Test “Means of artistic expression. Explanations and methodological recommendations Test “Means of Artistic Expression”

Combat as a state of the epic world. All the features and properties of the epic world of “The Song of Roland” (symmetry and heterogeneity, hyperbolism, etc.) are most clearly manifested in the scenes of struggle, battle, duel, and argument. In The Song of Roland, struggle appears as an unchanging, constant state of the epic world. This is not the first time any of the characters have participated in combat. In battle it is decided whether he lives or dies. A specific character often does not want to fight, fight: Marsilius does not want to fight with Karl, Karl does not want to fight with Marsilius, etc. The character is drawn into battle, becomes a hero or an enemy of the hero, leaves the battle, winning or dying, but the battle continues. So, the struggle is of an indefinitely personal nature, and does not depend either on specific participants or on the means of its conduct. The struggle is constant. This can explain the last tirade of the “Song of Roland”, which contradicts both the idea of ​​​​the victory of Christianity over paganism, and the plot, according to which the battle was fought with all the forces of the pagan world. The appearance of some new pagans, again threatening Christians, can be explained by the irreducible, eternal state of struggle in the epic world of “The Song of Roland” and the vaguely personal nature of this struggle.

Hyperbolism

Another tendency in building the early medieval epic world is hyperbolism, which differs from titanism in the loss of the direct meaning of exaggeration. The volumes reach unimaginable magnitudes, but listeners should not believe in them directly; hyperbole acts as an indirect image of a more real world. Titanism, built on the direct meaning of increase, would require the enlargement of the hero along with the enemy. This has not been shown to happen. Huge sizes in their literal sense lose their attractiveness. It is necessary to distinguish between epic hyperbolism and literary hyperbole. In literature, hyperbole serves to highlight an object, phenomenon, character, but in folk epic everything is hyperbolized, and a separate hyperbole does not highlight anything, it is only a sign of the general system of the world.

Space and time

Epic time has its own characteristics, which are sometimes difficult for the modern reader to understand. The basis of the epic ideal is the dreams of the people, but they are transferred to the past. Epic time thus appears as “the future in the past.” This type of time has a huge impact not only on the structure, but also on the very logic of the epic. Cause-and-effect relationships play a minor role in it. The main principle of epic logic is the “logic of the end,” which can be designated by the term “logical inversion.” According to logical inversion, Roland did not die because Ganelon betrayed him, but, on the contrary, Ganelon betrayed Roland because he must die and thereby immortalize his heroic name forever. Karl sends Roland to the rearguard (part of the troops located behind the main forces), because the hero must die, but he cries because he is endowed with knowledge of the end.

Knowledge of the end, future events by the narrator, listeners and the characters themselves is one of the manifestations of logical inversion. Events are anticipated many times; prophetic dreams and omens also act as forms of anticipation.

It should be especially noted that logical inversion completely removes the theme of rock. Not a fatal coincidence of circumstances, not the power of fate over a person, but the strict pattern of testing a character and elevating him to a heroic pedestal or depicting his inglorious death - this is the epic way of depicting reality in “The Song of Roland.”

Space and time of a real historical event

The Song of Roland (Chanson de Roland) was first recorded around 1170 and belongs to the epic of advanced feudalism. It is based on a real historical event. In 778, the tenth year of the reign of the Frankish king Charlemagne (742-814) begins. He begins to create an empire and carries out an unsuccessful campaign in Spain. A brief description of this campaign is contained in the work “Biography of Charles,” written by the court historiographer Einhard. He noted that a two-month campaign to annex Spain, which had belonged to the Arabs (Moors) since 711, resulted in an unsuccessful siege of Zaragoza, which had to be lifted and the troops retreated. During the passage of troops through the Roncesvalles Gorge in the Pyrenees, the rearguard was attacked by the highlanders - the Basques, and noble Franks were killed, including the prefect (official) of the Breton March (a mark created in the 8th century for protection against the Bretons (a people living in the region of Brittany in the north-west of France; the Bretons are closely related to the Celts) Hruotland (obviously a prototype of Roland). Charles tried to take revenge on the Basques for the death of the rearguard, but they scattered across the mountains, and Charles had to return to Aachen with nothing.

