Plot (from the French sujet - subject) - the course of the narrative about the events unfolding and happening in a work of art. As a rule, any such episode is subordinated to the main or subplot.
However, in literary criticism there is no uniform definition of this term. There are three main approaches:
1) plot is a way of developing a theme or presenting a plot;
2) plot is a way of developing a theme or presenting a plot;
3) plot and plot have no fundamental difference.
The plot is based on a conflict (a clash of interests and characters) between the characters. That is why where there is no narrative (lyrics), there is no plot.
The term “plot” was introduced in the 11th century. classicists P. Corneille and N. Boileau, but they were followers of Aristotle. Aristotle called what is called “plot” “legend”. Hence the “course of the story.”
The plot consists of the following main elements:
Exposition
Action development
Climax
Denouement
Exposition (Latin expositio - explanation, presentation) is a plot element containing a description of the lives of the characters before they begin to act in the work. Direct exposition is placed at the beginning of the story, delayed exposition is placed anywhere, but it must be said that modern writers rarely use this plot element.
The plot is the initial, starting episode of the plot. She usually appears at the beginning of the story, but this is not the rule. So, about Chichikov’s desire to buy dead Souls we find out only at the end of Gogol's poem.
The development of action proceeds “by will” characters narration and author's intention. The development of action precedes the climax.
Climax (from Latin culmen - peak) is the moment of the highest tension of action in a work, its turning point. After the climax comes the denouement.
Denouement is the final part of the plot, the end of the action, where the conflict is resolved and the motivation for the actions of the main and some is revealed. minor characters and their psychological portraits are clarified.
The denouement sometimes precedes the plot, especially in detective works, where in order to interest the reader and capture his attention, the story begins with a murder.
Other supporting plot elements are a prologue, backstory, author's aside, insert novella, and epilogue.
However, in the modern literary process we often do not encounter detailed expositions, prologues and epilogues, or other elements of the plot, and sometimes even the plot itself is blurred, barely outlined, or even completely absent.
Two things make a book fascinating - character and his fate. If you managed to create something bright, charming and original, half the battle is actually done. Reader's interest in your book is guaranteed. For the first hundred pages. But to justify it is the task of the plot.
What is a plot?
In Russian-language literature there are two concepts - plot and plot. They mean approximately the same thing, but there are differences.
To put it briefly and simply:
- the plot is the facts of your history, bare and impartial, arranged in chronological order;
- the plot is what (through the eyes of which character they were shown, what assessment they gave, maybe even changed chronological order, i.e., they first told about what happened, and then showed the reason for what happened).
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For example, in Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” the plot is as follows:
A poor student committed the murder of an old moneylender. Afterwards he suffered for a long time and repented. He confessed, went to hard labor and found peace and happiness.
And the plot is more complicated:
Poor student pondering the latest philosophical concepts of his time, perceives the old usurer as an impersonal evil that stands in his way, the path of an enlightened and potentially great man, and everything in his life depends on him having the determination and courage to admit that he is superior to her and has the right to destroy her, to achieve all that he can; can he be a real person, and not a trembling creature.
To prove to himself that he is a man and not a creature, the student kills the old woman - with an ax, ineptly and with horror; the murder scene shocks him so much that he falls into a state of shock and gradually slides into mental disorder… and so on.
I think this is enough for you to understand the difference between plot and plot.
The plot (as opposed to the plot) can be internal and external.
The internal plot is what happens in the head and heart. The path of his character development. After all, you already know that a hero is a hero because his character, his personality changes during the course of the work. These changes are the internal plot.
The external plot is what happens around the main character and with his direct participation. These are all the actions that happen in your story. Actions that affect the people you are talking about. Actions that generate facts.
Most often, these two types of plot coexist peacefully and support each other. But, of course, there are also stories where one of the plots prevails.
In the above novel by Dostoevsky, the advantage, as you understand, is on the side of the internal plot.
But in stories about Conan the Barbarian, the external plot prevails.
In many ways, the ratio of the internal and external plots of the story depends on the literary niche for which you are going to write.
If your goal is the mainstream, then the stories should be brought into balance. If - or, in other words, entertaining - literature, then it is better to work hard on the external plot. If you intend to get into elite literature, then you can safely study only inner world your hero!
However, remember: best books any of the named directions are always built on an organic fusion of both types of plot. The rich spiritual world of the protagonist, his active inner life is also stimulated by acute conflicts in the external world.
And vice versa.
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Delving into the historical depths of the question of plot (from French - content, development of events in time and space (in epic and dramatic works, sometimes in lyrical)) and plot, we find theoretical discussions on this matter for the first time in Aristotle’s “Poetics”. Aristotle does not use the terms “plot” or “plot” themselves, but in his reasoning he shows interest in what we now mean by plot, and expresses a number of valuable observations and comments on this matter. Not knowing the term “plot”, as well as the term “fable”, Aristotle uses a term close to the concept of “myth”. By it he understands the combination of facts in their relation to the verbal expression vividly presented before the eyes.
