What is the idea of ​​a work? Types of ideas in literary text

Any analysis literary work begins with defining its theme and idea. There is a close semantic and logical connection between them, thanks to which the literary text is perceived as an integral unity of form and content. Correct understanding of the meaning literary terms subject And idea allows you to determine how accurately the author was able to realize his creative concept and whether his book is worth the reader’s attention.

Definition

Subject of a literary work is a semantic definition of its content, reflecting the author’s vision of the depicted phenomenon, event, character or other artistic reality.

Idea- the intention of a writer pursuing a specific goal in creating artistic images, using the principles of plot construction and achieving the compositional integrity of a literary text.

Comparison

Figuratively speaking, a theme can be considered any reason that prompted the writer to take up the pen and transfer it to Blank sheet paper reflected in artistic images perception of the surrounding reality. You can write about anything; another question: for what purpose, what task should I set myself?

The goal and task determine the idea, the disclosure of which constitutes the essence of an aesthetically valuable and socially significant literary work.

Among the diversity literary themes there are several main directions that serve as reference points for flight creative imagination writer. These are historical, social, adventure, detective, psychological, moral and ethical, lyrical, philosophical themes. The list goes on. It will include both original author's notes and literary diaries, and stylistically refined extracts from archival documents.

The theme, felt by the writer, acquires spiritual content, an idea, without which the book page will remain just a coherent text. The idea can be reflected in a historical analysis of problems important to society, in the depiction of complex psychological moments on which human destiny, or simply in creating a lyrical sketch that awakens a sense of beauty in the reader.

The idea is the deep content of the work. Theme is a motive that allows you to realize a creative idea within a specific, precisely defined context.

Conclusions website

1. The theme determines the actual and semantic content of the work.
2. The idea reflects the tasks and goals of the writer, which he strives to achieve while working on a literary text.
3. The theme has formative functions: it can be revealed in small literary genres or be developed into a major epic work.
4. The idea is the main content core literary text. It corresponds to the conceptual level of organization of the work as an aesthetically significant whole.

Hello author! Analyzing any work of art, a critic/reviewer, and simply attentive reader, starts from four basic literary concepts. The author relies on them when creating his work of art, unless of course he is a standard graphomaniac who simply writes whatever comes to mind. You can write rubbish, stereotyped or more or less original without understanding these terms. But a text worthy of the reader’s attention is quite difficult. So, let's go over each of them. I'll try not to load it.

Translated from Greek, the theme is what is the basis. In other words, the theme is the subject of the author’s depiction, those phenomena and events to which the author wants to draw the reader’s attention.

Examples:

The theme of love, its emergence and development, and possibly its ending.
Theme of fathers and sons.
The theme of the confrontation between good and evil.
Theme of betrayal.
The theme of friendship.
Theme of character development.
Theme of space exploration.

Topics change depending on the era in which a person lives, but some topics that concern humanity from era to era remain relevant - called " eternal themes". Above, I listed 6 “eternal topics,” but the last, seventh - “the topic of space exploration” - became relevant for humanity not so long ago. However, apparently, it will also become an “eternal topic.”

1. The author sits down to write a novel and writes everything that comes to mind, without thinking about any themes of literary works.
2. The author is going to write, say, fantasy novel and is based on the genre. He doesn't care about the topic, he doesn't think about it at all.
3. The author coldly chooses a topic for his novel, scrupulously studies and thinks through it.
4. The author is concerned about some topic, questions about it do not allow him to sleep peacefully at night, and during the day he mentally returns to this topic every now and then.

The result will be 4 different novels.

1. 95% (the percentages are approximate, they are given for a better understanding and nothing more) - this will be an ordinary graphomaniac, slag, a meaningless chain of events, with logical errors, cranberries, blunders where someone attacked someone, although there were no there is no reason for that, someone fell in love with someone, although the reader does not understand at all what he/she found in her/him, someone quarreled with someone for some unknown reason (In fact, of course it’s clear - so it was necessary for the author in order to continue to sculpt his writing without hindrance)))), etc. and so on. There are a majority of such novels, but they are rarely published, because few people can handle them even in a small volume. The Runet is littered with such novels, I think you have seen them more than once.

