Artistic convention. Conventionality and lifelikeness Tendencies in artistic imagery lifelikeness and conventionality

ARTISTIC CONVENTION - in a broad sense, the original property of art, manifested in a certain difference, discrepancy between the artistic picture of the world, individual images and objective reality. This concept indicates a kind of distance (aesthetic, artistic) between reality and a work of art, awareness of which is an essential condition for adequate perception of the work. The term “convention” has taken root in the theory of art since artistic creativity is carried out primarily in “forms of life.” Linguistic, symbolic expressive means of art, as a rule, represent one or another degree of transformation of these forms. Usually, three types of convention are distinguished: convention, which expresses the specific specificity of art, determined by the properties of its linguistic material: paint - in painting, stone - in sculpture, word - in literature, sound - in music, etc., which predetermines the possibility of each type of art in the display of various aspects of reality and the artist’s self-expression - two-dimensional and flat images on canvas and screen, static in fine art, the absence of a “fourth wall” in the theater. At the same time, painting has a rich color spectrum, cinema has a high degree of image dynamism, and literature, thanks to the special capacity of verbal language, completely compensates for the lack of sensory clarity. This condition is called “primary” or “unconditional”. Another type of convention is the canonization of a set of artistic characteristics, stable techniques and goes beyond the framework of partial reception and free artistic choice. Such a convention can represent the artistic style of an entire era (Gothic, Baroque, Empire), express the aesthetic ideal of a specific historical time; it is strongly influenced by ethnonational characteristics, cultural ideas, ritual traditions of the people, and mythology. The ancient Greeks endowed their gods with fantastic powers and other symbols of deity. The conventions of the Middle Ages were affected by the religious-ascetic attitude towards reality: the art of this era personified the otherworldly, mysterious world. The art of classicism was required to depict reality in the unity of place, time and action. The third type of convention is the artistic device itself, which depends on the creative will of the author. The manifestations of such a convention are infinitely varied, distinguished by their pronounced metaphorical nature, expressiveness, associativity, deliberately open re-creation of “forms of life” - deviations from the traditional language of art (in ballet - a transition to a regular step, in opera - to colloquial speech). In art, it is not necessary that formative components remain invisible to the reader or viewer. A skillfully implemented open artistic device of convention does not disrupt the process of perception of the work, but, on the contrary, often activates it.

Fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not realized: the archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9—the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case, in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).

Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence. "Fantasy<…>- wrote Jean-Paul, - there is something higher, it is the world soul and the elemental spirit of the main forces (such as wit, insight, etc. - V.Kh.)<…>Fantasy is hieroglyphic alphabet nature." The cult of imagination, characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century, marked the emancipation of the individual, and in this sense constituted a positively significant fact of culture, but at the same time it also had negative consequences (artistic evidence of this is the appearance of Gogol’s Manilov, the fate of the hero of Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”) .

In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.” Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare.” Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such. At the beginning of the 20th century. fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated and rejected in the name of recreating a real fact that was documented. This extreme has been disputed. The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Through fiction, the author summarizes the facts of reality, embodies his view of the world, and demonstrates his creative energy. Z. Freud argued that artistic fiction is associated with unsatisfied drives and suppressed desires of the creator of the work and involuntarily expresses them.

The concept of artistic fiction clarifies the boundaries (sometimes very vague) between works that claim to be art and documentary information. If documentary texts (verbal and visual) exclude the possibility of fiction from the outset, then works with the intention of perceiving them as fiction readily allow it (even in cases where the authors limit themselves to recreating actual facts, events, and persons). Messages in literary texts are, as it were, on the other side of truth and lies. At the same time, the phenomenon of artistry can also arise when perceiving a text created with a documentary mindset: “... for this it is enough to say that we are not interested in the truth of this story, that we read it “as if it were the fruit<…>writing."

Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev named internal the world of the work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<…>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<…>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them.”

