What is composition in literature: techniques, types and elements. Composition of a literary work What is plot, composition and genre

28. Mythological stories as a genre. Features of the plot, composition, character system.

29. Origin and periodization of epics. Archaic epic. Features of the reflection of history in epics.

Bylinas are epic songs of heroic origin and content, telling about the early feudal period of Russian history. Features of great antiquity are depicted. Starting with Prince Vladimir Svyatosl, Kyiv is the capital of the state and the cities of Novgorod the Great, Chernigov, Murom, Ryazan. The names of the Polovtsian and Tatar khans indicate that epics began to take shape in Kievan Rus in the 9th-11th centuries.

The time of depictions in epics cannot be precisely named - this is a conditional epic time, but different periods of feudalism can be combined. Different periods of the Tatar-Mongol invasion are attributed to the period of the reign of Vladimir. The spirit of life, customs and representation can be attributed to the 11th-14th centuries. No less archaic and mature is the life in which the characters of the heroic epic live and act. The weapons are of great antiquity - swords, damask clubs, bows, stone arrows. The relationship between the princes and the heroes is peculiar - Prince Vladimir was initially depicted positively, he is called the red sun, their relationship is devoid of servility.

30. The problem of the emergence of epics in domestic science. Hearths of epic tradition. Storytelling schools.

Bogatyrs can disobey the prince and reprimand for injustice.

The singer who composed the epics had to have musical and poetic talent, and have a large supply of historical and everyday information.

Epics were recorded mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries. in the Russian North - their main guardian: in the former Arkhangelsk province, in Karelia (former Olonets province), on the Mezen, Pechora, Pinega rivers, on the coast of the White Sea, in the Vologda region. In addition, starting from the 18th century. epics were recorded among the old-timers of Siberia, the Urals, the Volga (Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Simbirsk, Samara provinces) and in the central Russian provinces (Novgorod, Vladimir, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Smolensk, Kaluga, Tula, Oryol, Voronezh).

Echoes of epics were preserved by Cossack songs on the Don, Terek, Lower Volga, and Urals.

The term "epic" is purely scientific; it was proposed in the first half of the 19th century. I. P. Sakharov. The word “epic” was taken by him from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and artificially used to designate the folklore genre in order to emphasize its historicism.

In the Russian North, performers of epics and other epic works were called storytellers.

Interest in the personality of the narrator arose in the early 1860s. after “Songs collected by P. N. Rybnikov” began to be published.

In total, 224 works were published in Rybnikov’s collection, which were recorded from 33 storytellers (including also several untitled recordings).

In 1871 to the same Olonets province. A.F. Hilferding went. Over the course of two months, Hilferding met with 70 storytellers and recorded 318 epics and other epic songs from them. Hilferding was the first to compile a collection of the repertoire of storytellers, prefacing it with brief biographical information. Storytellers performed epics not only in their free time, but also at work. the chain of events depicted in a literary work, that is, the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in successive situations and circumstances.

The events recreated by writers form (along with the characters) the basis objective world work and thereby an integral “link” of its form. The plot is the organizing principle of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It can also be significant in the lyrical genre of literature.

Plot elements: The main ones include exposition, plot, development of action, twists and turns, climax, denouement. Optional: prologue, epilogue, background, ending.

We will call the plot the system of events and actions contained in the work, its chain of events, and precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. The last remark is important, since quite often events are not told in chronological order, and the reader can find out what happened earlier later. If we take only the main, key episodes of the plot, which are absolutely necessary for its understanding, and arrange them in chronological order, then we will get plot - plot outline or, as they sometimes say, “straightened plot” . The plots in different works can be very similar to each other, but the plot is always uniquely individual.

There are two types of plots. In the first type, the development of the action occurs intensely and as quickly as possible, the events of the plot contain the main meaning and interest for the reader, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the denouement carries a huge meaningful load. This type of plot is found, for example, in “Tales of Belkin” by Pushkin, “On the Eve” by Turgenev, “The Player” by Dostoevsky, etc. Let’s call this type of plot dynamic.

In another type of plot - let's call it, in contrast to the first, adynamic - the development of the action is slow and does not strive for a denouement, the events of the plot do not contain any particular interest, the elements of the plot are expressed unclearly or are completely absent (the conflict is embodied and moves not with the help of plot, but with the help of other compositional means), the denouement is either completely absent, or it is purely formal; in the overall composition of the work there are many extra-plot elements (see about them below), which often shift the center of gravity of the reader’s attention to themselves.

