Types of plots in literature. Features of the plot and composition of Gogol's poem Dead Souls
“The Enchanted Wanderer” is a story with a fantastic form of narration. The form of a tale - oral speech in the first person - is necessary for the author to create the image of the hero-storyteller. The story is told on behalf of several storytellers - the narrator and Ivan Flyagin himself, who talks about himself while sailing from Valaam to the Solovetsky Islands. The speech of the narrator, on whose behalf the introduction and conclusion are conducted, is literary, in contrast to Flyagin’s tale speech, characterized by the reproduction of oral, conversational intonation. skaz is not the only form of storytelling. It is a means of expressing the character of the main character.
At the same time, the tale form determines the plot and composition of the work. “The Enchanted Wanderer” is a chronicle of the life of one hero, where there is no central event to which all the others are drawn, but where various episodes freely follow each other. The introduction to the story is an exposition in which the reader, with the help of the narrator, gets acquainted with the scene and the characters. The main part is Ivan Flyagin’s story about his life. The work ends with the conclusion of the narrator: “Having said this, the enchanted wanderer seemed to again feel the influx of the broadcasting spirit and fell into quiet concentration, which none of the interlocutors allowed themselves to be interrupted by a single new question. And what else was there to ask him about? He confessed the narratives of his past with all the frankness of his simple soul, and his prophecies remain until time in the hand of one who hides his destinies from the smart and reasonable and only sometimes reveals them to babies.” Thus the composition is a story within a story. The plot of the story is structured as a storytelling process, in which listeners traveling around Lake Ladoga participate, and Ivan Flyagin tells them about his life. The hero's story about his life has its own plot, consisting of various life episodes. 1. Flyagin’s rescue of the count’s family. 2. Punishment, escape from the count. 3. Babysitting and running away with the child's mother and her lover. 4. Battle with Savakirei and departure to the steppe. 5. Return to Russia. 6. Service under the prince, relationship with Grushenka. 7. Soldier's service. 8. Wanderings and coming to the monastery. 9. Life in a monastery.
The plot of “The Enchanted Wanderer” is varied: adventures follow adventures. “Promised” by his mother to God, Ivan Flyagin was supposed to become a monk according to her vow, but he deviated from his destiny, and therefore is punished and endures difficult trials. Apparently, the mother’s behest will be fulfilled: the hero will come to the monastery at a certain stage of his life. The tale structure of the story is significant for the author. Firstly, Flyagin’s story is given credibility. Secondly, this form allows the author to hide behind the hero and not impose his own interpretation and assessment of events on the reader. Thirdly, it becomes possible to deeply reveal the complex inner world of the hero: the narrator expresses himself in words. The tale form determines the stylistic originality of the story. The story from the narrator’s point of view is characterized by literary styled speech, in contrast to Flyagin’s speech, filled with colloquial intonation, vernacular, and dialectisms. The meaning of the so-called frame - the story that frames Flyagin's narrative - is also ambiguous. This is a gradual overcoming of the distance between the hero and his listeners, who at first expect only funny and interesting stories from him. In addition, the story about the trip on the steamboat gives symbolic meaning to Flyagin’s life path: he travels across Russia and, together with Russia, sails to a goal unknown to him or her. In literary criticism, the concept of skaz has another meaning: skaz as a genre. The tale-genre is a form of fiction, constructed mainly as a monologue narrative using the characteristic features of colloquial-narrative speech. The narration is not conducted on behalf of a neutral and objective author; it is led by a narrator, usually a participant in the reported events. The speech of a work of art imitates the living speech of an oral story. Moreover, in a tale, the narrator is usually a person of a different social circle and cultural layer than the writer and the intended reader of the work.
Literary scholars distinguish the following types of plots: interesting and entertaining, chronicle and concentric, internal and external, traditional and wandering. Those who explore life and discover in it what is hidden from the human eye are considered interesting. In works with entertaining plots there are unexpected, random events with spectacular twists and turns and something recognizable. Entertaining stories are used in popular literature and works of adventure and detective nature.
The authors of the textbook "Introduction to Literary Studies" (edited by M. Pospelov) distinguish between chronicle and concentric plots. They note that there can be temporal relationships between events (event B occurs after event A) and cause-and-effect relationships (event B occurs as a result of event A). The phrase "the king died and the queen died" illustrates the first type of plot. The second type of plot can be illustrated by the phrase “the king died and the queen died of grief.” Aristotle spoke about these types of plots. Chronicle plots dominate in the novels of F. Rabelais "Gargantua and Pantagruel", M. de Servalts - "Don Quixote", Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy". Events in U. Samchuk’s novel “Maria” develop in chronicle sequence.
Concentric plots reveal cause-and-effect relationships between events. Aristotle considered such stories to be perfect. These plots dominate the short stories; they are present in the novels “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin, “Red and Black” by Stendhal, “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky. In many works, chronicle and concentric plots are combined. This combination is in the novels “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy, “Do oxen roar when the manger is full?” Panas Mirny and Ivan Bilyk, “The Richinsky Sisters” by Irina Vilde, “Sanatorium Zone” by Nikolai Khvylovy, “Miracle” by P. Zagrebelny, “Marusya Churay” by Lina Kostenko.
External plots reveal characters through events and actions; they are based on intrigue and twists and turns. External plots were popular in ancient literature. Internal plots are built on collisions; they reveal characters indirectly, focusing on changes in the psyche of the characters, the dialectics of the soul. Internal plots in M. Kotsyubinsky’s short stories “Apple Blossom”, “Intermezzo”, “On the Road”.
Vagabond stories occupy an important place in literature; they are found in myths, fairy tales, fables, anecdotes, and songs. Fable stories about the wolf and the lamb, the fox of mercy have been known since antiquity. They were developed by Aesop, Phaedrus, Lafontaine, Grebenka, Glebov, Krylov. The “comparative historical school” paid special attention to wandering subjects. Supporters of the school believed that the similarities in the plots of folklore and literary works are explained by borrowings.
Traditional stories accumulate the experience of humanity accumulated over thousands of years. They, according to A. Neamtu, “are a unique form of universal memory that preserves and comprehends human experience” 1. Among traditional plots, according to A. Neamtu, the most productive are mythological (Prometheus, Pygmalion), literary (Gulliver, Robinson, Don Quixote, Schweik), historical (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Socrates), legendary church (Jesus Christ, Judas Iscariot, Barabbas). The scientist distinguishes proto-plots, sample plots, intermediary plots and traditional plot schemes. A proto-plot, according to A. Neamtsu, is a work “in which multivariate mythological or legendary material is systematized, a holistic plot scheme is created, the main problems and a value-significant system of moral and psychological dominants are outlined.” 1. The “People's Book” became the proto-plot for many national literatures I. Shpisa (1587 p.), which combined popular German folklore and historical sources (legends, tales) about the contemporaries of the historical doctor Faustus, who made a pact with the devil. Thanks to translations into English, French, Dutch, and Spanish, the “People's Book” has become a proto-plot for many national literatures. The German plot, interpreted by Goethe, became a model plot, a factor in European and cultural consciousness.