In this case, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms convention(the author’s emphasis on non-identity, or even opposition, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and lifelikeness(leveling such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between conventionality and life-likeness is already present in the statements of Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its implausibility). But the relationship between them was especially intensely discussed at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. L.N. carefully rejected everything implausible and exaggerated. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and His Drama.” For K.S. Stanislavsky’s expression “conventionality” was almost synonymous with the words “falsehood” and “false pathos.” Such ideas are associated with an orientation towards the experience of Russian realistic literature of the 19th century, the imagery of which was more life-like than conventional. On the other hand, many artists of the early 20th century. (for example, V.E. Meyerhold) preferred conventional forms, sometimes absolutizing their significance and rejecting life-likeness as something routine. Thus, in the article P.O. Jacobson’s “On Artistic Realism” (1921) emphasizes conventional, deforming, and difficult techniques for the reader (“to make it more difficult to guess”) and denies verisimilitude, which is identified with realism as the beginning of the inert and epigonic. Subsequently, in the 1930s - 1950s, on the contrary, life-like forms were canonized. They were considered the only acceptable ones for the literature of socialist realism, and convention was suspected of being related to odious formalism (rejected as bourgeois aesthetics). In the l960s, the rights of artistic convention were again recognized. Nowadays, the view has been strengthened that life-likeness and conventionality are equal and fruitfully interacting tendencies of artistic imagery: “like two wings on which creative imagination rests in an indefatigable thirst to find out the truth of life.”

At the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, generated by a public and solemn ritual idealizing hyperbole traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and had exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember the epic heroes or Gogol’s Taras Bulba). And secondly, this grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, laughter “double” of the solemn-pathetic one, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<…>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<…>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<…>the possibility of a completely different world order.” In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is the realistic narrative prose of the 19th century, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. At the same time, in the art of the 19th–20th centuries. conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions (“Kholstomer” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (plays by B. Brecht), exposure of the technique (“ Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), effects of the montage composition (unmotivated changes in the place and time of action, sharp chronological “breaks”, etc.).

Artistic fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not recognized: archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. We find judgments about artistic fiction in Aristotle’s “Poetics” (chapter 9—the historian talks about what happened, the poet talks about the possible, about what could happen), as well as in the works of philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often, these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time (this was the case (92), in particular, in the drama of the Renaissance and classicism, which widely used ancient and medieval plots).

Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence. "Fantasy<...>- wrote Jean-Paul, - there is something higher, it is the world soul and the elemental spirit of the main forces (such as wit, insight, etc. - V.Kh.)<...>Fantasy is the hieroglyphic alphabet of nature." The cult of imagination, characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century, marked the emancipation of the individual, and in this sense constituted a positively significant fact of culture, but at the same time it also had negative consequences (artistic evidence of this is the appearance of Gogol’s Manilov, the fate of the hero of Dostoevsky’s White Nights) .

In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. According to N.S. Leskova, a real writer is a “note-taker,” and not an inventor: “Where a writer ceases to be a note-taker and becomes an inventor, all connection between him and society disappears.” Let us also recall Dostoevsky’s well-known judgment that a close eye is capable of detecting in the most ordinary fact “a depth that is not found in Shakespeare.” Russian classical literature was more a literature of conjecture than of fiction as such. At the beginning of the 20th century. fiction was sometimes regarded as something outdated and rejected in the name of recreating a real fact that was documented. This extreme has been disputed. The literature of our century - as before - relies widely on both fiction and non-fictional events and persons. At the same time, the rejection of fiction in the name of following the truth of the fact, in some cases justified and fruitful, can hardly become the main line of artistic creativity: without relying on fictional images, art and, in particular, literature are unrepresentable.

Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev called the inner world of the work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<...>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<...>. Literature takes only some phenomena of reality and then conventionally reduces or expands them.”

At the same time, there are two trends in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms convention (the author’s emphasis on the non-identity, or even the opposite, between the depicted and the forms of reality) and life-likeness (leveling such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between convention and life-likeness is already present in statements by Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its improbability). But the relationships between them were especially intensely discussed at the turn of the 19th – (94) 20th centuries. L.N. carefully rejected everything implausible and exaggerated. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and His Drama.” For K.S. Stanislavsky’s expression “conventionality” was almost synonymous with the words “falsehood” and “false pathos.” Such ideas are associated with an orientation towards the experience of Russian realistic literature of the 19th century, the imagery of which was more life-like than conventional. On the other hand, many artists of the early 20th century. (for example, V.E. Meyerhold) preferred conventional forms, sometimes absolutizing their significance and rejecting life-likeness as something routine. Thus, in the article P.O. Jacobson’s “On Artistic Realism” (1921) emphasizes conventional, deforming, and difficult techniques for the reader (“to make it more difficult to guess”) and denies verisimilitude, which is identified with realism as the beginning of the inert and epigonic. Subsequently, in the 1930s – 1950s, on the contrary, life-like forms were canonized. They were considered the only acceptable ones for the literature of socialist realism, and convention was suspected of being related to odious formalism (rejected as bourgeois aesthetics). In the l960s, the rights of artistic convention were again recognized. Nowadays, the view has become firmly established that life-likeness and conventionality are equal and fruitfully interacting tendencies of artistic imagery: “like two wings on which creative imagination rests in an indefatigable thirst to find out the truth of life.”

