Epic as a type of literature is the main epic genre. Epic as a type of literature
Genres epic kind
The greatest productivity of the typological approach was found in the study of narrative genres, so it is advisable to start with their consideration. In identifying and classifying genres, the most effective was turning to substantive features, thanks to which it was possible to determine the specifics of the two main genres of world literature - heroic epic And novel.
This principle was essentially first applied and justified by Hegel, who proposed that in the study of genres we should focus on the type of situation and the principle of interaction between the hero and society. Virtually all subsequent researchers followed the path of comparing the ancient epic and the novel, including Hegel’s contemporaries - Schelling, Belinsky, and then Veselovsky and many scientists of the 20th century. As a result, it was found that historically the first type of narrative genres was heroic epic, which in itself is heterogeneous, because it includes works that are similar in type of situation, but different in “age” and type of characters.
The earliest form of heroic epic can be considered some variants of the mythological epic, in which the main character is the so-called first ancestor, a cultural hero who performs the functions of the organizer of the world: he makes fire, invents crafts, protects the family from demonic forces, fights monsters, establishes rituals and customs .
Another version of the heroic epic, called archaic, is distinguished by the fact that the hero combines the features of a cultural hero-ancestor and a brave warrior, knight, hero, fighting for the territory and independence of an ethnic group. Such heroes include, for example, Väinemäinen, a character in the Karelian-Finnish epic “Kalevala,” or Manas, a hero in the Kyrgyz epic of the same name.
The most mature forms of the heroic epic, called classical, include the Iliad, the Song of Sid, the Song of Roland, Serbian youth songs, and Russian epics. They were born at different times (the Iliad dates back to the 8th century BC, French songs about deeds date back to the 11th century, and Russian epics and heroic stories date back to the 11th–15th centuries AD), and received different names (epics, epics, dumas, songs about deeds, sagas, runes, olonkho), differed in volume, type of plot-compositional and stylistic organization, but contained common typological qualities, which gives reason to classify them as a genre of heroic epic. Among the most important of these qualities: 1) highlighting one or two main characters; 2) emphasizing their strength, courage and courage; 3) emphasizing the purpose and meaning of their actions aimed at the common good, be it building peace or fighting enemies. In other words, the hero was not the bearer of an individual and personal worldview that distinguished him from others, but the best exponent of the general spirit, universally significant values, which Hegel called substantial.
Hegel associated the objective prerequisites for the emergence of genres of the heroic type with the “heroic state of the world,” that is, the period when the protection of fundamental, fateful interests is required, for example, preserving the integrity of the territory of one or another people. Dynastic struggle, according to the philosopher’s subtle remark, does not fall within the scope of heroic actions.
The study of the heroic epic, as mentioned, in the 50s and 60s in the 20th century. were engaged in V.M. Zhirmunsky, E.M. Meletinsky, V.Ya. Propp, B.N. Putilov, P.A. Grinzer. The judgments of M.M., published in the 70s. Bakhtin’s approach to the ancient epic attracted special attention, but essentially demonstrated the same train of thought that had long been established in the science of genres. He considers the epic as the earliest type of narrative and is characterized by three constitutive features: “1) the subject of the epic is the national epic past;
2) the source of the epic is national tradition (and not personal experience and free fiction growing on its basis);
3) the epic world is separated from modernity, that is, from the time of the singer, by an absolute epic distance” (Bakhtin, 1975, 456). Characterizing this past, Bakhtin uses such concepts as “the world of beginnings and peaks” national history, the world of the first and best, fathers and ancestors." This means that time becomes a value category, and the singer’s position coincides with the position of the heroes, therefore, in Hegel’s words, there is little sense of subjectivity here, and according to Bakhtin’s logic, there is no dialogism. Bakhtin insisted on relegating the epic to the distant past, denying it the right to exist in later eras, and, of course, in modern times. Meanwhile, the need to reproduce heroic situations in interaction with tragic and dramatic ones persisted in the 19th and 20th centuries, as evidenced by works about the national liberation struggle, in particular about the Russian struggle against Napoleon in 1812, as well as about the struggle different nations Europe with fascism in the 40s of the twentieth century.
Another genre, dating back about ten centuries of existence, is novel, the emergence of which most scientists associate with the spread of a type of worldview called humanism and which was determined by the conditions of the New Age, i.e., the time of activation of the individual in different areas life. To the west European literature XI–XII centuries this was realized in the depiction of heroes, most often knights, who fought for their personal honor and performed feats to win the recognition of their beloved. At the same time, courage, boldness, bravery and audacity were demonstrated, but not in the name of defending the interests of society, but in the name of self-affirmation, primarily in the sphere of love relationships. And although such self-affirmation was associated primarily with the generally recognized courtly-knightly code of conduct, a personal element was already manifested in it. This was noted by almost all historians of foreign literature who studied the literature of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The type of novel that emerged at that time was called the adventure-knightly one; experts cite the novels of Chrétien de Troyes as an example and even a model of such a novel, although, of course, other authors are known (Mikhailov, 1976; Andreev, 1993).
In the XVI–XVII centuries. A so-called picaresque adventure novel developed, presented by the nameless author of the essay “The Life of Lazarillo from Tormes”, and then by P. Scarron, A. Furetier and other writers representing various European literatures. This line ends with the famous French novel “The History of Gilles Blas of Santillana” (author A. Lesage). The name of his hero has become a household name, which is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that in Russian literature of the 10-30s of the 19th century. Several “Gilles Blases” appeared, including “Russian Gilles Blases, or The Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov” by V.T. Narezhny (1814). This type of novel in Western European literature cultivated a hero who is free, independent, sometimes very smart, talented, achieving well-being in life and social status not by birth, but by one’s own intelligence, ingenuity, cunning and even trickery.
The next stage in the development of the novel coincides with the 18th century. and indicates a new stage in its formation. The most significant works of this stage are the novels of A. Prevost, S. Richardson, J. - J. Rousseau, I.V. Goethe, although these names do not exhaust the novelism of this period. Writers of that time were not interested in the adventures of heroes and the struggle for a place in life, but in their mental, moral, psychological life, the complexity of relationships with society and with each other. Beginning of the 19th century was marked by the appearance of novels by D.G. Byron, W. Scott, R. Chateaubriand, E.E. Senancourt, A. Musset, V. Hugo, B. Constant, and in Russia - A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov.
In the 19th century the novel continued its development in European literature, occupying a particularly significant position in Russian literature, which was repeatedly noted by Western European artists of different periods. “I have an almost religious feeling towards Russia. It came through reading Russians novels of the 19th century V. and is associated primarily with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Literary circles in England are simply obsessed with them. Of course, there is also Lermontov, Turgenev... But these two are kings. I think they are the greatest novelists of all time. Greater than Dickens, than even Proust,” noted the English writer Iris Murdoch in an interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta on 02.12. 1992
Since the 30s of the XX century. The development of the genre in Western Europe and Russia proceeded differently. This was revealed in the active development of the European novel and the fading of the Soviet novel due to the switching of attention from the individual, searching, thinking, critical of society, to the heroic, preoccupied with the problems of the life of the state and prone to authoritarian thinking, characteristic of Soviet society of that period. The place of the novel was taken by works often called heroic epic.
In the process of studying the novel, several concepts emerged, largely intertwined with each other and oriented towards the Hegelian concept of genres (Kosikov, 1994). In the 70s, M. Bakhtin’s concept, which combined the features of traditionalism and innovation, was made public and aroused active interest. Traditionality lay in the comparison of the ancient epic and the novel; innovation lay in evaluating the novel from a dialogic perspective. Based on the idea of dialogism, Bakhtin proposed an interpretation of the novel, which suggests that the prerequisites for the emergence of the novel developed not in the Renaissance, but in antiquity, when heteroglossia appeared and genres such as Socratic dialogue and Menippean satire arose. The subject of reproduction in them is modern reality, as something “fluid and transitory”, perceived in a comic sense. Thanks to this, the “epic distance” disappears, “the author finds himself in a new relationship with the depicted world: they are now in the same value-time dimensions, the depicting author’s word lies in the same plane with the depicted word of the hero and can enter into a dialogical relationship with it " As a result, the specific features of the novel as a genre are: “1) stylistic three-dimensionality associated with multilingual consciousness; 2) a radical change in the time coordinates of the literary image; 3) a new zone of image construction, namely the zone of maximum contact with the present (modernity) in its incompleteness... Through contact with the present, the object (image) is involved in the incomplete process of the formation of the world, and the stamp of incompleteness is imposed on it” (Bakhtin, 1975, 454). Thus, the phenomenon of incompleteness, unpreparedness, inherent in real reality, is transferred to the novel world and its hero, becoming the leading constitutive feature of the novel genre.
The idea of dialogism gave rise to the idea that there are two lines in the development of the novel, represented, on the one hand, by a sophistic, monolingual novel, and on the other, by a two-voice, bilingual novel, which later transformed into monologue and polyphonic types of novel. The originality and superiority of a polyphonic novel lies in the fact that it portrays someone else’s consciousness as someone else’s, independent, and the hero is shown as free, independent of someone else’s will and inaccessible to “completion” on the part of the author. In other words, the hero appears as “unfinished”, “unprepared”, not fully knowing himself and not striving to understand and acquire that life position that can be recognized as undeniable, authoritative and at the same time not dogmatic. Any “internally convincing word” (opinion, conviction) acquired by the hero is not final, because “the last word about the world has not yet been said.” Thus, authority is identified by Bakhtin with authoritarianism, indisputability with dogmatism, and completeness with the suppression of the personal principle.
The concepts that existed before this, as already mentioned, primarily associated the novel with an emphasis on the hero as an individual and his difficult relationships with peace. The obvious flaw in these concepts was their excessive generalization in understanding both the individual and society. Therefore, further clarification and identification of the specifics of the novel required a deeper substantiation of the concepts of society and personality. The current state of psychology, philosophy, ethics, and cultural studies has made it possible to bring greater clarity to the understanding of personality, distinguishing between the concepts of “man,” “individual,” and “personality” and emphasizing that personality is an individual who has a certain level of consciousness and self-awareness. Research by sociologists has confirmed that the category “society” is also overly broad and it is advisable to use when studying it the concepts of “macroenvironment”, “environment”, “microenvironment”, “personal environment”, which help to more specifically explain the relationship between the individual and society.
