Dramatic literature is characterized by its suitability for stage interpretation. Its main feature is its purpose for a theatrical performance. This makes clear the impossibility of complete isolation in the study of a dramatic work from the study of the conditions for its theatrical implementation, as well as the constant dependence of its forms on the forms of stage production.
The staging of the play consists of the performance of the actors and the stage environment (scenery) surrounding them. The performance of the actors is made up of speeches and movements.
We divide speech on stage into monologue and dialogic. A monologue is the speech of an actor in the absence of other characters, i.e. the speech is not addressed to anyone. However, in stage practice, a monologue also refers to developed and coherent speech, even if it is pronounced in the presence of other persons and addressed to someone. Such monologues contain emotional outpourings, narratives, sententious preaching, etc.
Dialogue is a verbal exchange between two players. The content of the dialogue is questions and answers, disputes, etc. While a addressed monologue (that is, pronounced in the presence of other characters) is always somewhat distracted from the personality of the listener and is usually addressed not to one, but to several listeners, dialogue refers to a direct confrontation between two interlocutors.
The concept of dialogue extends to cross-talk between three or more persons, which is typical of new drama. In the old drama, pure dialogue was predominantly cultivated - a conversation between two persons.
The individual short speeches of the interlocutors that make up the dialogue are called replicas. A developed replica already borders on a monologue, since uninterrupted speech already presupposes a passive listener, only a listener, and the structure of speech approaches monologue, i.e. one in which the topic of speech develops independently, and not from the crossing of motives put forward by interlocutors, participants in the dialogue.
Speeches are accompanied by games, i.e. movements. Every utterance of speech is accompanied by facial expressions, i.e. famous game facial muscles, in harmony with the emotional content of what is being said. Facial expressions are accompanied by facial gestures, i.e. movements of the hands, head, and whole body, in accordance with the same emotional moments of speech.
This expressive facial expression can sometimes be an equivalent (replacement) for speech. Thus, certain movements of the head and hands without any words can express affirmation, denial, agreement, disagreement, emotional movements and so on. An entire stage performance can be built on one facial expression (pantomime). In cinema, facial acting is the basis of thematic composition in so-called “psychological dramas.”
But along with such expressive movements, the performance of artists can reproduce everyday actions. The character on stage eats, drinks, fights, kills, dies, steals, etc. Here we no longer have expressive, but thematic play, and each such stage act is already an independent motive, woven into the plot of the stage performance along with the speeches of the characters.
The performance is completed with scenery, props, props, i.e. dead phenomena participating in actions. Things (props in the strict sense of the word), room furnishings, furniture, individual items necessary for the game (weapons, etc.), etc. can play a role here. Along with these objects, so-called “effects” are introduced into the performance - visual effects, for example light effects: dawn, lighting and extinguishing of a lamp, sunrise, moonlight, etc.; auditory effects: thunder, rain, bells, gunshots, any noise in general, playing instruments, etc. It is also possible to imagine olfactory effects, although they are used very rarely in theatrical practice, such as burning incense when depicting a church service, etc.
A literary work adapted to be reproduced in this way is a dramatic work.
The text of a dramatic work is divided into two parts - the speeches of the characters, which are given in full, as they should be pronounced, and stage directions, which give instructions to the head of the performance - the director, what stage means should be used in the performance.
In stage directions, one should distinguish between indications of the scenery and setting and game stage directions, indicating the actions, gestures and facial expressions of individual characters.
The text of speeches represents the only verbal and artistic part of a dramatic work. Directions have a service role of communicating the artistic concept to the actors and the director and therefore are usually presented in simple, ordinary prosaic language. In rare cases, we see the use of artistic style in stage directions to make the instructions more emotionally compelling.
A work written in the form of character speeches and stage directions is a work of “dramatic form.” This also applies to those works that resort to this form without any expectation of stage interpretation (“Undivine Comedy”, fragments from “Gypsies”).
It should be said that in general the dramatic form does not yet indicate the possibility of stage interpretation. The dramatic form is very often resorted to without any expectation of performance; on the other hand, almost every dramatic work intended for the stage is printed by the author for reading. But the conditions of reading and the conditions of performance are completely different. In reading, we do not receive additional instructions from the acting, the director's interpretation and the specification of the action except through very imperfect and meager stage directions.
On the other hand, when reading through the eyes of a dramatic text, we are not bound by the tempo of the performance, which determines greater or lesser tension in the development of the action.
This difference between reading and performance in general predetermines the essential difference between a text intended for the stage and a text intended for play. Hence it is clear why among experienced playwrights and writers we usually come across the fact of the existence of a special stage and special literary edition. The stage version is usually distinguished by abbreviations, and sometimes by a special layout of the verbal material. Stage editing is a collision of literature with the stage, of the author with the director. Directors usually introduce a number of changes to the literary text in the interests of the performance.
The study of stage versions, their specific construction, etc. belongs to the history and theory of theater. Here we are interested in scenic elements only insofar as they determine the structure of the dramatic text.
The interests of the scene require the dissection of the material. The large parts of a dramatic work are acts (or actions). An act is a part performed on stage continuously, in a continuous connection of speeches and acting. Acts are separated from each other by breaks in the performance - intermissions.
The division into acts is the result of various reasons. First, the act is a unit applied to the psychological limit of the spectator's untired attention. An act lasting about 30-40 minutes approximately satisfies this condition. Then - the technical necessity during a break in the performance for changing the scenery, changing clothes of the actors requires intermissions that determine the division. Along with these mechanical reasons, there are also thematic considerations. Each act provides some complete thematic unit of the work and has internal thematic closure.
It should be noted that sometimes during the course of the performance a change of scenery (lowering of the curtain) within the act is required. These pieces are called "pictures" or "scenes". There is no exact, fundamental boundary between “pictures” and “act”, and the difference between them is purely technical (usually the intermission between films is short and the audience does not leave their seats).
Within the act, division occurs according to the exits and departures of the characters. The part of the act, when the characters on stage do not change, is called a phenomenon (sometimes a “scene.” The latter term has a dual meaning, sometimes coinciding with the term “phenomenon”, sometimes with the term “picture.” Since this word also has its own independent meaning, it is better to avoid it in these particular applications).
Phenomena are directly divided into replicas.
The peculiarity of the plot development of a dramatic work is that the action takes place in front of the audience, i.e. the most crucial moments of the plot develop with complete completeness, and in their development the author is constrained by place and time. Both roughly coincide with the place and action of the performance, i.e. it is assumed that the actors within the act or picture do not go beyond an area equal to the area of the stage, and the action takes as long as the performance of the act lasts.
Only intermissions provide the opportunity to change location and imply the passage of an indefinite period of time. In this case, almost everything should happen before the eyes of the viewer, and as little as possible should be communicated in speeches about what is happening outside the stage. All these rules are approximate, i.e. the conventional stage area may be assumed to be much wider than it actually is, the time of the performance may not exactly coincide with the time flowing in the plot (for example, nothing special will happen if the clock on the stage chimes every quarter of an hour), exactly just as much can only be told by heroes on stage. But all these deviations from the dramatic principle (“stage conventions”) are limited by theatrical tradition and, if they excessively violate the illusion, they can destroy the theatrical effect.
In addition, the theme of the plot develops almost exclusively in speeches, which is why there is a complex system of dramatic motivation for the dialogue, introduced to justify the illusion of the need for such dialogue on stage.
The dramatic texture completely excludes the possibility of abstract narration, which significantly narrows the range of topics developed in the drama and gives a specific character to the introduced motives (every motive must be the subject of conversation).
The limited time of the performance (2-3 hours) does not make it possible to introduce long chains of events: by squeezing in a large number of successive events, the author would “throw down” the pace of the performance, not allowing each event to develop with more or less natural slowness. On the other hand, a single plot line would slow down the pace and weaken interest.
To fill the scene with action, a parallel or several parallel plot threads are introduced, or, in other words, several parallel intrigues. While the next twists and turns are being “prepared” within one plot thread, the action is filled with events from another line of intrigue. Thus, instead of the sequential development of motives, dramatic texture often resorts to parallel development of a complex plot.
The presence of living persons on stage with their speeches forces one to pay attention to their individual role. Dramatic literature is characterized by concern for concretizing the mental appearance of the hero, “developing character.” In the tradition of acting of the 19th century. this “typicality”, i.e. consistent motivation of a character's speeches and actions with some distinct and prominent character was considered a sign that ensures the success of a play on stage.
Everything that has been said is fair and understandable, but not for everyone dramatic works. Generally speaking, the development of dramatic technique must go hand in hand with the development of stage style.
At the moment we are experiencing a difficult crisis for dramatic literature in the performing arts. Theatrical techniques quickly replace one another. Directing is progressing and revolutionizing the production system. We have gone through a period of infatuation with productions “on the cloth”, “destruction of the ramp”, now there is a craze for the constructivism of the scenery and the eccentricity of the acting (instead of the recently outlived lyrical recitative of Maeterlinck’s style). But the dramaturgy does not keep up with the director. Not so long ago, Ibsen, Chekhov, Maeterlinck went hand in hand with the reform of the stage, the director could barely keep up with the author. Now the author has fallen behind the director. We have new scene and we have no new dramaturgy.