At the early historical stages in art, forms of representation prevailed, which are now perceived as conventional. This is, firstly, the idealizing hyperbole of traditional high genres (epic, tragedy), generated by a public and solemn ritual, the heroes of which manifested themselves in pathetic, theatrically effective words, poses, gestures and possessed exceptional appearance features that embodied their strength and power, beauty and charm. (Remember the epic heroes or Gogol’s Taras Bulba). And, secondly, this is the grotesque, which was formed and strengthened as part of carnival celebrations, acting as a parody, a laughing “double” of the solemn-pathetic, and later acquired programmatic significance for the romantics. It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque. Grotesque in art is akin to paradox in (95) logic. MM. Bakhtin, who studied traditional grotesque imagery, considered it the embodiment of a festive and cheerful free thought: “The grotesque frees us from all forms of inhuman necessity that permeate the prevailing ideas about the world<...>debunks this necessity as relative and limited; grotesque form helps liberation<...>from walking truths, allows you to look at the world in a new way, feel<...>the possibility of a completely different world order.” In the art of the last two centuries, the grotesque, however, often loses its cheerfulness and expresses a total rejection of the world as chaotic, frightening, hostile (Goya and Hoffmann, Kafka and the theater of the absurd, to a large extent Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Art initially contains life-like principles, which made themselves felt in the Bible, classical epics of antiquity, and Plato’s dialogues. In the art of modern times, life-likeness almost dominates (the most striking evidence of this is the realistic narrative prose of the 19th century, especially L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov). It is essential for authors who show man in his diversity, and most importantly, who strive to bring what is depicted closer to the reader, to minimize the distance between the characters and the perceiving consciousness. At the same time, in the art of the 19th – 20th centuries. conditional forms were activated (and at the same time updated). Nowadays this is not only traditional hyperbole and grotesque, but also all kinds of fantastic assumptions (“Kholstomer” by L.N. Tolstoy, “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” by G. Hesse), demonstrative schematization of the depicted (plays by B. Brecht), exposure of the technique (“ Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin), effects of the montage composition (unmotivated changes in the place and time of action, sharp chronological “breaks”, etc.).

ARTISTIC CONVENTION in a broad sense

the original property of art, manifested in a certain difference, discrepancy between the artistic picture of the world, individual images and objective reality. This concept indicates a kind of distance (aesthetic, artistic) between reality and a work of art, awareness of which is an essential condition for adequate perception of the work. The term “convention” is rooted in the theory of art, since artistic creativity is carried out primarily in “forms of life.” Linguistic, symbolic expressive means of art, as a rule, represent one or another degree of transformation of these forms. Usually, three types of convention are distinguished: convention expressing the specific specificity of art, determined by the properties of its linguistic material: paint - in painting, stone - in sculpture, word - in literature, sound - in music, etc., which predetermines the possibility of each type of art in display various aspects of reality and the artist’s self-expression - a two-dimensional and flat image on canvas and screen, static in fine art, the absence of a “fourth wall” in the theater. At the same time, painting has a rich color spectrum, cinematography has a high degree of image dynamism, literature, thanks to the special capacity of verbal language, completely compensates for the lack of sensory clarity. This condition is called “primary” or “unconditional”. Another type of convention is the canonization of a set of artistic characteristics, stable techniques and goes beyond the framework of partial reception and free artistic choice. Such a convention can represent the artistic style of an entire era (Gothic, Baroque, Empire), express the aesthetic ideal of a specific historical time; it is strongly influenced by ethnonational characteristics, cultural ideas, ritual traditions of the people, and mythology. The ancient Greeks endowed their gods with fantastic powers and other symbols of deity. The conventions of the Middle Ages were affected by the religious-ascetic attitude towards reality: the art of this era personified the otherworldly, mysterious world. The art of classicism was prescribed to depict reality in the unity of place, time and action. The third type of convention is a proper artistic device, depending on the creative will of the author. The manifestations of such a convention are infinitely diverse, distinguished by their pronounced metaphorical nature, expressiveness, associativity, deliberately open re-creation of “forms of life” - deviations from the traditional language of art (in ballet - a transition to a normal step, in opera - to colloquial speech). In art, it is not necessary that formative components remain invisible to the reader or viewer. A skillfully implemented open artistic device of convention does not disrupt the process of perception of the work, but, on the contrary, often activates it.