Based on the achievements of related sciences and considering the novel as a type of meaningful genre form, it can be argued that the defining typological quality of the novel as a genre is the presence of a situation in the center of which is novel microenvironment, represented, as a rule, by one, two or three personal heroes. The fate of such heroes unfolds against the background and in contact with environment, represented by a different number of characters. As a result, in the novel there is always character differentiation, affecting primarily the promotion of foreground heroes who make up the microenvironment, to whom it is given most of space and time reproduced in the novel. Due to this novel plot, striving for breadth and scale, as a rule, it is limited in space and time to that period of the heroes’ lives that is necessary for the manifestation or formation of their worldview, for them to acquire the most intelligible, from the point of view of the hero and the author, life position. This period can be relatively short, as in the novels of Turgenev, longer, as in the novels of Constant, Pushkin, Lermontov, and very long, as in the novels of O. Balzac, L. Tolstoy, T. Mann, J. Galsworthy and others. In a word , spatio-temporal organization, or novel chronotope, is determined by the central link of the novel situation, that is, by the fate of the heroes who make up the so-called novel microenvironment.
The differentiation of characters, reflecting the relationship between the microenvironment and the environment, fixes conflict in the novel situation(“discord between the poetry of the heart and the prose of relationships that opposes it,” as Hegel wrote). True, conflict can manifest itself in different ways. In some cases, it arises as a result of the struggle of heroes for their place in the sun, for their position in society, as was the case in picaresque adventure novels, and partly in the novels of Stendhal (“Red and Black”) and Balzac (“Lost Illusions”). In most cases, conflict is revealed in the drama that colors the moods of the characters and their lives. There are a great many examples of this.
Close attention to the inner world of the individual gives rise to psychologism, which can be direct (in dialogues, monologues and remarks), indirect (in actions, gestures, portraits), secret, as Turgenev said, and explicit, naked, “visual”, as Dostoevsky showed. It can manifest itself in psychologically charged actions, statements, psychologically rich portraits and other kinds of details.
The desire to analyze and evaluate the inner world of heroes inevitably gives rise to the desire to demonstrate and evaluate the significance of this world, the degree of its authority and truth. This quality is most obvious in climaxes plot and its denouement, as a reflection of the result of life and spiritual path the hero at the stage of his life that is depicted in the novel. The feeling of finality is an indicator of the completeness of the novel situation, or monologue(Esalnek, 2004).
The idea of monologism and completeness, as already said, was polemically perceived by Bakhtin and seemed inorganic for the novel. Probably, one of the incentives for such perception was the atmosphere of modern life and Russian literature of the Soviet period, which often cultivated a hero for whom the authoritarian word, that is, the idea of the need for self-denial, civic duty, and devoting oneself to the common cause seemed quite convincing. Internally polemicizing with Bakhtin, the Hungarian scholar D. Kiraly wrote: “The resolution of a novel’s situation cannot do without resolving the situation through the completeness of fate... completeness is saturated with moral conclusions for the characters themselves and for the reader, this becomes the main task of completion” (Kiraly, 1974).
Other researchers also paid attention to Bakhtin’s absolutization of the idea of the independence of the heroes, the independence of their position from the author, and most importantly, the absence of a “persuasive word” in the novel. “By its very essence, the novel deals not with many equivalent truths and worldviews, but with one single truth - the truth of the hero. Being a full-fledged bearer of the “novel” truth, the hero is inevitably in a privileged position” (Kosikov, 1976). Not finding in Soviet literature a novel depicting a free, independent personality, not burdened by the authoritarian ideas of his era, Bakhtin, of course, was right. But attributing such qualities to any novel was hardly fair and “fell into exaggeration from enthusiasm.” From this we can conclude that monologism is an organic quality of a novel, explainable by the novel’s situation.
The comparative study of the two main genres of world literature, characteristic of many works on the genological profile, is apparently not accidental, because the focus on these genres allows us to imagine the specifics of many other genres that come into contact with them. "Contact" gives different variations. Firstly, it is well known that in the history of literature genre formations appear, generated by the combination of two genre trends, one of which turns out to be romantic, and the other is associated with works of a heroic orientation. Among them is an epic novel, to which Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and “ Quiet Don» Sholokhov. Another genre in which the novelistic principle is internally intertwined with the mythological is the mythical novel. An example is the novels of T. Mann (“Joseph and His Brothers”), Russian-Kyrgyz writer Ch. Aitmatov (“And longer than a century lasts a day"), etc.
In addition, under the name of a novel there are often works that have not received any other designation, but still differ from the heroic and novel epic, since their main content is not the image of society at the moment of its formation, as in heroic epic, not a depiction of society in a relationship with a person who opposes him with his spiritual capabilities, as in a novel, but a reproduction of the life and everyday life of a particular social environment without its differentiation, with an emphasis on its stability, immutability and very often conservatism. This type of work traces its origins to ancient Roman literature and finds a place in the literature of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and subsequent eras.
In the 20-30s of the XIX century. The phrase “moral descriptive novel” appeared in Russian criticism. Modern scientists have used the concept moral description for terminological designation genre features this type of work. This type of genre, also called ethological, is discussed in detail and thoroughly in the works of G.N. Pospelov (Problems historical development literature, 1972), L.V. Chernets (Literary genres, 1982) and a number of articles by other authors. In Russian literature, Nekrasov’s narrative “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, called a poem, can be classified as a similar genre type, and in the 20th century. – many works of so-called village prose, in which the predominant tendency is to reproduce established life, shown in the aspect of different emotional tonality. Works of an ethological nature can be of different sizes: detailed, like the named poem by Nekrasov, medium-scale, which include the stories of V. Belov, V. Rasputin, V. Astafiev, and very small ones, which include numerous essays, appeared in Russian and Western European literature in the 40s of the 19th century. and continued to live in the 20th century. (Mesterhazy, 2006).
Turning to the definition of the so-called middle genres, i.e. stories, It is impossible not to notice that the word “story” means narration, and in terms of content (hence the plot and composition) the stories can be different. For example, the story by I.S. Turgenev (“Asya”, “Spring Waters”, “First Love”, “Faust”), L.N. Tolstoy (“The Death of Ivan Ilyich”), A.P. Chekhov (“The Lady with the Dog”, “About Love”, “The Bride”, “House with a Mezzanine”), as well as many stories by I.A. Bunina,
A. Kuprina, L. Andreeva, Y. Kazakova, Y. Trifonova focus on the dramatic fate of a not entirely ordinary person, that is, they essentially contain a novelistic beginning. In numerous stories of various scales that appeared in Russian literature back in the 11th–17th centuries, and then in the 20th century. (“Alpine Ballad”, “Sotnikov”, “Wolf Pack”, “In the Fog”
B. Bykova, “And the dawns here are quiet” by B. Vasilyev) a situation of a heroic nature is visible, as a rule, complicated by tragedy.
As the work of a variety of artists shows, the concept of a story often intersects with the concept story, and both of them can and do replace each other. Concerning short stories, then its roots and origins are in the Renaissance. At the same time, among the Spaniards the term “novela”, when it arose, meant works of any duration; among the French, a short story is very often a small novel; among the Italians, it is something opposite to the old novel and close to the new one that took shape in the 17th–18th centuries. According to the most authoritative researcher of the novel E.M. Meletinsky, “in a number of cases, the boundary between a short story and a novel becomes extremely unstable, which is reflected in the terminology... there is no approximate theoretical definition of a short story, since it appears in the form of various options due to cultural and historical differences” (Meletinsky, 1990). In Russian literature, the term “short story” is rarely used, and in essence this type of work often overlaps with short stories and tales. “Belkin’s Tales” could be classified as short stories.
In the designation of genres in Lately individual authorial nominations often predominate, which cannot be ignored (let us recall such designations as Astafiev’s “zatesi”, Bondarev’s “moments”, Solzhenitsyn’s “tiny things”), but for the most part they do not imply actual genre features and characteristics. As for the novel, the most bizarre names can be found here: a novel-museum, a novel-journey, a novel-summary, a meta-novel, a novel-fragment, chapters from a novel with a newspaper, an unwritten novel, a novel-version, a novel-dissertation, etc. The same applies to the story: essay story, Spanish suite, fairy tale for new adults, narrative score, road fantasy and many others. The use of such designations indicates a desire to emphasize individual stylistic tendencies in the work or becomes an example of a kind of play with text, characteristic of postmodernism. Recognizing the openness and incompleteness of genre processes in modern literature, one should not ignore the existence of established genre structures, despite the fact that they exist in a variety of modifications.
Dramatic genres
The main dramatic genres have also come a long way of development, preserving the basic genre-forming features and forming numerous specific historical variations. Therefore, comprehension of their essence is also possible only by relying on the historical-typological principle of research.
The study of dramatic genres began almost simultaneously with the appearance of the first dramatic works, and the founder of this process was Aristotle, who identified tragedy And comedy and distinguished them according to the content and method of development of the action, i.e., according to the originality of the plot, meaning in this case by the plot the internal integrity and mutual connection of the parts. At the same time, the greatest attention was paid to the tragedy, in connection with reflections on which the concepts of the tragic guilt of the hero, catharsis caused by the emotional impact of what was happening on stage and generating fear and compassion among the heroes and spectators of the tragedy arose. Comedy is associated with the comic, with ridicule of inconsistency, disproportion of certain traits in a person’s character and behavior.
At present, the judgments expressed by Aristotle seem quite obvious and well-known, but for several centuries they remained the subject of comprehension and discussion by both artists and drama researchers. One of the first to think about the same problems was the Roman poet Quintus Horace Flaccus, who outlined his views in the Epistle to the Piso, or The Art of Poetry. Active debates, the subject of which were the features of the genres themselves and their interpretation in Aristotle’s Poetics, took place during the Renaissance.
During the Baroque period, concepts emerged pastoral drama And tragicomedy. The 17th century in France and England produced outstanding playwrights and drama theorists, including D'Aubignac, author of the work “The Practice of the Theatre”; Chaplin – one of the authors of “Opinions of the French Academy on the tragicomedy “Cid””; Dryden, author of “Essay about dramatic poetry"; Milton, who prefaced his drama "Samson the Fighter" with the preface "On that kind of dramatic poetry called tragedy." Playwrights Corneille, Moliere and Racine also played the role of theorists. The most famous dramatic genres are tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, pastoral as a type of tragicomedy, heroic play as a kind of tragedy.