The event that took place in the Roncesvalles Gorge in 778 in the “Song of Roland”, as a result of folklore transformation, looks completely different: Emperor Charles, who is over two hundred years old, is waging a seven-year victorious war in Spain. Only the city of Zaragoza did not surrender. In order not to shed unnecessary blood, Charles sends the noble knight Ganelon to the leader of the Moors, Marsilius. He, mortally offended by Roland, who gave this advice to Karl, negotiates, but then cheats on Karl. On the advice of Ganelon, Charles puts Roland at the head of the rearguard of the retreating troops. The rearguard is attacked by the Moors (“non-Christians”) who agreed with Ganelon and destroy all the soldiers. Roland is the last to die (not from wounds, but from overexertion). Charles returns with troops and destroys the Moors and all the “pagans” who joined them, and then in Aachen arranges God’s judgment on Ganelon. Ganelon's fighter loses the fight to Karl's fighter, which means that God is not on the side of the traitor, and he is brutally executed: they tie his hands and feet to four horses, let them gallop - and the horses tear Ganelon's body into pieces.

When studying the text of “The Song of Roland” you should: pay attention to the artistic means used in the gesture; explore hyperboles, repetitions, transfers of the scene of action, the nature of the flow of artistic time, descriptions of heroes, weapons, nature, depictions of struggle, battle and dispute.

The main methodological principle of the analysis is to draw a line between folklore and literature.

M. M. Bakhtin identified three main differences between the epic and the novel:

1. The subject of the epic is the national epic past, the “absolute past”, in the terminology of Goethe and Schiller;

2. The source of the epic is national tradition (and not personal experience and free fiction growing on its basis);

3. The epic world is separated from modernity, that is, from the time of the singer (the author and his listeners), by an absolute epic distance. (1)

An epic work of folklore (heroic epic) and literature (for example, a novel) stand on completely different laws and should be studied differently.

The main difference between folklore and literary epic works is the problem of authorship. A group of foreign researchers led by the French academician J. Bedier tried to prove the sole authorship of the “Song of Roland”. But most scientists have rejected this approach; they talk about a “collective author”, a “semi-personal singer of the old epic”, etc.

It follows from this that patriotism and other ideological merits of the “Song of Roland” do not belong to a single author. In “The Song of Roland,” as in the heroic epic in general, a public assessment is presented, not a personal, but a national court, and the court is not so much the singer’s contemporaries as the people of legendary times, the court of the forefathers, supported by all subsequent generations. This is an eternal and absolute judgment in the perception of medieval man, which is why even epic heroes fear it (see verses 1013-1014, 1466, 1515-1517).

However, it would be a mistake to draw a conclusion about the uncreative nature of the singer’s activities. The narrator was not allowed liberty (i.e., the author's principle), but accuracy was not required. Folklore is not learned by heart, so deviations from what is heard are perceived not as a mistake (as would be the case when transmitting a literary work), but as improvisation. Improvisation is a mandatory beginning in the heroic epic. Clarification of this feature leads to the conclusion that the epic has a different system of artistic means than in literature. It is determined by the principle of improvisation and initially acts not as an artistic system, but as a mnemonic system that allows one to retain huge texts in memory and, therefore, is built on repetitions, constant motifs, parallelism, similar images, and actions. Later, the artistic significance of this system is revealed, for the gradual universalization of the musical motif (recitative) leads to the restructuring of prose speech into poetry, the systematization of assonance and alliteration first generates assonant consonance or alliterative verse, and then rhyme. Repetition begins to play a big role in highlighting the most important moments of the story.

In “The Song of Roland,” repetition affects all levels (from sound, verbal, compositional to plot, ideological). Repetition is the general law of the poetics of the “Song”.

When exploring the issues of the poetics of the “Song”, one should dwell not on epithets, metaphors and other means characteristic of literature, but on various repetitions - the genuine poetic language of the oral forms of the epic. When considering figurative means, it is necessary to identify how their use differs from their use in literature. Let's take one example. In The Song of Roland, the phrase green grass appears 16 times. In a literary work, the word “green” could not even be considered an epithet. But in folklore, a permanent epithet does not serve to highlight an object, but is a way of aggravating, concentrating its generic quality, that is, it acts in a function directly opposite to the function of a literary epithet. The grass can only be “green” and not dry and straight, just as a forest can only be dark and not sparse, a high mountain, a deep gorge, etc.

Two main tendencies are revealed in the depiction of reality, refracted through ancient consciousness: the tendency of symmetry and the tendency of asymmetry, heterogeneity of the epic world.

The symmetry is associated with the epic-improvisational poetics of “The Song of Roland”, built on variable repetitions. We find examples of symmetry in the identical structure of the court of Charles and Marsilius, the same weapons of the warring parties, the similar organization of councils, embassies, etc., in the common language of the opponents, which allows them to understand each other both in negotiations and on the battlefield.