There are two types of artistic conventions. Primary artistic convention is associated with the very material that a given type of art uses. For example, the possibilities of words are limited; it does not make it possible to see color or smell, it can only describe these sensations:

Music rang in the garden

With such unspeakable grief,

Fresh and sharp smell of the sea

Oysters on ice on a platter.

(A. A. Akhmatova, “In the Evening”)

This artistic convention is characteristic of all types of art; the work cannot be created without it. In literature, the peculiarity of artistic convention depends on the literary type: the external expression of actions in drama, description of feelings and experiences in lyrics, description of the action in epic. The primary artistic convention is associated with typification: when depicting even a real person, the author strives to present his actions and words as typical, and for this purpose changes some of the properties of his hero. Thus, the memoirs of G.V. Ivanova“Petersburg Winters” evoked many critical responses from the heroes themselves; for example, A.A. Akhmatova she was indignant that the author had invented dialogues between her and N.S. that never happened. Gumilev. But G.V. Ivanov wanted not just to reproduce real events, but to recreate them in artistic reality, to create the image of Akhmatova, the image of Gumilyov. The task of literature is to create a typified image of reality in its acute contradictions and features.
Secondary artistic convention is not characteristic of all works. It presupposes a conscious violation of verisimilitude: Major Kovalev’s nose, cut off and living on its own, in “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol, the mayor with a stuffed head in “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin. A secondary artistic convention is created through the use of religious and mythological images (Mephistopheles in “Faust” by I.V. Goethe, Woland in “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov), hyperboles(the incredible strength of the heroes of the folk epic, the scale of the curse in N.V. Gogol’s “Terrible Vengeance”), allegories (Grief, Dashing in Russian fairy tales, Stupidity in “Praise of Stupidity” Erasmus of Rotterdam). A secondary artistic convention can also be created by a violation of the primary one: an appeal to the viewer in the final scene of “The Government Inspector” by N.V. Gogol, an appeal to the discerning reader in the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky“What to do?”, variability of the narrative (several options for the development of events are considered) in “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by L. Stern, in the story by H.L. Borges"The Garden of Forking Paths", violation of cause and effect connections in the stories of D.I. Kharms, plays by E. Ionesco. Secondary artistic convention is used to draw attention to the real, to make the reader think about the phenomena of reality.

This ideological and thematic basis, which determines the content of the work, is revealed by the writer in life pictures, in the actions and experiences of the characters, in their characters.

People are thus depicted in certain life circumstances, as participants in the events developing in the work that make up its plot.

Depending on the circumstances and characters depicted in the work, the speech of the characters in it and the author’s speech about them are constructed (see Author’s speech), i.e., the language of the work.

Consequently, the content determines and motivates the writer’s choice and depiction of life scenes, the characters of the characters, plot events, the composition of the work and its language, i.e. the form of the literary work. Thanks to it - life pictures, composition, plot, language - the content is manifested in all its completeness and versatility.

The form of the work is thus inextricably linked with its content and is determined by it; on the other hand, the content of a work can only appear in a certain form.

The more talented the writer, the more fluent he is in the literary form, the more perfectly he depicts life, the deeper and more accurately he reveals the ideological and thematic basis of his work, achieving unity of form and content.

S. of L.N. Tolstoy’s story “After the Ball” - scenes of the ball, execution and, most importantly, the author’s thoughts and emotions about them. F is a material (i.e. sound, verbal, figurative, etc.) manifestation of S. and its organizing principle. Turning to a work, we directly encounter the language of fiction, composition, etc. and through these components F, we comprehend the S. of the work. For example, through the change of bright colors into dark ones in the language, through the contrast of actions and scenes in the plot and composition of the above-mentioned story, we comprehend the author’s angry thought about the inhumane nature of society. Thus, S. and F. are interconnected: F. is always meaningful, and S. is always formed in a certain way, but in the unity of S. and F., the initiative always belongs to S: new F. are born as an expression of a new S.

