Novelistic and anecdotal tale => short story.

In different eras - even the most distant - there has been a tendency to combine short stories into novelistic cycles. Typically, these cycles were not a simple, unmotivated collection of stories, but were presented on the principle of some unity: connecting motifs were introduced into the narrative.

All collections of oriental tales are characterized by framing principle(circumstances under which fairy tales are told). 1000 and one night is a literary monument, a collection of stories united by the story of King Shahriyar and his wife named Shahrazada (Scheherazade, Scheherazade). (Remember also “The Decameron”).

Faced with his first wife's infidelity, Shahryar takes a new wife every day and executes her at dawn the next day. However, this terrible order is disrupted when he marries Shahrazad, the wise daughter of his vizier. Every night she tells a fascinating story and interrupts the story “at the most interesting place” - and the king is unable to refuse to hear the end of the story.

The stories are quite heterogeneous in content and style and go back to Arab, Iranian, and Indian folklore. The most archaic among them are Indo-Iranian. Arabian fairy tales introduced love themes into the development of the novella.

In Europe, there have been no short stories as such for a very long time. In antiquity we find only one short story from the Satyricon, which describes the love affairs of a group of youths from among the “golden youth” of Rome, telling about their dissipation, moral deformity, depravity and adventurism. The novella there is “About the Chaste Matron of Ephesus” (an inconsolable widow, grieving in the grave crypt over her husband’s body, enters into a relationship with a warrior who is nearby guarding the corpses of those executed; when one of these corpses turns out to be stolen, the widow gives her husband’s body to compensate for the loss) .

The Middle Ages knew only one form, close to the novella - exempla (from the Latin “example”) - part of a church sermon, some illustration to it. Accompanied by a moral maxim at the end. The plots were taken from lives. Copies were published in collections. In Russia there is something close to them - a patericon (a book containing the lives of the so-called “holy fathers” (monks of a monastery). Kiev-Pechersk settlement). Sometimes you can find purely novelistic motifs.

Fablio is a kind of alternative to church lives. These are short poetic stories presented by jugglers - traveling comedians. Often this is a satire on priests (rude humor). An unexpected twist in the finale. They were common in France and Germany (schwant).

In Boccaccio you can find all kinds of short stories:

short stories about witty answers (3 short stories of the first day)
test short stories (10 short story 10 days - Griselda)
short stories about the vicissitudes of fate (5th short story of the 5th day)
satirical short stories

In Boccaccio's short stories, human individuality is revealed for the first time. A man appears in a Renaissance novella. The actions of the heroes are motivated, which is especially evident in love-psychological short stories.

The novella is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The plot structure of the short story is similar to the dramatic one, but usually simpler. “The short story is an unheard-of journey accomplished” (Goethe) - about the action-packed nature of the short story. The short story emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which contains an unexpected twist (pointe). We can say that the entire novel is conceived as a denouement.

In addition to fable short stories, Tomashevsky writes about fable-free short stories, in which there is no causal-temporal relationship between motives. Such a short story can be easily divided into parts and these parts rearranged without disturbing the correctness of the overall flow of the short story. He gives the example of Chekhov’s “Complaint Book,” where we have a number of entries in the railway complaint book, and all these entries have nothing to do with the complaint book.

The romantic novella (late 19th century) returns to the fairy tale. The novels of the romantics are filled with fantasy.

The novella turns into a story. The story does not depict an event; its central attention is shifted to psychology, to everyday conditions, but not to the unusualness of the event. The story loses its overcoming of trials. Becomes plotless. Chekhov's stories.

The story is an intermediate link between a novel and a short story. The story depicts one event, one episode. A novel is a collection of episodes. Story - 2-3 episodes from the life of the hero. A story rarely has more than 2-3 characters. A novel is a multi-character narrative. The story has something in between, 2-3 clearly defined heroes, but there is a large number of secondary characters.

Feature article- one of the varieties of the small form of epic literature - the story, which differs from its other form, the short story, in the absence of a single, acute and quickly resolved conflict and in the greater development of the descriptive image. Both differences depend on the specific issues of the essay. An essay is a half-fiction, half-documentary genre that describes real events and real people.