The 18th century is no less rich in dramatic works, including works by Russian playwrights. The theory is even richer, which is fueled by the ideology of the Enlightenment and, according to experts, goes ahead of practice. The main theorists include D. Diderot (“On Dramatic Poetry”, “The Paradox of the Actor”, “Conversations about the Bastard”), G. Lessing (“Hamburg Drama”, etc.), as well as Voltaire and S. Johnson, who spoke out O modern genres in connection with reflections on the work of Shakespeare.
The main feature of the genre theory of the 18th century. - justification for a new type of genre, which was called bourgeois or everyday tragedy, That tearful comedy and as a result began to be called bourgeois drama and then just drama. Thus, the third, middle, as they said then, genre of the dramatic kind was realized only in the 18th century, although examples of this type of work most likely appeared earlier, including in Shakespeare.
Schelling and Hegel, especially the latter, made significant contributions to the theory of drama. For Hegel, the genre of tragedy was associated with tragic pathos, which found itself in classical form in ancient tragedy. He also called the works of the romantic period, in particular Schiller, tragedies, while drawing attention to their difference from ancient tragedies due to the predominance of subjectively significant goals and intentions in the actions of the heroes. F. Schlegel and his older brother A. Schlegel discussed drama in their “Readings on Dramatic Art.” He based his theoretical generalizations on the material of ancient tragedy and romantic drama, to which, in his opinion, the works of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega, as well as his contemporaries Goethe and Schiller, belonged. Among the new dramatic genres are family paintings And touching dramas.
In France, the problems of drama in various aspects, including genre, were discussed in the works of Stendhal, Hugo, de Staël; in England - Byron, Shelley; in Russia - Griboyedov, Pushkin, etc. In the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. questions of the specifics of dramatic types of works arose in connection with the works of Wagner, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Shaw, and in Russia - Gogol, Ostrovsky, A. Tolstoy, L. Tolstoy, Chekhov. The writers themselves often acted as theorists. About drama researchers in Russian science of the 2nd half of the 20th century. stated in the section devoted to the problem of childbirth. The theory and history of drama are examined very thoroughly in a series of works by A.A. Anixta (1967, 1972, 1980, 1983, 1988).
So, dramatic works created over many centuries evolved, were filled with different specific content depending on the time and place of their creation, but retained a tendency towards typological properties, the main of which were conflict and modality, sometimes very ambiguous, i.e. inclusive different emotional tendencies. The terminology used to name dramatic works was enriched in the twentieth century. concepts that are very often neutral in relation to the actual genre characteristics (plays, scenes, etc.), or testify to the author’s ideas.
Genres of the lyrical and lyric epic type
Many lyrical genres in European literature have been known since Antiquity. This odes, hymns, satires, elegies, epigrams, epitaphs, epistles, madrigals, epithalamas, eclogues etc. Titles were assigned to works of a certain content. Later, during the Renaissance, there appeared sonnets, stanzas, ballads. Almost all of them continued to function in the future, including in the 19th century, as evidenced by the work of Russian and Western European poets of that time. The most common have become ode, elegy, satire.
Since in lyric poetry the main content is borne by reflection and experience, its character depends on the object of reflection and on the emotional perception of it by the lyrical hero. Genre designations are also associated with this. Oda always responds to material worthy of glorification and glorification. Such “material” can be individuals who have accomplished something significant and highly valued by society (“Ode on the Accession to the Throne of Elizabeth Petrovna” by M.V. Lomonosov), historical events of a national scale (“Ode on the Capture of Khotin” by the same author), even some qualities of people or features of their worldview - courage, courage, dignity, freedom, desire to comply with laws (“Liberty” by A.N. Radishchev and “Liberty” by A.S. Pushkin).
Satire, as its name shows, is born as a result of a critical understanding of certain aspects of life, resulting in emotional reflection about some specific shortcomings in the life of society or its individual members. Satires were written in the 18th century. A. Kantemir, A. Sumarokov, V. Kapnist and others.
The elegy is dominated by a dramatic tonality, which appears during the emotional experience of some contradictions, disharmony, disorder in the life of an individual, in the state of society, in the relationship between man and the world, etc. Sometimes the poet directly calls his work an elegy, as, for example, A.S. Pushkin (“The Faded Fun of Crazy Years”) or N.A. Nekrasov (“Let changing fashion tell us”). But for the most part, the belonging of a poem to the genre of elegy, as well as to the genre of ode or satire, is realized when analyzing their content.
However, it is not always easy to establish boundaries between lyrical genres. Back in the 18th century, when such “borders” were considered quite firm, the Russian poet M. Khemnitser, famous at that time, wrote poems in which not a solemn, but a sad-ironic tonality prevailed (“Wealth”, “Gold”, “Noble Breed” "), but called them moral odes. In the 19th century, lyrical works especially often combined different types of moods; in the 20th century. this trend is intensifying. In addition to the objective features caused by the mixing and interweaving of different emotional tendencies and orientation towards different forms, there is added the need to introduce an authorial element into the designation of the genre specificity of a lyrical work. Hence, along with the traditional names of lyrical texts, we find such as “Lullaby in an Undertone” (Samoilov), “Lullaby of Cod Cape” (Brodsky), “Lullaby for Lena Borisova” (Kibirov), “Dialogue” (Vinokurov), “My Verse” "(Vanshenkin), etc. (See: Abisheva, 2008). All this means that determining genre features when reading and even analyzing lyrical works is quite difficult, but it is possible if you focus on the content features, i.e. modality.
Long-term debates about the essence and interaction of genre and generic principles in artistic creativity, which have not been completed to this day, have not become a serious obstacle to the identification and designation of those types of works that exist under the name lyric epic. These primarily include poems. Poems differ in the degree of manifestation or presence of epic or lyrical principles, as well as in genre orientation. The epic beginning in them is determined by the fact that there are characters here, although not very numerous and not shown in great detail in action, but possessing external signs. They appear against the backdrop of nature or everyday life and take some part in the action, due to which in the poems sufficient attention is paid to the characters of the characters depicted, but a lot of space is also given to descriptions of nature, terrain, and, in addition, to the thoughts of the author, which are traditionally called “lyrical” retreats." In poems they are very organic.
Poems gravitate towards two types: in one, the epic principle is quite clearly and actively revealed; in the other it is lyrical. For example, " Bronze Horseman“It was no coincidence that the author himself called it “The Petersburg Tale” on the basis that the center is the story about the fate of Eugene, starting from the moment of the flood and ending with the death of the hero on the island, near the former house of his bride, about a year after the death of Parasha: the flood occurred in November 1824, the “fatal” meeting of Eugene with Peter the Monument - in early autumn next year(“Once he slept // At the Neva pier. The days of summer // Were approaching autumn...”), shortly after which he died. The story is accompanied by descriptions of different places in St. Petersburg, pictures of the flood, and most importantly, the author’s lyrical statements about the misfortune that befell Eugene and other townspeople, and about the beauty and greatness of St. Petersburg, as well as thoughts about the role of Peter, who founded the city at the mouth of the Neva, which periodically “revolted” and threatened the city with destruction.
Lermontov's poem "Mtsyri" clearly gravitates towards the lyrical type. It includes 26 chapters, of which 25 are Mtsyri’s monologue, during which he talks about three days spent in freedom after escaping from the monastery, but a significant part of his monologue is occupied by emotionally charged descriptions of nature, and most importantly, the experiences that he shares with monk before his death. These experiences are full of bitterness, suffering from the feeling of a failed life. Such a highly emotional monologue gives reason to call the poem lyroepic, but with a predominance of the lyrical principle, which is expressed in the free composition characteristic of lyrical works.
Akhmatova’s “Requiem” can be classified as a lyrical poem. Its complex composition is explained by both the content and the conditions of creation of the work, which was born over several years (from 1935 to 1940), while individual parts of it were kept for a long time only in Akhmatova’s memory. The poem contains a prosaic introduction (“Instead of a Preface”), explaining the appeal to this idea; dedication; introduction; then six small chapters continuing the introduction; seventh (“Verdict”); chapters eight and nine (“To Death”), chapter ten (“Crucifixion”) and an epilogue in two parts.
A reminder of the facts that served as material for the poem (the arrest of all loved ones, the death of her husband, loneliness, waiting for her son’s verdict, standing in lines for prison, meeting with women like herself) is combined with tragic reflections on her fate and the fate of the country, with thoughts of death , which sometimes seems easier than life, with prayers for all those killed and suffering in the conditions of the then situation in the country. All this motivates a complex composition of the lyrical type and an emotionally expressive type of speech.
As for the actual genre characteristics, the term poem, on the one hand, it seems legitimate and succinct, on the other hand, it is not accurate enough, since under this name there are lyro-epic works of the heroic (“Vasily Terkin”), romantic (“Mtsyri”, “Gypsies”), morally descriptive (“Who lives well in Rus' ") plan and, of course, different modalities. Lyric epic genres include ballad, if the narrative principle appears more or less clearly in it.
Epic, unlike lyricism and drama, is impartial and objective at the moment of narration.
Epic genres
- Large ones - epic, novel, epic poem (poem-epic);
- Middle - story,
- Small - story, short story, essay.
Also included in the epic are folklore genres: fairy tale, epic, historical song.
Meaning
An epic work has no limitations in its scope. According to V.E. Khalisev, “Epic as a type of literature includes both short stories (...) and works designed for long-term listening or reading: epics, novels (...).”
A significant role for the epic genres is played by the image of the narrator (storyteller), who talks about the events themselves, about the characters, but at the same time delimits himself from what is happening. The epic, in turn, reproduces and captures not only what is being told, but also the narrator (his manner of speaking, his mentality).
An epic work can use almost any artistic means known to literature. The narrative form of an epic work “promotes the deepest penetration into the inner world of man.”
see also
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Literature
- Veselovsky A. N., Shishmarev V. F.,.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
- Khalizev V. E. Theory of literature. - M., 2009. - P. 302-303.
- Belokurova S. P. .