Classifying dramatic genres, one could first divide the works into poetry and prose, but in drama this feature is not decisive. Composition techniques are approximately the same for both verse and prose drama, since the rhythmic form of speech affects only the structure of individual remarks, rarely dialogue, and has little effect on the plot and plot structure - except in the sense that it affects the tempo of the performance. It should be taken into account that modern drama developed from verse drama, and the gradual transition from verse to prose forms contributed to the unity of the compositional texture.
At the initial point of modern drama (17th century - French classicism), drama was divided into tragedy and comedy. The distinctive features of the tragedy were historical heroes(mainly the heroes of Greece and Rome, especially the heroes of the Trojan War), “high” theme, “tragic” (i.e. unfortunate - usually the death of heroes) denouement. A feature of the texture was the advantage of a monologue, which, when spoken in verse, created a special style of theatrical recitation. The game in the broadest sense of the word was completely absent.
Tragedy was opposed by comedy, which chose modern themes, “low” (i.e., laughter-inducing) episodes, and a happy ending (typically a wedding). In comedy, dialogue predominated, and therefore the overall mood of the play, the “teamwork” of the troupe, and not just the high qualities of individual interpreters, as in tragedy, were important. In addition, the comedy had a rich game outline, which required a lot of character movement.
In the 18th century the number of genres is increasing. Along with strict theatrical genres, lower, “fair” genres are put forward: Italian slapstick comedy, vaudeville, parody, etc. These genres are the origins of modern farce; grotesques, operettas, miniatures. Comedy splits, separating itself as “drama”, i.e. a play with modern everyday themes, but without a specific “comic” situation (“bourgeois tragedy” or “tearful comedy”). By the end of the century, familiarity with Shakespearean dramaturgy influenced the texture of the tragedy.
Romanticism of the early 19th century. introduces into tragedy the techniques developed in comedy (the presence of acting, greater complexity of characters, the predominance of dialogue, freer verse that required reduced declamation), turns to the study and imitation of Shakespeare and Spanish theater, destroys the canon of tragedy, which proclaimed three theatrical unities (unity of place, i.e., the immutability of the scenery, the unity of time - or the 24-hour rule - which required that the plot time should not exceed a day, and the unity of action - a very meaningless rule, which each author interpreted in his own way).
Drama decisively displaces other genres in the 19th century, in harmony with the evolution of the psychological and everyday novel. The heir to the tragedy are historical chronicles (like the “Trilogy” of Alexei Tolstoy or the chronicles of Ostrovsky). At the beginning of the century, melodrama (like Ducange’s still-renewed play “30 Years or the Life of a Gambler”) was very popular. In the 70s and 80s, attempts were made to create a special genre of dramatic fairy tales or extravaganzas - setting plays (see Ostrovsky's The Snow Maiden).
In general, for the 19th century. characterized by mixing dramatic genres and the destruction of solid boundaries between them. In parallel with this, there is a slow but steady decline in stage technology. Only now we seem to be standing on the threshold of a new flowering of stage art, because artistic interest in the theater is increasing.
Tomashevsky B.V. Theory of literature. Poetics - M., 1999
Over the millennia of cultural development, humanity has created countless literary works, among which we can distinguish some basic types that are similar in the way and form of reflecting human ideas about the world around us. These are three types (or types) of literature: epic, drama, lyric.
What is different about each type of literature?
Epic as a type of literature
Epic(epos - Greek, narrative, story) is a depiction of events, phenomena, processes external to the author. Epic works reflect the objective course of life, human existence generally. Using various artistic means, the authors of epic works express their understanding of historical, socio-political, moral, psychological and many other problems that live with human society in general and each of its representatives in particular. Epic works have significant visual potential, thereby helping the reader to understand the world around them and comprehend the deep problems of human existence.
Drama as a genre of literature
Drama(drama - Greek, action, performance) is a type of literature, the main feature of which is the stage nature of the works. Plays, i.e. dramatic works are created specifically for the theater, for production on stage, which, of course, does not exclude their existence in the form of independent literary texts intended for reading. Like the epic, drama reproduces the relationships between people, their actions, and the conflicts that arise between them. But unlike the epic, which is narrative in nature, drama has a dialogical form.
Related to this features of dramatic works :
2) the text of the play consists of conversations between the characters: their monologues (the speech of one character), dialogues (a conversation between two characters), polylogues (simultaneous exchange of remarks by several participants in the action). That is why speech characterization turns out to be one of the most important means of creating a memorable character of a hero;
3) the action of the play, as a rule, develops quite dynamically, intensively, as a rule, it is allocated 2-3 hours of stage time.
Lyrics as a type of literature
Lyrics(lyra - Greek, musical instrument, to the accompaniment of which poetic works and songs were performed) is distinguished by a special type of construction artistic image- this is an image-experience in which the individual emotional and spiritual experience of the author is embodied. Lyrics can be called the most mysterious type of literature, because it is addressed to the inner world of a person, his subjective feelings, ideas, and ideas. In other words, a lyrical work serves primarily the individual self-expression of the author. The question arises: why do readers, i.e. other people turn to such works? The whole point is that the lyricist, speaking on his own behalf and about himself, miraculously embodies universal human emotions, ideas, hopes, and the more significant the author’s personality, the more important his individual experience is for the reader.
Each type of literature also has its own system of genres.
Genre(genre - French genus, species) - a historically established type of literary work that has similar typological features. Genre names help the reader navigate the vast sea of literature: some people love detective stories, others prefer fantasy, and still others are a fan of memoirs.
How to determine What genre does a particular work belong to? Most often, the authors themselves help us in this, calling their creation a novel, story, poem, etc. However, some author’s definitions seem unexpected to us: let us remember that A.P. Chekhov emphasized that “The Cherry Orchard” is a comedy, and not a drama at all, but A.I. Solzhenitsyn considered One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to be a story, not a novella. Some literary scholars call Russian literature a collection of genre paradoxes: the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, the prose poem “Dead Souls”, the satirical chronicle “The History of a City”. There was a lot of controversy regarding “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy. The writer himself said only about what his book is not: “What is War and Peace? This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. “War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.” And only in the 20th century did literary scholars agree to call the brilliant creation of L.N. Tolstoy's epic novel.
Each literary genre has a number of stable characteristics, knowledge of which allows us to classify a specific work into one group or another. Genres develop, change, die out and are born, for example, literally before our eyes arose new genre blog (web loq English online journal) - personal online diary.
However, for several centuries there have been stable (also called canonical) genres.
Literature of literary works - see table 1).
Table 1.
Genres of literary works 
Epic genres of literature
Epic genres are primarily distinguished by their volume; on this basis they are divided into small ones ( essay, story, short story, fairy tale, parable ), average ( story ), large ( novel, epic novel ).
Feature article- a small sketch from life, the genre is both descriptive and narrative. Many essays are created on a documentary, life basis, often they are combined into cycles: the classic example is “A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy” (1768) by the English writer Laurence Sterne, in Russian literature it is “A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790) A Radishcheva, “Frigate Pallada” (1858) by I. Goncharov” “Italy” (1922) by B. Zaitsev and others.
Story- a small narrative genre, which usually depicts one episode, incident, human character, or an important incident in the life of the hero that influenced his future fate (“After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy). Stories are created both on a documentary, often autobiographical basis (“Matryonin’s Dvor” by A. Solzhenitsyn) and through pure fiction (“The Gentleman from San Francisco” by I. Bunin).
The intonation and content of the stories can be very different - from comic, curious (early stories of A.P. Chekhov) to deeply tragic (Kolyma Stories by V. Shalamov). Stories, like essays, are often combined into cycles (“Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev).
Novella(novella Italian news) is in many ways akin to a short story and is considered its variety, but is distinguished by the special dynamism of the narrative, sharp and often unexpected turns in the development of events. Often the narrative in a short story begins with the ending and is built according to the law of inversion, i.e. reverse order, when the denouement precedes the main events (“Terrible Revenge” by N. Gogol). This feature of the construction of the novella will later be borrowed by the detective genre.
The word “novella” has another meaning that future lawyers need to know. In Ancient Rome, the phrase “novellae leges” (new laws) referred to laws introduced after the official codification of law (after the Code of Theodosius II in 438). The novellas of Justinian and his successors, published after the second edition of the Justinian Code, later formed part of the code of Roman laws (Corpus iuris civillis). In the modern era, a novel is a law submitted to parliament (in other words, a draft law).
Fairy tale- the most ancient of the small epic genres, one of the main ones in the oral creativity of any people. This small piece magical, adventurous or everyday in nature, where fiction is clearly emphasized. Another important feature folk tale- her edifying character: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows.” Folk tales are usually divided into fairy tales (“The Tale of the Frog Princess”), everyday ones (“Porridge from an Ax”) and tales about animals (“Zayushkina’s Hut”).
With the development of written literature, literary tales arise that use traditional motifs and symbolic possibilities folk tale. The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is rightfully considered a classic of the genre of literary fairy tales; his wonderful “The Little Mermaid”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Shadow”, “Thumbelina” are loved by many generations of readers, both very young and quite mature. And this is far from accidental, because Andersen’s fairy tales are not only extraordinary and sometimes strange adventures of heroes, they contain a deep philosophical and moral meaning contained in beautiful symbolic images.