But a more important and decisive tendency is the tendency to depict the world as asymmetrical, heterogeneous, i.e. it appears in the light from one position, and such a single point of reference is the position of the people themselves - the creator of the epic. Note that the forces in the fight are almost always unequal; the heroes have to fight with superior forces, with a more powerful opponent. 20 thousand French led by Roland fight against 400 thousand Moors; Charles leads 10 regiments, in which there are 350 thousand soldiers, against 30 regiments of pagans, in which there are over 1.5 million people; Roland fights 400 Saracens alone; skinny Thierry fights with huge Pinabel. But while maintaining natural human proportions, the heroes invariably turn out to be victorious or (if they are secondary heroes), dying, inflicting great damage on the enemy.

Another manifestation of the heterogeneity of the epic world is the different material density of people and objects. You can notice a trend: the French body has greater density than the Arab body. The Moor is as if empty inside, so the spear easily passes through him and even knocks out the spine; the sword cuts the Moor in half (see tirades 93,94,95,97-100,104,106,107,114,119,124,145, 259, etc.). In contrast, the bodies of the French are comparatively impenetrable. The invulnerability of the hero’s body and the permeability of the body of his enemy is a very ancient feature of the epic world (cf. the battle of Achilles and Hector, Cuchulainn and Ferdiad). The image of Roland is especially important in this regard. His body is, as it were, enchanted for his enemies (see verses 2155-2160).

Objects (for example, Roland Durandal's sword) can also have maximum material density.

In the description of the death of the heroes, another side of the heterogeneity of the epic world is revealed, namely axiological heterogeneity. Olivier was killed in the back, Gautier and Turpin were killed by spears thrown at them, and the Moors threw spears and arrows at Roland. So, there is a division of blows into noble (from above and in front) and ignoble (from behind and from afar). Another example: the Moors choose an ignoble position for battle (the gorge gives them an advantage), while Charles’s troops fight with Baligan’s troops on a huge flat area. The heterogeneity of the epic world is expressed in the fact that a blow is not equal to a blow, right is not right, God is not equal to God, everything must be tested for truth. The dying French do not renounce their god, the dying Arabs overthrow their gods. Two outwardly equivalent rights (vassal and the right to strife, state and clan) are tested by God's court, and it shows the superiority of one right over the other. Here the source of the heroes’ victory over the strongest enemy is revealed - righteousness (see verses 3366-3367).

In the epic world, rightness is not so much the consciousness of the correctness of one’s actions, but rather a materialized quality fused with physical strength and character. Or, in another way, rightness is the very heroic state of a person, which is why even all religious motives are focused not on heaven, but on the state of rightness. Man is not dependent on the sky in the epic world. On the contrary, deity and nature are put to the test, playing a role dependent (not on man, but on his rightness). You should pay attention to the image of nature. She either tests the heroes (not by the equal value of the positions in the gorge), or helps them (day comes so that the right battle can begin, night is always a way to stop the battle), or mourns for the heroes (see tirade 110). Nature is not separated from man.

Pay attention to the difference between epic hyperbolism and literary hyperbole. In literature, hyperbole usually serves to highlight an object, phenomenon, character, but in folk epic everything is hyperbolized, and a separate hyperbole does not highlight anything, it is only a sign of the general concept of the hyperbolized world.

All the features and properties of the epic world of “The Song of Roland” (symmetry and heterogeneity, hyperbolism, etc.) are most clearly manifested in the scenes of struggle, battle, duel, and dispute. In The Song of Roland, struggle appears as a permanent state of the epic world. This is not the first time any of the characters have participated in combat. Before the battle, the hero can live as long as he wants (Charles is 200 years old, Baligan is older than Homer and Virgil, etc.). In battle, it is instantly decided whether he should live or die. A specific character often does not want to fight, fight: Marsilia does not want to fight with Karl, Karl does not want to fight with Marsilius, Ganelon is afraid of a dangerous assignment, Roland considers his appointment to the rearguard to be Ganelon’s treason, Olivier suggests blowing the horn to avoid a massacre, Karl again in the final scene must fight (see verses 3999-4001). The character is drawn into battle to become a hero or an enemy of the hero, leaves the battle having won or died, but the battle continues.