An excerpt characterizing Epic (a type of literature)
Julie wrote:"Chere et excellente amie, quelle chose terrible et effrayante que l"absence! J"ai beau me dire que la moitie de mon existence et de mon bonheur est en vous, que malgre la distance qui nous separe, nos coeurs sont unis par des liens indissolubles; le mien se revolte contre la destinee, et je ne puis, malgre les plaisirs et les distractions qui m"entourent, vaincre une certaine tristesse cachee que je ressens au fond du coeur depuis notre separation. Pourquoi ne sommes nous pas reunies, comme cet ete dans votre grand cabinet sur le canape bleu, le canape a confidences? Pourquoi ne puis je, comme il y a trois mois, puiser de nouvelles forces morales dans votre regard si doux, si calme et si penetrant, regard que j"aimais tant et que “je crois voir devant moi, quand je vous ecris.”
[Dear and priceless friend, what a terrible and terrible thing is separation! No matter how much I tell myself that half of my existence and my happiness lies in you, that, despite the distance that separates us, our hearts are united by inextricable bonds, my heart rebels against fate, and, despite the pleasures and distractions that surround me, I I cannot suppress some hidden sadness that I have been experiencing in the depths of my heart since our separation. Why aren’t we together, like last summer, in your big office, on the blue sofa, on the sofa of “confessions”? Why can’t I, like three months ago, draw new moral strength from your gaze, meek, calm and penetrating, which I loved so much and which I see before me at the moment I write to you?]
Having read up to this point, Princess Marya sighed and looked back at the dressing table, which stood to her right. The mirror reflected an ugly, weak body and a thin face. The eyes, always sad, now looked at themselves in the mirror especially hopelessly. “She flatters me,” thought the princess, turned away and continued reading. Julie, however, did not flatter her friend: indeed, the princess’s eyes, large, deep and radiant (as if rays of warm light sometimes came out of them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the ugliness of her whole face, these eyes became more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen a good expression in her eyes, the expression they took on in those moments when she was not thinking about herself. Like all people, her face took on a tense, unnatural, bad expression as soon as she looked in the mirror. She continued reading: 211
“Tout Moscou ne parle que guerre. L"un de mes deux freres est deja a l"etranger, l"autre est avec la garde, qui se met en Marieche vers la frontiere. Notre cher empereur a quitte Petersbourg et, a ce qu"on pretend, compte lui meme exposer sa precieuse existence aux chances de la guerre. Du veuille que le monstre corsicain, qui detruit le repos de l"Europe, soit terrasse par l"ange que le Tout Puissant, dans Sa misericorde, nous a donnee pour souverain. Sans parler de mes freres, cette guerre m"a privee d"une relation des plus cheres a mon coeur. Je parle du jeune Nicolas Rostoff, qui avec son enthousiasme n"a pu supporter l"inaction et a quitte l"universite pour aller s"enroler dans l"armee. Eh bien, chere Marieie, je vous avouerai, que, malgre son extreme Jeunesse, son depart pour l "armee a ete un grand chagrin pour moi. Le jeune homme, dont je vous parlais cet ete, a tant de noblesse, de veritable jeunesse qu"on rencontre si rarement dans le siecle ou nous vivons parmi nos villards de vingt ans. Il a surtout tant de franchise et de coeur. Il est tellement pur et poetique, que mes relations avec lui, quelque passageres qu"elles fussent, ont ete l"une des plus douees jouissances de mon pauvre coeur, qui a deja tant souffert. Je vous raconterai un jour nos adieux et tout ce qui s "est dit en partant. Tout cela est encore trop frais. Ah! Chere amie, vous etes heureuse de ne pas connaitre ces jouissances et ces peines si poignantes. Vous etes heureuse, puisque les derienieres sont ordinairement les plus fortes! Je sais fort bien, que le comte Nicolas est trop jeune pour pouvoir jamais devenir pour moi quelque chose de plus qu"un ami, mais cette douee amitie, ces relations si poetiques et si pures ont ete un besoin pour mon coeur. Mais n" en parlons plus. La grande nouvelle du jour qui occupe tout Moscou est la mort du vieux comte Earless et son heritage. Figurez vous que les trois princesses n"ont recu que tres peu de chose, le prince Basile rien, est que c"est M. Pierre qui a tout herite, et qui par dessus le Marieche a ete reconnu pour fils legitime, par consequent comte Earless est possesseur de la plus belle fortune de la Russie. On pretend que le prince Basile a joue un tres vilain role dans toute cette histoire et qu"il est reparti tout penaud pour Petersbourg.
Epic- (from the Greek epos - word, narrative, story) - one of the three main types of literature, in contrast to lyrics and drama, highlighting an objective image of reality, the author's description of events unfolding in space and time, a narration about various phenomena life, people, their destinies, characters, actions, etc. Special role in works of epic genres, the role of the bearer of the narrative (author-narrator or storyteller) is played, reporting on events, their development, characters, their lives, while separating himself from the depicted. Depending on the time span of events, major genres of epic are distinguished - epic, novel, epic poem, or epic poem; medium - a story and small - a story, short story, essay. Some genres of oral folk art also belong to the epic family: fairy tales, epics, fables.
Epic genres:
Novel- (from French roman - originally: a work written in one of the Romance (i.e. modern, living) languages, as opposed to written in Latin) - epic genre: a large epic work that comprehensively depicts the life of people in a certain period time or over the course of an entire human life. Characteristic properties of the novel: multi-linear plot, covering the fate of a number of characters; the presence of a system of equivalent characters; coverage of a wide range of life phenomena, formulation of socially significant problems; significant duration of action.
Story- small epic genre: prose work a small volume in which, as a rule, one or several events in the hero’s life are depicted. The circle of characters in the story is limited, the action described is short in time. Sometimes a work of this genre may have a narrator. The masters of storytelling were A.P. Chekhov, V.V. Nabokov, A.P. Platonov, K.G. Paustovsky, O.P. Kazakov, V.M. Shukshin.
Tale- a middle (between short story and novel) epic genre, in which a number of episodes from the life of the hero (heroes) are presented. In terms of volume, the story is larger than a story and depicts reality more broadly, drawing a chain of episodes that make up a certain period in the life of the main character; it has more events and characters, however, unlike a novel, as a rule, there is one storyline.
Epic- the largest genre form of epic. The epic is characterized by:
1. Wide coverage of the phenomena of reality, depiction of the life of the people in a historically significant way, crucial moment
2. Global problems of universal significance are raised
3. National content
4. Multiple storylines
5. Very often - relying on history and folklore
Journey- a literary genre based on a description of the hero’s wanderings. This can be information about the countries and peoples the traveler has seen in the form of travel diaries, notes, essays, and so on.
Epistolary genre is a genre of literary work characterized by the form of personal letters.
Confession- a literary genre that can be epic or lyrical in nature. one of the seven Christian sacraments, which also include baptism, communion, confirmation, marriage, etc. Confession required complete sincerity from a person, a desire to get rid of sins, and repentance. Having penetrated into the artist. Literally, confession acquired a didactic connotation, becoming a kind of act of public repentance (for example, in J. J. Rousseau, N. V. Gogol, L. N. Tolstoy). But at the same time, confession was also a means of moral self-affirmation of the individual. As a genre of lyric poetry, poetry was developed by the romantics. A confession is akin to a diary, but unlike it, it is not attached to a book. place and time.
Lyrics- one of the three main types of literature, highlighting the subjective image of reality: individual states, thoughts, feelings, impressions of the author, caused by certain circumstances, impressions. In lyric poetry, life is reflected in the experiences of the poet (or lyrical hero): it is not narrated about it, but an image-experience is created. The most important property of lyrics is the ability to convey an individual (feeling, state) as universal. Characteristic features of the lyrics: poetic form, rhythm, lack of plot, small size.
Lyric genres:
Elegy is a genre of lyric poetry: a poem of meditative (from the Latin meditatio - in-depth reflection) or emotional content, conveying deeply personal, intimate experiences of a person, as a rule, imbued with moods of sadness and light sadness. Most often written in the first person. The most common themes of elegy are contemplation of nature, accompanied by philosophical thoughts, love, usually unrequited, life and death, etc. This genre, which arose in the ancient era, enjoyed the greatest popularity in the poetry of sentimentalism and romanticism, the elegies of V.A. Zhukovsky, K.N. Batyushkova, A.A. Pushkina, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykova.
Message - poetic genre: a poetic letter, a work written in the form of an appeal to someone and containing appeals, requests, wishes, etc. (“To Chaadaev”, “Message to the Censor” by A.S. Pushkin; “Message to the Proletarian Poets” by V.V. Mayakovsky). There are lyrical, friendly, satirical, journalistic, etc.
There are lyric-epic genres that are at the intersection of lyric and epic. From the lyrics they have a subjective beginning, a clearly expressed author’s emotion, from the epic they have a plot, a narration of events. Lyric-epic genres gravitate toward poetic form. The larger lyric epic genre is the poem, the smaller one is the ballad.
Poem is a lyric-epic genre: a large or medium-sized poetic work (a poetic story, a novel in verse), the main features of which are the presence of a plot (as in an epic) and an image of a lyrical hero (as in lyric poetry)
Ballad is a genre of lyric-epic poetry: a narrative song or poem of a relatively small volume, with a dynamic development of the plot, the basis of which is an extraordinary incident. Often in a ballad there is an element of the mysterious, fantastic, inexplicable, unspoken, even tragically insoluble. By origin, ballads are associated with legends, folk legends, combine the features of a story and a song. Ballads are one of the main genres in the poetry of sentimentalism and romanticism. For example: ballads by V.A. Zhukovsky, M.Yu. Lermontov.
Drama- one of the three main types of literature, reflecting life in actions taking place in the present. These are works intended to be staged. The dramatic genre includes tragedies, comedies, dramas proper, melodramas and vaudeville.
Drama Genres:
Tragedy- (from Greek tragodia - goat song< греч. tragos - козел и ode - песнь) - один из основных жанров драмы: пьеса, в которой изображаются крайне острые, зачастую неразрешимые жизненные противоречия. В основе сюжета трагедии - непримиримый конфликт Героя, strong personality, with supra-personal forces (fate, state, elements, etc.) or with oneself. In this struggle, the hero, as a rule, dies, but wins a moral victory. The purpose of the tragedy is to cause shock in the viewer by what they see, which, in turn, gives rise to grief and compassion in their hearts: such a state of mind leads to catharsis - purification due to shock.
Comedy- (from the Greek from komos - a cheerful crowd, a procession at Dionysian festivals and odie - a song) - one of the leading genres of drama: a work based on ridicule of social and human imperfection.