We see this type of plot, for example, in “Dead Souls” by Gogol, “Men” and other works by Chekhov, etc. There is a fairly simple way to check what kind of plot you are dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be re-read from anywhere, while works with a dynamic plot are characterized by reading and re-reading only from beginning to end. Dynamic plots, as a rule, are built on local conflicts, while adynamic plots are based on substantial ones. This pattern does not have the character of a strict 100% dependence, but still in most cases this relationship between the type of conflict and the type of plot takes place.

Concentric plot - one event (one event situation) comes to the fore. Characteristic of small epic forms, dramatic genres, literature of antiquity and classicism. (“Telegram” by K. Paustovsky, “Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev) Chronicle plot - events have no cause-and-effect relationships and are correlated with each other only in time (“Don Quixote” by Cervantes, “Odyssey” by Homer, Don- Juan" by Byron).

Plot and composition. The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the work, occupying one or another, more or less important place in it, depending on the intentions of the author. There is also an internal composition of the plot, which we now turn to consider.

Depending on the relationship between plot and plot in a particular work, they talk about different types and techniques of plot composition. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are linearly arranged in direct chronological sequence without any changes. This composition is also called straight or plot sequence. A more complex technique is in which we learn about an event that happened earlier than the others at the very end of the work - this technique is called default. This technique is very effective, since it allows you to keep the reader in the dark and in suspense until the very end, and at the end, surprise him with the surprise of the plot twist.

Thanks to these properties, the technique of silence is almost always used in works of the detective genre, although, of course, not only in them. Another method of violating chronology or plot sequence is the so-called retrospection, when, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule, to the time preceding the plot and beginning of this work. Finally, the plot sequence can be disrupted in such a way that events at different times are given intermixed; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the action to various previous time layers, then again turns to the present in order to immediately return to the past.

This plot composition is often motivated by the memories of the characters. It is called free composition and, to one degree or another, is used quite often by different writers: for example, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. However, it happens that free composition becomes the main and determining principle of constructing a plot, in which case we, as a rule, actually talk about free composition.

Extra-plot elements. In addition to the plot, in the composition of the work there are also so-called extra-plot elements, which are often no less, or even more important, than the plot itself. If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then the extra-plot elements are the static side; Non-plot elements are those that do not move the action forward, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions.

There are three main types of extra-plot elements: description, author's digressions and inserted episodes (otherwise they are also called inserted short stories or inserted plots). Description - this is a literary depiction of the external world (landscape, portrait, world of things, etc.) or a stable way of life, that is, those events and actions that occur regularly, day after day and, therefore, are also not related to the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most common type of extra-plot elements; they are present in almost every epic work.

Author's digressions - these are more or less detailed author's statements of philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, etc. character; Moreover, these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationships between them. Author's digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they do appear there (“Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Dead Souls” by Gogol, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, etc.), they usually play the most important role and are subject to mandatory analysis. Finally, insert episodes - these are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to another time and place, etc. Sometimes inserted episodes begin to play an even greater role in the work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol’s “Dead Souls”.

In some cases, psychological depiction can also be considered extra-plot elements if the hero’s state of mind or reflections are not the consequence or cause of plot events and are excluded from the plot chain. However, as a rule, internal monologues and other forms of psychological depiction are somehow included in the plot, since they determine the further actions of the hero and, consequently, the further course of the plot.

In general, extra-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and represent a separate compositional line.

Composition anchor points. The composition of any literary work is constructed in such a way that from beginning to end the reader's tension does not weaken, but intensifies. In a work of small volume, the composition most often represents a linear development in increasing order, directed towards the finale, the ending, in which the point of highest tension is located. In larger works, the composition alternates between rises and falls in tension with an overall upward development. We will call the points of greatest reader tension the reference points of the composition.

The simplest case: the reference points of the composition coincide with the elements of the plot, primarily with the climax and denouement. We encounter this when the dynamic plot is not just the basis of the composition of the work, but essentially exhausts its originality. The composition in this case contains virtually no extra-plot elements and uses compositional techniques to a minimal extent. An excellent example of such a construction is an anecdote story, such as Chekhov’s story “The Death of an Official” discussed above.

In the event that the plot traces different turns of the external fate of the hero with the relative or absolute static character of his character, it is useful to look for reference points in the so-called twists and turns - sharp turns in the fate of the hero. It was precisely this construction of reference points that was characteristic, for example, of ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later and is used in adventure literature.