Among traditional plots, A. Vselovsky distinguished active and passive ones; such a division is conditional. Active plots are those that constantly work and adapt to the requirements of a foreign context. Active stories include stories about Cassandra, Prometheus, Don Juan, Don Quixote, and Faust. Various literatures have addressed the plot of Faust: English (C. Marlowe’s “The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus”), Spanish (X. Valera “The Illusions of Doctor Faustus”), Belgian (M. de Gelderod “The Death of Doctor Faustus”), French (P. Val era "My Faust", Russian (I. Turgenev "Faust"), Ukrainian (V. Vinnichenko "Notes of snub-nosed Mephistopheles"), A. Levada ("Faust and Death"). The German plot has become a factor in the cultural consciousness of many peoples.
Passive plots include a relatively limited number of plots of folklore, mythological and literary origin, the dominant content of which is more dependent on real national-historical factors that promote or hinder traditionalization in those cultures that perceive them. Passive subjects, as a rule, require specific conditions for their entry into the spiritual context of that era; they are borrowed.
Russian researcher L. Pinsky proposes a differentiated distinction between traditional structures into plot-fables and plot-situations: According to the researcher, plot-fables include folklore and mythological structures that writers of different times and literatures were guided by (plots about Antigone, Prometheus , Faust, Don Juan). Situational plots include works from which writers choose main characters, who are interpreted as generalized social and psychological types of ideas. This is Cervantes' Don Quixote. Each of the following quixotes differs from the hero of the Spanish writer in interests, character and fate. In one novel, close in spirit to Don Quixote, plot motifs are not repeated; none of the following Don Quixotes repeats the exploits of the medieval knight of La Mancha, Cervantes.
In the history of literature, various methods of processing traditional plot-shaped material have been formed; we find their detailed description in the monograph by A. Neamtsu “The Poetics of Traditional Plots.” Among them are additions, processing, comparison, continuation, creation of “literary apocrypha, translation, adaptation, variants of narrative transfer. Additions, notes A. Neamtsu, do not fundamentally affect the plot scheme” of the sample, modernizing it by including previously missing episodes... , a significant expansion of the plot moves and situations outlined in the works. Additional writing is characterized by a tendency towards in-depth psychologization of traditional situations, their event-specific concretization and everyday detail."
A unique aesthetic indicator of the deep assimilation of the spiritual values of the past is the creation of “processings”. The authors of the adaptations rethink the plots and images, focusing on the literary options indicated in the subtitle of the work: “Don Juan” (according to Moliere) by Brecht. A. Neamtsu believes that the reasons for creating adaptations are the universal authority of writers whose works are addressed by modern authors. The content of the “processing” is to bring mythological or historically distant events closer to the present, to fill them with relevant ideas and problems, and to make them understandable to the modern reader.
A common form of national-historical and personal concretization of traditional images is “comparison, imposition of their semantics on the names of historical, scientific and cultural figures of different times and peoples” 2. For example, Napoleon called Emperor Paul I the “Russian Don Quixote,” emphasizing his duality. A. Herzen gave an opposite assessment of this person, calling Paul I a disgusting, ridiculous spectacle of the crowned Don Quixote. Such comparisons and associative convergences are subjective in nature and express the opinion of the individual author.
The reason for creating sequels is the desire of the authors to prove a popular plot to its logical conclusion, from a modern point of view, directly or indirectly present in a new version of the traditional structure. For example, writers are interested in what would have happened if Faust and Don Quixote had not died, what would have been the fate of Sancho Panza after the death of Don Quixote, what would have happened if Don Quixote had not died. Such continuation options must comply with the logic of character evolution, preserve the features of traditional situations, motivations that guarantee their recognition by the reader.
In the literature of the 20th century, the educational development of traditional plots became widespread, the purpose of which is to familiarize the general reader with classical examples, while traditional material is translated without significant plot changes or modernization of its problematics (J. Genet “Iliad” by Homer and “Odyssey” by Homer).
A specific form of rethinking traditional material is the creation of so-called literary apocrypha, in which collisions are well known and semantic dominants are qualitatively rethought. The apocrypha of K. Capek ("The Punishment of Prometheus", "Romeo and Juliet") are known. In the second half of the 20th century, the genre of the apocryphal novel was formed (R. Ivanichuk “The Gospel of Thomas”, G. Nossak “Orpheus”).
In the literature of the 20th century, literary versions of author’s myths actively use the technique of changing the narrative center, which differs from the canonized or well-known one. The moral and psychological model of the behavioral and value worlds created is significantly different from the proto-plot one. Thus, a new system of motivation for well-known plot moves and conflicts is formed, new views of the world, new characteristics are created. The appearance of a second narrator does NOT completely remove the real author, who plays the role of an intermediary. The narrator evaluates events differently than the author; he acts as a publisher of unknown materials, or a person who had the opportunity to observe what was happening and claims the objectivity of the narration.
The character's story uses such forms of organization of material as diaries, notes, memoirs, letters, and fictional manuscripts. “Such a narrative organization of the text,” A. Neamtsu rightly notes, “is focused on messages and statements of realistic justification for silence or incredible (fantastic, surreal) events from the point of view of an ordinary person... Such versions are often characterized by a “mosaic” composition, in which the retrospective of the life of the main character (his diary, letter) is complicated by various stylized and real documents, as well as a story about the events of the time the document was published." In G. Nossak's story "Cassandra", the function of the narrator is performed by the son of the cunning Odysseus, who talks about the tragic fate of his father and complements the knowledge about him with the stories of participants in the Trojan War. “The guests who come to Ithaca,” says the son of Odysseus, “are asking me about the Trojan War. Although I did not take part in it, they believe that, as the son of Odysseus... I should know about it more than others. And in As a result, I myself learn more about her from these inquisitive people than from my father’s stories.”
In literary interpretations of a traditional plot, there are various types of authors: the author-observer (witness), the author-participant in events, the author-provocateur of events, the author-commentator, the author-publisher, the author-mediator.
Writers often rethink the plots of well-known myths and create new ones. At all times, there have been attempts at unconventional, ironic rethinking of plots and images (P. Scarron “Virgil Re-faced” (1648-1653), M. Osipov “Virgil’s Aeneid, re-faced” (1791), I. Kotlyarevsky “Virgil’s Aeneid, re-faced” Ukrainian language (1798). A. Neamtsu names the following reasons for parodying traditional subjects and images: firstly, the appearance of parodies indicates the popularity and active functioning of the use of traditional structures in the spiritual consciousness of a certain cultural-historical period, and secondly, parody is one of the effective ways of destroying the tradition of perception of the plot. At the same time, quite often unknown possibilities for the evolution of traditional plots appear, the emphasis in their semantics is rearranged, and mythological plots become more complex. Writers fill mythological models with specific historical and national everyday realities. The conflict of Aristophanes' comedy "Lysistrata" is transferred to the 20th century century (N. Hikmet “Revolt of Women”, K. Gerhard “Greeks Among Us”). The literature of the 20th century rethinks the formal and content dominants of the myths about Medea, Cassandra, and antigens.