Drama– (in the narrow sense) one of the leading genres of drama; a literary work written in the form of a dialogue between characters. Intended for performance on stage. Focused on spectacular expressiveness. The relationships between people and the conflicts that arise between them are revealed through the actions of the heroes and are embodied in a monologue-dialogue form. Unlike tragedy, drama does not end in catharsis.
About poetic meter
When working on any essay related to the analysis of a poetic text, you need to analyze poetic meter. Why is this so important? Because in a poetic work, not only the content is important, but also the form - that is, the rhythm, sound, music of the poem, which, in fact, forms the poem itself.
The most important thing is not just to determine the size, but to say in your essay what this size brings to the poem.
Iambic is an energetic, often solemn sound of verse, trochee is melodious and gentle (all lullabies are written in trochee and, by the way, following Lermontov - all poems in which there is night landscape). Three-syllable sizes are more flexible intonation, close to colloquial speech(This is probably why Nekrasov preferred them).
Well, let's get down to business. To easily determine the size, you must first remember what a foot is. A foot is a group of syllables, one of which is stressed. That's all.
Everyone knows, of course, that there are five poetic meters in Russian versification: two two-syllable and three three-syllable. Two-syllables are when there are two syllables in a foot, three-syllables are when there are three, respectively:
Trochee is a two-syllable meter with stress on the first syllable.
Iambic is a two-syllable meter with stress on the second syllable.
Let us introduce the following notations: ` - stressed syllable, _ - unstressed syllable.
Then the trochee will look like this: | ` _ |, and iambic - like this: | _` |.
Dactyl - like this: | ` _ _ |. It’s easy to remember: dactyl means “finger” in Greek. It’s true, it looks like: three phalanges, on the first nail, like three syllables, the first is marked with stress.
Anapest (“inverted, reflected” - even sounds in Russian like “stick (pestle) in reverse”) looks like this: | _ _ ` |.
Amphibrachium ("surrounded") - | _ ` _ |.
Now that we know everything, the simplest and, oddly enough, the most difficult thing for the guys to do is to mark each syllable of a poetic line with a dash. It is more convenient when all the strokes are the same, regardless of the length of the syllable. (Just in case: the number of syllables is equal to the number of vowel sounds). Function words, as a rule, are not marked with stress unless logical stress falls on them when reading a poem.
Well, for example, let’s take the first two lines of Akhmatova’s poem “Native Land”.
We don’t carry them on our chests in our treasured amulet,
We don’t write sobbing poems about her...
It will turn out like this:
_ ` _ ` _ _ _ ` _ _ _ `
_ ` _ ` _ ` _ _ _ ` _
Now this needs to be divided into groups of syllables (foots) so that inside each there is a stressed syllable... “Something is wrong here,” you say. Indeed, two-syllable Russian verse is characterized by pyrrhich - omission of stress. And this is very natural: not all words in our country consist of two syllables! If there were no such omissions, the poems would be like a monotonous drumbeat.
By the way, I’ll offer a twist for your essay: if you note that the sound of a word in a verse (a verse is a line of poetry) is emphasized and highlighted due to pyrrhic, that will be great. Provided, of course, that your teacher knows what pyrrhichium is.
Let's return to our (i.e. Akhmatov's) poem:
| _ ` | _ ` | _ _ | _ ` | _ _ | _ ` |
| _ ` | _ ` | _ ` | _ _ | _ ` | _
Note that the “tail” (what remains outside the foot) is not taken into account when determining the size.
So, for the first stanza of her poem, Akhmatova turns to the solemn sound of iambic pentameter - this, or a conclusion close to it, you would have to draw when analyzing the size of this poem.
But the second stanza will bring us surprises. It is so different that even the size changes:
Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,
Yes, for us it’s a crunch in the teeth...
How the size has changed is up to you to determine. What is also important is why it has changed so much, what this change reflects. I would like to draw your attention to this: the poetess emphasizes the first word (“yes”) with extra-metric stress (i.e., unnecessary in the verse). It's called a spondee and is quite rare. For example, in Pushkin’s “Poltava” the spondee conveys the rumbling, confusion of battle:
Drumming, clicks, grinding,
The thunder of guns, stomping, neighing, groaning...
POETRY RHYTHM
BIOSYLLABLE AND TRIPYSYLLABLE VERSE SIZES
The literature textbook for grade 6 contains the topics “Two-syllable meters of verse” and “Three-syllable meters of verse”, placed in different sections of the book. How do we work with them? First, we combine the topics. Secondly, to fully understand the topic, we use the following types of work.
I. Linguistic experiment.
Compare two performances of a stanza from the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov
"Three Palms"
First reading:
But darkness has just fallen to the ground,
The ax clattered on the elastic roots,
And the pets of centuries fell without life.
Their clothes were torn off by small children,
Their bodies were then destroyed,
And they slowly burned them with fire until the morning.
What words sound unusual because we don’t usually pronounce them?
Second reading: (The student reads this stanza, observing the normative
emphasis: “by the roots”, “plucked”, “until the morning”).
What changed? The poem spreads out, its energy and rhythm are lost. This means that rhythm is the most important attribute of a poem. (We are not talking about free verse without rhythm here.)
II. Comparison of the rhythms of surrounding life and poetic rhythm
The life around us, the life of nature and people, is built on rhythms. Day alternates with night, winter is replaced by spring... Where else do we find rhythmic alternations?
The guys’ answers: “At school, lessons alternate with breaks, the clock is ticking, the heart is beating, inhalation and exhalation alternate. There is rhythm in music, in dancing.”
Poems are also built on rhythm. Just as, for example, day alternates with night, forming a day, so a stressed syllable alternates with an unstressed one, forming a foot. The foot is repeated to form a line. The lines alternate with each other to form a poem.
III. Algorithm for determining poetic meter.
We try to read the poem expressively in order to convey its meaning to the listeners. But small children, having learned their first poems in their lives, read them in a chant, chant (that is, they read them incorrectly, “sticking out” the stressed syllables), but at the same time convey to the listener the clear rhythm of the verse:
1. Our / Tanya / loudly / cries/
2. Uro / nila / into the river / ball /
3. Hush / Tanya / don’t / cry
4. The ball is not / drowning / in the river.
There are 4 feet in a line. Each foot (except for two incomplete ones in 3.4 lines) represents an ordered alternation of two syllables (bisyllabic foot); first stressed – second unstressed |-- --|. The rhythmic pattern of the line is as follows:
1. ta-ta / ta-ta / ta-ta / ta-ta /
A two-syllable poetic meter with stress on the first syllable is a trochee. Easy to remember. If a keyword fits several times in a line - any two-syllable word with stress on the first syllable (for example, COLD) - it is a trochee:
2. cold/cold/cold/ho/
hush / Tanya / don’t / cry /
There are two two-syllable meters, three three-syllable meters. All other poetic meters are also determined using this algorithm:
Read the poetic stanza expressively.
Scan it.
Give it a rhythmic pattern.
Fill in the stanza with keywords.
Please indicate the size of the verse.
IV. Reference diagram
Key words for each of the five poetic meters are contained in the following table:
SUPPORT DIAGRAM
COLD, strong, HOREUS
JANUARY is sweeping, IAMB
DASHENKA DACTYL
IN THE PHARMACY OF AMPHIBRACHIUS
PINEAPPLE takes ANAPEST
Let’s immediately make a reservation that pineapples are not sold in pharmacies, but for the reference scheme it is not life-likeness that is important, but ease of memorization.
In literature courses, students are taught the following:
Anna Akhmatova - dactyl
Marina Tsvetaeva - amphibrachium
Nikolay Gumilyov - anapaest
This support can also be adopted.
For students, the support diagram I propose is convenient because keywords already suggest the name of the poetic meter. This is easier than placing accents, dividing a line into feet, especially since quite often the emphasis in a foot is not obvious, but hidden, additional | --- ---|, for example,
I do not regret, do not call, do not cry/
Everything will pass/ go like / with white/ apples/ smoke/
U-vya/ dan-ya/ zo-lo/ tom o/ grabbed/ ny/
I won't/ will/ more/ mo-lo/ smoke/
Traditionally, the phenomenon of missing schematic stress is called pyrrhichium (Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary M, 1987, p. 278). Gradually the term "pyrrhic" comes out of their use.
Based on a given situation with given rhymes, compose quatrains using all poetic meters (group work).
Situation: The boy Sanya brought a snake to school to scare the girls.
The girls got scared, and then, united, they pulled the joker’s ears.
Rhymes: Sanya - in your pocket
He rang out - he stayed
Possible options:
Horey: Managed to go to school Sanya
Bring the snake in your pocket.
A terrible scream suddenly rang out -
The hero remained a little alive.
Iambic (sing): Sanya decided today
Carrying a snake in your pocket,
The real bastard
Beautiful, shiny,
Such a cry was heard here -
Barely left alive!
Dactyl: This Sanya is such a strange person:
He managed to find a monster in his pocket
Bring it to class. A heart-rending scream rang out.
Our hero was almost left without ears.
Amphibrachius: Yesterday this Sanya made us laugh to tears:
He quietly brought the snake in his pocket.
A frantic scream rang out throughout the school,
Our Sanya was almost left without hair.
Anapest: Once Sanya came to school,
He brought the snake in his pocket.
Then such a heart-rending cry was heard -
Sanya almost became a stutterer.
CONCLUSION: The same content can be conveyed in different
poetic sizes.
Scope of application of the algorithm that determines poetic meter
Using the algorithm given above, the size of lines written in the syllabic-tonic (syllabic-stressed) system of versification is easily determined, including the size of the so-called “blank verse” (non-rhymed), for example, “Song of the Falcon” - iambic, “Song of Petrel" - trochee.
Naturally, it is impossible to determine the metric size (for lack of one) in A. Blok’s poem “She Came from the Frost,” written in free verse (free verse without rhythm), in some poems by A. Fet, E. Vinokurov, V. Soloukhin and others.
It is interesting to follow the rhythmic pattern in the poems written by Dolnik:
The girl/ sang/ in the church/ choir Dashenka/ cold/ pharmacy/ cold
About everyone/ tired/ in a foreign/ land January/ pharmacy/ January/ January
About all/ ships/ gone/ to sea January/ pineapple/ pharmacy/ cold
About everyone/ who forgot/ joy/ their January/ pharmacy/ cold/ January
We see here a random alternation of three-syllable and two-syllable feet with the same number of stresses in each line. Strictly speaking, these are not feet, but strong places (stressed syllables). The alternation of strong points (icts) and weak points (inter-tict intervals) gives the beat (beat, krat) and provides the poem with a tangible internal rhythm. (Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 87). The volume of interictic intervals is not constant, as in syllabic-tonic meters, but fluctuates in the range of 1-2 syllables (see first line):
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
And here is the rhythmic pattern of another Blok poem. Do you recognize his first line?