From European literary fairy tales The 20th century classic was “The Little Prince” (1942) by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And the famous “Chronicles of Narnia” (1950 - 1956) by the English writer Cl. Lewis and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-1955), also by the Englishman J.R. Tolkien, are written in the fantasy genre, which can be called a modern transformation of an ancient folk tale.
In Russian literature, the fairy tales of A.S., of course, remain unsurpassed. Pushkin: “About the dead princess and seven heroes”, “About the fisherman and the fish”, “About Tsar Saltan...”, “About the golden cockerel”, “About the priest and his worker Balda”. An excellent storyteller was P. Ershov, the author of “The Little Humpbacked Horse.” E. Schwartz in the 20th century creates the form of fairy tale plays, one of them “The Bear” (another name is “An Ordinary Miracle”) is well known to many thanks to the wonderful film directed by M. Zakharov.
Parable- also very ancient folklore genre, but, unlike fairy tales, parables contained written monuments: the Talmud, the Bible, the Koran, the monument of Syrian literature “Teachings of Akahara”. A parable is a work of instructive, symbolic nature, distinguished by sublimity and seriousness of content. Ancient parables, as a rule, are small in volume; they do not contain a detailed account of events or psychological characteristics of the character of the hero.
The purpose of the parable is edification or, as they once said, teaching wisdom. In European culture, the most famous parables are from the Gospels: about the prodigal son, about the rich man and Lazarus, about the unrighteous judge, about the crazy rich man and others. Christ often spoke to his disciples allegorically, and if they did not understand the meaning of the parable, he explained it.
Many writers turned to the genre of parables, not always, of course, investing in it a high religious meaning, but rather trying to express in an allegorical form some kind of moralistic edification, such as, for example, L. Tolstoy in his late work. Carry it. V. Rasputin - Farewell to Matera" can also be called a detailed parable, in which the writer speaks with anxiety and sorrow about the destruction of the "ecology of conscience" of man. Many critics also consider the story “The Old Man and the Sea” by E. Hemingway to be part of the tradition of literary parables. The famous contemporary Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho also uses the parable form in his novels and stories (the novel “The Alchemist”).
Tale- a medium literary genre, widely represented in world literature. The story depicts several important episodes from the hero's life, as a rule, there is one storyline and a small number characters. The stories are characterized by great psychological intensity; the author focuses on the experiences and changes in mood of the characters. Very often the main theme of the story is the love of the protagonist, for example, “White Nights” by F. Dostoevsky, “Asya” by I. Turgenev, “Mitya’s Love” by I. Bunin. Stories can also be combined into cycles, especially those written on autobiographical material: “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L. Tolstoy, “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” by A. Gorky. The intonations and themes of the stories are extremely diverse: tragic, addressing acute social and moral issues (“Everything Flows” by V. Grossman, “House on the Embankment” by Yu. Trifonov), romantic, heroic (“Taras Bulba” by N. Gogol), philosophical , parables (“The Pit” by A. Platonov), mischievous, comic (“Three in a Boat, Not Counting the Dog” by the English writer Jerome K. Jerome).
Novel(gotap French originally, in the late Middle Ages, any work written in a Romance language, as opposed to those written in Latin) is a major epic work in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual. The novel is the most complex epic genre, which is distinguished by an incredible number of themes and plots: love, historical, detective, psychological, fantasy, historical, autobiographical, social, philosophical, satirical, etc. All these forms and types of the novel are united by its central idea - the idea of personality, human individuality.
The novel is called the epic of private life because it depicts the diverse connections between the world and man, society and the individual. The reality surrounding a person is presented in the novel in different contexts: historical, political, social, cultural, national, etc. The author of the novel is interested in how the environment influences a person’s character, how he is formed, how his life develops, whether he managed to find his purpose and realize himself.
Many people attribute the origin of the genre to antiquity, such as Long's Daphnis and Chloe, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and the knightly romance Tristan and Isolde.
In the works of classics of world literature, the novel is represented by numerous masterpieces:
Table 2. Examples of classic novels by foreign and Russian writers (XIX, XX centuries) 
Famous novels of Russian writers of the 19th century
.:
In the 20th century, Russian writers develop and enhance the traditions of their great predecessors and create no less wonderful novels:
Of course, none of such listings can claim completeness and exhaustive objectivity, especially when it comes to modern prose. In this case, the most famous works that glorified both the country’s literature and the name of the writer are named.
Epic novel. In ancient times, there were forms of heroic epic: folklore sagas, runes, epics, songs. These are the Indian “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”, the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf”, the French “Song of Roland”, the German “Song of the Nibelungs”, etc. In these works, the hero’s exploits were exalted in an idealized, often hyperbolic form. The later epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer, “Shah-name” by Ferdowsi, while retaining the mythological character of the early epic, nevertheless had expressed connection with a real story, and the theme of intertwining human destiny and the life of the people becomes one of the main things in them. The experience of the ancients will be in demand in the 19th-20th centuries, when writers will try to comprehend the dramatic relationship between the era and the individual personality, and talk about the tests to which morality, and sometimes the human psyche, is subjected at the time of the greatest historical upheavals. Let us remember the lines of F. Tyutchev: “Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments.” The poet's romantic formula in reality meant the destruction of all familiar forms of life, tragic losses and unfulfilled dreams.
The complex form of the epic novel allows writers to artistically explore these problems in all their completeness and inconsistency.
When we talk about the genre of the epic novel, of course, we immediately remember “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy. Other examples can be mentioned: “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov, “Life and Fate” by V. Grossman, “The Forsyte Saga” by the English writer Galsworthy; book by American writer Margaret Mitchell gone With the Wind"can also with good reason be classified as part of this genre.
The very name of the genre indicates a synthesis, a combination of two main principles in it: novel and epic, i.e. related to the theme of the life of an individual and the theme of the history of the people. In other words, the epic novel tells about the destinies of the heroes (as a rule, the heroes themselves and their destinies are fictitious, invented by the author) against the background and in close connection with epochal historical events. So, in “War and Peace” - these are the fates of individual families (Rostov, Bolkonsky), beloved heroes (Prince Andrei, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha and Princess Marya) at a turning point for Russia and all of Europe historical period the beginning of the 19th century, the Patriotic War of 1812. In Sholokhov's book, the events of the First World War, two revolutions and a bloody civil war tragically invade the life of the Cossack farm, the Melekhov family, and the fate of the main characters: Grigory, Aksinya, Natalya. V. Grossman talks about the Great Patriotic War and its main event - the Battle of Stalingrad, about the tragedy of the Holocaust. “Life and Fate” also intertwines historical and family themes: the author traces the history of the Shaposhnikovs, trying to understand why the destinies of the members of this family turned out so differently. Galsworthy describes the life of the Forsyte family during the legendary Victorian era in England. Margaret Mitchell is a central event in US history, the Civil War between North and South, which dramatically changed the lives of many families and the fate of the most famous heroine of American literature - Scarlett O'Hara.
Dramatic genres of literature
Tragedy(tragodia Greek goat song) is a dramatic genre that originated in Ancient Greece. The emergence of ancient theater and tragedy is associated with the worship of the cult of the god of fertility and wine Dionysus. A number of holidays were dedicated to him, during which rituals were played out. magic games with mummers, satyrs, whom the ancient Greeks imagined as bipedal goat-like creatures. It is assumed that it was precisely this appearance of the satyrs singing hymns to the glory of Dionysus that gave such a strange name in translation to this serious genre. Theatrical performance in Ancient Greece was given magical religious significance, and theaters built in the form of large arenas under open air, have always been located in the very center of cities and were one of the main public places. Spectators sometimes spent the whole day here: eating, drinking, loudly expressing their approval or censure of the spectacle being presented. The heyday of ancient Greek tragedy is associated with the names of three great tragedians: Aeschylus (525-456 BC) - author of the tragedies “Chained Prometheus”, “Oresteia”, etc.; Sophocles (496-406 BC) - author of “Oedipus the King”, “Antigone”, etc.; and Euripides (480-406 BC) - the creator of “Medea”, “Troyanok”, etc. Their creations will remain examples of the genre for centuries; people will try to imitate them, but they will remain unsurpassed. Some of them (“Antigone”, “Medea”) are still staged today.
What are the main features of the tragedy? The main one is the presence of an insoluble global conflict: in ancient tragedy this is the confrontation between fate, fate, on the one hand, and man, his will, free choice, on the other. In the tragedies of later eras, this conflict acquired a moral and philosophical character, as a confrontation between good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred. It has an absolute character; the heroes who embody the opposing forces are not ready for reconciliation or compromise, and therefore the ending of the tragedy often involves a lot of death. This is how the tragedies of the great English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) were constructed; let us remember the most famous of them: “Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Othello”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Julius Caesar”, etc.
In the tragedies of the 17th century French playwrights Corneille (Horace, Polyeuctus) and Racine (Andromache, Britannicus), this conflict received a different interpretation - as a conflict of duty and feelings, rational and emotional in the souls of the main characters, i.e. . acquired a psychological interpretation.