A large group consists of traditional plots and images of legendary origin; in the process of centuries-old functioning, they went through a number of stages of plot formation. At first, the plots and images had a distinctly national character: the German Faust, the Spanish Don Juan. In the process of expanding geography, the legendary structures were intensively processed, adapting to the needs and traditions of the underlying culture; their primary national identity was eroded, becoming either conditional (traditional), or reoriented to a specific ontological and spiritual continuum of the recipient environment. “In all cases of “re-nationalization” of material,” notes A. Neamtsu, “a prerequisite is the presence of formal and meaningful problems, situations, characteristics, proximity of emotional and psychological guidelines, etc. Only if these and a number of other conditions are met there is an organic inclusion of the works of one national culture into the spiritual creation of another people."
The medieval legend of Don Juan attracted the attention of such writers as Tirso de Molina, J.B. Moliere, C. Goldoni, ET. Goffman, J.G. Byron, A. de Muses, S. Cherkasenko. For centuries, the medieval character was interpreted as an eternally young and irresistible seducer of women, as a violator of generally accepted norms of behavior. The time of Don Juan, who “playfully” conquered women and destroyed human destinies with impunity, has passed. The modern hero is “doomed” to martyrdom about his immoral existence, which becomes the cause of absolute loneliness. He is pragmatic, not devoid of romance, which leads him to tragic collisions with reality, he is far from the ideals of chivalry, honor and duty.
“Literary variants of traditional structures,” notes A. Neamtsu, “convincingly confirm the effectiveness of using the spiritual heritage of the past to reflect pressing problems of our time, and show the inexhaustibility of ideological and semantic possibilities that have arisen in the depths of centuries, plots and images.”
Plots in which the action develops from beginning to end are called archetypes. In such plots, vicissitudes play an important role; fate prepares unexpected changes for the heroes of the work. Such plots are found in the works of Sophocles "Oedipus" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
The mentioned types (types, genera) of plots interact and coexist in one work.
One of the creators of the “new novel,” the Frenchman Robbie-Grillet, believes that literature is developing in the direction of being plotless. The plot novel with events and characters has exhausted itself. But besides the new novel, which is based on a stream of consciousness, it is traditional - with heroes, events, plot.
An integral factor of the plot is the plot (Latin Fabula - fable, story, translation, fairy tale, history). In antiquity, the term "plot" had two meanings - a tale, a narrative part of a tragedy, for example, the myth of the Argonauts, about Oedipus the King. Aristotle divided plots into simple and complex. Simple called a plot without twists and turns or recognition, and confused - “one in which change occurs either with recognition, or twists and turns, or with both of them together.” Subsequently, the story taken from the translation began to be called the plot. In the XIX-XX centuries. The plot was understood as a natural, sequential presentation of events in logical, chronological, psychological, cause-and-effect aspects.
1) a sequence of presentation of events that are depicted in the text differently from how they happen in life, with omissions of important links, with rearrangements, with inversion, with subsequent recognition, back ("Boa constrictor", "Roads and Roads" by I. Franko)
2) the motivation of the story - as a memory ("The Enchanted Desna" by A. Dovzhenko), a vision, a dream ("The Dream" by T. Shevchenko), a letter ("Abbé Aubin" by P. Merimee), a diary ("Robinson Crusoe" by D. Defoe) , a story within a story (“The Fate of a Man” by M. Sholokhov)
3) by the subject of the story - in the first and second person..., from the author, does not reveal his presence..., from the author, reveals his emotional mood..., on behalf of the biographical author..., opovidacha-masks... , the narrator-character...
The plot can be documentary or factual in nature. The plot can be based on legends, ballads, legends, anecdotes.
In large epic works there are several plot lines. In the novel "Do oxen roar when the manger is full?" is the line of Chipke, Gregory and Maxim Gudz. Dramatic works intended for stage adaptation cannot have a complex, branched plot.
In lyrical works, the plot can be fragmentary; such a plot is called “pointed”. Those works that are based on thoughts and experiences are plotless. Meditative lyrics are plotless.
The category “motive” is closely related to the category “plot” (French Motivus from Latin Moveo - moving). The concept of “motive,” which came into literary studies from musicology, remains insufficiently studied. The motive is identified with the theme, the idea. They call patriotic, civic, social motives. Motives determine the actions of characters. The leading motive is called the leitmotif.
In the XIX-XX centuries. the term “motive” was used in the study of folklore subjects. A. Veselovsky believed that motives were historically stable and constantly recurring. Each era returns to old motifs, filling them with a new understanding of life. A. Veselovsky wrote that the motive is the primary element of the plot.
A. Tkachenko is right in noting that the “term” motive “is more appropriate to use for lyrics. And above all, that which is sometimes called plotless (in fact, devoid of a clear plot), themes, problematics and other traditional coarsening in the field of content.”
The peculiarity of the motif is its repetition. “As a motive,” notes B. Gasparov, “there can be any phenomenon, any meaningful “spot” - an event, character traits, an element of landscape, any object, a spoken word, paint, sound, etc., the only thing that determines a motif is its reproduction in the text, so that unlike a traditional plot story, where it is more or less determined in advance what can be considered discrete components ("characters" or "events"), here there is no given "alphabet" - it is formed directly in the unfolding of structure and through structure."
In a lyric work, a motif is a recurring set of feelings and ideas. Individual motives in lyric poetry are more independent than in epic or drama, where they are subordinated to the development of action. The motif repeats psychological experiences. There are motives of memory, conscience, freedom, liberty, feat, fate, death, loneliness, unrequited love.
Features of the plot and composition of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"
When starting to work on the poem “Dead Souls,” Gogol wrote that in this direction he wanted to “show at least one side of all of Rus'.” This is how the writer defined his main task and the ideological concept of the poem. To implement such a grandiose theme, he needed to create a work that was original in form and content.
The poem has a circular “composition”, which is unique and does not repeat a similar composition, say, the novel by M. Yu. Lermontov “A Hero of Our Time” or the Gogol comedy “The Inspector General”. It is framed by the action of the first and eleventh chapters: Chichikov enters the city and leaves it.
The exposition, traditionally located at the beginning of the work, in “Dead Souls” is moved to its end. Thus, the eleventh chapter is, as it were, the informal beginning of the poem and its formal end. The poem begins with the development of the action: Chichikov begins his path to “acquisition”.
The genre of the work, which the author himself defines as an epic poem, also looks somewhat unusual. Highly appreciating the ideological and artistic merits of “Dead Souls,” V. G. Belinsky, for example, was perplexed why Gogol called this work a poem: “This novel, for some reason called a poem by the author, is a work that is as national as it is highly artistic."