2. This is the so-called “streaming literature”; it is published quite often. Read and forget. For one time. It'll go well with beer. Such novels can captivate if the author has a good imagination, but they do not touch or excite. A certain man went somewhere, found something, then became powerful, etc. A certain young lady fell in love with a handsome man, from the very beginning it was clear that in chapter five or six there would be sex, and in the finale they would get married. A certain “nerd” became the chosen one and went to distribute carrots and sticks right and left to all those whom he did not like and liked. And so on. In general, all sorts of... stuff. There are plenty of such novels both on the Internet and on bookshelves, and most likely, while you were reading this paragraph, you remembered a couple or three, or maybe a dozen or more.

3. These are so-called “crafts” of high quality. The author is a pro and skillfully guides the reader from chapter to chapter, and the ending surprises. However, the author does not write about what sincerely concerns him, but he studies the moods and tastes of readers and writes in such a way that the reader finds it interesting. Such literature is much less common in the second category. I won’t name the authors here, but you’re probably familiar with some good crafts. These are fascinating detective stories and exciting fantasy and beautiful love stories. After reading such a novel, the reader is often satisfied and wants to continue to get acquainted with the novels of his favorite author. They are rarely reread because the plot is already familiar and understandable. But if you fall in love with the characters, then re-reading is quite possible, and reading the author’s new books is more than likely (if he has them, of course).

4. And this category is rare. Novels, after reading which people walk around for several minutes, or even hours, dazed, impressed, and often think about what they have written. They may cry. They may laugh. These are novels that shake the imagination, that help to cope with life's difficulties, to rethink this or that. Almost all classic literature- exactly like that. These are the novels that people put on bookshelf so that after some time you can reread and rethink what you read. Novels that influence people. Novels that are remembered. This is Literature with a capital L.

Naturally, I’m not saying that choosing and elaborating a topic is enough to write strong romance. Moreover, I will say frankly - it is not enough. But in any case, I think it’s clear how important the theme is in a literary work.

The idea of ​​a literary work is inextricably linked with its theme, and the example of the novel’s influence on the reader that I described above in paragraph 4 is unrealistic if the author paid attention only to the theme and forgot to think about the idea. However, if the author is concerned about the topic, then the idea, as a rule, is comprehended and worked out with the same attention.

What is this - the idea of ​​a literary work?

The idea is the main idea of ​​the work. It reflects the author’s attitude to the topic of his work. It is in this display artistic means and therein lies the difference between the idea of ​​a work of art and a scientific idea.

"Gustave Flaubert vividly expressed his ideal of a writer, noting that, like the Almighty, the writer in his book should be nowhere and everywhere, invisible and omnipresent. There are several most important works fiction, in which the presence of the author is unobtrusive to the extent that Flaubert wanted it, although he himself failed to achieve his ideal in Madame Bovary. But even in works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he is nevertheless dispersed throughout the book and his absence turns into a kind of radiant presence. As the French say, “il brille par son absence” (“it shines by its absence”)” © Vladimir Nabokov, “Lectures on Foreign Literature.”

If the author accepts the reality described in the work, then such an ideological assessment is called an ideological statement.
If the author condemns the reality described in the work, then such an ideological assessment is called ideological negation.

The ratio of ideological affirmation and ideological negation in each work is different.

It is important not to go to extremes, and this is very, very difficult. An author who forgets about the idea at the moment of emphasis on artistry will lose the idea, and an author who forgets about artistry, because he is completely absorbed in the idea, will write journalism. This is neither good nor bad for the reader, because it is a matter of the reader’s taste to choose how to treat it, but fiction is just that, fiction and just that, literature.

Examples:

Two different authors describe the NEP period in their novels. However, after reading the novel by the first author, the reader is filled with indignation, condemns the events described and concludes that this period was terrible. And after reading the novel by the second author, the reader would be delighted and would draw conclusions that the New Economic Policy is a wonderful period in history and would regret that he does not live in this period. Of course, in this example I am exaggerating, because the clumsy expression of an idea is a sign weak novel, poster, popular print - which may cause rejection in the reader, who will consider that the author is imposing his opinion on him. But I’m exaggerating in this example for better understanding.