Essay literature does not address the problems of developing the character of an individual in his conflicts with the established social environment, as is inherent in the short story (and novel), but the problems of the civil and moral state of the “environment” (usually embodied in individual individuals) - “moral descriptive” problems; it has great cognitive diversity. Essay literature usually combines features of fiction and journalism.

In fiction, an essay is one of the types of stories that is more descriptive and deals primarily with social problems. A journalistic essay, including a documentary one, presents and analyzes real facts and phenomena of social life, usually accompanied by a direct interpretation of them by the author.

The main feature of an essay is writing from life.

Fairy tale- one of the genres of folklore or literature. An epic, mostly prose work of a magical nature, usually with a happy ending. As a rule, fairy tales are intended for children.

A fairy tale is an epic, predominantly prosaic work of art of a magical, adventurous or everyday nature with a fictional focus. S. refers to different types of oral prose, hence the discrepancy in defining its genre features. S. differs from other types of artistic epic in that the storyteller presents it, and listeners perceive it primarily as a poetic invention, a play of fantasy. This, however, does not deprive S. of its connection with reality, which determines the ideological content, language, and the nature of plots, motives, and images. Many S. reflected primitive social relations and ideas, totemism, animism, etc.

ORIGIN OF THE TALE

In the early stages of culture, fairy tales, sagas and myths are found undivided and initially probably have a production function: the hunter lured the frightened animal with gestures and words. Later, pantomime with words and singing is introduced. Traces of these elements were preserved by the fairy tale of later stages of development in the form of dramatic performance, melodious elements of the text and wide layers of dialogue, of which the more primitive the fairy tale, the more primitive it is, the more abundant it is.

At a later stage of the pastoral economy, pre-natal and early-natal social organization and animistic worldview, S. often receives the function of a magical rite to influence not the beast, but the souls and spirits. S. are obliged to either attract and entertain, especially among hunters, forest and all other spirits (Turks, Buryats, Soyats, Uriankhians, Orochons, Altaians, Shors, Sagais, residents of Fiji, Samoa, Australians), or they are used as spells (in New Guinea, among the Altaians, Chukchi), or S. is directly included in religious rites (among the Malays, Gilyaks, Iranian Tajiks). Eg. the famous motif of magical flight is played out by the Chukchi in their funeral rites. Even Russian S. was included in the wedding ceremony. Thanks to this cult meaning of S., many peoples have regulations for telling fairy tales: they cannot be told during the day or in the summer, but only at night after sunset and in winter (Baluchis, Bechuanas, Hotentots, Witotos, Eskimos).

TYPES OF TALES

Despite the constructive uniformity, modern S. distinguishes several types:

WITH. about animals- the oldest species; it goes back partly to the primitive Natursagen, partly to the later influence of literary poems of the Middle Ages (like the novel about Renard) or to the stories of northern peoples about the bear, wolf, raven, and especially about the cunning fox or its equivalents - the jackal, hyena.
WITH. magical, genetically going back to various sources: to decayed myth, to magical stories, to rituals, book sources, etc.
WITH. novelistic with everyday, but unusual subjects:. Among them there are varieties of S. anecdotal(about poshekhontsy, cunning wives, priests, etc.) and erotic. Genetically, novelistic S. often has its roots in a feudal society with clear class divisions.
WITH. legendary,

Folklore tale- an epic genre of written and oral folk art: a prosaic oral story about fictitious events in the folklore of different peoples. A type of narrative, mostly prosaic folklore ( fairy tale prose), which includes works of different genres, the texts of which are based on fiction. Fairytale folklore is opposed to “reliable” folklore narration ( not fairy tale prose).
Literary fairy tale- epic genre: a fiction-oriented work, closely related to a folk tale, but, unlike it, belongs to a specific author, did not exist in oral form before publication and had no variants. A literary fairy tale either imitates a folklore one ( literary fairy tale written in folk poetic style), or creates a didactic work based on non-folklore stories. The folk tale historically precedes the literary one.