Ticket 4. Conditionality and life-likeness. Conventionality and realism. Convention and fantasy in a work of art.
Artistic fiction in the early stages of the development of art, as a rule, was not recognized: archaic consciousness did not distinguish between historical and artistic truth. But already in folk tales, which never present themselves as a mirror of reality, conscious fiction is quite clearly expressed. For a number of centuries, fiction has appeared in literary works as a common property, as inherited by writers from their predecessors. Most often these were traditional characters and plots, which were somehow transformed each time. Much more than was the case before, fiction manifested itself as the individual property of the author in the era of romanticism, when imagination and fantasy were recognized as the most important facet of human existence.
In the post-romantic era, fiction somewhat narrowed its scope. Flights of imagination of writers of the 19th century. often preferred direct observation of life: characters and plots were close to their prototypes. Through fiction, the author summarizes the facts of reality, embodies his view of the world, and demonstrates his creative energy.
Forms of “primary” reality (which is again absent in “pure” documentary) are reproduced by the writer (and artist in general) selectively and in one way or another transformed, resulting in a phenomenon that D.S. Likhachev called the inner world of the work: “Every work of art reflects the world of reality in its creative perspectives<...>. The world of a work of art reproduces reality in a certain “abbreviated”, conditional version<...>.
At the same time, there are two tendencies in artistic imagery, which are designated by the terms conventionality (the author’s emphasis on non-identity, or even opposition, between what is depicted and the forms of reality) and life-likeness (leveling such differences, creating the illusion of the identity of art and life). The distinction between conventionality and life-likeness is already present in the statements of Goethe (article “On truth and verisimilitude in art”) and Pushkin (notes on drama and its improbability).
It is customary to call the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things, grotesque.
Realism and convention in literature.
Realism in literature. In fiction, realism develops gradually over many centuries. But the term “realism” itself arose only in the middle of the 19th century. Realism in literature and art is a truthful, objective reflection of reality using specific means inherent in a particular type of artistic creativity. In the course of the historical development of art, painting takes on the specific forms of certain creative methods.
Artistic convention is the non-identity of the artistic image with the object of reproduction. A distinction is made between primary and secondary convention depending on the degree of credibility of the images and the awareness of artistic fiction in different historical eras.
Primary convention is closely related to the nature of art itself, inseparable from convention, and therefore characterizes any work of art, because it is not identical to reality. Such a convention is perceived as something generally accepted and taken for granted.
Secondary convention, or convention itself, is a demonstrative and conscious violation of artistic verisimilitude in the style of the work.
Violation of proportions, combination and emphasis of any components of the artistic world, revealing the frankness of the author's fiction, give rise to special stylistic techniques that indicate the author's awareness of playing with convention, turning to it as a purposeful, aesthetically significant means. Types of conventional imagery - fantasy, grotesque (grotesque is usually called the artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to the combination of incompatible things); related phenomena - hyperbole, symbol, allegory - can be both fantastic (Grief-Misfortune in ancient Russian literature, Lermontov's Demon) and plausible (the symbol of the seagull, the cherry orchard in Chekhov).
Convention and fantasy in a work of fiction
Esin A.B. Principles and techniques of analyzing a literary work. - M., 1998
The artistic world is conditionally similar to primary reality. However, the measure and degree of convention varies in different works. Depending on the degree of convention, such properties of the depicted world as life-likeness and fantasy differ, which reflect different degrees of difference between the depicted world and the real world.
Life-likeness presupposes “the depiction of life in the forms of life itself,” according to Belinsky, that is, without violating the physical, psychological, cause-and-effect and other laws known to us.
Science fiction involves a violation of these patterns, emphasizing the implausibility of the depicted world. So, for example, Gogol’s story “Nevsky Prospekt” is life-like in its imagery, and his “Viy” is fantastic.
Most often we encounter individual fantastic images in a work - for example, the images of Gargantua and Pantagruel in Rabelais's novel of the same name, but fantasy can also be plot-based, as, for example, in Gogol's story "The Nose", in which the chain of events from beginning to end is completely impossible in the real world.