The construction of "Dead Souls" is logical and consistent. Each chapter is completed thematically, it has its own task and its own subject of the image. In addition, some of them have a similar composition, for example, chapters devoted to the characteristics of landowners. They begin with a description of the landscape, estate, home and life, the appearance of the hero, then a dinner is shown, where the hero is already acting. And the completion of this action is the attitude of the landowner towards the sale of dead souls. This structure of the chapters made it possible for Gogol to show how different types of landowners developed on the basis of serfdom and how serfdom in the second quarter of the 19th century, due to the growth of capitalist forces, led the landowner class to economic and moral decline.
In contrast to the author's attraction to logic, absurdity and illogicality strike the eye everywhere in Dead Souls. Many of the poem’s images are built on the principle of illogicality; the actions and actions of the characters are absurd. The desire to explain facts and phenomena encounters the inexplicable and uncontrollable mind at every step. Gogol shows his Rus', and this Rus' is absurd. Madness here replaces common sense and sober calculation, nothing can be fully explained, and life is controlled by
absurdity and nonsense.In the context of the entire work, in understanding its concept, in the composition and development of the plot, lyrical digressions and inserted short stories are of great importance. The Tale of Captain Kopeikin plays a very important role. Not related in its content to the main plot, it continues and deepens the main theme of the poem - the theme of the death of the soul, the kingdom of dead souls. In other lyrical digressions, a citizen writer appears before us, deeply understanding and feeling the full force of his responsibility, passionately loving his Motherland, and suffering in his soul from the ugliness and unrest that surrounds him and which is happening everywhere in his beloved and long-suffering Homeland.
The macro-composition of the poem "Dead Souls", that is, the composition of the entire planned work, was suggested to Gogol by Dante's immortal "Divine Comedy": the first volume is the hell of serfdom, the kingdom of dead souls; the second is purgatory; the third is heaven. This idea remains unfulfilled. Having written the first volume of Vedas, Gogol did not put an end to it; it remained beyond the horizon of the unfinished work. The writer could not lead his hero through purgatory and show the Russian reader the future paradise that he had dreamed of all his life.
Tasks and tests on the topic "Features of the plot and composition of Gogol's poem Dead Souls"
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1
PLOT AND COMPOSITION
Features of a fairy tale plot The fairy tale is one of the most important genres of folklore. It, like all folklore in general, reflected the life of the people, their worldview. The cognitive and educational significance of fairy tales is undeniable and enormous. But fairy tales are of great interest both artistically and, in particular, as a manifestation of folk talent in the field of plotting. The main feature of all epic genres of folklore (as well as literature) is their plot. However, the plot in each genre has its own specifics, which is determined by the peculiarities of the content, creative principles and purpose of the genre. What are these features of the content and purpose of the fairy tale? What is its genre specificity? “Fairy tales,” wrote the famous folklorist A.I. Nikiforov, “are oral stories that exist among the people for the purpose of entertainment, containing events that are unusual in the everyday sense (fantastic, miraculous or everyday) and are distinguished by a special compositional and stylistic structure.” A.I. Nikiforov, in our opinion, although briefly, quite accurately defined the genre features of the fairy tale, emphasizing that it exists “for the purpose of entertainment.” Famous folklorists, the Sokolov brothers, also considered entertainment and amusement to be the hallmarks of fairy tales. In their collection “Fairy Tales and Songs of the Belozersky Territory” they wrote: “We use the term fairy tale here in the broadest sense - we use it to designate any oral story told to listeners for the purpose of entertainment.” No one, of course, will deny the significance of the content and great educational value of fairy tales. Pushkin also said: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it! A lesson to good fellows." But that’s not what we’re talking about now. We are talking about the features of a fairy tale plot, the techniques of creation and the manner of telling fairy tales. The main goal of a storyteller is to captivate, amuse, and sometimes simply surprise and amaze the listener with his story. For these purposes, he often gives even quite real life facts a completely incredible, fantastic form of expression. The storyteller, according to Belinsky, “...not only did not pursue plausibility and naturalness, but also seemed to make it an indispensable duty to deliberately violate and distort them to the point of nonsense.” Folklorists also come to the same conclusion based on a detailed study of the fairy tale and the features of its plot. In J. Propp wrote: “A fairy tale is a deliberate and poetic fiction. It is never presented as reality." All this was reflected in the fairy-tale plot structure, and quite uniquely in various genre varieties of fairy tales: in fairy tales about animals, social and everyday (novelistic) and magical (wonderful). Let us first dwell on the features of the plot of fairy tales about animals. The plot of some of them has a little exposition. For example, the fairy tale “The Wolf and the Goat” begins with the following exposition: “Once upon a time there was a goat, she made herself a hut in the forest and gave birth to children. The goat often went into the forest to look for food; As soon as she leaves, the little goats will lock the hut behind her, and they themselves won’t go out. The goat comes back, knocks on the door and sings: “Little goats, little kids! Open up, open up!..” And the little goats unlock the door.” The above exposition characterizes the situation preceding the development of the action and provides some motivation for a certain plot. However, it already contains a fabulous quality, it paints a very amazing picture: the goat and her babies have human qualities. Sometimes the exposition of animal tales is even shorter. No sooner has it begun than it immediately goes into overdrive. Here, for example, is the beginning of the fairy tale “The Bear”: “Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman, they had no children. The old woman says to the old man: “Old man, go get some firewood.” The old man went to collect firewood; a bear came towards him and said: “Old man, let’s fight” (Af., 1, 82). In the above example, the exposition consists of only one small sentence (“Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman, they had no children”), and everything else is the plot. Most fairy tales about animals do not have any exposition, but immediately begin with the beginning. For example, the fairy tale “Beasts in the Pit” begins with the following premise: “A pig went to St. Petersburg to pray to God. A wolf meets her: “Pig, pig, where are you going?” - “To St. Petersburg, to pray to God.” - “Take me too.” - “Let's go, kumanek!” (Aph., 1, 44). And here is the beginning of the fairy tale “A Man, a Bear and a Fox”: “A man was plowing a field, a bear came to him and said to him: “Man, I will break you” (Af., 1, 35). The main purpose of the given openings is to surprise the listener with an unusual situation, to rivet his attention to the incredible and unusual. So, undoubtedly, it is surprising that a bear approaches an old man in the forest and says to him in a human voice: “Old man, let’s fight.” No less surprising is the fact that a pig goes to St. Petersburg to pray to God and a wolf begs to be her peaceful companion. The beginning of a fairy tale is followed by the development of the plot. But it must be said right away that the plot in fairy tales about animals has not received any significant development; it is very simple. Sometimes