All about fiction. Genres of fiction

Lyrics

Lyrics are a type of literature that is based on an appeal to the internal sphere - to states of human consciousness, emotions, impressions, experiences. Even if there is a narrative element in the works, the lyrical work is always subjective and focused on the hero. The characteristics of a lyrical work are “conciseness”, “monologue”, “unity of the lyrical plot” and “instantaneity” (“precision”, “modernity”). Majority lyrical works refers to poetry.

Drama

Drama is a type of literature that primarily reproduces the world external to the author - actions, relationships between people, conflicts, but unlike the epic, it has not a narrative, but a dialogical form. In dramatic works, the text on behalf of the author is episodic in nature, mostly limited to stage directions and explanations of the plot. Majority dramatic works is being written for subsequent production in the theatre.

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Structural text types

Prose

Prose is considered to be a literary text in which a separate rhythm, independent of speech, does not invade the linguistic fabric and does not affect the content. However, it is known whole line borderline phenomena: many prose writers deliberately give their works some signs of poetry (one can mention the highly rhythmic prose of Andrei Bely or the rhymed fragments in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “The Gift”). Literary scholars continue to argue about the exact boundaries between prose and poetry. different countries over the last century.

Prose is widely used in fiction - in the creation of novels, short stories etc. Selected examples Such works have been known for many centuries, but they have developed into an independent form of literary works relatively recently.

For the Russian ear, the familiar appearance of a poem is associated with a syllabic-tonic rhythm and the presence of rhyme in the poem, but neither one nor the other is actually a necessary feature of poetry that distinguishes it from prose. In general, the role of rhythm in a poem is not only to give the text a peculiar musicality, but also to the impact that this rhythm has on the meaning: thanks to the rhythm, some words and expressions (for example, those that appear at the end of a poetic line, rhymed) are highlighted in the poetic speech , accented.

Poetic speech, earlier than prosaic speech, was recognized as a special phenomenon characteristic of literary text and distinguishing it from ordinary everyday speech. First known literary works- for the most part, ancient epics (for example, the Sumerian “Tale of Gilgamesh”, dating back to about 2200-3000 BC) are poetic texts. At the same time, the poetic form is not necessarily associated with artistry: the formal features of poetry help it perform a mnemonic function, and therefore different time V different cultures Scientific, legal, genealogical, and pedagogical works in verse were distributed.

Fiction by period

Ancient literature

The first period of the appearance of fiction as an art form is considered to be antiquity - the Mediterranean civilization of the 1st millennium BC. e. Ancient literature is the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, consisting of two national literatures: ancient Greek and ancient Roman. Historically, Greek literature preceded Roman literature.

At the same time with ancient culture Other cultural areas developed in the Mediterranean basin, among which ancient Judea occupied a prominent place. Ancient and Jewish culture became the basis of all Western civilization and art.

In parallel with the ancient one, other ancient cultures and, accordingly, literatures developed: ancient Chinese, ancient Indian, ancient Iranian, and Hebrew. Ancient Egyptian literature was experiencing a period of prosperity at that time.

IN ancient literature main genres formed European literature in their archaic forms and the foundations of the science of literature. The aesthetic science of antiquity identified three main literary genres: epic, lyric and drama (Aristotle), this classification retains its basic meaning to this day.

Literature of the Middle Ages

Medieval art reached its culmination in the XII-XIII centuries. Currently, medieval literature is usually divided into Latin literature and literature in vernacular languages ​​(Romance and Germanic). The genre division of Latin literature as a whole reproduced the ancient one. Animal epic was popular.

Renaissance Literature

If medieval literature was predominantly Christian, then during the Renaissance, against the background of a general interest in antiquity, interest in ancient literature was also revived, fiction increasingly focused on secular subjects, humanistic tendencies appear. Initial stage The literature of the Renaissance is traditionally considered to be the work of Dante, his “Divine Comedy” combines elements of both medieval literature (form - an afterlife vision, allegorical content) and elements of mysticism, pantheism, not typical of medieval literature, and the image of a simple girl Beatrice. Blooms during the Renaissance dramatic art(Shakespeare, Lope de Vega school), humanistic utopias appear (Thomas More, Tomaso Campanella), as well as sharp satire, for example “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais. Gutenberg's invention of printing in 1455 made fiction much more accessible during this period.