The most famous in Russian literature is the romantic tragedy “Boris Godunov” by A.S. Pushkin, created on historical material. In one of his best works, the poet acutely raised the problem of the “real trouble” of the Moscow state - a chain reaction of impostures and “terrible atrocities” that people are ready for for the sake of power. Another problem is the attitude of the people to everything that happens in the country. The image of the “silent” people in the finale of “Boris Godunov” is symbolic; discussions continue to this day about what Pushkin wanted to say by this. Based on the tragedy, the opera of the same name by M. P. Mussorgsky was written, which became a masterpiece of Russian opera classics.
Comedy(Greek komos - cheerful crowd, oda - song) - a genre that originated in Ancient Greece a little later than tragedy (5th century BC). The most famous comedian of that time was Aristophanes (“Clouds”, “Frogs”, etc.).
In comedy with the help of satire and humor, i.e. comic, moral vices are ridiculed: hypocrisy, stupidity, greed, envy, cowardice, complacency. Comedies, as a rule, are topical, i.e. They also address social issues, exposing the shortcomings of the authorities. There are sitcoms and character comedies. In the first, a cunning intrigue, a chain of events (Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors) are important; in the second, the characters of the heroes, their absurdity, one-sidedness, as in the comedies “The Minor” by D. Fonvizin, “The Tradesman in the Nobility”, “Tartuffe”, written by the classic genre, French comedian of the 17th century Jean Baptiste Moliere. In Russian drama, it turned out to be especially popular satirical comedy with her sharp social criticism, such as, for example, “The Inspector General” by N. Gogol, “The Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov. A. Ostrovsky created many wonderful comedies (“Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”, “Mad Money”, etc.).
The comedy genre invariably enjoys success with the public, perhaps because it affirms the triumph of justice: in the finale, vice must certainly be punished, and virtue must triumph.
Drama- a relatively “young” genre that appeared in Germany in the 18th century as lesedrama (German) - a play for reading. The drama is addressed to Everyday life person and society, everyday life, family relationships. Drama is primarily interested in the inner world of a person; it is the most psychological of all dramatic genres. At the same time, this is also the most literary of stage genres, for example, the plays of A. Chekhov are largely perceived more as texts for reading, rather than as theatrical performances.
Lyrical genres of literature
The division into genres in lyrics is not absolute, because the differences between genres in this case are conditional and not as obvious as in epic and drama. More often we distinguish lyrical works by their thematic features: landscape, love, philosophical, friendly, intimate lyrics, etc. However, we can name some genres that have pronounced individual characteristics: elegy, sonnet, epigram, epistle, epitaph.
Elegy(elegos Greek plaintive song) - a poem of medium length, usually of moral, philosophical, love, confessional content.
The genre arose in antiquity, and its main feature was considered to be the elegiac distich, i.e. dividing a poem into couplets, for example:
The longed-for moment has arrived: my long-term work is over. Why is this incomprehensible sadness secretly disturbing me?
A. Pushkin
In the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries, the division into couplets is no longer such a strict requirement; now the semantic features that are associated with the origin of the genre are more significant. In terms of content, the elegy goes back to the form of the Ancient funeral “laments”, in which, while mourning the deceased, they simultaneously remembered his extraordinary virtues. This origin predetermined the main feature of the elegy - the combination of grief with faith, regret with hope, acceptance of existence through sadness. The lyrical hero of the elegy is aware of the imperfection of the world and people, his own sinfulness and weakness, but does not reject life, but accepts it in all its tragic beauty. A striking example is “Elegy” by A.S. Pushkin:
Crazy years of faded fun
It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.
But like wine - the sadness of days gone by
In my soul, the older I get, the stronger it is.
My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The coming troubled sea.
But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
And I know I will have pleasure
Between sorrows, worries and worries:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction,
And maybe - at my sad sunset
Love will flash with a farewell smile.
Sonnet(sonetto Italian song) - the so-called “solid” poetic form, which has strict rules of construction. The sonnet has 14 lines, divided into two quatrains and two tercets. In quatrains only two rhymes are repeated, in terzettos two or three. The methods of rhyming also had their own requirements, which, however, varied.
The birthplace of the sonnet is Italy; this genre is also represented in English and French poetry. The 14th century Italian poet Petrarch is considered the luminary of the genre. He dedicated all his sonnets to his beloved Donna Laura.
In Russian literature, the sonnets of A.S. Pushkin remain unsurpassed; poets of the Silver Age also created beautiful sonnets.
Epigram(epigramma Greek, inscription) - a short mocking poem, usually addressed to a specific person. Many poets write epigrams, sometimes increasing the number of their ill-wishers and even enemies. The epigram on Count Vorontsov turned out to be bad for A.S. Pushkin by the hatred of this nobleman and, ultimately, expulsion from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye:
Popu, my lord, half-merchant,
Half-sage, half-ignorant,
Semi-scoundrel, but there is hope
Which will be complete at last.
Mocking poems can be dedicated not only to a specific person, but also to a general addressee, as, for example, in the epigram of A. Akhmatova:
Could Biche, like Dante, create?
Did Laura go to praise the heat of love?
I taught women to speak...
But, God, how to silence them!
There are even known cases of a kind of duel of epigrams. When the famous Russian lawyer A.F. Kony was appointed to the Senate, his ill-wishers spread an evil epigram against him:
Caligula brought his horse to the Senate,
It stands, dressed in both velvet and gold.
But I will say, we have the same arbitrariness:
I read in the newspapers that Kony is in the Senate.
To which A.F. Kony, who was distinguished by his extraordinary literary talent, replied:
(epitafia Greek, funeral) - a farewell poem to a deceased person, intended for tombstone. Initially this word was used in a literal sense, but later it acquired a more figurative meaning. For example, I. Bunin has a lyrical miniature in prose “Epitaph”, dedicated to farewell to the Russian estate that was dear to the writer, but forever a thing of the past. Gradually, the epitaph is transformed into a dedication poem, a farewell poem (“Wreath to the Dead” by A. Akhmatova). Perhaps the most famous poem of this kind in Russian poetry is “The Death of a Poet” by M. Lermontov. Another example is “Epitaph” by M. Lermontov, dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Venevitinov, a poet and philosopher who died at the age of twenty-two.
Lyric-epic genres of literature
There are works that combine some features of lyricism and epic, as evidenced by the very name of this group of genres. Their main feature is the combination of narration, i.e. a story about events, conveying the feelings and experiences of the author. TO lyric-epic genres it is customary to attribute poem, ode, ballad, fable .
Poem(poeo Greek: create, create) is a very famous literary genre. The word "poem" has many meanings, both direct and figurative. In ancient times, large poems were called epic works, which today are considered epics (the poems of Homer already mentioned above).
In the literature of the 19th-20th centuries, a poem is a large poetic work with a detailed plot, for which it is sometimes called a poetic story. The poem has characters and a plot, but their purpose is somewhat different than in a prose story: in the poem they help the author’s lyrical self-expression. This is probably why romantic poets loved this genre so much (“Ruslan and Lyudmila” by early Pushkin, “Mtsyri” and “Demon” by M. Lermontov, “Cloud in Pants” by V. Mayakovsky).
Oh yeah(oda Greek song) is a genre represented mainly in the literature of the 18th century, although it also has ancient origins. The ode goes back to the ancient genre of dithyramb - a hymn glorifying a national hero or winner Olympic Games, i.e. an outstanding person.
Poets of the 18th-19th centuries created odes based on different cases. This could be an appeal to the monarch: M. Lomonosov dedicated his odes to Empress Elizabeth, G. Derzhavin to Catherine P. Glorifying their deeds, the poets simultaneously taught the empresses, instilled in them important political and civil ideas.
Significant historical events could also become the subject of glorification and admiration in the ode. G. Derzhavin after the capture by the Russian army under the command of A.V. Suvorov of the Turkish fortress, Izmail wrote the ode “The thunder of victory, ring out!”, which for some time was the unofficial anthem of the Russian Empire. There was a type of spiritual ode: “Morning reflection on God’s greatness” by M. Lomonosov, “God” by G. Derzhavin. Civil and political ideas could also become the basis of an ode (“Liberty” by A. Pushkin).
This genre has a pronounced didactic nature; it can be called a poetic sermon. Therefore, it is distinguished by the solemnity of style and speech, the leisurely narration. An example is the famous excerpt from “Ode on the day of the accession to the All-Russian throne of Her Majesty Empress Elizabeth Petrovna 1747” by M. Lomonosov, written in the year when Elizabeth approved the new charter of the Academy of Sciences, significantly increasing funds for its maintenance. The main thing for the great Russian encyclopedist is the enlightenment of the younger generation, the development of science and education, which, according to the poet’s conviction, will become the key to the prosperity of Russia.
Ballad(balare Provence - to dance) was especially popular at the beginning of the 19th century, in sentimental and romantic poetry. This genre originated in French Provence as a folk dance of love content with obligatory choruses and repetitions. Then the ballad migrated to England and Scotland, where it acquired new features: now it is a heroic song with a legendary plot and heroes, for example, the famous ballads about Robin Hood. The only constant feature remains the presence of refrains (repetitions), which will be important for ballads written later.