Ta / ta-ta-ta / ta-ta / ta-ta-ta
Xo/ Dashenka/ January/ pharmacy/
Yes, this is the well-known “Night. Smart girl. Flashlight. Pharmacy". Here we are also dealing with a debtor. Let's remember about great importance pauses in such verses (another name for dolnik is pauznik).
Dolnik (previously, the term pausnik was sometimes used) is a type of tonic verse, where only the number of stressed syllables coincides in the lines, and the number of unstressed syllables between them ranges from 2 to 0.
"Days (0) bull (0) peg,
Slow (2) years (1) cart,
Our (0) god (0) running,
The heart is (1) our (2) drum.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
General formula X Ú X Ú X Ú, etc. (Ú - stressed syllables, X - unstressed; the value of X is variable; X = 0, 1, 2). Depending on the number of stresses in a line, a distinction is made between two-stress, three-stress, four-stress, etc. This type of verse is typical for languages with tonic versification and is very often found in English, Russian, and German poetry. Can be distinguished whole line modifications of the dolnik, depending on the number of stresses in the line (some modifications of the dolnik do not retain an equal number of stresses, for example, many of Mayakovsky’s poems), on the degree of variation in the number of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, etc.
If lines with an inter-beat interval of 3 are allowed, they speak of a tact, if 4 or more - of an accented verse.
In Russian poetry, dolnik is a very old verse form. In its structure, it undoubtedly goes back to folk verse, which - minus the musical side of it - basically fits the formula of the tactician, and many lines fit into the rhythm of the dolnik (it was from folk verse that he argued theoretically ("An Experience on Russian Versification", 1812) and practically (“Rivers”, translated from Confucius and others) by Vostokov, who defended the introduction of dolnik into Russian poetry). In a certain sense, the trisyllabic meters of syllabic-tonic versification are also close to the dolnik, in which the pattern of the number of unstressed words between the stressed ones in a number of cases was not observed, due to which they represented a formation close to the dolnik (for example, Russian hexameter).
In Russian poetry, the dolnik was cultivated by the Symbolists, then by the Futurists. It was especially widespread in the poetry of the early 20th century (see chapters on dolnik in “Introduction to Metrics” by V. M. Zhirmunsky, pp. XXX, 184 and following).
The term “dolnik” was introduced in the early 1920s by V. Ya. Bryusov and G. A. Shengeli, but in relation to what is now known as accented verse. Initially, dolnik was called pausnik in Russian poetry (a term first noted by S.P. Bobrov), however, starting from the works of V.M. Zhirmunsky, the terms “dolnik” and “pausnik” are used as equivalent.
Rhyme
Rhyme (from the Greek rhythmós - harmony, proportionality), consonance of poetic lines, which has a phonic, metric and compositional meaning. R. emphasizes the boundary between verses and connects verses into stanzas. In the poetry of most peoples, R. is located at the ends of verses, but regular initial consonances are found (for example, initial assonances in Mongolian poetry). At different times and among different peoples, R. was presented with different requirements Therefore, there cannot be a single universal definition of R. based on its sound composition: it depends both on the literary tradition and on the phonetic structure of the language. For example, in Russian poetry the basis of rhyme is the consonance of stressed vowels; in the Czech language, in which the stress always falls on the initial syllable, the consonance of the last syllables may not depend on the place of stress.
According to the place of emphasis, R. are divided into men's- with emphasis on the last syllable (banks - rays), women's- with emphasis on the penultimate syllable (Ruslana - novel), dactylic- with stress on the third syllable from the end (chained - enchanted) and very rare hyperdactylic(quacks - jumps up) with a large number of post-stressed syllables (see Clause). The relative position of rhyming lines can be different. Basic rhyming methods: adjacent- according to the pattern aa bb... (The raven flies to the raven, / The raven shouts to the crow... - Pushkin ); cross- abab (The east was covered with a ruddy dawn, /In a village across the river/ A light went out... - Pushkin); encompassing, or encircling, - abba(The hops are already drying up on the tine. /Behind the farmsteads, on the farms, /In the cool sun rays/ Bronze melons turn red... - Bunin). These rhyming methods can alternate and intertwine in different ways. Poems for one R. - monorimes- are rare in European poetry, but widespread in the poetry of the Near and Middle East (see Ghazal, Qasida, Rubai). A certain, repeating arrangement of R. is one of the signs of a stanza.
In Russian poetry, R. originates from syntactic parallelism, widespread in folklore, thanks to which the same parts of speech appear at the ends of the verses in the same grammatical form, which generates the consonance: “Praise the hay in the haystack, and the master in the coffin.” In Old Russian. poetry was dominated by the so-called grammatical (suffixal-inflectional) R.: byashe - znashe, beats - drives away. From the 18th century R. heterogeneous, formed by different parts of speech (night - away, etc.) begins to be appreciated. At the same time (as earlier in French poetry, etc.), the requirement for an exact R. is gradually established, that is, one in which the final stressed vowel and all the sounds that follow it coincide (by you - by hand). If the so-called supporting consonants preceding the stressed vowel also coincide, R. is then called rich (rake - Zeus); if the consonance captures the pre-stressed syllable, it is deep (ill - could not). From the middle of the 19th century. in Russian verse, so-called approximate vowels are increasingly encountered, in which the overstressed vowels do not coincide (air - rozdykh). Since the beginning of the 20th century. poets more often use imprecise phrases of various types: assonance - consonance of vowels with a mismatch (usually partial) of consonants (cloud - about); truncated R., with truncation of the final consonant in one of the words (forest - cross, flame - memory); compound R. (to grow up to one hundred - old age); consonances in which the stressed vowels are different (norov - communards); unequally syllabic rhymes, in which masculine or dactylic endings rhyme with feminine or hyperdactylic endings (papakha - pokakhivaya).
R. also has a semantic meaning: it “... returns you to the previous line... makes all the lines that form one thought stick together” (Mayakovsky V.V., Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 12, 1959 , p. 235). An aesthetic assessment of poetry (its accuracy or inaccuracy, novelty or traditionality, etc.) is impossible outside the context of the poem, without taking into account its composition and style.
Sonnet(Italian sonetto, from Provence sonet - song), solid poetic form: poem of 14 lines, divided by 2 quatrains (quatrain) And 2 tercets (tercet); in quatrains only 2 rhymes are repeated, in terzettos - 2 or 3. The most common are 2 types of rhyme arrangement: 1) “Italian” - quatrains according to the scheme abab abab or abba abba, tercettoes according to the scheme cdc dcd or cdc cde; 2) "French" - abba abba and ccd eed or ccd ede. S.'s verse is 11-syllable in Italian and Spanish poetry, 12-syllable in French, iambic 5-foot in English, iambic 5- and 6-foot in German and Russian poetry. Various deviations from the classical scheme are possible: changing the order of rhymes (abab baab, “To the Poet” by A. S. Pushkin), introducing extra rhymes (abba cddc, etc.), introducing extra lines (S. with coda, etc. ), free order of quatrains and tercets, use of non-traditional meters, etc. Of these “free forms”, only “English S.” has been canonized to some extent. Shakespearean type (abab cdcd efef gg). The clear internal division of the syllable makes it possible to emphasize the dialectical development of the theme: already early theorists provided “rules” not only for the form, but also for the content of the syllable (pauses, dots on the boundaries of stanzas; not a single meaningful word is repeated; the last word is the semantic key of everything poems, etc.); In modern times, the development of a theme across 4 stanzas of S. has been more than once conceptualized as the sequence “thesis - development of the thesis - antithesis - synthesis”, “commence - development - climax - denouement”, etc.
Of all the solid poetic forms of European poetry, only S. has received wide and free use in lyric poetry. S. originated in Italy in the first half of the 13th century. It received its classical form in Florence at the end of the 13th century. (Dante), gained widest popularity thanks to F. Petrarch (317 sonnets about Laura), dominates the lyric poetry of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, from the 16th century. goes to Spain, Portugal, France, England (L. de Vega, L. Camoes, P. Ronsard, Du Bellay, W. Shakespeare, J. Donne, etc.), in the 17th century. reaches Germany in the 18th century. - Russia (V.K. Trediakovsky, A.P. Sumarokov). Romanticism revives interest in S., which had fallen during the era of classicism and Enlightenment; The centers of S. culture are Germany (A. Schlegel, N. Lenau, A. Platen), England (W. Wordsworth, E. B. Browning, D. G. Rossetti), and partly famous. countries (J. Kollar, A. Mickiewicz, in Russia - A. A. Delvig, A. A. Grigoriev) and France (C. Baudelaire, J. Heredia). S. was cultivated by the poetry of symbolism and modernism - P. Verlaine, P. Valery, G. D. Annunzio, S. George, R. M. Rilke, V. I. Ivanov, V. Ya. Bryusov and others; among the poets who overcame modernism - I. Becher, but for none of them this form became
fundamental in his work. In Sov. In poetry, I. Selvinsky, S. Kirsanov, and others experimented with the form of S.
Haiku
Haiku(otherwise known as haiku), genre and form of Japanese poetry; tercet, consisting of two encircling five-syllable verses and one seven-syllable in the middle. Genetically goes back to the first half-strophe tank(Hokku literally - initial verses), from which it differs in the simplicity of the poetic language, the rejection of previous canonical rules, and the increased role of associativity, understatement, and hint. In his development, X. went through several stages. The poets Arakida Moritake (1465-1549) and Yamazaki Sokan (1465-1553) saw X as a purely comic genre. The credit for turning X into a leading lyrical genre belongs to Matsuo Basho (1644-94); The main content of X. became landscape lyrics. The name of Taniguchi Buson (1716-83) is associated with the expansion of the theme of X. In parallel, in the 18th century. Comic X. developed, becoming an independent satirical and humorous genre of senryu. At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. Kobayashi Issa introduces civic motives into X. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Masaoka Shiki applied to X. the method of “sketches from life” (shasei), borrowed from painting, which contributed to the development of realism in the X genre.