it consists of one situation, one small episode. See, for example, the fairy tales “The Fox and the Black Grouse” (Af., 2, 47), “The Fox and the Cancer” (Af., 1, 52), etc. The point in fairy tales about animals is not the fascination of the narrative, but the amazingness of individual situations. As Yu. M. Sokolov rightly noted, in the plot of fairy tales about animals, the technique of meetings is very widely used - meetings of animals with each other or with humans. Thus, the basis of the fairy tale “The Fox, the Hare and the Rooster” is the meeting of a hare with a fox, dogs, a bear, a bull and a rooster (Af., 1, 23). In the fairy tale “Old bread and salt is forgotten,” a man first meets a wolf, and then together they meet a horse, a dog and a fox (Af., 1, 41-42). The reception of the meetings perfectly corresponds to the ideological and artistic purpose of fairy tales about animals. On the one hand, through it some elements of the real are conveyed (meetings between animals and people with animals themselves are quite possible). On the other hand, this technique makes it possible to bring together and juxtapose any animals in the plot, rewarding them with the appropriate qualities and actions, thus conveying the most incredible, surreal and fantastic. A distinctive feature of the plot composition of fairy tales about animals is that they widely use dialogic speech. There are fairy tales, the main content of which is conveyed only through dialogues: for example, the fairy tales “The Sheep, the Fox and the Wolf” (Af., 1, 43); “The Fox and the Black Grouse” (Af., 1, 47); “The Fox and the Woodpecker” (Af., 1, 48); “The Wolf and the Goat” (Af., 1, 75-77), etc. Dialogue is so widely used in fairy tales about animals because it is one of the simplest and at the same time effective forms of endowing animals with human characteristics and qualities (speech and judgment ). The amazing in such a fairy tale is achieved by a peculiar combination of the real and the surreal, human and animal. This is what makes the fairy tale interesting for the listener. V.I. Lenin wrote: “... if you presented children with a fairy tale where a rooster and a cat do not speak human language, they would not become interested in it.” Among the funny stories about animals, there are many cumulative tales, that is, those in which “links can follow one after another according to the principle of stringing, or agglutination.” For example: “Kolobok”, “Death of a Cockerel”, “Tower of a Fly”, “Goat”, etc. (Af., 1, pp. 53-54, 99-100, 125-127, 86-88). Consider the fairy tale “The Tower of the Flies.” Here is its beginning: “The fly built a tower; a creeping louse came: “Who, who, who is in the mansion? Who, who, who's on high? - “Honey fly, who are you?” - “I am a creeping louse” (Af., 1, 125). A fly lets a louse into the mansion. Then one by one a flea, a mosquito, a mouse, a lizard, a fox, a hare and a wolf ask to come into the house. And the fly lets them all into the tower. Finally, a bear approaches the mansion and answers the question: “Who, who, who is in the mansion? Who, who, who's on high? hears the answer: “I, a burning fly, I, a crawling louse, I, a spinning flea, I, a long-legged mosquito, I, a small mouse, I, a rough-haired lizard, I, a fox Patrikeevna, I, a snatch from under bush, I, wolf, gray tail" (Af., 1, 125). The bear did not ask to see the fly, but stepped on it with its paw and crushed it. The sequence of appearance of animals in a fairy tale (louse, flea, etc.) is not vitally motivated in any way. “The appearance of these animals is determined by artistic logic, not cause-and-effect thinking.” . And the artistic logic of a fairy tale is to surprise the listener with the unexpected and extraordinary: “... the more implausible and absurd the fairy tale, the better and more entertaining it is.” Everyday fairy tales themselves are also devoted to everyday themes. Their action takes place in an ordinary setting - in a village, in a field, in a forest, etc. Their heroes are a man, a soldier, a worker, etc. However, they do not have animal characters, animal heroes. And if animals end up in such a fairy tale, then only in their real form, without possessing any qualities and signs of a person. In everyday fairy tales, relationships are not depicted between animals and people, but only between people. The main themes of everyday fairy tales are either family relationships or social relations between a man and a gentleman, a priest and his worker, a soldier and a merchant, etc. Living conditions in everyday fairy tales are depicted quite realistically, the characters are typical, conflicts are resolved truthfully. What is surprising about everyday fairy tales? Why do they listen with great interest? The amazing thing about such fairy tales is that in them very real life conflicts between very real characters receive an unusual, fairy-tale plot realization. The amazing thing is in the plot itself, in the behavior of the characters. The unusualness and fabulousness of such a fairy tale begins from the very beginning of the plot, in which ordinary people enter into unusual, exceptional relationships, begin to act in unusual, and therefore surprising, circumstances. So, for example, the fairy tale “The Priest’s Worker” begins with the message that the priest sends a worker into the field to plow on a dog. But our surprise intensifies even more when we learn that the priest gives bread to the worker in the field and says at the same time: “Here, brother, be well fed, and so that the bitch is well-fed, and so that the rug is whole” (Af., 3 , 61). We also find an amazing beginning in the everyday fairy tale “Pop and the Sexton.” The priest and sexton of one parish, having spent all their wealth, decided to make money on fortune telling. “And the sexton comes to the priest and begins to tell him: “Come on,” he says, priest, I will steal, and you will do magic. And bring, he says, an old book from the church, as if this book shows you this witchcraft” (Sokolovs, 289). Sometimes the beginning of an everyday fairy tale is not only surprising, but also comical. So, a capricious lady wanted to have fifty black chickens. In another tale, a rich man wanted to bury his goat like a human being, in a Christian way, with the help of clergy. The argument between two brothers in the fairy tale “Seven Years” about who foaled at night: a mare or a cart (Andreev, 445-447) seems ridiculously ridiculous. In the further development of the plot of an everyday fairy tale, its entertainingness increases even more. It is surprising, of course, that the lady wanted to have no more and no less, namely fifty chickens and not just any, but certainly all black ones. But what is even more surprising is that the coachman undertakes to hatch such chickens. Only he sets the following conditions: give him a separate room, sew a tanned sheepskin coat, give him a scarf, a sash and warm boots, give him excellent water and food for three weeks, and then pay him fifty rubles and give him a month’s vacation. And the lady agrees to all these conditions. Surprising, of course, is the old man’s desire to bury his beloved goat with all Christian honors, but no less surprising is the fact that the priest, sexton and bell-ringer agree to do this for a decent bribe and do so. We see amazing developments in the plot in other everyday fairy tales. However, the endings of everyday fairy tales contain the most amazing and incredible things. Their endings are usually unexpected and very interesting. I will give just a few examples. The coachman, in order to avoid answering, sets fire to the bathhouse in which he was hatching chickens (Andreev, 482); the man proves to the master that he and his wife are fools (Andreev, 485); an angry lady taught a lesson by a shoemaker becomes kind (Sokolovs, 69-70), etc. Especially many comic situations contain everyday tales of an anecdotal nature. This can be confirmed by the fairy tale “Ivan the Fool” (Af., 3, 195-197). Briefly summarized, the plot of this tale is as follows. The old man and the old woman had three sons: two smart, the third Ivanushka the fool. One day the old woman sent Ivan the Fool to take dumplings to the brothers who were in the field. The day was sunny. A fool walks along and, seeing his shadow and thinking that someone is chasing him, he