Poets of the 18th and early 19th centuries fell in love with the ballad for its special expressiveness. If we use an analogy with epic genres, a ballad can be called a poetic short story: it must have an unusual love, legendary, heroic plot that captures the imagination. Often fantastic, even mystical images and motifs are used in ballads: let us remember the famous “Lyudmila” and “Svetlana” by V. Zhukovsky. No less famous are “Song of the Prophetic Oleg” by A. Pushkin and “Borodino” by M. Lermontov.
In Russian lyric poetry of the 20th century, a ballad is a romantic love poem, often accompanied by musical accompaniment. Ballads in “bardic” poetry are especially popular, the anthem of which can be called the beloved ballad of Yuri Vizbor.
Fable(basnia lat. story) - a short story in verse or prose of a didactic, satirical nature. Elements of this genre have been present in the folklore of all nations since ancient times as tales about animals, and then transformed into jokes. The literary fable took shape in Ancient Greece, its founder was Aesop (5th century BC), after his name the allegorical speech began to be called “Aesopian language.” In a fable, as a rule, there are two parts: plot and moral. The first contains a story about some funny or absurd incident, the second contains a moral, a lesson. The heroes of fables are often animals, under whose masks there are quite recognizable moral and social vices that are ridiculed. The great fabulists were Lafontaine (France, 17th century), Lessing (Germany, 18th century). In Russia, the luminary of the genre will forever remain I.A. Krylov (1769-1844). The main advantage of his fables is a living, popular language, a combination of slyness and wisdom in the author's intonation. The plots and images of many of I. Krylov’s fables look quite recognizable today.
Drama is a literary (dramatic), stage and cinematic genre. Received particular popularity in literature XVIII-XXI centuries, gradually displacing another genre of drama - tragedy, contrasting it with predominantly everyday plots and a style closer to everyday reality. With the emergence of cinema, it also moved into this art form, becoming one of its most widespread genres (see the corresponding category).
Dramas usually specifically depict the private life of a person and his conflict with society. At the same time, the emphasis is often placed on universal human contradictions, embodied in the behavior and actions of specific characters.
Two tasks of the drama:
2. give a director’s interpretation, a new interpretation of the author’s intention in the stage production of the work.
2) (Greek - action) depiction of events and relationships between characters on stage (a special way of writing text). The direct expression of the author's point of view in the text is contained in the stage directions.
Folk: Game, Ritual, Folk drama, Raek, Nativity scene
Tragedy, Comedy: positions, characters, masks...
Drama: philosophical social historical social-philosophical. Vaudeville, Farce, Tragifarce
FORM AND CONTENT literature- fundamental literary scholars. concepts that generalize ideas about the external and internal aspects of literature. works and at the same time relying on the philosopher. categories of form and content. As in other spheres of culture, form (F.) in literature not only objectifies the content (S.): it acts as its ordering measure and organizing principle.
In reality, form and content are inseparable, because form is nothing more than the content, as we perceive it, and content is nothing more than the internal meaning of a given form.
The form of the work includes: style, genre, composition, artistic speech, rhythm.
Both to form and content: plot.
A literary critic often has to focus his main attention either on content or on form, but his efforts will be fruitful only if he does not lose sight of the relationship, interaction, unity of form and content, otherwise he will be dealing with either the subject of literature (that is, to characterize the social, everyday, ideological, moral, psychological features of the recreated reality), or with its material (that is, to analyze the stylistic and linguistic properties of the speech element from which the writer came , creating an art form).
STRUCTURE literary work- the structure of a work of verbal art, its internal and external organization, the way of connecting its constituent elements. The presence of a certain structure ensures the integrity of the work, its ability to embody and convey the artist’s expression. content. For the reader’s perception, the work exists precisely as a concrete integrity.
No matter how unique the structure of each specific work is, it has a number of common features with the principles of the structure of other works of the same genre, the same kind and style, artistic movement, and ultimately - literature as an art form and, finally, all art in general .
Structural model of any lit. prod. can be represented - of course, for clarity - in the form of a core surrounded by several shells.
1. Theme and idea (core)
2. Inner shape- a system of images, which has a purely ideal character: it covers everything imagined by the imagination, although described in words, - from micro-images-tropes (metaphors, comparisons, metonymies, etc.) to images-characters and their interaction.
3. External shape - a system of material means of translating ordinary linguistic fabric and its organization according to laws dictated by the content; we're talking about about such means, which allow us to achieve activation of the sound side of the text (in verse, these are rhymes, assonances, alliterations) and which carry out its rhythmicity. and compositional orderliness, sequential development of action, principles of descriptions, character dialogue, direct authorial speech, etc.
Dramatic genres - totality genres, arising and developing within the drama as literary kind.
Dramas typically depict specifically the private life of a person and his social conflicts. At the same time, the emphasis is often placed on universal human contradictions, embodied in the behavior and actions of specific characters. Drama is a literary work that depicts serious conflict, struggle between actors
As a genre of drama, drama emerged in the mid-19th century. This is an intermediate genre between comedy and tragedy.
Types of drama (dramatic genres)
- Tragedy
A tragedy is a dramatic work in which the main character (and sometimes other characters in side conflicts), distinguished by the maximum strength of will, mind and feeling for a person, violates a certain universally binding (from the author’s point of view) and irresistible law; at the same time, the hero of the tragedy may either not be aware of his guilt at all - or not be aware of it for a long time - acting either according to plans from above (for example, ancient tragedy), or being in the grip of a blinding passion (for example, Shakespeare). The fight against an irresistible law is associated with great suffering and inevitably ends in the death of the tragic hero; the struggle with the irresistible law - its revaluation with the inevitable triumph - causes spiritual enlightenment in us - catharsis.
The hero of every dramatic work steadily strives towards his goal: this aspiration, a single action, encounters a counter-action of the environment. We must not forget that tragedy developed from a religious cult; The original content of tragedy is resistance to fate, its convincing and inevitable destiny, which neither mortals nor gods can avoid. This is, for example, the construction of Sophocles’ Oedipus. In Christian theater, the tragic action is a struggle with God; such, for example, is Calderon’s “Adoration of the Cross.” In some Shakespearean tragedies, for example, in “Julius Caesar,” ancient fate, fate, is revived in the form of cosmic forces taking a formidable part in the dramatic struggle. German tragedies usually depict a violation of the divine law; German tragedies are religious - and religious in a Christian way. This is the case in most of his tragedies by Schiller (in “The Robbers” - God very often takes on Jewish features, here the influence of the Bible is felt), Kleist, Hebbel, etc. The Christian worldview is also felt in Pushkin’s tragic sketches, as, for example, in “The Feast of plague." “Dramatic guilt” is a violation of the norms of a certain way of life; “tragic guilt” is a violation of the absolute law. On the other hand, a tragedy is possible, developing in the social and state plane, devoid of religious pathos in the narrow sense of the word; the hero of a tragedy may fight not with God, but with “historical necessity,” etc.
The hero of a social tragedy encroaches on the fundamental foundations social life. The protest of the hero of a domestic drama is caused by living conditions; in another environment he may calm down. In a society where a woman has equal rights with a man, Ibsen’s Nora must show great calm; on the contrary, the hero of a social tragedy - like any tragedy - is a rebel under any circumstances. He does not find a place for himself within the framework of sociality. Such, for example, is Shakespeare's Coriolanus; in any environment his indomitable arrogance must be revealed. He rebels against the immutable demands of citizenship. There is no tragedy if the hero is not strong enough.
(That’s why Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm” is not a tragedy. Katerina is too weak; barely realizing her sin, her tragic religious guilt, she commits suicide; she is unable to fight God).
The counter-action of other characters in the tragedy should also be maximum; all the main characters of the tragedy must be gifted with extraordinary energy and intellectual acuity. A tragic hero acts without evil intent—this is the third essential sign of tragedy. For Oedipus, his murder and incest are destined from above; Macbeth fulfills the witches' predictions. The hero of the tragedy is guilty without guilt, doomed. At the same time, he is humane, he is capable of deep suffering, he acts in defiance of his suffering. The heroes of the tragedy are richly gifted natures, at the mercy of their passions. The themes of the tragedy are mythological. In myth there appears an effective fundamental principle of human relations, not obscured by everyday layers. Historical images tragedy uses images folk legend, and not as scientific material. She is interested in history - legend, not history - science. The truth of tragedy is the truth of passions, and not of an accurate realistic depiction. Tragedy enlightens our spiritual consciousness; in addition to artistic imagery, it is characterized by the pathos of philosophical penetration. The tragedy inevitably ends with the death of the hero. His passion is directed against fate itself and, moreover, is indomitable; the death of the hero is the only possible outcome of the tragedy. However, the daring power of the hero arouses in us moments of sympathy and insane hope for his victory.
- Drama (genre)
drama appears at the end of the 18th century. This is a play with a modern everyday theme. The difference from melodrama is that drama does not seek to pity. The task is to outline a section of modern life with all the details and show a certain shortcoming, a vice. This can be dealt with in a comedic manner. Drama can be mixed with melodrama.