What is haiku
HAIKU(otherwise - haiku, haikai) - a three-line (three-line) lyric poem, as a rule, which is the national Japanese form of "Dentosshi" (" poetic tradition"). In Haiku, nature and man are usually depicted in their eternal inseparability. In each Haiku, a certain measure of verses is observed - the first and third verses have five syllables, the second verse has seven, and in total there are 17 syllables in Haiku. Of course, this applies to Haiku in Japanese, but also in Russian, it is customary to adhere to a certain rhythmic pattern when writing haiku.
Matsuo Basho- recognized Master of Japanese poetry. Basho's haiku are truly masterpieces among the haiku of other Japanese poets. Basho is the pseudonym of the great poet. At birth, Basho was named Kinzaku, upon reaching adulthood - Munefusa; another name for Basho is Jinsichiro. Matsuo Basho is a great Japanese poet and theorist of verse. Basho was born in 1644 in the small castle town of Ueno, Iga Province (Hons Island
"Autumn has already arrived!" -
The wind whispered in my ear,
Sneaking up to my pillow.
He is a hundred times nobler
Who does not say at the flash of lightning:
"This is our life!"
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
Tanka - Japanese pentaverse poems
And I watch with envy how the white wave
He runs back to the abandoned edge.
Oh, if only in the world
You've never been here
Cherry blossoms!
Probably then in the spring
My heart was comforted.
Rubaiyat(quatrain), a form of lyric poetry of the peoples of the Middle East. Borrowed from the widespread oral folk art of the Persians and Tajiks (another name for R. in folklore is dubaiti or taran). In written literature, in which, unlike the syllabic folk meter, R. is built in the Aruz meter, it appears already in the 9th-10th centuries. (Rudaki and others) and since then has invariably served to express a lyrical theme with a predominance of philosophical reflections. From Persian-language literature, R. passes into Arabic, many Turkic-language literatures, and Urdu literature. As a genre form, poetry reached its peak in the mid-11th century, but from the 2nd half of the 12th century. noticeably gives way to the gazelle. R. consists of 4 hemistiches (or two beits), rhyming like aaba, less often like aaaa.
Omar Khayyam
Where did we come from? Where are we going on our way?
What is the meaning of our life? He is incomprehensible to us.
How many pure souls are under the azure wheel
It burns to ashes, to dust, and where, tell me, is the smoke?
Gazelle
Abu Ali ibn Sina.
Gazelleь (ghazal) - a lyrical poem in which two hemistiches of the first beit rhyme, and then the same rhyme is maintained in all second hemistiches of each subsequent beit like “aa, ba, ca, da”, etc. In the last beit of the ghazal it is often called the poetic name (tahallus) of the author.
Beautifully pure wine, its spirit is sublime and rich,
Its fragrance outshone the scent of roses
As in the teaching of the father, in bliss there is bitterness and grace,
A prude finds lies in wine, but a wise man finds a generous treasure of truths.
Wine is not harmful to the wise, it is ruin for the ignorant,
It contains poison and honey, good and evil, shadow of sorrows and light of delights.
A ban has been placed on wine due to the ignorance of the ignorant,
Unbelief splits the world into a bright paradise and a dark hell.
What guilt is there in the wine that a fool drinks it,
When drunk, he is happy to talk idle and, whatever he says, is out of place.
Drink wisely, like Abu Ali, I swear by the truth:
Wine will show the right path to the country, the true wind town.
There are ten signs of a noble soul,
Six humiliate her. You need to be free
To her from meanness, lies and low envy,
Neglect of loved ones leads to people's misfortune and pain.
If you are rich, then show your generosity to your friends,
Be their support and guiding star.
And if you fall into poverty, be strong and proud,
Let your face turn yellow in hopeless melancholy.
The age is short, our every breath may be our last,
Don’t worry about the world with fruitless worries,
Death plays backgammon tirelessly: we are checkers
Epic- a type of literature (along with lyrics and drama), a narrative about events supposed in the past (as if they had happened and are remembered by the narrator). The epic embraces existence in its plastic volume, spatio-temporal extension and event intensity (plot content). According to Aristotle's Poetics, epic, unlike lyric poetry and drama, is impartial and objective at the time of narration.
▪ Large - epic, novel, epic poem (poem-epic);
▪ Middle - story,
▪ Small - story, short story, essay.
Epic also includes folklore genres: fairy tale, epic, epic, historical song.
Meaning:
An epic work that has no limitations in its scope. According to V.E. Khalisev, “Epic as a type of literature includes both short stories (...) and works designed for long-term listening or reading: epics, novels (...).”
A significant role for the epic genres is played by the image of the narrator (storyteller), who talks about the events themselves, about the characters, but at the same time demarcates himself from what is happening. The epic, in turn, reproduces and captures not only what is being told, but also the narrator (his manner of speaking, his mentality).
An epic work can use almost any artistic means known to literature. The narrative form of an epic work “promotes the deepest penetration into the inner world of man.”
Until the 18th century, the leading genre of epic literature was the epic poem. The source of its plot is folk legend, the images are idealized and generalized, the speech reflects a relatively monolithic popular consciousness, the form is poetic (Homer's Iliad). In the XVIII-XIX centuries. The leading genre is the novel. The plots are borrowed mainly from modern times, the images are individualized, the speech reflects a sharply differentiated multilingual social consciousness, the form is prosaic (L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky).
Other genres of epic are tale, short story, short story. Striving for a complete reflection of life, epic works tend to be combined into cycles. Based on the same trend, an epic novel is emerging (“The Forsyte Saga” by J. Galsworthy).
One of the founders of Russian literary criticism was V.G. Belinsky. And although serious steps were taken in antiquity in developing the concept of literary gender (Aristotle), it was Belinsky who owned the scientifically based theory of three literary families, which you can get acquainted with in detail by reading Belinsky’s article “The Division of Poetry into Genus and Species.”
There are three types of fiction: epic(from Greek Epos, narrative), lyrical(a lyre was a musical instrument, accompanied by chanting poems) and dramatic(from Greek Drama, action).
When presenting this or that subject to the reader (meaning the subject of conversation), the author chooses different approaches to it:
The first approach: you can tell in detail about the object, the events associated with it, the circumstances of the existence of this object, etc.; in this case, the author’s position will be more or less detached, the author will act as a kind of chronicler, narrator, or choose one of the characters as the narrator; The main thing in such a work will be the story, the narration about the subject, the leading type of speech will be the narration; this kind of literature is called epic;
The second approach: you can tell not so much about the events as about the impression they made on the author, about the feelings they aroused; the depiction of the inner world, experiences, impressions will belong to the lyrical genre of literature; it is the experience that becomes the main event of the lyrics;
Third approach: you can depict an object in action, show it on stage; present it to the reader and viewer surrounded by other phenomena; this kind of literature is dramatic; In a drama, the author's voice will be heard least often - in stage directions, that is, the author's explanations of the actions and remarks of the characters.
Look at the table and try to remember its contents:
Types of fiction
EPOS
DRAMA
LYRICS
(Greek - narrative)
story about events, the fate of the heroes, their actions and adventures, a depiction of the external side of what is happening (even feelings are shown from their external manifestation). The author can directly express his attitude to what is happening.
(Greek - action)
image events and relationships between characters on the stage(a special way of writing text). The direct expression of the author's point of view in the text is contained in the stage directions.
(from the name of the musical instrument)
experience events; depiction of feelings, inner world, emotional state; the feeling becomes the main event.
Each type of literature in turn includes a number of genres.
GENRE is a historically established group of works united by common features of content and form. Such groups include novels, stories, poems, elegies, short stories, feuilletons, comedies, etc. In literary criticism the concept is often introduced literary type, this is a broader concept than genre. In this case, the novel will be considered a type of fiction, and genres will be various types of novels, for example, adventure, detective, psychological, parable novel, dystopian novel, etc.
Examples of genus-species relationships in the literature:
Genus: dramatic; view: comedy; genre: sitcom.
Genus: epic; view: story; genre: fantastic story etc.
Genres, being historical categories, appear, develop and eventually “leave” from the “active stock” of artists depending on the historical era: ancient lyricists did not know the sonnet; in our time, the ode, born in antiquity and popular in the 17th-18th centuries, has become an archaic genre; Romanticism of the 19th century gave rise to detective literature, etc.
Consider the following table, which presents the types and genres related to the various types of word art:
Genera, types and genres of artistic literature
EPOS
DRAMA
Poem (epic):
Heroic
Strogovoinskaya
Fabulous-
legendary
Historical...
Fairy tale
Bylina
Thought
Legend
Tradition
Ballad
Parable
Small genres:
proverbs
sayings
nursery rhymes...
EpicNovel:
Historical
Fantastic.
Adventurous
Psychological
R.-parable
Utopian
Social...
Small genres:
Lit. fairy tale...
A game
Ritual
Folk drama
Raek
Nativity scene...
Tragedy
Comedy:
provisions,
characters,
Drama:
philosophical
social
historical
social-philosophical
Vaudeville
Farce
Tragifarce...
Song
Hymn
Elegy
Sonnet
Message
Madrigal
Romance
Rondo
Epigram...
Modern literary criticism also highlights fourth, a related genre of literature that combines the features of the epic and lyrical genres: lyric-epic, which refers to poem. And indeed, by telling the reader a story, the poem manifests itself as an epic; Revealing to the reader the depth of feelings, the inner world of the person telling this story, the poem manifests itself as lyricism.
In the table you came across the expression “small genres”. Epic and lyrical works are divided into large and small genres, largely in volume. Large ones include an epic, a novel, a poem, and small ones include a story, story, fable, song, sonnet, etc.
Read V. Belinsky’s statement about the genre of the story:
“Our modern life is too diverse, complex, fragmented (...) There are events, there are cases that, so to speak, would not be enough for a drama, would not be enough for a novel, but which are deep, which concentrate so much life in one moment, no matter how much it can be eliminated in centuries: the story catches them and encloses them in its narrow framework. (...) Brief and quick, light and deep at the same time, it flies from subject to subject, splits life into little things and tears out leaves from the great book of this life." .
If a story, according to Belinsky, is “a leaf from the book of life,” then, using his metaphor, one can figuratively define a novel from a genre point of view as “a chapter from the book of life,” and a story as “a line from the book of life.”