Word " fairy tale"attested in written sources no earlier than the 17th century. From the word " say" What mattered was: a list, a list, an exact description. It acquires modern significance from the 17th-19th centuries. Previously the word " fables».

Bylina- a heroic-patriotic song-legend telling about the exploits of heroes and reflecting the life of Ancient Rus' of the 9th-13th centuries; a type of oral folk art, which is characterized by a song-epic way of reflecting reality. The main plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - “starina”, “old woman”, implying that the action in question took place in the past).

Bylinas, as a rule, are written in tonic verse with two to four stresses.

The term “epics” was first introduced by Ivan Sakharov in the collection “Songs of the Russian People” in 1839. He proposed it based on the expression “ according to epics" in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", which meant " according to facts».

There are several theories to explain the origin and composition of epics:

Mythological theory sees in epics stories about natural phenomena, and in heroes - the personification of these phenomena and their identification with the gods of the ancient Slavs (Orest Miller, Afanasiev).
Historical theory explains epics as a trace of historical events, sometimes confused in people's memory (Leonid Maikov, Kvashnin-Samarin).
The theory of borrowings points to the literary origin of epics (Theodor Benfey, Vladimir Stasov, Veselovsky, Ignatius Yagich), and some tend to see borrowings through the influence of the East (Stasov, Vsevolod Miller), others - from the West (Veselovsky, Sozonovich).

As a result, one-sided theories gave way to mixed ones, allowing in epics the presence of elements of folk life, history, literature, and borrowings from Eastern and Western.

Historical songs- a group of epic songs conventionally identified by scientists from the circle of epics . In terms of volume, historical songs are usually smaller than epics; Using in general epic poetics, historical song, however, is poorer in traditional artistic formulas and techniques: commonplaces, retardation, repetitions, comparisons.

Historical songs are works of art, therefore the facts of history are present in them in a poetically transformed form, although historical songs strive to reproduce specific events, to preserve accurate memory in them. As epic works, many historical songs have features similar to epics, but they are a qualitatively new stage in the development of folk poetry. Events are conveyed in them with greater historical accuracy than in epics.

***********************************************************************************

An epic work has no limitations in its scope. According to V.E. Khalisev, “Epic as a type of literature includes both short stories (...) and works designed for long-term listening or reading: epics, novels (...).”

A significant role for the epic genres is played by the image of the narrator (storyteller), who talks about the events themselves, about the characters, but at the same time demarcates himself from what is happening. The epic, in turn, reproduces and captures not only what is being told, but also the narrator (his manner of speaking, his mentality).

An epic work can use almost any artistic means known to literature. The narrative form of an epic work “promotes the deepest penetration into the inner world of man.”

Until the 18th century, the leading genre of epic literature was the epic poem. The source of its plot is folk legend, the images are idealized and generalized, the speech reflects a relatively monolithic popular consciousness, and the form is poetic (Homer’s Iliad). In the XVIII-XIX centuries. The leading genre is the novel. The plots are borrowed mainly from modern times, the images are individualized, the speech reflects a sharply differentiated multilingual social consciousness, the form is prosaic (L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky).

Other genres of epic are tale, short story, short story. Striving for a complete reflection of life, epic works tend to be combined into cycles. Based on the same trend, an epic novel is emerging (“The Forsyte Saga” by J. Galsworthy).

The epic method of creating works of art is the most ancient, the first to appear on Earth, and is the most natural way of presenting material. He talks about events and the actions of the characters either in chronological order (that is, the way they happened), or in the sequence that the author needs to realize his plan (then this is called a broken, reverse, ring composition). For example, in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov, we first learn about modern events, and then we are transported back five years, as this is necessary for the author to fully reveal the character of the main character - Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin.

Epic works - epic, fable, story, story, novel, ballad, poem, essay, etc.

The first of the genres of epic works should be the epic. Epic appears in the era of the early formation of nationalities and peoples from heroic folk songs telling about the most significant and glorious events in the history of the people. Thanks to the cyclization of these songs, an epic emerges, the most striking example of which is Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

The classical epic could be born and exist only at a certain stage of human history, since its content is inextricably linked with the mythological ideas of people who lived during the “childhood of mankind” and is determined by the social relations that existed then.