Almost always, one of the supporting points falls on the ending of the work (but not necessarily on the denouement, which may not coincide with the ending!). In small, mostly lyrical works, this, as has already been said, is often the only supporting point, and everything previous only leads to it, increases the tension, ensuring its “explosion” at the end.

In major works of art, the ending also, as a rule, contains one of the supporting points. It is no coincidence that many writers said that they work especially carefully on the last phrase, and Chekhov pointed out to aspiring writers that it should sound “musical.”

Sometimes - although not so often - one of the reference points of the composition is, on the contrary, at the very beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection”.

The reference points of a composition can sometimes be located at the beginning and end (usually) of parts, chapters, acts, etc. Types of composition. In the most general form, two types of composition can be distinguished - let's call them conventionally simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced only to combining the parts of the work into a single whole, and this combination is always carried out in the simplest and most natural way. In the area of ​​plotting, this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the area of ​​narration - a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the area of ​​substantive details - a simple list of them without highlighting particularly important, supporting, symbolic details, etc.

With a complex composition, a special artistic meaning is embodied in the very construction of the work, in the order of combination of its parts and elements. For example, the consistent change of narrators and the violation of the chronological sequence in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time” focus attention on the moral and philosophical essence of Pechorin’s character and allow us to “get closer” to it, gradually unraveling the character.

Simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a particular work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be, to a certain extent, purely quantitative: we can talk about the greater or lesser complexity of the composition of a particular work. There are, of course, pure types: for example, the composition of, say, Krylov’s fables or Gogol’s story “The Stroller” is simple in all respects, but Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” or Chekhov’s “Lady with a Dog” is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since simple and complex types of composition can become stylistic dominants of the work and, thus, determine its artistic originality.

Composition is the construction of a work of art. The effect that the text produces on the reader depends on the composition, since the doctrine of composition says: it is important not only to be able to tell entertaining stories, but also to present them competently.

Gives different definitions of composition, in our opinion, the simplest definition is this: composition is the construction of a work of art, the arrangement of its parts in a certain sequence.
Composition is the internal organization of a text. Composition is about how the elements of the text are arranged, reflecting the different stages of development of the action. The composition depends on the content of the work and the author’s goals.

Stages of action development (composition elements):

Elements of composition– reflect the stages of development of the conflict in the work:

Prologue – introductory text that opens the work, preceding the main story. As a rule, thematically related to the subsequent action. It is often the “gateway” of a work, that is, it helps to penetrate the meaning of the subsequent narrative.

Exposition– the background of the events underlying the work of art. As a rule, the exposition provides characteristics of the main characters, their arrangement before the start of the action, before the plot. The exposition explains to the reader why the hero behaves this way. Exposure can be direct or delayed. Direct exposure is located at the very beginning of the work: an example is the novel “The Three Musketeers” by Dumas, which begins with the history of the D’Artagnan family and the characteristics of the young Gascon. Delayed exposure placed in the middle (in I.A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” the story of Ilya Ilyich is told in “Oblomov’s Dream,” that is, almost in the middle of the work) or even at the end of the text (a textbook example of Gogol’s “Dead Souls”: information about Chichikov’s life before arrival in the provincial city are given in the last chapter of the first volume). The delayed exposure gives the work a mysterious quality.

The beginning of the action is an event that becomes the beginning of an action. The beginning either reveals an existing contradiction, or creates, “knots” conflicts. The plot of “Eugene Onegin” is the death of the protagonist’s uncle, which forces him to go to the village and take over his inheritance. In the story about Harry Potter, the plot is an invitation letter from Hogwart, which the hero receives and thanks to which he learns that he is a wizard.

Main action, development of actions - events committed by the characters after the beginning and preceding the climax.

Climax(from the Latin culmen - peak) - the highest point of tension in the development of action. This is the highest point of the conflict, when the contradiction reaches its greatest limit and is expressed in a particularly acute form. The climax in "The Three Musketeers" is the scene of the death of Constance Bonacieux, in "Eugene Onegin" - the scene of Onegin and Tatiana's explanation, in the first story about "Harry Potter" - the scene of the fight over Voldemort. The more conflicts there are in a work, the more difficult it is to reduce all the actions to just one climax, so there may be several climaxes. The climax is the most acute manifestation of the conflict and at the same time it prepares the denouement of the action, and therefore can sometimes precede it. In such works it can be difficult to separate the climax from the denouement.