Minor epic genres, to which the story belongs, is prose that is “intensive” in content: due to the small volume, the writer does not have the opportunity to “spread his thoughts along the tree,” get carried away with detailed descriptions, enumerations, reproduce a large number of events in detail, and often need to tell the reader a lot.
The story is characterized by the following features:
Small volume;
The plot is most often based on one event, the rest are only plotted by the author;
Small number of characters: usually one or two central characters;
One main issue is being solved; other issues are “derived” from the main one.
So,
STORY is a small prose work with one or two main characters, dedicated to depicting a single event. Somewhat more voluminous story, but the difference between a story and a story is not always clear: some people call A. Chekhov’s work “The Duel” a short story, and some call it a big story. The following is important: as the critic E. Anichkov wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, “it is the person’s personality that is at the center of the stories, and not whole group of people".
The heyday of Russian short prose begins in the 20s of the 19th century, which gave excellent examples of short prose epic prose, among which are the absolute masterpieces of Pushkin ("Belkin's Tales", "The Queen of Spades") and Gogol ("Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", St. Petersburg stories), romantic short stories by A. Pogorelsky, A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. Odoevsky and others. In the second half of the 19th century, short epic works were created by F. Dostoevsky ("The Dream of a Funny Man", "Notes from the Underground"), N. Leskov ("Lefty", "The Stupid Artist", "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"), I. Turgenev ("Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District", "King of the Steppes Lear", "Ghosts", "Notes of a Hunter"), L. Tolstoy (" Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Hadji Murat", "Cossacks", Sevastopol stories), A. Chekhov as the greatest master of the short story, works by V. Garshin, D. Grigorovich, G. Uspensky and many others.
The twentieth century also did not remain in debt - and stories by I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, M. Zoshchenko, Teffi, A. Averchenko, M. Bulgakov appear... Even such recognized lyricists as A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, M. Tsvetaeva “they stooped to despicable prose,” in the words of Pushkin. It can be argued that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the small genre of epic took a leading position in Russian literature.
And for this reason alone, one should not think that the story raises some minor problems and touches on shallow topics. The form of the story is laconic, and the plot is sometimes uncomplicated and concerns, at first glance, simple, as L. Tolstoy said, “natural” relationships: the complex chain of events in the story simply has nowhere to unfold. But this is precisely the task of the writer, to enclose a serious and often inexhaustible subject of conversation in a small space of text.
If the plot of the miniature I. Bunin "Muravsky Way", consisting of only 64 words, captures only a few moments of the conversation between the traveler and the coachman in the middle of the endless steppe, then the plot of the story A. Chekhov "Ionych" would be enough for a whole novel: the artistic time of the story covers almost a decade and a half. But it doesn’t matter to the author what happened to the hero at each stage of this time: it is enough for him to “snatch” several “links”-episodes from the hero’s life chain, similar friends on each other like drops of water, and the whole life of Doctor Startsev becomes extremely clear to both the author and the reader. “As you live one day of your life, you will live your whole life,” Chekhov seems to be saying. At the same time, the writer, reproducing the situation in the house of the most “cultured” family provincial town S., can focus all his attention on the clatter of knives from the kitchen and the smell of fried onions (artistic details!), but talk about several years of a person’s life as if they did not exist at all, or it was a “passing”, uninteresting time: “Four years have passed”, “Several more years have passed”, as if it’s not worth wasting time and paper on depicting such a trifle...
Image Everyday life a person devoid of external storms and shocks, but in a routine that forces a person to wait forever for happiness that never comes, became the cross-cutting theme of A. Chekhov’s stories, which determined the further development of Russian short prose.
Historical upheavals, of course, dictate other themes and subjects to the artist. M. Sholokhov in the cycle of Don stories he talks about terrible and wonderful human destinies during the time of revolutionary upheaval. But the point here is not so much in the revolution itself, but in the eternal problem of man’s struggle with himself, in the eternal tragedy of the collapse of the old familiar world, which humanity has experienced many times. And therefore Sholokhov turns to plots that have long been rooted in world literature, depicting private human life as if in the context of world legendary history. Thus, in the story “The Birthmark,” Sholokhov uses a plot as ancient as the world about a duel between father and son, unrecognized by each other, which we encounter in Russian epics, in the epics of ancient Persia and medieval Germany... But if ancient epic explains the tragedy of a father who killed his son in battle by the laws of fate, which is not subject to man’s control, then Sholokhov talks about the problem of a person’s choice of his life path, the choice that determines everything further events and in the end makes one a beast in human form, and the other an equal greatest heroes of the past.
Despite the relativity of the boundaries separating one poetic genre from another, with all the complex system of mutual transitions, each work of art always represents one or another poetic genre - epic, literature or drama.
“Taking into account the generic specificity of works of art when studying them at school will help schoolchildren understand literature as an art form and create the desired setting on the perception of epic, lyricism, drama. Each of these types of art differs in the manner of reflecting reality, and in the way of expressing the author’s creation, and in the nature of the impact on the reader. Therefore, while there is a unity of methodological principles in their study, the methods of working on epic, lyric and drama are different.” The qualitative certainty of poetic genera, the specificity of the content of each of them, the very principle of the artistic translation of life material accessible to epic, lyric poetry and drama, is first of all discovered by the artist of words. “The very idea already, as it were, carries within itself in embryo the artistic possibilities of epic, lyricism or drama. Therefore, it is natural that comprehension of the laws of the poetic kind is necessary for the reader, especially the literature teacher, who seeks to penetrate into the artistic world of the work.”
2. Epic as a type of literature.
a) features of the epic type of literature.
Epic (Greek epos - word, narrative, story) is a literary genre distinguished along with lyrics and drama. An epic, like a drama, reproduces an action unfolding in space and time, the course of events in the lives of the characters. A specific feature of the epic is the organizing role of the narrator: the speaker reports events and their details as something that happened and is remembered, simultaneously resorting to descriptions of the setting of the action and the appearance of the characters, and sometimes to discrepancies.
The most precise definition of the epic was given by V.G. Belinsky: “epic poetry is primarily objective external poetry, both in relation to itself and to the poet and his reader. Epic poetry expresses the contemplation of the world and life as existing in themselves and being in perfect balance with themselves and the poet or reader contemplating them.”
I.A. Gulyaev also speaks of the objectivity of the epic narrative: “In an epic work, external circumstances determine the behavior of the characters, their present and future.”
The narrative layer of the epic work interacts with the dialogues and monologues of the characters. The epic narrative either becomes self-pressing, temporarily suspending the statements of the heroes, or is imbued with their spirit in inappropriately direct speech; Sometimes it frames the characters’ remarks, sometimes, on the contrary, it is reduced to a minimum or temporarily disappears. But overall it dominates the work, holding together everything depicted in it. Therefore, the features of the epic are largely determined by the properties of the narrative.
The epic narration is conducted on behalf of the named narrator, a kind of mediator between the person depicted and the listeners, a witness and interpreter of what happened. Information about his fate, his relationships with the characters, and the circumstances of the “story” are usually missing. At the same time, the narrator can “condense” into a specific person, becoming a storyteller.
The epic is as free as possible in the exploration of space and time. The writer either creates scenic episodes, that is, pictures that record one place and one moment in the life of the heroes, or - in descriptive, overview, "panoramic" episodes - he talks about long periods of time or what happened in different places. The epic uses the arsenal of literary and visual means in full, which gives the images the illusion of plastic volume and visual and auditory authenticity. The epic does not insist on the conventionality of what is being recreated. Here it is not so much the depicted itself, but the “depicting” one, that is, the narrator, who is often characterized by absolute knowledge of what happened in its smallest details.
The epic form is based on various types of plot structures. In some cases, the dynamics of events are revealed openly and in detail, in others, the depiction of the course of events seems to be drowned in descriptions, psychological characteristics, and reasoning. The volume of text of an epic work, which can be either prosaic or poetic, is practically unlimited - from miniature stories to lengthy epics and novels. An epic can concentrate in itself such a number of characters and events that are not available to other types of literature and types of art. At the same time, the narrative form is able to recreate complex, contradictory, multifaceted characters that are in the making. The word “epic” is associated with the idea of showing life in its integrity, of revealing the essence an entire era and the scale of the creative act. The scope of epic genres is not limited to any types of experiences and attitudes. The nature of the epic is the universally wide use of the cognitive and ideological capabilities of literature and art in general.
So, the main features of epic works are the reproduction of phenomena of reality external to the author in the objective course of events, narration and plot. When studying epic as a type of literature, it is necessary to familiarize students with these features. This is especially important when distinguishing between types and genres of literature.
b) the uniqueness of the epic genres.
Difficulties that arise when analyzing epic works arise when determining the genre of the work. A serious mistake will be made by the one who begins to consider a story or story, making demands on them that only a novel can meet.
One of the teacher’s methodological tasks is to introduce students to the genre uniqueness of epic works and teach them to apply this knowledge when analyzing works. It is important to take into account the age characteristics of students and the stages of literary education at school. In grades V - VI, the study of genres of literary works (fairy tale, legend, myth, chronicle, epic, fable, short story, story, ballad, poem) serves to clarify the author's poetry. Work in grades VII – VIII is aimed at systematizing ideas about the types and genres of literature; the range of study includes such genres as: novel, biography, hagiography, parable, sermon, confession, short story. Literary theory in high school helps to trace historical changes in the poetics of literary types and genres.
Epic genres are divided into large (epic, novel), medium (life, story) and small (fairy tale, fable, parable, short story, short story, sketch, essay). Some forms of prose also belong to the lyrical-epic genres.
The methodology for analyzing an epic work is largely based on the uniqueness of the type and genre. And the volume of the work plays an important role in choosing the path of analysis. This is due to time constraints and the intensity of the school curriculum. Here is how in this case he solves the problem of analyzing the works of M.A. Rybnikov: “Methodological techniques are dictated by the nature of the work... A ballad can be analyzed using a plan, but it is unlikely that a lyrical work should be planned. Little story read and understand in its entirety. From the novel we select individual, leading chapters and read one of them in class, another at home, carefully analyze the third and retell it close to the text, analyze the fourth, fifth, sixth at a faster pace and retell it briefly, excerpts from the seventh and eighth chapters are given in in the form of an artistic story to individual students, the epilogue is told to the class by the teacher himself. The riddle is guessed and repeated by heart, the proverb is explained and accompanied by everyday examples, the fable is analyzed with the expectation of understanding the morality expressed in it.”