throws all the dumplings into this shadow. The brothers beat the fool for this, went home to dinner, and left the fool in the field to graze sheep. A fool is tending sheep and sees that they have begun to scatter across the field. Then he gathered the sheep, gouged out their eyes and put them all in one heap. For this, the brothers who returned to the field beat the fool again. The next episode of the fairy tale is like this. The parents sent the fool to the market for various purchases. He bought a table, pots, pots, dishes, a bag of salt and various “foods” there. Returning home with shopping, the fool noticed that it was very difficult for a horse to carry such a load. Then he took the table from the cart and put it on the road: he also has four legs, like a horse, let him go home under his own power. He moves on. He hears crows cawing. “Hungry,” thought the fool. And he placed all the dishes with “foods” on the road for them. The fool was driving through the woods and noticed burnt stumps. To prevent the stumps from freezing, he covered them with pots and pots. The fool reached the river and decided to give the horse water, but it didn’t drink the water. “It’s not tasty, it’s not salty,” the fool thought and poured the entire bag of cote into the river. But the horse still did not drink the water, then the fool, in his heart, hit it on the head with his fist - and killed it. He walks, carrying only the remaining spoons on his hump. Spoons rattle in the bag “Blink, blink.” And he heard: “Ivanushka is a fool.” The fool got offended, jumped out of the bag and trampled all the spoons. The older brothers beat the fool for this, left him at home, and went to the market themselves. A fool sits at home and hears that the beer is fermenting. He emptied all the beer from the tub, “sat himself in the trough, drives around the hut and sings songs” (Af., 3, 196). The brothers got tired of messing around with the fool, and they decided to drown him. They put the fool in a bag, took this bag to the river, put it on the bank, and they themselves went to look for an ice hole. The fool sits in a sack and shouts: “They put me in the voivodeship to judge and to arbor, but I can neither judge nor arbor” (Af., 3, 196). A gentleman passing by in a troika heard this, and he wanted to be a governor. He freed the fool and asked him to put him in a sack. The fool put the master in a sack and sewed him up. The brothers who arrived thought that a fool was sitting in the bag, and threw the bag into the river. Let's go home. And they see that a fool in a troika is riding towards them. They also wanted to have good horses and asked the fool to throw them into the river. Ivanushka complied with this request and went home in a troika “to finish his beer and remember his brothers” (Af., 3, 197). The main character of the above fairy tale, “the ironic successor,” Ivanushka the Fool, is not so stupid: he managed to take revenge on the brothers who offended him, and with the hands of his brothers he drowned a really stupid master. Ivanushka is characterized by feelings of humanism and compassion (he gives all his “food” to hungry crows, saves forest stumps from possible freezing). M. Gorky said about him: “The hero of folklore is a “fool”, despised even by his father and brothers, always turns out to be smarter than them, always the winner of all everyday adversities...” Gorky put the word “fool” in the above statement in quotation marks. The fairy-tale hero, beloved by the people, is, of course, no fool at all. He commits various stupid things only for purely artistic reasons of the fairy-tale genre in order to achieve entertainment and create amazing, funny plot situations. The specificity of the fairy tale plot that we have noted (its improbability and entertainingness) is especially clearly manifested in fairy tales, where extraordinary heroes and wonderful creatures contribute to the development of an extraordinary plot. Unlike the fairy tales about animals and everyday life discussed above, in fairy tales, in addition to people of ordinary rank (peasants, soldiers, etc.), the heroes are kings and princes, kings and princes. These tales often begin with the words: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a king and a queen” (Af., vol. 1, 278). Or: “Once upon a time there was a king, he had three daughters” (Af., vol. 1, 244), etc. Already such a beginning immediately indicates that the tale will not be about the usual, but about what something extraordinary. Often the main character of a fairy tale is a simple person (a soldier, a peasant's son, etc.) who does something special. In a fairy tale, a special poetics has been developed to create such an extraordinary hero. One of the techniques of this poetics is the story of the unusual, miraculous birth of a future hero. So, for example, the fairy tale “Tereshechka” begins with a message that once upon a time there lived a childless old man and an old woman. “So they made a block, wrapped it in a diaper, put it in a cradle, began to rock it and cradle it - and instead of a block, son Tereshechka, a real berry, began to grow in the diapers” (Af., vol. 1, 183). Such heroes of fairy tales as Ivan the Cow's Son (Af., 1, 268), Ivan Bykovich (Af., 1, 278), Zorka, Vechorka, Polunochka (Af., 1, 299) and many others also have a miraculous origin. But, regardless of whether the birth of the hero of a fairy tale is miraculous or ordinary, he is always distinguished by extraordinary qualities: he shows unprecedented endurance, fearlessness and literally performs miracles. The place where the characters take place is also unusual in a fairy tale. Unlike everyday fairy tales, the events of which take place in a setting familiar to the peasant, the action of fairy tales, as a rule, begins in a royal palace unfamiliar to the peasant, and then is transferred to a completely fantastic world - beyond the seas and oceans, to the distant kingdom and the thirtieth state, into a terrible dungeon, etc. Here our hero meets such fantastic creatures as Baba Yaga, Koschey the Immortal, the Serpent (three-, six-, nine- or twelve-headed), the filthy Idol, Dashing One-Eyed, etc. All these the characters have incredible strength and look very scary. Thus, it is said about Baba Yaga that she has “a sinewy muzzle and a clay leg” (Af. , 6, 185). In the fairy tale “Ivan Bykovich,” a portrait of a terrible giant is drawn - the husband of a witch, who is so huge that when he wakes up, his eyelashes are lifted with pitchforks by twelve mighty heroes (Af., 1, 283). In the magical fairy-tale world, scary, simply creepy pictures are often drawn. For example, in the fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” the house of the cannibal Baba Yaga is described in this way, into which the hero of the fairy tale must certainly enter: “A fence around the hut is made of human bones, human skulls with eyes stick out on the fence; instead of doors at the gates there are human legs, instead of locks there are hands, instead of a lock there is a mouth with open teeth” (Aph., 1, 161). All these terrible monsters kidnap people, keep them in dungeons, and devour them. And in this terrible world, with its incredible monsters, the hero of a fairy tale has to fight, showing extraordinary strength, courage and endurance. But fortunately, he is not alone in the struggle. He is helped by a variety of creatures and objects. Such assistants to the positive hero in fairy tales are wise old men and women, the fantastic creatures Obedalo and Opivalo, the heroes Gorynya, Dubynya, Usynya, etc. All these images are unusual and amazing. Thus, having met with the Hero's Son, the hero of the fairy tale Ivashko-Medvedko was amazed by the following picture: “A man is standing on the shore, he has taken his hand with his mouth, he is catching fish with his mustache, he is twirling it on his tongue and eating it” (Af., 1, 304). The assistants of the positive heroes in the fairy tale are all kinds of animals, beasts and birds: the good horse “Sivka-Burka”, “duck with the golden egg”, “wonderful chicken”, dog, cat, cat, wolf, falcon, eagle, raven, pike and etc. Unlike fairy tales about animals in fairy tales, all these animals have miraculous powers. They are the ones who often control the course of events. A striking example is the fairy tale “Emelya