Two different authors have written stories about adultery. The first author condemns adultery, the second understands the reasons for its occurrence, and main character, that being married, she fell in love with another man - justifies. And the reader is imbued with either the author’s ideological negation or his ideological affirmation.

Without an idea, literature is waste paper. Because describing events and phenomena for the sake of describing events and phenomena is not only boring reading, but also simply stupid. “Well, what did the author mean by this?” - a dissatisfied reader will ask and shrug his shoulders and throw the book into the trash. It's junk because...

There are two main ways to present an idea in a work.

The first is through artistic means, very unobtrusively, in the form of an aftertaste.
The second - through the mouth of a character-reasoner or in direct author's text. Head-on. In this case, the idea is called a trend.

It’s up to you to choose how to present the idea, but a thoughtful reader will certainly understand whether the author gravitates towards tendentiousness or artistry.

Plot.

The plot is a set of events and relationships between characters in a work, unfolding in time and space. At the same time, events and relationships between characters are not necessarily presented to the reader in a cause-and-effect or time sequence. A simple example for better understanding is a flashback.

Warning: The plot is based on the conflict, and the conflict unfolds thanks to the plot.

No conflict - no plot.

This is very important to understand. Many “stories” and even “novels” on the Internet do not have a plot, as such.

If a character went to a bakery and bought bread there, then came home and ate it with milk, and then watched TV - this is a plotless text. Prose is not poetry and, as a rule, it is not accepted by the reader without a plot.

Why is such a “story” not a story at all?

1. Exposition.
2. The beginning.
3. Development of action.
4. Climax.
5. Denouement.

The author does not necessarily need to use all the elements of the plot, in modern literature authors often do without exposition, for example, but the main rule of fiction is that the plot must be complete.

More details about the plot elements and conflict can be found in another topic.

There is no need to confuse plot with plot. These are different terms with different meanings.
The plot is the content of events in their serial communication. Causal and temporal.
For a better understanding, I’ll explain: the author conceived the story, in his head the events are arranged in order, first this event happened, then that, this follows from here, and this from here. This is a plot.
And the plot is how the author presented this story to the reader - he kept silent about something, rearranged events somewhere, etc. and so on.
Of course, it happens that the plot and the plot coincide, when the events in the novel are arranged strictly according to the plot, but the plot and the plot are not the same thing.

Composition.

Oh, this composition! A weak point for many novelists, and often for short story writers.

Composition is the construction of all elements of a work in accordance with its purpose, character and content and largely determines its perception.

Difficult, right?

I'll put it more simply.

Composition is the structure of a work of art. The structure of your story or novel.
It's such big house, consisting of various parts. (for men)
This is a soup that contains all sorts of ingredients! (for women)

Every brick, every soup component is an element of the composition, an expressive means.

Monologue of the character, description of the landscape, lyrical digressions and inserted short stories, repetitions and point of view on what is depicted, epigraphs, parts, chapters and much more.

The composition is divided into external and internal.

The external composition (architectonics) is the volumes of a trilogy (for example), parts of a novel, its chapters, paragraphs.

Internal composition includes portraits of characters, descriptions of nature and interiors, point of view or change of points of view, accents, flashbacks and much more, as well as extra-plot components - prologue, inserted short stories, author's digressions and epilogue.