When translating Aristotle into Russian, the term “myth” is sometimes translated as “plot”. But this is inaccurate: the term “fabula” is Latin in origin, “Gautage”, which means to tell, narrate, and in exact translation means story, narration. The term "plot" in Russian literature and literary criticism begins to be used around the middle of the 19th century, that is, somewhat later than the term “plot”.
For example, “plot” as a term is found in Dostoevsky, who said that in the novel “Demons” he used the plot of the famous “Nechaevsky case”, and in A. N. Ostrovsky, who believed that “by plot we often mean completely ready-made content ... with all the details, but there is a plot short story about some incident, incident, a story devoid of any color.”
In G. P. Danilevsky’s novel “Mirovich,” written in 1875, one of the characters, wanting to tell another a funny story, says: “...And listen to this comedian’s plot!” Although the novel takes place in mid-18th century century and the author monitors the verbal authenticity of this time, he uses a word that has recently appeared in literary use.
The term “plot” in its literary sense was widely introduced into use by representatives of French classicism. In “The Poetic Art” of Boileau we read: “You must introduce us into the plot without delay. // You should maintain the unity of the place in it, // Than to tire our ears and disturb our minds with an endless, meaningless story.” IN critical articles Corneille, dedicated to the theater, the term “plot” is also found.
Assimilating French tradition, Russian critical literature uses the term plot in a similar sense. In the article “On the Russian story and the stories of N.V. Gogol” (1835), V. Belinsky writes: “Thought is the subject of his (the modern lyric poet’s) inspiration. Just as in an opera words are written for music and a plot is invented, so he creates, at the will of his imagination, a form for his thought. In this case, his field is limitless.”
Subsequently, such a major literary theorist, the second half of the 19th century century, like A. N. Veselovsky, who laid the foundation theoretical study plot in Russian literary criticism is limited only to this term.
Having broken down the plot into its component elements - motives, tracing and explaining their origin, Veselovsky gave his definition of the plot: “Plots are complex schemes, in the imagery of which the famous acts human life and psyche in alternating forms of everyday reality.
The evaluation of the action, positive and negative, is already connected with the generalization.” And then he concludes: “By plot I mean the scheme in which different positions- motives."
As we see, in Russian criticism and literary tradition enough for a long time Both terms are used: “plot” and “plot”, although without distinguishing their conceptual and categorical essence.
The most detailed development of these concepts and terms was made by representatives of the Russian “formal school”.
It was in the works of its participants that the categories of plot and fable were first clearly distinguished. In the works of the formalists, plot and plot were subjected to careful study and comparison.
B. Tomashevsky writes in “Theory of Literature”: “But it is not enough to invent an entertaining chain of events, limiting them to a beginning and an end. It is necessary to distribute these events, to construct them in some order, to present them, to make a literary combination out of the plot material. The artistically constructed distribution of events in a work is called a plot.”
Thus, the plot here is understood as something predetermined, like some story, incident, event taken from the life or works of other authors.
So, for quite a long time in Russian literary criticism and criticism, the term “plot” has been used, which originates and is borrowed from French historians and literary theorists. Along with it, the term “fable” is also used, quite widely used since the middle of the 19th century. In the 20s of the 20th century, the meaning of these concepts was terminologically divided within the same work.
At all stages of the development of literature, the plot occupied a central place in the process of creating a work. But to mid-19th century, having received brilliant development in the novels of Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and many others, the plot seems to begin to weigh on some novelists... “What seems beautiful to me and what I would like to create,” writes the great French writer in one of his letters in 1870 stylist Gustave Flaubert (whose novels are beautifully plotted) is a book that would have almost no plot, or at least one in which the plot would be almost invisible. The most beautiful works are those that contain the least amount of matter... I think that the future of art lies in these perspectives...”
In Flaubert's desire to free himself from the plot, a desire for free plot form. Indeed, later in some novels of the 20th century the plot no longer has such a dominant meaning as in the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. Genre lyrical confession, memories with in-depth analysis received the right to exist.
But one of the most widespread genres today, the detective novel genre, has made a fast-paced and unusually sharp plot its basic law and only principle.
Thus, the modern plot arsenal of the writer is so huge, he has at his disposal so many plot devices and principles for constructing and arranging events that this gives him inexhaustible possibilities for creative solutions.
Not only did the plot principles become more complex, but the method of storytelling itself became incredibly complex in the 20th century. In the novels and stories of G. Hesse, X. Borges, G. Marquez, the basis of the narrative is complex associative memories and reflections, the displacement of different episodes far removed in time, and multiple interpretations of the same situations.
Events in epic work can be combined different ways. In the “Family Chronicle” by S. Aksakov, in the stories of L. Tolstoy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, Youth” or in “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, the plot events are connected with each other by a purely temporal connection, since they develop sequentially one after another throughout long period time.
The English novelist Forster presented this order in the development of events in a short figurative form: “The king died, and then the queen died.” This type of plot began to be called chronicle, in contrast to concentric, where the main events are concentrated around one central moment, are interconnected by a close cause-and-effect relationship and develop in a short period of time. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief,” continued his thought about concentric stories the same Forster.