Literature of the Enlightenment

19th century literature

Literature of the 19th century developed in two main directions, the literature of romanticism and the literature of realism. Romanticism as literary direction developed from sentimentalism and is characterized by an interest in mysticism (Meyrink, M. Shelley, Hoffmann), folklore (the Brothers Grimm), to the common man(Hugo), other cultures (Byron, F. Cooper). Within the framework of romanticism, fantasy, detective, and adventure literature were formed.

Realism was well characterized by Balzac, who is considered a classic of realism. He said: “I describe men, women and things.” Works of realism do not teach, do not idealize, or give moral assessments. They describe life and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. An important element of realism is a comprehensive, impartial description inner world heroes. The most characteristic writers of realism are Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others.

Literature of modernism

Chronologically, modernism fits into the framework of the first half of the twentieth century, thematically connected with industrialization, urbanization, and the horrors of the First World War. Modernists turn to the description of the intricacies of the human psyche (W. Wolfe), the theme of sexuality (D. H. Lawrence), they are characterized by apoliticality and pacifism (E. Hemingway).

A classic example of modernist literature is the novel by J. Joyce “Ulysses”, the work of T. S. Eliot, M. Proust.

Postmodern literature

Postmodernism gradually replaced modernism in the mid-20th century. It is difficult to characterize it unambiguously, since within the framework of postmodernism there are many different approaches. This is hypertext, when the reading order is not dictated by the author, but is chosen by the reader, intertextuality, characterized by allusions to other works, and sometimes conscious borrowing, the absence of a plot resolution or the presence of several alternative endings, a mixture of styles, irony, play and black humor.

Postmodernism can also include magical realism, a genre that originated in South America and characterized by the inclusion of magical elements in a realistic narrative. The novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by G. G. Marquez is a shining example magical realism. In Russia, Chingiz Aitmatov is included in this direction.

The Beat generation is also classified as postmodernism.

Artistic methods and directions

• Baroque is a movement characterized by a combination of realistic descriptions with their allegorical depiction. Symbols, metaphors, theatrical techniques, saturation with rhetorical figures, antitheses, parallelisms, gradations, oxymorons. Baroque literature is characterized by a desire for diversity, a summation of knowledge about the world, inclusiveness, encyclopedicism, which sometimes turns into chaos and collecting curiosities, a desire to study existence in its contrasts (spirit and flesh, darkness and light, time and eternity).
• Classicism is a movement whose main subject of creativity was the conflict between public duty and personal passions. “Low” genres - fable (

Literature (from the Latin litera - letter, writing) is a type of art in which the main means of figurative reflection of life is the word.

Fiction is a type of art that is capable of most comprehensively and widely revealing the phenomena of life, showing them in movement and development.

As an art of words, fiction arose in oral folk art. Its sources were songs and folk epic tales. The word is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and an amazing means for creating artistic images. In words, in the language of any people, their history, their character, the nature of the Motherland are captured, the wisdom of centuries is concentrated. The living word is rich and generous. It has many shades. It can be menacing and gentle, instill horror and give hope. No wonder the poet Vadim Shefner said this about the word:

With a word you can kill, with a word you can save, with a word you can lead regiments. A word can be sold and betrayed and bought, A word can be poured into crushing lead.

1.2. Oral folk art and literature. Genres unt.

1.3. Artistic image. Artistic time and space.

Artistic image is not only an image of a person (the image of Tatyana Larina, Andrei Bolkonsky, Raskolnikov, etc.) - it is a picture of human life, in the center of which stands a specific person, but which includes everything that surrounds him in life. Thus, in a work of art a person is depicted in relationships with other people. Therefore, here we can talk not about one image, but about many images.

Any image is an inner world that has come into the focus of consciousness. Outside of images there is no reflection of reality, no imagination, no knowledge, no creativity. The image can take sensual and rational forms. The image can be based on a person’s fiction, or it can be factual. Artistic image objectified in the form of both the whole and its individual parts.

Artistic image can expressively influence feelings and mind.

It provides the maximum capacity of content, is capable of expressing the infinite through the finite, it is reproduced and evaluated as a kind of whole, even if created with the help of several details. The image may be sketchy, unspoken.