- Crime drama
- Existential drama
- drama in verse
Melodramaappeared in France. Melodrama is a play that directly appeals to the emotions of the audience, evoking compassion, fear, hatred, etc. Misfortunes usually occur due to external causes: natural disasters, sudden death, villains acting for selfish reasons. In a tragedy, such a villain is divided into two: he doubts and suffers. In melodrama, a person is whole and involved in a single emotional impulse. The plots are taken from the lives of ordinary people, and the ending is usually happy.
Melodrama is a drama that captivates not so much by the seriousness of the dramatic struggle and the detailed depiction of everyday life in which this struggle develops, but by the severity of the stage situations. The poignancy of stage situations arises partly as a consequence of the complex and spectacular circumstances (dramatic node) in which melodrama arises, and partly as a consequence of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of its characters. The heroes of the melodrama are put in an isolated prison cell, sewn up in a bag and thrown into the water (A. Dumas), and they still escape. Sometimes a happy accident saves them; the authors of melodramas, in their desire for ever newer and newer effects, sometimes greatly abuse such random turns in the fate of their heroes. The main interest of melodrama is thus purely fabulistic. This interest is often enhanced in melodramas by sudden "recognitions" (Aristotle's term); many heroes of melodrama have been acting under fictitious name, a dramatic struggle is waged between close relatives who have not been aware of this for a long time, etc. In connection with the superficial depiction of everyday life, melodrama develops under the sign of “tragic guilt” (see “Tragedy”). However, melodrama is far from tragedy, there is no spiritual deepening in it; The characteristics of melodrama are more schematic than in any other dramatic work. In melodrama, there are often villains, noble adventurers, helplessly touching characters (“Two Orphans”), etc.
- hierodrama
- mystery
- Comedy
Comedy developed from a ritual cult that had a serious and solemn character. The Greek word κω?μος has the same root as the word κω?μη - village. Therefore, we must assume that these funny songs - comedies - appeared in the village. And indeed, Greek writers have indications that the beginnings of this type of work, called mimes (μι?μος, imitation), arose in the villages. The etymological meaning of this word also indicates the source from which the content for the mimes was obtained. If the tragedy borrowed its content from the legends about Dionysus, gods and heroes, i.e. from the world of fantasy, then the mime took this content from everyday life. Mimes were sung during festivities dedicated to certain times of the year and associated with sowing, harvesting, grape harvest, etc.
All these everyday songs were improvisations of humorous and satirical content, with the character of the topic of the day. The same dicharic songs, i.e. with two singers, were known to the Romans under the name atellan and fescennik. The content of these songs was variable, but, despite this variability, they took on a certain form and constituted something whole, which was sometimes part of the Greek tetralogy, consisting of three tragedies about one hero (“Oresteia” by Aeschylus consisted of the tragedies “Agamemnon”, "Choephori", "Eumenides") and the fourth satirical play. A more or less definite form in the 6th century. BC. In the 5th century. BC, according to Aristotle, the comedian Chionides was famous, from whom only the names of some plays have been preserved. Aristophanes is thus. successor of this type of creativity. Although Aristophanes ridicules Euripides, his contemporary, in his comedies, he builds his comedies according to the same plan that was developed by Euripides in his tragedies, and even the external construction of comedies is no different from tragedy. In the 4th century. BC Menander comes forward among the Greeks. . We have already spoken about Plautus, since his comedies imitate the comedies of Menander. In addition to this, we add that for Plautus the love affair plays an important role. There is no chorus in the comedies of Plautus and Terrence; in Aristophanes it was more important than in the tragedy of Euripides and his predecessors. The chorus in its parabasis, i.e. deviations from the development of the action, he turned to the audience to interpret and understand for them the meaning of the dialogues of the characters. The next writer after Plautus was Terence. He, just like Plautus, imitates Menander and another Greek writer Apollodorus. Terence's comedies were not intended for the masses, but for a select aristocratic society, therefore he does not have the obscenity and rudeness that we find in abundance in Plautus. Terence's comedies are distinguished by their moralizing character. If in Plautus fathers are fooled by their sons, then in Terence they are the leaders of family life. The seduced girls of Terence, in contrast to Plautus, marry their seducers. In pseudo-classical comedy, the moralizing element (vice is punished, virtue triumphs) comes from Terence. In addition, the comedies of this comedian are distinguished by greater care in depicting the characters than those of Plautus and Menander, as well as by the grace of style. During the Renaissance in Italy, a special type of comedy was developed:
COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE all'improvviso - a comedy performed by professional Italian actors not according to a written text, but according to a script (Italian: Scenario or soggetto) which outlines only the milestones of the plot content, leaving it to the actor himself to put on the role in those words that his stage experience, tact, resourcefulness, inspiration tell him or education. This type of game flourished in Italy around the middle of the 16th century. It is difficult to strictly distinguish improvised comedy from literary comedy (sostenuta erudita): both genres were in undoubted interaction and differed mainly in execution; a written comedy sometimes turned into a script and back, a literary comedy was written according to the script; There are clear similarities between the characters of both. But in the improvised one they are even more frozen than in the written one into certain, fixed types. Such is the greedy, in love and invariably fooled Pantalone; Dr. Graziano, sometimes a lawyer, sometimes a physician, a scientist, a pedant, inventing incredible etymologies of words (like pedante from pede ante, because the teacher forces the students to go forward); captain, a hero in words and a coward in deeds, confident in his irresistibility to any woman; in addition, two types of servants (zanni): one is smart and cunning, a master of any intrigue (Pedrolino, Brighella, Scapino), the other is the idiotic Harlequin or the even more stupid Medzetin, representatives of involuntary comedy. Standing somewhat apart from all these comic figures are lovers (innamorati). Each of the actors chose one role for himself and often remained faithful to it all his life; Thanks to this, he got used to his role and achieved perfection in it, leaving the imprint of his personality on it. This prevented the masks from completely becoming motionless. Good actors had a large stock of their own or borrowed tirades (concetti), which they kept in memory so that at the right moment they could use one or the other, depending on the circumstances and inspiration. The lovers had ready a concetti of entreaties, jealousies, reproaches, delights, etc.; They learned a lot from Petrarch. Each troupe had about 10-12 actors and, accordingly, each script had the same number of roles. Various combinations of these almost unchanged elements create a variety of plots. The intrigue usually boils down to the fact that parents, out of greed or rivalry, prevent young people from loving as they choose, but the first Zannt is on the side of the youth and, holding all the threads of intrigue in his hands, removes the obstacles to marriage. The form is almost without exception three-act. Scene in C. d. arte, as in literary Italian and ancient Roman comedy, depicts a square with two or three houses of the characters facing it, and in this amazing square all conversations and dates take place without passers-by.. In the comedy of masks there is nothing to look for a rich psychology of passions, in in her conventional world there is no place for a truthful reflection of life. Its dignity is in movement. The action develops easily and quickly, without length, using the usual conventional techniques of eavesdropping, changing clothes, not recognizing each other in the dark, etc. This is exactly what Moliere adopted from the Italians. The time of greatest flowering of the comedy of masks was in the first half XVII V.
By the 19th century higher value becomes a comedy of characters.
COMEDY. Comedy depicts a dramatic struggle that arouses laughter, causing in us a negative attitude towards the aspirations, passions of the characters or the methods of their struggle. The analysis of comedy is associated with the analysis of the nature of laughter. According to Bergson, any human manifestation that, due to its inertia, contradicts social requirements is funny. The inertia of a machine, its automatism, is ridiculous in a living person; for life requires “tension” and “elasticity.” Another sign of something funny: “The depicted vice should not greatly offend our feelings, for laughter is incompatible with emotional excitement.” Bergson points out the following moments of comedic “automatism” that causes laughter: 1) “treating people like puppets” makes you laugh; 2) the mechanization of life, reflected in repeated stage situations, makes you laugh; 3) the automatism of the characters who blindly follow their idea is ridiculous. However, Bergson loses sight of the fact that every dramatic work, both comedy and tragedy, is formed by a single, integral desire of the main character (or the person leading the intrigue) - and that this desire, in its continuous activity, acquires the character of automatism. We also find the signs indicated by Bergson in tragedy. Not only does Figaro treat people like puppets, but so does Iago; however, this appeal does not amuse, but terrifies. In Bergson's language, “tension” devoid of “elasticity” or flexibility can be tragic; strong passion is not “elastic”. When defining the characteristics of comedy, it should be noted that the perception of what is funny is changeable; What excites one person may make another laugh. Then: there are quite a lot of plays where dramatic (tragic) scenes and lines alternate with comedic ones. Such are, for example, “Woe from Wit,” some of Ostrovsky’s plays, etc. These considerations should not, however, interfere with establishing the characteristics of comedy—comedy style. This style is not determined by the goals towards which the colliding, struggling aspirations of the characters are directed: stinginess can be depicted in a comedic and tragic sense (“The Miser” by Moliere and “The Stingy Knight” by Pushkin). Don Quixote is ridiculous, despite all the loftiness of his aspirations. Dramatic struggle is funny when it does not evoke compassion. In other words, comedy characters should not suffer so much that it affects us. Bergson rightly points out the incompatibility of laughter with emotional excitement. Comedy wrestling should not be brutal, and pure style comedy should not contain horrific stage situations. As soon as the hero of a comedy begins to suffer, the comedy turns into drama. Since our capacity for compassion is related to our likes and dislikes, the following relative rule can be established: the more disgusting the hero of a comedy, the more he can suffer without arousing pity in us, without leaving the comedic plan. The very character of comedy heroes is not predisposed to suffering. The comedic hero is distinguished by either extreme resourcefulness, quick resourcefulness, which saves him in the most ambiguous situations - like, for example, Figaro - or animal stupidity, which saves him from an overly acute awareness of his situation (for example, Caliban). This category of comedy characters includes all heroes of everyday satire. Another hallmark of comedy: the comedic struggle is carried out by means that are awkward, ridiculous or humiliating - or both ridiculous and humiliating. Comedy struggle is characterized by: an erroneous assessment of the situation, inept recognition of faces and facts, leading to incredible and long-term delusions (for example, Khlestakov is mistaken for an auditor), helpless, even stubborn resistance; inept tricks that fail to achieve the goal - moreover, devoid of any scrupulousness, means of petty deception, flattery, bribery (for example, the tactics of officials in “The Inspector General”); the struggle is pitiful, ridiculous, humiliating, buffoonish (and not cruel) - this is the pure type of comedic struggle. A funny remark produces a strong effect when it is given by a funny person.