the Fool,” where such power is possessed by a pike that he caught and then released into the Emelya River. After Emelya’s words: “At the behest of the pike, and at my request,” the buckets of water went home on their own, the ax itself chopped the wood, and they went to the hut and laid in the oven, the sleigh without a horse went into the forest for firewood, the batons beat the officer and The soldiers whom the king sent for Emelei, the stove takes him to the king in the city. Emelya turns into a handsome man and marries the royal daughter (Af., 1, pp. 401-408). In addition to living creatures, the heroes of the fairy tale are helped in the most difficult moment by various objects: a self-assembled tablecloth, boots, a flying carpet, a harp, a samogud, a baton, an axe, a buzzer, a horn, a gold ring, a ring, a mirror, comb, brush, towel, living and dead water, etc. n. All these objects in fairy tales have miraculous powers. Thus, a fairy tale is very attractive with its extraordinary world. This wonderful world, its fantastic images and paintings, surprise and amaze. However, it should be noted that the most effective means of creating something amazing in a fairy tale is its plot. Defining the specifics of a fairy tale, Yu. M. Sokolov rightly wrote: “No matter how characteristic a fairy tale is of its heroes and objects, living and animated bearers of fairy-tale action, the most important and characteristic of a fairy tale as a genre is the action itself. For a wonderful fairy tale, these actions determine the magical and adventurous nature of the wonderful fairy tale as a special narrative genre.” Sometimes a fairy tale opens with a “saying” that precedes the plot. The purpose of such a saying is to set the listener in a fairy-tale mood, to prepare him for the perception of an amazing world, an entertaining fairy-tale plot. Here, for example, is a saying to the fairy tale “Ivan Tsarevich and the hero Sineglazka.” “This thing happened at sea, on the ocean; On the island of Kidan there is a tree of golden crowns, and the cat Bayun walks along this tree - he goes up and sings a song, and down he goes and tells fairy tales. That would be interesting and entertaining to watch. This is not a fairy tale, but there is still a saying, and the whole fairy tale lies ahead” (Sokolovs, 249). And ahead, indeed, there was a fairy tale in which it was told how the tsar first sent his eldest son Fyodor, then the middle one - Vasily and, finally, the youngest - Ivan “far away lands, to the tenth kingdom” to the girl Sineglazka to bring from her living water. The brothers experience various adventures in which their characters and relationships between them are manifested differently. As one would expect, the hero of the tale is the tsar’s youngest son, Ivan Tsarevich. However, sayings are not often found in fairy tales. As a rule, the plot of a fairy tale begins with an intriguing plot, with an extraordinary event in which the main role is played by some magical creature with miraculous powers. So, for example, “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf” begins with the message that the firebird began to fly into the royal garden at night and pick golden apples from the apple tree (Af., 1, 415). The fairy tale “Three Kingdoms” opens with an episode that tells how one day a whirlwind “grabbed the queen and carried her away to an unknown place” (Af., 1, 231). The fairy tale “Nikita Kozhemyaka” begins not only surprisingly, but also scary. Here is her first phrase: “A serpent appeared near Kyiv, he took considerable extortions from the people: from each courtyard a red girl; He will take the girl and eat her. The time has come for the king’s daughter to go to this serpent” (Af., 1, 327). The purpose of the above beginnings is obvious. They immediately say that the fairy tale will talk about the miraculous. The plot in each fairy tale develops in its own unique way and is entertaining in its own way. However, for all fairy tales it is a pattern that sooner or later its heroes, in an open or hidden form, will necessarily enter into certain relationships with magical, miraculous forces. This provides the basis for the development of an extraordinary, fantastic plot. This is the main interest of a fairy tale. A distinctive feature of the plot of a fairy tale is its multi-event nature. It often reveals a fairly long period in the hero’s life, which is extremely tense and dramatic. As a rule, the hero of a fairy tale must go through a series of trials. In a fairy tale, in connection with this, a special poetic technique of assignments has been developed, which plays a large role in creating images of heroes, enhancing the drama of the fairy tale, and increasing its psychological tension. The drama of a fairy tale is especially enhanced by the fact that the hero sometimes has several of these tasks. Before the hero has time to complete one thing, he is immediately given another, a third. Moreover, each subsequent task is necessarily much more difficult than the previous one. Let's give an example from the fairy tale “The Frog Princess”. It so happened, like a fairy tale, that the eldest son of the king marries the prince's daughter, the middle one - the general's daughter, and the youngest - the frog. Already at the very beginning of the story, the main character of the fairy tale, the frog princess, has to go through three tests, from which she emerges victorious. In the fairy tale “The Frog Princess,” the heroine is helped to complete all difficult tasks by her frog skin. In general, it should be said that the hero of a fairy tale, as a rule, performs various difficult tasks through the intervention of his friends-helpers (horse, old man, old woman) and wonderful objects (self-chopping ax, self-breaking club, etc.). Sometimes the entire fairy tale is almost entirely built on their actions. These are, for example, such tales as “The Horse, the Tablecloth and the Horn” (Af., 2, 30-31), “Two from the Bag” (Af., 2, pp. 32-34), “The Rooster and the Millstones” (Af., 2, pp. 35-36). Needless to say, the presence of all kinds of wonderful animals and objects in fairy tales significantly increases their already intense plot entertainment. As you know, in fairy tales the technique of all kinds of transformations is widely used. Thus, we learn that in the necessary plot situation, Ivan the peasant son “turned into a cat” (Af., 1, 289), the princess turns into a pin (Af., 1, 221), the king’s daughter - into a star (Af., 1 , 285), etc. Often in fairy tales, the transformation of animals and objects into people is also observed: in one fairy tale, a star “turned into a queen” (Af., 1, 285), in another, a falcon, an eagle and a raven turned into fellows (Af. , 1, 376-377), etc. We observe transformations of heroes in those cases when they, in their usual appearance (image), cannot complete one or another task. For example, the fairy tale “The Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise” talks about the pursuit of Vasilisa and the prince by the messengers of the water king. In order not to be recognized by the chase, Vasilisa “wrapped the horses with a well, herself with a ladle, and the prince with an old man” (Af., 2, 176). But the tale continues further. “Vasilisa the Wise heard a new pursuit; turned the prince into an old priest, and she herself became an old church; The walls are barely holding up, they are overgrown with moss” (Af., 2, 176). The technique of transformations further enhances the entertaining nature of the fairy tale. As a result, we can conclude that a specific feature of a fairy tale plot is its deliberate fictionality, the constant desire for the unusual and incredible. V. Ya. Propp wrote: “In the Russian fairy tale there is no no one plausible plot." However, this general feature of a fairy tale plot, as we see, manifests itself in different genre varieties of fairy tales in its own, rather specific way. This is due to the uniqueness of the content and purpose of this or that fairy tale variety. In this regard, V.P. Anikin writes: “In fairy tales about animals, the functionality of fiction is based primarily on the transmission of critical thought: for humorous or satirical purposes, animals are given human traits.” A different basis for the fictional in fairy tales. “In fairy tales, the improbability of what is reproduced is based on the transfer of overcoming life’s obstacles through a miracle.” Completely different principles for creating something amazing in everyday fairy tales. “The everyday short story tale reproduces reality in exaggerated forms of deliberate violation of reality. Fiction here is based on the inconsistency of reproducible phenomena with the norms of common sense. Fantastic fiction, in this case, forms the basis of the entire narrative." However, one should not conclude from what has been said that everything in the fairy tale is fictitious and implausible. V.I. Lenin wrote: “In every fairy tale there are elements of reality...”