Each author strives to find his own composition, to get closer to his ideal composition for a particular work, however, as a rule, in compositional terms, most texts are rather weak.
Why is this so?
Well, firstly, there are a lot of components, many of which are simply unknown to many authors.
Secondly, it is trivial due to literary illiteracy - thoughtlessly placed accents, overdoing with descriptions to the detriment of dynamics or dialogues, or vice versa - continuous jumping, running, jumping of some cardboard Persians without portraits or continuous dialogue without or with attribution.
Thirdly, due to the inability to cover the volume of the work and isolate the essence. In a number of novels, entire chapters can be thrown out without harming (and often benefiting) the plot. Or in some chapter, a good third is presented with information that does not play into the plot and characters - for example, the author gets carried away with the description of the car, right down to the description of the pedals and a detailed story about the gearbox. The reader is bored, he scrolls through such descriptions (“Listen, if I need to get acquainted with the structure of this car model, I will read the technical literature!”), and the author believes that “This is very important for understanding the principles of driving Pyotr Nikanorych’s car!” and thereby makes a generally good text dull. By analogy with soup, if you overdo it with salt, for example, the soup will become too salty. This is one of the most common reasons why writers are asked to first practice on small form before taking on novels. However, practice shows that quite a few people seriously believe that starting literary activity It should be in the large form, because that’s what publishing houses need. I assure you, if you think that to write a readable novel you only need the desire to write it, you are greatly mistaken. You need to learn to write novels. And learning is easier and more efficient - from miniatures and stories. Despite the fact that the story is a different genre, you can perfectly learn internal composition by working in this particular genre.

Composition is a way of embodying the author's idea, and a compositionally weak work is the author's inability to convey the idea to the reader. In other words, if the composition is weak, the reader simply will not understand what the author wanted to say with his novel.

Thank you for attention.

© Dmitry Vishnevsky

There is an inextricable logical connection.

What is the theme of the work?

If you raise the question of the theme of the work, then intuitively every person understands what it is. He just explains it from his point of view.

The theme of a work is what underlies a particular text. It is with this basis that the most difficulties arise, because it is impossible to define it unambiguously. Some people believe that the theme of the work - what is described there - is the so-called vital material. For example, topic love relationship, war or death.

The topic can also be called problems of human nature. That is, the problem of personality formation, moral principles or the conflict of good and bad actions.

Another topic could be verbal basis. Of course, it’s rare to come across works about words, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. There are texts in which the play on words goes to foreground. Suffice it to recall the work of V. Khlebnikov “Perverten”. His verse has one peculiarity - the words in a line are read the same in both directions. But if you ask the reader what the verse was actually about, he is unlikely to answer anything intelligible. Since the main highlight of this work is the lines that can be read both from left to right and from right to left.

The theme of the work is a multifaceted component, and scientists put forward one or another hypothesis regarding it. If we talk about something universal, then the theme of a literary work is the “foundation” of the text. That is, as Boris Tomashevsky once said: “The theme is a generalization of the main, significant elements.”

If the text has a theme, then there must be an idea. An idea is a writer’s plan that pursues a specific goal, that is, what the writer wants to present to the reader.

Figuratively speaking, the theme of the work is what made the creator create the work. So to speak, the technical component. In turn, the idea is the “soul” of the work; it answers the question of why this or that creation was created.

When the author is completely immersed in the topic of his text, truly feels it and is imbued with the problems of the characters, then an idea is born - spiritual content, without which the page of the book is just a set of dashes and circles.

Learning to find

As an example, you can give a short story and try to find its main theme and idea:

• The autumn downpour did not bode well, especially late at night. All the residents of the small town knew about this, so the lights in the houses had long gone out. In all but one. It was an old mansion on a hill outside the city, which was used as Orphanage. During this terrible downpour, the teacher found a baby on the threshold of the building, so there was a terrible turmoil in the house: feeding, bathing, changing clothes and, of course, telling a fairy tale - after all, this is the main tradition of the old orphanage. And if any of the residents of the city knew how grateful the child would be who was found on the doorstep, they would have responded to the soft knock on the door that sounded in every house on that terrible rainy evening.

In that small excerpt Two themes can be distinguished: abandoned children and an orphanage. Essentially, these are the basic facts that forced the author to create the text. Then you can see that introductory elements appear: a foundling, tradition and a terrible thunderstorm, which forced all the city residents to lock themselves in their houses and turn out the lights. Why does the author talk about them specifically? These introductory descriptions will be the main idea of ​​the passage. They can be summarized by saying that the author is talking about the problem of mercy or selflessness. In one word, he tries to convey to every reader that, regardless of weather conditions, you need to remain human.