Subject of the epic - an event of the recent past that is important for the life of all people. This work represented the heroic nature of the actions performed in a purified form, the scope of the image of the glorified subject was extremely wide, it reflected all aspects of the life of the people. The epic included a large number of characters.

Fable- the oldest type of epic poetry, a small poetic allegorical story pursuing moralizing purposes (fables by I.A. Krylov).

Story- a small form of epic work, characterized as a work that most often has one storyline, shows one or several individual episodes from the life of the heroes, and depicts a small number of characters.

Tale- found only in Slavic literature, associated with the traditions of Old Russian literature. Sometimes the same work of art is called alternately a story or a novel (“The Captain’s Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin)

Novel- a modern large epic form, which is characterized by a complex branched plot, covers a significant period of the heroes’ lives and has a large number of characters (“War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy).

Poem - a large plot work of a lyrical-epic nature, combining a display of the emotional experiences and actions of the heroes, may include the image of a lyrical hero along with images of the characters in the story ("Mtsyri" by M.Yu. Lermontov).

Ballad - a small plot-based poetic work of historical, heroic, fantastic or everyday content, having the features of a lyric-epic work, in which the author not only conveys his feelings and thoughts, but also depicts what caused these experiences ("Svetlana" by V.A. Zhukovsky) .

Feature article - a short epic that tells about a real event, fact of life, or person.

Epic (1)

Epic is a type of literature (along with lyrics and drama), a narrative about events supposed in the past (as if they had happened and are remembered by the narrator). The epic embraces existence in its plastic volume, spatio-temporal extension and event intensity (plot content). According to Aristotle's Poetics, epic, unlike lyric poetry and drama, is impartial and objective at the time of narration.

Epic (2)- (Greek - narrative)

a story about events, the fate of the heroes, their actions and adventures, a depiction of the external side of what is happening (even feelings are shown from their external manifestation). The author can directly express his attitude to what is happening.

Epic genres:

Large ones - epic, novel, epic poem (poem-epic);

Middle - story,

Small - story, short story, essay.

Epic also includes folklore genres: fairy tale, epic, historical song.

Meaning

An epic work can use almost any artistic means known to literature. The narrative form of an epic work “promotes the deepest penetration into the inner world of man.”

Until the 18th century, the leading genre of epic literature was the epic poem. The source of its plot is folk legend, the images are idealized and generalized, the speech reflects a relatively monolithic popular consciousness, the form is poetic (Homer's Iliad). In the XVIII-XIX centuries. The leading genre is the novel. The plots are borrowed mainly from modern times, the images are individualized, the speech reflects a sharply differentiated multilingual social consciousness, the form is prosaic (L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky).

Folk:

Myth Poem (epic): Heroic Strogovoinskaya Fabulous

legendary Historical... Fairy tale Epic Duma Legend Tradition Ballad Parable

Small genres: proverbs, sayings, riddles, nursery rhymes...

Historical Fantastic. Adventurous Psychological. R.-parable Utopian Social... Minor genres: Tale Short story Fable Parable Ballad Lit. fairy tale...

Epic

This is an artistic reproduction of the world external to the writer

This is a figurative type of literature

It is an objective depiction of the human personality in its relationships with other people and events.

Arose later than lyrics and drama

It requires understanding the interdependence of various life phenomena. External and internal world

. The predecessor of all epic genres was the poetic epic (in the 19th century, works of this genre, for example, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, were called epic poems).

Three types of genre content of the epic:

The leading criterion for distinguishing epic genres is type of genre content, that is, such features of the content of works that, together with stable formal features, form a genre. Particularly important romantic And morally descriptive types of genre content. It is the differences between them that are significant in determining the genre of most epic works. In some works one can distinguish national historical type of genre content.