As an example of an artistic image, one can cite the image of the landowner Korobochka from Gogol’s novel “ Dead Souls" She was an elderly woman, thrifty, collecting all sorts of rubbish. The box is extremely stupid and slow to think. However, she knows how to trade and is afraid to sell things short. This petty thrift and commercial efficiency puts Nastasya Petrovna above Manilov, who has no enthusiasm and who knows neither good nor evil. The landowner is very kind and caring. When Chichikov visited her, she treated him to pancakes, unleavened pie with eggs, mushrooms, and flatbreads. She even offered to scratch her guest's heels at night.

What is fiction? We will learn about it with early childhood when mom reads a bedtime story. If we ask this question seriously and talk about literature in general, about its types and genres, then, of course, we will remember about scientific literature, and about documentary prose. Anyone, even without a philological education, will be able to distinguish fiction from other genres. How?

Fiction: Definition

First, let's define what fiction is. As textbooks and reference books say, this is a type of art that, with the help of the written word, expresses the consciousness of society, its essence, views, mood. It is thanks to books that we learn what people thought about at a given time, how they lived, what they felt, how they talked, what they were afraid of, what values ​​they had. You can read a history textbook and know the dates, but it is fiction that will describe in detail the way of life and life of people.

Fiction: features

To answer the question of what fiction is, you need to know that all books are divided into fiction and non-fiction. What is the difference? Here are examples of sentences from fiction.

“At the very moment when I decided to myself that I didn’t want to be here to death, the lock rattled on the door behind me and Fred appeared, tired after an all-night shift, staring at the strangers who filled his house with a terrible stench and unwound paper napkins everywhere ". This is an excerpt from Danny King's first book, Diary of a Robber. He shows us the main features of fiction - description and action. In fiction there is always a hero - even if it is a story written in the first person, where it is as if the author himself falls in love, robs or travels. Well, there’s no way without descriptions either, otherwise how can we understand exactly in what environment the heroes operate, what surrounds them, where they are going. The description gives us the opportunity to imagine what the hero looks like, his clothes, his voice. And we form our own idea of ​​the hero: we see him the way our imagination, combined with the desire of the author, helps us see him. We draw a portrait, the author helps us. That's what fiction is.

Fiction or truth?

What conclusion do we come to? Fiction is fiction, it is characters invented by the author, invented events, and sometimes non-existent places. The writer is given complete freedom of action - he can do whatever he wants with his characters: send them to the past or the future, to the ends of the earth, kill, resurrect, take offense, steal a million from the bank. If you dig deeper, then, of course, everyone understands that heroes have prototypes. But often they are so far from bookish people that it is almost impossible to draw a parallel. The author can only borrow a way of speaking, walking, or describing a habit. It happens that a real man pushes the writer to create a hero and a book. Thus, Alice Lindell inspired Lewis Carroll to write the favorite book of many children, “Alice in Wonderland,” and the prototype of Peter Pan was one of the sons of Arthur and Sylvia Davis, friends of Barry James. Even in historical novels The boundaries of fiction and truth are always blurred, so what can we say about science fiction? If we take an excerpt from a news feed, from a newspaper, we will know that these are facts. But if we read the same passage on the first page of the novel, it would never even occur to us to believe in the reality of what is happening.

What goals does fiction serve?

Literature teaches us. Since childhood, poems about Moidodyr teach us to maintain hygiene, and the story about Tom Sawyer teaches us that punishment follows an offense. What does literature teach adults? For example, courage. Read secret story Vasil Bykov about two partisans - Sotnikov and Rybak. Sotnikov, sick, exhausted by the hard road, crippled during interrogations, holds firm to the last and even for fear of death does not betray his comrades. And there is something to learn from Rybak’s example. Having betrayed his comrade and himself, he goes over to the side of the enemy, which he regrets later, but the way back is cut off, the way back is only through death. And perhaps he is punished more than his hanged comrade. Everything is like from childhood: without punishment there is no crime.

So, the goals of fiction are clearly defined: to show, using the example of heroes, what one should do and what one should not do; talk about the time and place where the events take place, and pass on the accumulated experience to the next generation.

De gustibus non est disputandum, or There is no arguing about tastes

Remember, at the end of each class before summer holidays did the teacher give us a list of fiction books from which we needed to read by September? And many suffered all summer, barely moving through this list. Indeed, reading something you don’t like is simply not interesting. Everyone chooses for themselves - “one loves watermelon, the other loves pork cartilage,” as Saltykov-Shchedrin said. If a person says that he does not like to read, he simply has not found his book. Some people like to travel through time with science fiction writers, some like to solve crimes in detective novels, some are enraptured by love scenes in novels. There is no single recipe, just as there is no author that everyone would like and perceive equally, because we perceive fiction subjectively, based on our age, social status, emotional and moral components.