Denouement- the outcome of the conflict. This is the final moment in creating an artistic conflict. The denouement is always directly related to the action and, as it were, puts the final semantic point in the narrative. The denouement can resolve the conflict: for example, in “The Three Musketeers” it is the execution of Milady. The final outcome in Harry Potter is the final victory over Voldemort. However, the denouement may not eliminate the contradiction; for example, in “Eugene Onegin” and “Woe from Wit” the heroes remain in difficult situations.

Epilogue (from Greekepilogos - afterword)- always concludes, closes the work. The epilogue tells about the further fate of the heroes. For example, Dostoevsky in the epilogue of Crime and Punishment talks about how Raskolnikov changed in hard labor. And in the epilogue of War and Peace, Tolstoy talks about the lives of all the main characters of the novel, as well as how their characters and behavior have changed.

Lyrical digression– the author’s deviation from the plot, the author’s lyrical insertions that have little or nothing to do with the theme of the work. A lyrical digression, on the one hand, slows down the development of the action, on the other hand, it allows the writer to openly express his subjective opinion on various issues that are directly or indirectly related to the central theme. Such, for example, are the famous lyrical digressions in Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” or Gogol’s “Dead Souls.”

Types of composition:

Traditional classification:

Direct (linear, sequential)– the events in the work are depicted in chronological order. “Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboedov, “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy.
Ring – the beginning and end of the work echo each other, often completely coinciding. In “Eugene Onegin”: Onegin rejects Tatiana, and at the end of the novel, Tatiana rejects Onegin.
Mirror - a combination of repetition and contrast techniques, as a result of which the initial and final images are repeated exactly the opposite. One of the first scenes of L. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina depicts the death of a man under the wheels of a train. This is exactly how the main character of the novel takes her own life.
A story within a story - The main story is told by one of the characters in the work. M. Gorky’s story “The Old Woman Izergil” is constructed according to this scheme.

Classification by A. BESIN (according to the monograph “Principles and Techniques of Analysis of a Literary Work”):

Linear – the events in the work are depicted in chronological order.
Mirror – the initial and final images and actions are repeated exactly the opposite way, opposing each other.
Ring – the beginning and ending of the work echo each other and have a number of similar images, motifs, and events.
Retrospection – During the narration, the author makes “digressions into the past.” V. Nabokov’s story “Mashenka” is built on this technique: the hero, having learned that his former lover is coming to the city where he now lives, looks forward to meeting her and remembers their epistolary novel while reading their correspondence.
Default – the reader learns about the event that happened earlier than the others at the end of the work. So, in “The Snowstorm” by A.S. Pushkin, the reader learns about what happened to the heroine during her flight from home only during the denouement.
Free – mixed actions. In such a work one can find elements of a mirror composition, techniques of omission, retrospection and many other compositional techniques aimed at retaining the reader’s attention and enhancing artistic expressiveness.

1. Plot and composition

ANTITHESIS - opposition of characters, events, actions, words. It can be used at the level of details, particulars (“Black evening, white snow” - A. Blok), or can serve as a technique for creating the entire work as a whole. This is the contrast between the two parts of A. Pushkin’s poem “The Village” (1819), where the first depicts pictures of beautiful nature, peaceful and happy, and the second, by contrast, depicts episodes from the life of a powerless and brutally oppressed Russian peasant.

ARCHITECTONICS - the relationship and proportionality of the main parts and elements that make up a literary work.

DIALOGUE - a conversation, conversation, argument between two or more characters in a work.

PREPARATION - an element of the plot, meaning the moment of conflict, the beginning of the events depicted in the work.

INTERIOR is a compositional tool that recreates the environment in the room where the action takes place.

INTRIGUE is the movement of the soul and the actions of a character aimed at searching for the meaning of life, truth, etc. - a kind of “spring” that drives the action in a dramatic or epic work and makes it entertaining.

COLLISION - a clash of opposing views, aspirations, interests of characters in a work of art.

COMPOSITION – the construction of a work of art, a certain system in the arrangement of its parts. Vary compositional means(portraits of characters, interior, landscape, dialogue, monologue, including internal) and compositional techniques(montage, symbol, stream of consciousness, self-disclosure of the character, mutual disclosure, depiction of the character’s character in dynamics or statics). The composition is determined by the characteristics of the writer’s talent, the genre, content and purpose of the work.

COMPONENT - an integral part of a work: when analyzing it, for example, we can talk about components of content and components of form, sometimes interpenetrating.