Romantic type of genre content - a set of principles for depicting a person in a literary work. The main feature of works with a romantic type of genre content is the predominant interest of writers in the personality of the heroes, the desire to reveal their fate in conflicts and plots. In a novel, the center of the story is how external, so and internal changes happening to people. The social environment, life and customs can be depicted quite fully and in detail. However, they do not have independent meaning - this is only conditions and circumstances, allowing us to show the development of the characters’ characters and their fates.

The group of romantic genres usually includes the novel, short story, “romantic story,” and “romantic poem.” Some novel genres do not have a clear terminological designation.

Moral descriptive (or ethological , from ancient Greek etos- disposition and logos- word, story) type of genre content is opposite to the romantic, since in morally descriptive works a different principle of depicting people and circumstances is manifested.

In such works, the foreground is not the fate and development of the characters’ characters, but the social and everyday environment that determines their daily existence, behavior and psychology. Heroes appear, first of all, as bearers of stable qualities, brought up and encouraged by a certain way of life, way of life and customs of a particular environment (for example, landowners, merchants, petty bourgeois, workers, or even “tramps”).

The lives of people in morally descriptive works are depicted in all detail and detail, but their characters are internally static, and the external changes that occur to them fit completely within the framework of behavioral stereotypes prescribed by the life and customs of their class, social or professional group (such as, for example, heroes "Dead Souls" by Gogol). Conflicts are of a private nature, being a “dynamic” type of moral description. The dominance of descriptiveness - this most important artistic principle of the authors of moral descriptions - is manifested in the plot and compositional features of the works. They are composed of a series of “still frames” (“essays”, “sketches”, “scenes”), forming a kind of “chronicle” of the life of a certain environment within the historical era chosen by the writer.

National-historical type of genre content can be identified primarily in works on historical topics. A hallmark of works with national-historical genre content is the desire of writers to capture the most significant features of the chosen historical era. These are national conflicts and events that are important for understanding the fate of the people, long-term determining their social, political and spiritual development. Personal destinies and various everyday encounters, which can be presented in abundance in works, are of secondary importance: they clarify the main, epic content of the work. The national-historical type of genre content determines the genre originality of “Songs about the merchant Kalashnikov” by M.Yu. Lermontov, the poems “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov, “The Twelve” by A.A. Blok, “Requiem” by A.A. .Akhmatova and “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky, interacts with other genre trends (romantic and morally descriptive) in “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Peter the Great” by A.N. Tolstoy, “Quiet Don” by M .A.Sholokhov.

Epic genres

The epic has large, medium and small forms

Epic (novel - epic) - a large epic form, this genre is based on heroic songs about the history of the country and people. It is distinguished by its particular breadth in depicting historical events against a broad socio-political and economic background, especially the large number of characters.

Novel - a large epic form in which the complex phenomena of life in their development are widely depicted, when an entire historical era is depicted through the depiction of the life of an individual family or group of people. A novel always has many characters and literary heroes, many intertwining plot lines, and the action takes a long period of time.

Tale - the average epic form, the subject of the image is one complex social phenomenon, which is revealed through the image of several characters or families. Most often, this is the story of one human life in its relationship with other destinies of the heroes.

Story - a small epic form based on the depiction of one or more significant events, significant and typical for certain historical, cultural and social conditions. Depicts mainly one main character and several minor characters.

Novella – a small epic form about an unusual phenomenon with a dynamic plot and an unexpected ending to the story.

Feature article - small epic form, documentary genre, a story about real facts and people on a documentary basis with minimal figurative coloring. Depicts a specific picture of a social environment and one main character in this environment.

Feuilleton - a small epic form, in a comic form ridiculing any negative social phenomena

Pamphlet – a small epic form, in a sharply satirical form with great pathos of denunciation, branding negative social phenomena

Literary portrait - a small epic form dedicated to the description of the life and character of one historical person

Memoirs – a small epic form, documentary, built on socially significant and psychologically interesting and indicative for a certain era memories of the author

Diary – a small epic form, documentary, conveying the perception of the world and important historical events through the perception of the author - a participant in these events

Fable - small epic form, tells in verse or prose an instructive story of allegorical meaning with an obligatory precisely formulated moral in the finale