Shakespeare's strength in portraying Falstaff is precisely this combination: a funny joker. Comedy does not move deeply, however, we cannot imagine life without death and suffering; therefore, according to Bergson's subtle remark, comedy gives the impression of being unreal. Moreover, it needs a convincing everyday coloring, in particular, a well-developed characteristic of the language. Comedy fiction is also distinguished, so to speak, by its rich everyday development: here are specific details of the legend, so to speak, the life of mythological creatures (for example, the scenes of Caliban in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”). However, comedy characters are not types like domestic drama types. Since comedy of pure style is characterized by an entirely inept and humiliating struggle, its characters are not types, but caricatures, and the more caricatured they are, the brighter the comedy. Laughter is hostile to tears (Boileau). It should also be added that the outcome of the comedic struggle, due to its non-cruel nature, is not significant. The comedic victory of vulgarity, baseness, stupidity - since we ridiculed the winners - does not touch us much. The defeat of Chatsky or Neschastlivtsev does not cause bitterness in us; Laughter in itself is a satisfaction for us. Therefore, in a comedy, an accidental outcome is also acceptable - at least through the intervention of the police. But where defeat threatens someone with real suffering (for example, Figaro and his beloved), such an ending, of course, is unacceptable. The extent to which the denouement in itself is unimportant in a comedy is clear from the fact that there are comedies where it can be foreseen in advance. Such are the countless comedies where lovers are prevented from getting married by their cruel and funny relatives; here the marriage outcome is predetermined. We are carried away in comedy by the process of ridicule; however, interest increases if the outcome is difficult to foresee. The outcome is positive, happy.
There are:
1) satire, comedy of high style, directed against vices that are most dangerous for society,
2) a domestic comedy that makes fun of characteristic shortcomings certain society,
3) a sitcom, entertaining with funny stage situations, devoid of serious social significance. - Vaudeville
Vaudeville is a dramatic encounter in a comedic sense (see comedy). If in comedy the dramatic struggle should not be brutal, then this is even more applicable to vaudeville. Here, usually, a comedic violation of some very insignificant social norm is depicted, for example, the norm of hospitality, good neighborly relations, etc. Due to the insignificance of the violated norm, vaudeville is usually reduced to a sharp short collision - sometimes to one scene.
Vaudeville history. The etymology of this word (vaux-de-Vire, Vire Valley) gives an indication of the initial origin of this type of dramatic creativity (the city of Vire is located in Normandy); Subsequently, this word was interpreted through distortion as voix de ville - a village voice. Vaudeville began to be understood as such works in which the phenomena of life are defined from the point of view of naive village views. Easy character content is a hallmark of vaudeville. The creator of vaudeville, who characterizes these works in terms of their content, was the 15th-century French poet Le Goux, who was later confused with another poet Olivier Basselin. Le Goux published a collection of poems, Vaux de vire nouveaux. These light comic songs in the spirit of Le Goux and Basselin became the property of the broad urban masses in Paris, thanks to the fact that they were sung on the Pont Neuf bridge by wandering singers. In the 18th century, Lesage, Fuselier and Dorneval, in imitation of these vaudeville songs, began to compose plays of similar content. The text of vaudevilles has been accompanied by music since the beginning of the second half of the 18th century. The musical performance of vaudevilles was facilitated by the fact that the entire text was written in verse (“Melnik” by Ablesimov). But soon, during the actual performance of vaudeville, the artists began to make changes to the text in prosaic form - improvisations on the current issues of the day. This gave the authors the opportunity to alternate verse with prose. From this time on, vaudeville began to branch into two types: vaudeville itself and operetta. In vaudeville, spoken language predominates, and in operetta, singing predominates. However, operetta began to differ in its content from vaudeville. After this differentiation of vaudeville, what remains behind it is first a humorous depiction of the life of the urban class in general, and then middle and petty officials. - Farce
A farce is usually a comedy in which the hero violates the social and physical norms of public life. Thus, in Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” the heroine seeks to force men to end the war by encouraging women to refuse them love. Thus, Argan (“The Imaginary Invalid” by Molière) sacrifices the interests of his family to the interests of his imaginary sick stomach. The field of farce is primarily eroticism and digestion. Hence, on the one hand, there is an extreme danger for farce - falling into greasy vulgarity, and on the other - the extreme sharpness of farce, which directly affects our vital organs. In connection with the physical element of the farce, it is naturally characterized on stage by an abundance of externally effective movements, collisions, hugs, and fights. Farce is by its nature peripheral, eccentric - it is an eccentric comedy.
History of farce. Farces developed from everyday scenes introduced as independent sideshows into medieval plays of a religious or moralistic nature. Farces supported the tradition of comic performances coming from the Greco-Roman stage, and gradually transformed into the comedy of new centuries, remaining as a special type of light comedy. Farce performers in former times were usually amateurs.
Drama has its advantages over epic. There is no author's comment here. This construction gives the illusion of objectivity. The viewer's reaction is always more emotional than the reader's reaction. The action is continuous, the pace of perception is dictated by the performance. The main impact of a dramatic type is emotional. Since ancient times there has been a concept catharsis - a kind of “cleansing” with fear and compassion.
A sign of the dramatic kind in general is conflict , on which the action is based. It can be defined as “oppositely directed human wills.” In drama, the goal is never achieved quietly. Obstacles can be both material and psychological. The conflict depends not only on the will of the playwright, but also on social reality.
Late 19th century - European New drama . Representatives: Materlinck, Hauptmann, Chekhov. Their innovation is that the plays eliminate external conflict. However, a persistent state of conflict remains.
Drama means “action,” a sequence of events depicted depending on the actions of the characters. An action is any change on stage, incl. and psychological. Action is associated with conflict
Words in drama are not like epic ones; here they are part of the action, a depiction of actions. The word strives to become action. Performative - a special type of utterance in which the word coincides with the action. (“I declare war”, “I curse”). A word in the theater is always directed at someone = a replica. Or it itself is a response to someone’s speech. Continuous dialogue creates the effect of reality.
In drama, unlike epic, it is impossible to convey the thoughts and feelings of the characters on behalf of the author. We learn about them only from monologues and dialogues, or from self-characteristics, or from the characteristics of other characters.
In the 20th century, drama tends to move closer to epic. IN " Epic Theater» Bertolt Brecht at the end of the play - direct assessment: the moment when the actors take off their masks. Thus, the actor does not merge with the hero. The viewer here should not empathize with the hero (as in a classical drama), but think.
Epic differs from drama in terms of plot and work with heroes; epic tends toward monologue, drama toward dialogue.
Article by V.E. Khalizeva:
Dramatic works, like epic works, recreate events, the actions of people and their relationships. The playwright is subject to the “law of developing action,” but the drama lacks narrative and descriptive imagery. (except in rare cases when the drama has a prologue).
The author's speech is auxiliary and episodic. List of characters, sometimes with brief characteristics; designations of time and place of action; description of the stage environment; remarks. All this amounts to side text of a dramatic work. The main text is a chain of statements by characters, consisting of replicas and monologues => a limited range of visual means, compared to the epic.
The time of action in a drama must fit within the strict framework of stage time. The chain of dialogues and monologues gives the illusion of present time. “All narrative forms,” wrote Schiller, “transfer the present into the past, all dramatic forms make the past present.
The purpose of drama, according to Pushkin, is “to influence the multitude, to engage their curiosity,” and for this purpose to capture the “truth of passions”: “Drama was born in the square and was a popular entertainment<…>people demand strong sensations<…>laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic art.”
The dramatic genre is especially closely connected with the sphere of laughter, for theater is strengthened and developed within the framework of mass celebrations, in an atmosphere of play and fun.
Drama gravitates toward an outwardly effective presentation of what is depicted. Its imagery, as a rule, turns out to be hyperbolic, catchy, theatrically bright (for this, for example, did Tolstoy reproach Shakespeare?).