CONFLICT is a clash of opinions, positions, characters in a work, driving its action, like intrigue and conflict.

CLIMAX is an element of the plot: the moment of highest tension in the development of the action of the work.

LEITMOTHIO - the main idea of ​​a work, repeatedly repeated and emphasized.

MONOLOGUE is a lengthy speech of a character in a literary work, addressed, in contrast to an internal monologue, to others. An example of an internal monologue is the first stanza of A. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”: “My uncle has the most honest rules...”, etc.

MONTAGE is a compositional technique: compiling a work or its section into a single whole from individual parts, passages, quotes. An example is the book of Eug. Popov "The beauty of life."

MOTIVE is one of the components of a literary text, part of the theme of the work, which more often than others acquires symbolic meaning. Road motif, house motif, etc.

OPPOSITION - a variant of the antithesis: opposition, opposition of views, behavior of characters at the level of characters (Onegin - Lensky, Oblomov - Stolz) and at the level of concepts ("wreath - crown" in M. Lermontov's poem "The Death of the Poet"; "it seemed - it turned out" in A. Chekhov's story “The Lady with the Dog”).

LANDSCAPE is a compositional tool: the depiction of pictures of nature in a work.

PORTRAIT – 1. Compositional means: depiction of the character’s appearance – face, clothing, figure, demeanor, etc.; 2. Literary portrait is one of the prose genres.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS is a compositional technique used mainly in the literature of modernist movements. Its area of ​​application is the analysis of complex crisis states of the human spirit. F. Kafka, J. Joyce, M. Proust and others are recognized as masters of the “stream of consciousness”. In some episodes, this technique can also be used in realistic works - Artem Vesely, V. Aksenov and others.

PROLOGUE is an extra-plot element that describes the events or persons involved before the start of the action in the work (“The Snow Maiden” by A. N. Ostrovsky, “Faust” by I. V. Goethe, etc.).

DENOUNCING is a plot element that fixes the moment of resolution of the conflict in the work, the outcome of the development of events in it.

RETARDATION is a compositional technique that delays, stops or reverses the development of action in a work. It is carried out by including in the text various kinds of digressions of a lyrical and journalistic nature (“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” in “Dead Souls” by N. Gogol, autobiographical digressions in A. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, etc.).

PLOT - a system, the order of development of events in a work. Its main elements: prologue, exposition, plot, development of action, climax, denouement; in some cases an epilogue is possible. The plot reveals in the work cause-and-effect relationships in the relationships between characters, facts and events. To evaluate various types of plots, concepts such as plot intensity and “wandering” plots can be used.

THEME – the subject of the image in the work, its material, indicating the place and time of action. The main topic, as a rule, is specified by topic, i.e., a set of particular, individual topics.

FABULA - the sequence of unfolding of the events of a work in time and space.

FORM is a certain system of artistic means that reveals the content of a literary work. Categories of form - plot, composition, language, genre, etc. Form as a way of existence of the content of a literary work.

CHRONOTOP is the spatiotemporal organization of material in a work of art.

Bald man with white beard – I. Nikitin

Old Russian giant – M. Lermontov

With the young dogaressa – A. Pushkin

Falls on the sofa – N. Nekrasov

Used most often in postmodern works:

There's a stream underneath him,

But not azure,

There is an aroma above it -

Well, I have no strength.

He, having given everything to literature,

I tasted its full fruits.

Drive away, man, five altyn,

And don’t irritate unnecessarily.

Freedom sower desert

Reaps a meager harvest.

I. Irtenev

EXPOSITION - an element of the plot: setting, circumstances, positions of the characters in which they find themselves before the start of the action in the work.

EPIGRAPH – a proverb, a quotation, someone’s statement placed by the author before a work or its part, parts, designed to indicate his intention: “...So who are you finally? I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” Goethe. “Faust” is an epigraph to M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita.”

EPILOGUE is a plot element that describes the events that occurred after the end of the action in the work (sometimes after many years - I. Turgenev. “Fathers and Sons”).

15. Composition Composition in color means placing two or more colors side by side so that their combination is extremely expressive. For the overall solution of a color composition, the choice of colors, their relationship to each other, their place and direction in

Tempo-rhythm and plastic composition of the performance. The tempo-rhythm of a performance is a dynamic characteristic of its plastic composition. And as Stanislavsky said, “... The tempo-rhythm of a play and performance is not one, but a whole series of large and small complexes, diverse and