Of course, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the two types of plots, and such a division is very conditional. Most a shining example Concentric novels could be called the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky.
For example, in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” the plot events rapidly unfold over the course of several days, are interconnected solely by a causal relationship and are concentrated around one central moment of the murder of the old man F. P. Karamazov. The most common type of plot is the most often used in modern literature— chronicle-concentric type, where events are in a causal-temporal relationship.
Today, having the opportunity to compare and study classic examples of plot perfection (novels by M. Bulgakov, M. Sholokhov, V. Nabokov), we can hardly imagine that in its development the plot went through numerous stages of formation and developed its own principles of organization and formation. Aristotle already noted that a plot must have “a beginning, which presupposes further action, a middle, which presupposes both the previous and the subsequent, and an ending, which requires previous action, but has no follow-up."
Writers have always had to deal with a variety of plot and compositional problems: how to introduce new characters into the unfolding action, how to take them away from the pages of the narrative, how to group and distribute them in time and space. Such a seemingly necessary plot point as the climax was first truly developed only by the English novelist Walter Scott, the creator of tense and exciting plots.
Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005
Features of the work fiction taken into account in editorial analysis.
A work of fiction, an artistic object, can be viewed from two points of view - from the point of view of its meaning (as an aesthetic object) and from the point of view of its form (as an external work).
The meaning of an artistic object, enclosed in a certain form, is aimed at reflecting the artist’s understanding of the surrounding reality. And the editor, when evaluating an essay, must proceed from an analysis of the “plane of meaning” and the “plane of fact” of the work (M.M. Bakhtin).
An artistic object is a point of interaction between the meaning and the fact of art. Art object demonstrates the world, conveying it in an aesthetic form and revealing the ethical side of the world.
For editorial analysis, this approach to consideration is productive work of art, at which literary work explored in its connection with the reader. It is the influence of the work on the individual that should be the starting point in evaluating an artistic object.
An artistic object includes three stages: the stage of creation of the work, the stage of its alienation from the master and independent existence, the stage of perception of the work.
As the starting point of the unifying principle of a work of artistic process in editorial analysis, it is necessary to consider the concept of the work. It is the concept that brings together all the stages of an artistic object. This is evidenced by the attention of the artist, musician, writer to the selection of appropriate expressive means when creating works that are aimed at expressing the master’s intention.
In the book “How our word will respond,” the writer Yu. Trifonov notes: “The highest concept of a thing - that is, why all this damage to paper - is in you constantly, it is a given, your breath, which you do not notice, but without which you cannot live.” .
The idea embodied in a work of art, it is the idea, first of all, that is perceived by the reader, controlling the stage of perception of artistic creativity.
And all artistic process is, as already mentioned, a dialogical process of communication between the artist and those who perceive the work.
The writer evaluates what surrounds him and talks about how he would like reality to be. Or rather, it does not “speak”, but reflects the world in such a way that the reader understands it. In a work of art, the presence and necessity of life is realized, the artist’s interpretation is carried out life values. It is the idea that absorbs the writer’s value guidelines and determines the selection of vital material for the work.
But the concept of design not only characterizes the main meaning of the work. The intention is the main component of the impact of a work of art at the moment of its perception.
Thus, the subject of art is not only a person and his connections and relationships with the world. The subject area of the work also includes the personality of the book’s author, who evaluates the surrounding reality.
Having assessed the idea, the editor determines how well the material used by the author corresponds to the idea. Thus, a large, large-scale plan requires a large form, for example, it can be realized in the genre of a novel. An idea that reveals the intimate aspects of a person’s fate, in the genre of a story or short story. Considering the genre of a work, the editor responds to the most main question, associated with assessing the quality of the work, is the question of the completeness of the disclosure of the plan. Thus, having examined the plan of meaning of the work, the editor analyzes the plan of fact. Read more about the editor's assessment of the concept and genre originality fiction will be discussed below. Having answered the question of what the author said, the editor evaluates how he said it, i.e., analyzes the writer’s skill. At the same time, the editor focuses on the basic laws, patterns, and nature of art.
In art artistic image is a means of understanding the surrounding reality, a means of mastering the world, and also a means of recreating reality in a work of art - in an artistic object.
Event in a literary text. Plot and non-plot narration. Features of plot construction: plot components (plot, course of action, climax, denouement - if any), sequence of main components. The relationship between plot and plot. Plot motives. System of motives. Types of plots.
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; This central point not only epic and dramatic action, but also 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 action in them is based not on events, but on the vicissitudes of feelings, thoughts, and 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 structure 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 intent.
Exposition- the 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 author's position(for example, in the story by I.S. Turgenev “Date”). 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 appearance 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 heroes, their psychological state; be an expression of the author's position; can serve to create big picture morals, have a symbolic meaning, etc. Artistic details in a work are classified into portrait, landscape, world of things, and psychological details.
Basic literature: 20, 22, 50, 54,68, 69, 80, 86, 90
Further reading: 27, 28, 48, 58