How many people - so many opinions?

The question of what fiction is can be answered this way: it is literature that transcends time and place. It does not have clearly limited functions, like a dictionary or instructions for washing machine, but it has a more important function: it educates, criticizes, and gives us a break from reality. Books of fiction are ambiguous, they cannot be interpreted in the same way - it is not a carrot cake recipe where a dozen people following the directions step by step will end up with the same baked goods. Everything here is purely individual. The book “Schindler's Ark” by author Keneally Thomas Michael cannot be assessed equally: someone will condemn the German who saved people, someone will keep this image in their hearts as an example of dignity and philanthropy.

All books are divided into two categories - fiction and non-fiction. Fiction refers to all works that have a fictional plot and fictional characters. Fiction is novels, short stories, novellas, plays and poetry (for both children and adults)...

Non-fiction literature is usually called non-fiction (from the English non-fiction - non-fiction, non-fictional literature) - these are textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, monographs, biographies, memoirs, journalism, etc.

Fiction is divided into genre literature, mainstream and intellectual prose.

IN genre literature the main thing is the development of the plot, which fits into certain, pre-known frameworks. For example, any detective story develops according to the scheme “crime - investigation - exposing the criminal”; any romance novel - “heroes meet - fall in love - fight for love - connect hearts.” This does not mean that everything genre novels must have a predictable plot. The skill of a writer lies precisely in creating his own unique world within a given framework.

Genre literature is all about action and quick changes of scenery. All the reader cares about is: “What’s next?”

Genres of fiction:

Avant-garde literature is characterized by violation of canons and language and plot experiments. As a rule, avant-garde works are published in very small editions. Closely intertwined with intellectual prose.

Action film - aimed primarily at a male audience. The basis of the plot is fights, chases, saving beauties, etc.

Detective - main story line- solving a crime.

Historical novel - time of action - past. The plot is usually tied to significant historical events.

Romance novel - characters find love.

Mysticism - the basis of the plot is supernatural events.

Adventures - heroes get involved in an adventure or go on a risky journey.

Thriller/Horror - the heroes are in mortal danger, from which they are trying to get rid of.

Fantasy - the plot revolves in a hypothetical future or parallel world. One type of science fiction is alternative history.

Fantasy/Fairy Tales - the main features of the genre are fairy worlds, magic, unseen creatures, talking animals, etc. Often based on folklore.

What is mainstream (from English mainstream - main stream)? There is no place for canons and templates in books of this genre. Readers expect from them unexpected decisions. The most important thing in the mainstream is the moral development of heroes, philosophy and ideology. Because professional requirements the author of the mainstream is much higher: he must be not only an excellent storyteller, but also a good psychologist and a serious thinker. If a writer sets his sights on the mainstream but falls short or falls into cliches, the reader will be disappointed.

The term "mainstream" arose thanks to American writer and criticism to William Dean Howells (1866-1920). As the editor of one of the most popular and influential literary magazines of his time, The Atlantic Monthly, he gave a clear preference to works written in a realistic vein and emphasizing moral and philosophical problems. Thanks to Howells realistic literature became fashionable, and for some time it was called “mainstream”.

Instructions

This is also explained by the fact that Slavic, created in the mid-9th century by the famous brothers Cyril and Methodius, was intended to translate sacred Christian texts. The Church Slavonic language, by definition, could not be the language in which secular fiction is created. For the same reason, in Old Russian until the 17th century there were no fictional characters and plots, no descriptions of love experiences. Moreover, comic creations were completely absent (after all, laughter was considered a sinful activity that distracted from prayers and pious reasoning).

The first surviving work is considered to be “The Sermon on Law and Grace,” written by Hilarion, Metropolitan of Kyiv. It was created, most likely, in the late 30s–40s of the 11th century (during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise). Beginning in the 12th century, a form of literature called chronicle flourished. The most famous of them is “The Tale of Bygone Years.” According to most researchers, the first (edition) was compiled by the monk Nestor, the second edition by the monk Sylvester, and the author of the third edition remained unknown.