So, struggle is a permanent state of the epic world, manifesting itself only through man and the spheres under his control. It does not depend either on specific participants or on the means of its allocation; it is of an indefinitely personal nature. This can explain the little understood last tirade of the “Song of Roland”, which contradicts both the idea of ​​​​the victory of Christianity over paganism, and the plot, according to which the battle was fought with all the forces of the pagan world. The appearance of some new pagans, again threatening Christians, can be explained by the irreducible, eternal state of struggle in the epic world of “The Song of Roland” and the vaguely personal nature of this struggle.

Let's move on to the problem of the hero and draw attention to the fact that the artistic means of depicting an individual person have not yet been developed, the portrait has not stood out from the description and assessment, usually the hero's appearance is merged with his weapons, his action (dressing in armor), and in general the characters of the main characters represent variations of the general type of epic hero in its ideal sound. The hero has not yet stood out from the mass of people, his emotional life is of a public nature (heroes cry in front of everyone, tear out their hair, faint, get angry, insulted, etc.), which does not imply internal hidden experiences. Personality is not recognized. The hero (especially the king) rarely makes a decision without advice (hence the large role of advice as an element of the epic narrative). The personal principle (as the evil principle) triumphs in Ganelon, but he does not lose the extra-personal, social principle. The duality of Ganelon’s behavior during the embassy is explained by the combination of two functions of the image (as an ambassador he must negotiate, as a traitor he must change).

Let us turn to the problem of the replaceability of heroes. The functions and attributes of even the most important heroes are transferred to others. After the death of Roland, Charles appoints Hynemann in his place. However, with the entry of Charles into the battle, Roland's function passes to him. Therefore, Hyneman leaves the story (he dies - tirade 250), the entire glorification of the commander and the bravest warrior passes to Karl. Similarly, Marsilius is replaced by Baligan, etc.

So, the indefinitely personal character of the epic world is coordinated with the replaceability of heroes while maintaining their function. A paradoxical outcome follows from the folklore approach to the “Song of Roland”: this monument began to take shape long before the battle in the Roncesval Gorge in 778. Historical events, people, relationships were superimposed on the already created epic world. This is not about substituting historical names into the finished poem, but about the fact that even the first singer who began to sing Roland was not the author of the poem, for he introduced the heroes into the epic world that already existed in oral folk art, endowed the song with a pre-existing idea, and used the system artistic means, which allowed only variation, and not original creativity. In other words, before Roland’s death, the support for improvisation had already been formed. This support did not coincide in all respects with historical events, but they did not change it, but were themselves subordinate to it. The epic world is older than the heroes and goes back to time immemorial. Naturally, it is necessary to take into account the development of the epic world itself over the centuries-old history of the creation of “The Song of Roland.”

Epic time appears as “the future in the past.” This type of time shows a huge influence not only on the structure, but also on the very logic of the epic. Cause-and-effect relationships play a minor role in it. The main principle of epic logic is the “logic of the end” (let us denote it by the term “logical inversion”). According to logical inversion, Roland did not die because Ganelon betrayed him, but, on the contrary, Ganelon betrayed Roland because he must die and thereby immortalize his heroic name forever. Karl sends Roland to the rearguard because the hero must die, and he cries when sending him because he is endowed with knowledge of the end.

It should be especially noted that logical inversion completely removes the theme of rock. Not a fatal coincidence of circumstances, not the power of fate over a person, but the strict pattern of testing a character and placing him on a heroic pedestal or depicting his inglorious death - this is the epic approach to depicting reality in “The Song of Roland.”

When we talk about art and literary creativity, we are focused on the impressions that are created when reading. They are largely determined by the imagery of the work. In fiction and poetry, there are special techniques for enhancing expressiveness. A competent presentation, public speaking - they also need ways to construct expressive speech.

For the first time, the concept of rhetorical figures, figures of speech, appeared among the orators of ancient Greece. In particular, Aristotle and his followers were involved in their study and classification. Delving into the details, scientists have identified up to 200 varieties that enrich the language.

Means of expressive speech are divided according to language level into:

• phonetic;
• lexical;
• syntactic.

The use of phonetics is traditional for poetry. Musical sounds often predominate in a poem, giving poetic speech a special melodiousness. In the drawing of a verse, stress, rhythm and rhyme, and combinations of sounds are used for emphasis.

Anaphora– repetition of sounds, words or phrases at the beginning of sentences, poetic lines or stanzas. “The golden stars dozed off...” - repetition of the initial sounds, Yesenin used phonetic anaphora.

And here is an example of lexical anaphora in Pushkin’s poems:

Alone you rush across the clear azure,
You alone cast a dull shadow,
You alone sadden the jubilant day.