How is a theme different from an idea?

The theme has two differences. Firstly, it determines the meaning (main content) of the text. Secondly, the theme can be revealed both in large works and in small short stories. The idea, in turn, shows the main goal and task of the writer. If you look at the presented passage, you can say that the idea is the main message from the author to the reader.

Determining the theme of a work is not always easy, but such a skill will be useful not only in literature lessons, but also in Everyday life. It is with its help that you can learn to understand people and enjoy pleasant communication.

The gasoline is yours, the ideas are ours

When analyzing a literary work, the concept of “idea” is traditionally used, which most often means the answer to the question allegedly posed by the author.

The idea of ​​a literary work - This the main idea, summarizing the semantic, figurative, emotional content of a literary work.

Artistic idea works – this is the content-semantic integrity of a work of art as a product of emotional experience and mastery of life by the author. This idea cannot be recreated by means of other arts and logical formulations; it is expressed throughout artistic structure work, the unity and interaction of all its formal components. Conventionally (and in a narrower sense), an idea stands out as the main thought, ideological conclusion and “ life lesson", naturally arising from a holistic comprehension of the work.

An idea in literature is a thought contained in a work. There are a great many ideas expressed in literature. Exist logical ideas And abstract ideas . Logical ideas are concepts that are easily conveyed without figurative means; we are able to perceive them with our intellect. Logical ideas are characteristic of nonfiction literature. Fictional novels and stories are characterized by philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyzes of causes and consequences, that is, abstract elements.

But there is also special kind very subtle, barely perceptible ideas of a literary work. Artistic idea is a thought embodied in figurative form. It lives only in figurative transformation and cannot be expressed in the form of sentences or concepts. The peculiarity of this thought depends on the disclosure of the topic, the author’s worldview, conveyed by the speech and actions of the characters, and on the depiction of pictures of life. It lies in the combination of logical thoughts, images, and all significant compositional elements. An artistic idea cannot be reduced to a rational idea that can be specified or illustrated. The idea of ​​this type is integral to the image, to the composition.

Forming an artistic idea is difficult creative process. In literature it is influenced personal experience, the writer’s worldview, understanding of life. An idea can be nurtured for years and decades, and the author, trying to realize it, suffers, rewrites the manuscript, and looks for suitable means of implementation. All themes, characters, all events selected by the author are necessary for a more complete expression of the main idea, its nuances and shades. However, it is necessary to understand that an artistic idea is not equal ideological plan, that plan that often appears not only in the writer’s head, but also on paper. Exploring non-fictional reality, reading diaries, notebooks, manuscripts, archives, literary scholars restore the history of the idea, the history of creation, but often do not discover the artistic idea. Sometimes it happens that the author goes against himself, yielding to the original plan for the sake of artistic truth, an internal idea.

One thought is not enough to write a book. If you know in advance everything that you would like to talk about, then you should not contact artistic creativity. Better - to criticism, journalism, journalism.

The idea of ​​a literary work cannot be contained in one phrase and one image. But writers, especially novelists, sometimes struggle to formulate the idea of ​​their work. Dostoevsky about “The Idiot” he wrote: “The main idea of ​​the novel is to portray positively wonderful person" For such a declarative ideology Dostoevsky scolded, for example, Nabokov. Indeed, the phrase of the great novelist does not clarify why, why he did it, what is the artistic and vital basis of his image. But here you can hardly take sides Nabokov, a down-to-earth second-line writer, never, unlike Dostoevsky who does not set himself creative super-tasks.

Along with the attempts of authors to determine the so-called main idea of ​​their work, opposite, although no less confusing, examples are known. Tolstoy to the question “what is “War and Peace”? answered as follows: ““War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.” Reluctance to translate the idea of ​​your work into the language of concepts Tolstoy demonstrated once again, speaking about the novel “Anna Karenina”: “If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write the very one that I wrote first” (from a letter to N.Strakhov).