. There is literally not a single fairy tale that does not contain certain signs of reality. What are these signs of the real, the “elements of reality” that can be seen in folk tales? This question can be answered with certainty that the connection between folk tales and reality is very diverse. We have already said above that the heroes of everyday fairy tales are peasants, soldiers, priests, merchants, landowners, etc. taken from real life. The action of everyday fairy tales unfolds in ordinary life conditions. Elements of the real can also be noted in fairy tales about animals. Their plot always has a life motivation to one degree or another. Of course, it is incredible and surprising that the bear is talking to the old man, but there is nothing incredible in the fact that the old man met the bear in the forest. It is surprising that the wolf asks the man to put him in a sack and thereby save him from the hunters who were chasing him. But it is not surprising that the man met him on the road along which he was returning home from the field. In fairy tales there is incomparably more than in any other type of fairy tale, the fantastic, fictitious and unreal, as discussed in detail above. But even in fairy tales there is a lot from reality. First of all, the heroes of fairy tales themselves, despite the fantastic nature of the plot, have pronounced life traits. The relationship between the real and the fantastic in fairy tales is also manifested in a unique way in the method of their “ring composition”. As a rule, the picture of a fantasy world, in which the hero has to meet the most mysterious creatures, is framed in a fairy tale by a picture of the real world: it, as a rule, begins and ends on the real Earth. In this “ring picture” everything is real: the setting, the characters, etc. An example is the fairy tale “Three Kingdoms - Copper, Silver and Gold.” The fairy tale opens with the following picture: “Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman; they had three sons: the first was Yegorushka Zalet, the second was Misha Kosolapy, the third was Ivashko Zapechnik. So their father and mother decided to marry them” (Af., 1, 228). Everything is real here. And then the unreal, the fantastic begins. The brothers, looking for brides for themselves, meet the Serpent. A snake on straps, like down a well, lowers Ivashka into the underground, fairy-tale world. In this fairy-tale world, the hero visits three kingdoms - copper, silver and gold, and talks with “red maidens” in them. The most beautiful girl agrees to be Ivashka’s bride. In addition, Ivashka in the fairy-tale world enters into relationships with a wonderful old man (“he’s about the size of a quarter, and his beard is as long as an elbow”), the Strong Idol, Baba Yaga and the Eagle Bird. But the fairy tale ends with the return of the heroes from the underground fairy-tale world to the real Earth. The red maidens are pulled out of the dungeon with the help of belts by the Ivashki brothers. And Ivashka flies out from there on the Eagle Bird. As we remember, the Serpent lowered Ivashka on belts into the underworld through a hole. The eagle “pulled him into the same hole in Rus'” (Af., 1, p. 230). And the fairy tale ends with this, in a certain sense, real picture. “Ivashka came home, took a maiden from the golden kingdom from his brothers, and they began to live and be, and now they live” (Af., 1, p. 230). Thus, in all types of fairy tales we find a peculiar combination of the real and the unreal, the ordinary and the unusual, the vitally plausible, quite probable and completely implausible, incredible. It is as a result of the collision of these two worlds (real and unreal), two types of plot situations (probable and incredible) that what makes the story a fairy tale arises. This is precisely the beauty of it. Based on all that has been said, we can conclude that the fairy tale plot, both in its organization and in its ideological and artistic functions, is distinguished by its distinct genre specificity. Its main purpose is to create something amazing.
I have already raised this topic on another site - it did not arouse interest there. Perhaps the same picture will be here. But suddenly a constructive conversation will turn out...
To begin with, I will lay out a brief description.
The plot is concentric (centripetal)
a type of plot distinguished on the basis of the principle of action development, the connection of episodes, and the characteristics of the beginning and denouement. In S.k. The cause-and-effect relationship between the episodes is clearly visible, the beginning and the end are easily distinguished. If the plot is at the same time multilinear, then a cause-and-effect relationship is also clearly visible between the plot lines, which also motivates the inclusion of a new line in the work.
The plot is chronicle (centrifugal)
a plot without a clearly defined plot, with a predominance of temporary motivations in the development of action. But in S.kh. episodes may be included, sometimes quite extensive, in which events are connected by a cause-and-effect relationship, i.e. in S.kh. Various concentric plots are often included. Contrasted with concentric plot.
Principles of connection of events in chronicles And concentric The plots differ significantly; therefore, their capabilities in depicting reality, actions and behavior of people also differ. The criterion for distinguishing these types of plot is the nature of the connection between events.
IN chronicles In plots, the connection between events is temporary, that is, events replace each other in time, following one after another. The “formula” of plots of this type can be represented as follows:
a, then b, then c... then x (or: a + b + c +... + x),
where a, b, c, x are the events that make up the chronicle story.
Action in chronicles plots are not distinguished by integrity, strict logical motivation: after all, in chronicle plots no one central conflict unfolds. They represent a review of events and facts that may not be externally related to each other. The only thing that unites these events is that they all line up in one chain from the point of view of their passage over time. Chronicle the plots are multi-conflict: conflicts arise and die out, some conflicts replace others.
Often, in order to emphasize the chronicle principle of the arrangement of events in works, writers called them “stories”, “chronicles” or - in accordance with the long Russian literary tradition - “stories”.
IN concentric Plots are dominated by cause-and-effect relationships between events, that is, each event is the cause of the next one and the consequence of the previous one. These stories are different from chronicles unity of action: the writer explores any one conflict situation. All events in the plot seem to be pulled together into one knot, obeying the logic of the main conflict.
The “formula” of this type of plot can be represented as follows:
a, therefore b, therefore c... therefore x
(a -> b -> c ->… -> x),
where a, b, c, x are the events that make up concentric plot.
All parts of the work are based on clearly expressed conflicts. However, the chronological connections between them may be disrupted. IN concentric In the plot, one life situation is brought to the fore, the work is built on one event line.
And now the questions:
What, in your opinion, is unacceptable in this or that plot?
Which one is better suited for what?
Why do works with a concentric plot prevail in science fiction/fantasy, while critics and authors forget about the chronicle type?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type?
In general, I propose to discuss this topic.