Epiphora- a similar technique, but much less common, in which words or phrases are repeated at the end of lines or sentences.

The use of lexical devices associated with a word, lexeme, as well as phrases and sentences, syntax, is considered as a tradition of literary creativity, although it is also widely found in poetry.

Conventionally, all means of expressiveness of the Russian language can be divided into tropes and stylistic figures.

Trails

Tropes are the use of words and phrases in a figurative sense. Paths make speech more figurative, enliven and enrich it. Some tropes and their examples in literary work are listed below.

Epithet- artistic definition. Using it, the author gives the word additional emotional overtones and his own assessment. To understand how an epithet differs from an ordinary definition, you need to understand when reading whether the definition gives a new connotation to the word? Here's a simple test. Compare: late autumn - golden autumn, early spring - young spring, quiet breeze - gentle breeze.

Personification- transferring the signs of living beings to inanimate objects, nature: “The gloomy rocks looked sternly...”.

Comparison– direct comparison of one object or phenomenon with another. “The night is gloomy, like a beast...” (Tyutchev).

Metaphor– transferring the meaning of one word, object, phenomenon to another. Identifying similarities, implicit comparison.

“There is a red rowan fire burning in the garden...” (Yesenin). The rowan brushes remind the poet of the flame of a fire.

Metonymy– renaming. Transferring a property or meaning from one object to another according to the principle of contiguity. “The one in felt, let’s argue” (Vysotsky). In felt (material) - in a felt hat.

Synecdoche- a type of metonymy. Transferring the meaning of one word to another based on a quantitative connection: singular - plural, part - whole. “We all look at Napoleons” (Pushkin).

Irony- the use of a word or expression in an inverted, mocking sense. For example, the appeal to the Donkey in Krylov’s fable: “Are you crazy, smart one?”

Hyperbola- a figurative expression containing exorbitant exaggeration. It may relate to size, meaning, strength, and other qualities. Litota is, on the contrary, an exorbitant understatement. Hyperbole is often used by writers and journalists, and litotes is much less common. Examples. Hyperbole: “The sunset burned with one hundred and forty suns” (V.V. Mayakovsky). Litota: “a little man with a fingernail.”

Allegory- a specific image, scene, image, object that visually represents an abstract idea. The role of allegory is to suggest subtext, to force one to look for hidden meaning when reading. Widely used in fable.

Alogism– deliberate violation of logical connections for the purpose of irony. “That landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” (Saltykov-Shchedrin). The author deliberately mixes logically heterogeneous concepts in the enumeration.

Grotesque– a special technique, a combination of hyperbole and metaphor, a fantastic surreal description. An outstanding master of Russian grotesque was N. Gogol. His story “The Nose” is based on the use of this technique. A special impression when reading this work is made by the combination of the absurd with the ordinary.

Figures of speech

Stylistic figures are also used in literature. Their main types are shown in the table:

Test "Means of Artistic Expression"

To test your understanding of the material, take a short test.

Read the following passage:

“There the war smelled of gasoline and soot, burnt iron and gunpowder, it scraped with caterpillar tracks, screeched from machine guns and fell into the snow, and rose again under fire...”

What means of artistic expression are used in the excerpt from K. Simonov’s novel?

Swede, Russian - stabs, chops, cuts.

Drumming, clicks, grinding,

The thunder of guns, stomping, neighing, groaning,

And death and hell on all sides.

A. Pushkin

The answer to the test is given at the end of the article.

Expressive language is, first of all, an internal image that arises when reading a book, listening to an oral presentation, or a presentation. To manipulate images, visual techniques are needed. There are enough of them in the great and mighty Russian. Use them, and the listener or reader will find their own image in your speech pattern.

Study expressive language and its laws. Determine for yourself what is missing in your performances, in your drawing. Think, write, experiment, and your language will become an obedient tool and your weapon.

Answer to the test

K. Simonov. The personification of war in the passage. Metonymy: howling soldiers, equipment, battlefield - the author ideologically connects them into a generalized image of war. The techniques of expressive language used are polyunion, syntactic repetition, parallelism. Through this combination of stylistic techniques when reading, a revived, rich image of war is created.

A. Pushkin. The poem lacks conjunctions in the first lines. In this way the tension and richness of the battle are conveyed. In the phonetic design of the scene, the sound “r” plays a special role in different combinations. When reading, a rumbling, growling background appears, ideologically conveying the noise of battle.

If you were unable to give the correct answers while answering the test, do not be upset. Just re-read the article.