Belinsky very accurately pointed out that “art does not allow abstract philosophical, much less rational ideas: it allows only poetic ideas; A poetic idea- This<…>It’s not a dogma, it’s not a rule, it’s a living passion, pathos.”

V.V. Odintsov expressed his understanding of the category “artistic idea” more strictly: “Idea literary composition is always specific and is not directly derived not only from those lying outside it individual statements writer (facts of his biography, public life etc.), but also from the text - from replicas goodies, journalistic inserts, comments by the author himself, etc.”

2000 ideas for novels and stories

Literary critic G.A. Gukovsky also spoke about the need to distinguish between rational, that is, rational, and literary ideas: “By idea I mean not only a rationally formulated judgment, statement, not even just the intellectual content of a work of literature, but the entire sum of its content, which constitutes it intelligent function, its goal and task." And he further explained: “To understand the idea of ​​a literary work means to understand the idea of ​​each of its components in their synthesis, in their systemic interconnection.<…>. At the same time, it is important to take into account the structural features of the work - not only the words-bricks from which the walls of the building are made, but the structure of the combination of these bricks as parts of this structure, their meaning.”

The idea of ​​a literary work is an attitude towards what is depicted, the fundamental pathos of the work, a category that expresses the author’s tendency (inclination, intention, preconceived thought) in the artistic coverage of a given topic. In other words, idea is the subjective basis of a literary work. It is noteworthy that in Western literary criticism, based on other methodological principles, instead of the category “artistic idea”, the concept of “intention”, a certain premeditation, the tendency of the author to express the meaning of the work is used.

The greater the artistic idea, the longer the work lives. The creators of pop literature who write outside of great ideas face very rapid oblivion.

V.V. Kozhinov called an artistic idea a semantic type of work that grows out of the interaction of images. An artistic idea, unlike a logical idea, is not formulated by an author’s statement, but is depicted in all the details of the artistic whole.

IN epic works the idea can be partly formulated in the text itself, as was the case in the narrative Tolstoy: “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.” More often, especially in lyric poetry, the idea permeates the structure of the work and therefore requires a lot of analytical work. A work of art as a whole is much richer than the rational idea that critics usually isolate, and in many lyrical works isolating an idea is simply impossible, because it practically dissolves in pathos. Consequently, the idea of ​​a work should not be reduced to a conclusion or a lesson, and in general one should certainly look for it.

Idea(gr. idea - concept, idea) - a thought about a life phenomenon, about a person, an object, etc., which expresses the attitude towards these life phenomena, people’s idea of ​​them.

"There is an idea cognition and aspiration (want) [of a person],” teaches V.I. Lenin (“Philosophical Notebooks,” p. 188).

This or that idea is always determined social order in which people live, the material conditions of society.

In a class society, ideas, people's ideas about life phenomena, their attitude towards life phenomena, their aspirations express the point of view of a particular class, its material interests in this society.

The idea of ​​a work of art is its main thought about the main range of phenomena that are depicted in this work; writer's idea - the thought expressed by him in artistic images, i.e. in pictures of life, in behavior characters works, their actions and experiences.

Depicting people and life phenomena, the writer expresses his attitude towards them and strives to evoke the same attitude towards them in the reader. In the writer's ideas, in his attitude towards life phenomena reflects the interests of the class with which he sympathizes, on whose side he takes in the popular struggle.

Thus, telling about the life and struggle of Pavel Korchagin and his comrades, N. Ostrovsky, in the interests of the people fighting against the exploiting classes, artistically convincingly and vitally truthfully showed that there are no difficulties that a person cannot overcome if he is inspired great goal- the struggle for the happiness of humanity, the construction of communism. This is the main, main idea, the main idea of ​​the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”, an idea that inspired N. Ostrovsky himself to a creative feat.

It should be borne in mind that a full-fledged work of art, truthfully and broadly reflecting life, is not limited to one main idea. Along with it, the writer expresses in images a number of other ideas, to one degree or another related to the main idea of ​​the work, and conveys his attitude to the various aspects of life depicted by him.

"AND": Ideal,