In the 19th and 20th centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in drama became less vibrant. The origins of this phenomenon are the so-called “philistine drama”, the creators of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the 19th - 20th centuries. - Ostrovsky, Gorky, Chekhov - are distinguished by the authenticity of the life forms they recreate. And yet, psychological and verbal hyperboles remain in their work.
The most important role in dramatic works belongs to the conventions of verbal self-disclosure of characters, dialogues and monologues. Conditional cues "to the side" , which seem to be for other characters not on stage, but are clearly audible to the viewer, as well as monologues pronounced by the characters alone, which are a purely stage technique of bringing out internal speech. Speech in a dramatic work often takes on similarities with artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech. Therefore, Hegel is partly right when he views drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical principle (speech expression).
Drama has, as it were, two lives in art: theatrical and literary. But a dramatic work was not always perceived by the reading public. The emancipation of drama from the stage was carried out gradually over a number of centuries and was completed quite recently: in the 18th - 19th centuries. At the time of their creation, globally significant examples of drama (from antiquity to the 18th century) were practically not recognized as literary works: they existed only as part of the performing arts. Neither Shakespeare nor Moliere were perceived by their contemporaries as writers. The 18th century "discovery" of Shakespeare as a great dramatic poet played a decisive role in the purpose of drama not only for performance but also for reading. In the 19th century, the literary merits of a play were sometimes placed above the stage ones. The so-called Lesedrama (reading drama) became widespread. Such are Goethe's Faust, Byron's dramatic works, and Pushkin's little tragedies. Dramas created for reading are often potentially stage plays.
Creating a performance based on a dramatic work is associated with its creative advantages: the actors create intonation and plastic drawings of the roles they play, the artist designs the stage space, the director develops the mise-en-scène. In this regard, the concept of the play changes somewhat, and is often specified and generalized: the stage production introduces new shades of meaning into the drama. At the same time, the principle of faithful reading of literature is of paramount importance for the theater. The director and actors are called upon to convey the staged work to the viewer with the greatest possible completeness. Fidelity of stage reading occurs when actors deeply comprehend a literary work in its main content, genre, and style features and combine it as people of their era with their own views and tastes.
In classical aesthetics of the 18th - 19th centuries, in particular in Hegel and Belinsky, drama (especially tragedy) is considered as the highest form literary creativity: as “the crown of poetry.” A whole series of eras have indeed imprinted themselves primarily in dramatic art. Aeschylus and Sophocles during the period of slave-owning democracy, Moliere, Corneille and Racine during the period of classicism.
Until the 18th century, drama not only successfully competed with epic, but also often became the leading form of reproducing life in space and time. Causes:
And although in the 19th and 20th centuries the socio-psychological novel, a genre of epic literature, came to the fore, dramatic works still have a place of honor.
Dramatic genres
| Parameter name | Meaning |
| Article topic: | Dramatic genres |
| Rubric (thematic category) | Literature |
Vaudeville ( from French vaudeville from Vau de Vire – title. in Normandy, where this genre originated), one of the genres of dramatic work, a light play with entertaining intrigue, with couplet songs and dances. At first, vaudeville was the name given to verse songs in fairground comedies of the first half of the 18th century. How an independent theatrical genre took shape during the Great french revolution, subsequently, having lost its political relevance, vaudeville became an entertainment genre and became widespread throughout Europe. French classics vaudeville – O.E. Scribe, E. Labiche - retained many of the features of the genre “as a folk work of the French”: playful fun, topical hints. In the second half of the 19th century it was replaced by operetta. In Russia, vaudeville became widespread at the beginning of the 19th century, inheriting an interest in national subjects from the comic opera of the 18th century. Famous are the vaudeville acts of N.I. Khmelnitsky, A.S. Griboyedova, A.A. Shakhovsky, D.T. Lensky. One-act plays by A.P. Chekhov continued the tradition of vaudeville (without verses).
Drama(from Greek drama - literal action) 1) one of the types of literature. It belongs at the same time to literature and theater, being the fundamental basis of the performance, it is also perceived in reading. Intended for collective perception, drama has always gravitated towards the most pressing social problems and in the most striking examples it has become popular: its basis is socio-historical contradictions or eternal human antinomies (see Artistic Conflict); 2) One of the basic genres of drama as a literary genre, along with tragedy and comedy. Like comedy, it mainly reproduces the private life of people, but its main goal is not to ridicule morals, but to depict the individual in his dramatic relationship with society. Like tragedy, drama tends to recreate acute contradictions; at the same time, its conflicts are not so inescapable and tense and, in principle, allow for the possibility of a successful resolution, and the characters are not so exceptional. As an independent genre, drama emerged in the second half of the 18th century among the enlighteners (bourgeois drama in France and Germany); its interest in the social structure and way of life, the moral ideals of a democratic environment, and the psychology of the average person contributed to the strengthening of realistic principles in European art. As the drama develops, its internal drama thickens, a successful outcome is less common, the hero usually remains at odds with society and himself ("The Thunderstorm", "The Dowry" by A.N. Ostrovsky, plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorky).
Sideshow(from Latin intermedius - located in the middle), a small comic play or scene played between acts of the main play. It arose in the 15th century as an everyday farce skit, part of a mystery play, then a school drama (later tragedy and comedy). In England it was called an interlude (from the Latin inter – between and ludus – game). It became widespread in the West. Europe of the 16th – 17th centuries (in Spain as an independent genre of folk theater), in Russian theater of the 17th – 18th centuries. The interlude has been preserved as an inserted comic or musical scene in the play.
Comedy ( lat. comoedia, Greek komodia, from komos - cheerful procession and ode - song), a type of drama in which characters, situations and action are presented in funny forms or imbued with the comic. Until classicism, comedy meant a work opposite to tragedy, with an obligatory happy ending; her heroes were, as a rule, from the lower class. Many poets (including N. Boileau) defined comedy as a lower genre.
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In the literature of the Enlightenment, this relationship was violated by the recognition of the middle genre - the so-called bourgeois drama.
Comedy is aimed primarily at ridiculing the ugly (improper, contradictory social ideal or norm), the heroes of the comedy are internally bankrupt, incongruous, do not correspond to their position, purpose, and thus are sacrificed to laughter, which debunks them, thereby fulfilling their “ideal” mission. The range of comedy is unusually wide - from political satire to light vaudeville humor. The “honest face” of any comedy is laughter. There are comedy of characters, comedy of situations, everyday comedy, comedy of intrigue, lyrical comedy, satirical comedy.
The most important remedy comic effect– speech comedy (illogicality, incongruity with the situation, parody, irony, in modern comedy – wit and play with paradoxes). Aristophanes, the creator of socio-political satirical comedy, is considered the father of comedy.
In Russia, comedy is represented in the works of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol, Ostrovsky.
Melodrama(from the Greek melos - song, drama - action), 1) genre of drama, a play with acute intrigue, exaggerated emotionality, a sharp contrast between good and evil, and a moral and instructive tendency. Melodrama arose in the 90s of the 18th century in France (plays by J.M. Monvel). In Russia, melodrama appeared in the late 20s of the 19th century (plays by N.V. Kukolnik, N.A. Polevoy).
Tragedy(from the Greek tragodia, lit. goat song), a dramatic genre based on the tragic collision of heroic characters, its tragic outcome, filled with pathos. The tragedy is marked by stern seriousness, depicts reality in the most pointed way, as a clot of internal contradictions, reveals the deepest conflicts of reality in an extremely intense and rich form, acquiring the meaning of an artistic symbol; It is no coincidence that most tragedies are written in verse. Historically, tragedy existed in different manifestations, however, the very essence of tragedy, like the aesthetic category of the tragic, was given European literatures ancient Greek tragedy and poetry.
Greek the tragedy arose from religious and cult rituals, was a reproduction, a stage performance of a myth; she introduced the audience to the one for the whole people and their historical destinies reality. Perfect examples of complete, organic works of tragic art were given by Aeschylus and Sophocles; with the unconditional reality of what is happening, it shocks the viewer, causing strong internal conflicts in him and resolving them in the highest harmony (through catharsis).
A new flowering of tragedy occurs in the crisis era of the Late Renaissance and Baroque. Shakespearean tragedy depicts an endless reality, a deep crisis human world. Shakespeare's tragedy does not fit into the framework of a particular conflict or character of the hero, but embraces everything, like reality itself; the hero's personality is internally open, not fully defined, capable of changes, even sudden shifts.
Examples of the tragedy of classicism are represented by the works of P. Corneille, J. Racine. These are tragedies of high style with respect to three unities; aesthetic perfection appears as a result of the poet’s conscious self-restraint, as a masterfully developed pure formula for life’s conflict.
At the turn of the 18th–19th centuries, F. Schiller creates tragedy, updating the “classical” style. In the era of romanticism, tragedy is “the opposite” of the ancient one - the key to substantial content is not the world, but the individual with his soul.
In tragedy, a person’s ability to enter into a struggle with an unsatisfactory starting position is indicated.
Dramatic genres - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Dramatic genres" 2017, 2018.
